Microsoft may have chosen a side in the ongoing optical disk war.
Microsoft is finally choosing sides and going with HD-DVD now? Wow, this is exciting news. Personally, I was left wondering after:
It was announced (though later dropped) that the 360 would support HD-DVD.
It was announced from the beginning that HD-DVD's DRM was less restrictive to what Microsoft wanted to do with Vista and thus their platform of choice.
It was rumoured that Bill Gates shouted out the head of Sony for the restrictive DRM on Blu Ray and how it conflicted with Microsoft's plans.
Microsoft has backed HD-DVD all along. Observing that they've finally chosen a side is like observing that the earth seems to have finally chosen to orbit around the sun or that fat kids have finally chosen a side in the cake-no cake debate.
About 30 seconds after you enter your first job, the 2nd language you learned at University will mean nothing compared to the on-the-job experience you have.
On the other hand, your GPA will follow you around forever.
If you know enough of one already to be confident (but not so over confident as to be cocky, cut corners and get poor grades), pick that one.
The advice others have given, about choosing the best prof, also holds true. The better prof will help you learn more and thus get better grades too. On the flip side though, they're helping others learn more and thus any grade curves will be harsher.
I hate to be so mercenary about it but, honestly, that's what University is really about. Forget all the foolish notions of learning, noble pursuits of knowledge, bettering yourself, etc. University is about getting out the far end, doing whatever you have to do to cope with crazy instructors, team projects where everyone else refuses to work, and all the other things people call "unfair." Of course it's unfair, it's supposed to be.
Your GPA isn't a measure of how well you've learned a bunch of exciting courses like Advanced Navel Lint Statistics 427 - it's a guide to employers about how well you can deal with such ridiculous situations because, trust me, it's only going to get more ridiculous in the working world.
So, focus on what gets you the best wins on your GPA and don't worry about the specifics of how you got it - as, trust me, that won't matter from the moment you land your first job.
This will only hit the garbage can AFTER we elect a democratically controlled senate/house.
Unfortunately, you did elect a democratically controlled sentate/house. It's just that a combination of events allowed most of the checks and balances to be overcome.
Ultimately, the 2000 election aside, a Republican president got elected in to office. In 2004 he got elected back in again. In 2008 he has to leave and either a Republican will be elected in to follow him or a Democrat to replace him. Pretty much democracy in action.
Congress and the Senate, similarly, were populated by votes. Granted there was some dubious redistricting by a guy who's now under criminal investigation - but those offices were all populated by votes and can have their population changed by votes. Again, pretty much democracy in action.
None of those offices, despite some glaring similarities, are dictatorships and, certainly, none of them are "for life" (save the Supreme Court but that's long been accepted). Every one of them can be changes [at regular intervals] by the will of the people. Thus, by definition, it is a democracy.
The problem is, when you allow the will of the people, you have to allow that people are stupid.
9/11 and the threat of the boogie man have worked as a great tool for scaring people and getting them to vote pro-conservative. It worked for the Nazi party in the 1940s, it worked for the Conservatives in Britain during the Falkands and the first Gulf war, and it's working for the Republicans now.
As Jimmy Carter pointed out on The Daily Show last night: "There's 9-10% of the population that, regardless of political affiliation, will always vote to support the current commander in chief whenever there's a war on and America's young men and women are fighting." Most of the margins are well within that 9-10% and, so long as there's a war on, it's an instant bonus for the party in power.
So, sadly, it is, by definition, a democratically elected government. It's just that part of democracy is allowing stupid people to vote, that stupid people can be manipulated, and that smart politicians will, eventually, find a way around almost any checks and balances. But that doesn't stop it being democratically elected.
If it makes its way from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office and becomes law, the measure will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment.
They all have a very lucrative market converting analog video signals (photons) in to digital video signals (MPEG4 etc.) in their video camera market.
What? Stupid laws sometimes get stupidly broad definitions?
And, before it's argued that the DRM encryption can't be embedded in to photons and thus cameras don't have to support it: How long do you really think it'll take for some nerd to figure out how to make a little colored light filter, pulsed laser emitter, or whatever it might be that ends up doing just that?
At which point, I'd pay money to see the nerd community hang these things in every major popular movie location (skyline of NYC, streets of LA, etc.) and then sue to have all copies of the MPAA's latest movies destroyed as their recording converted this analog watermark to digital (for processing in AVID, release on DVD, etc.) without respecting it. I wonder if losing the reels of every movie shot on location, having to replace every digital camera bought after the changeover, etc. would cost enough to make them regret this one? Do we get to sue them for the usual $250,000 per instance bull? Across a 2,500 theater release, that would close down most studios right there.
Dude, AnandTech's carried articles for years on underclocking our special ops troops, allowing passive cooling, so we can get closer to the goal of a "truly silent soldier." Get with the times!
Of course, all that extra sound insulation chaffes like a bitch.
"By definition, most theories cannot be proved, they can only be disproved. The validity of a theory is perceived to increase the longer it goes without being disproved."...is a part of science - and a pretty important one. Blindly accepting theories without questioning them, if anything, is even closer to religion.
Granted, singling out one alternative to be taught, despite minimal to no proof of it, is poor science. You can inform students as to what makes a theory and what gives it validity and strength without citing alternatives - or, if you want to teach alternatives in a science classroom, explain the alternatives in terms of their scientific validity - which, sadly, places Christian creationism (which, let's face it, is the real purpose of this) on a par with his noodly appendages, Narnia, Middle Earth and giants that fall asleep to form mountains.
It's in this way that the ID argument undermined itself. If they just wanted the notion of theories and validity of theories discussed - that would be science but it would also question creationism even more than it does Darwinism. Instead, they took a reasonable scientific concept and then tried using that to weaken only one perspective and then promote a specific alternative for religious gain - and that's what the judge rightly identified as a failure of separation of church and state.
Had they stopped with "Theories should be questioned" though, whether it's uncomfortable for firm believers in Darwin or not, it was still science at that point and had a place in science classrooms.
30 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was COBOL.
20 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was C. They still saw some COBOL programmers around.
10 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was Java. They still saw some C programmers around but just about never had anything to do with COBOL programmers who were still working - just at other companies with legacy mainframes.
Now, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds is AJAX. They still see some Java programmers around but just about never have anything to do with C programmers - who are still working just on non web related tasks - and absolutely never see the COBOL programmers who are still working - just absolutely removed, in totally different companies.
In another ten years time, the exciting skillset will be [whatever]. They will never see any AJAX programmers as they were all fired for knowing a silly over-hyped skillset. They will very rarely see Java programmers if at all, never see C programmers and absolutely not see the baby boomer COBOL programmers who are hitting retirement age anyway and bankrupting the nation.
Ten years after that, the hip skill will be COBOL as companies pay out the ass to maintain legacy code that no one still working knows how to work with. And thus the cycle will repeat.
So, it's not that old programmers don't have jobs. It's just that trends change and the exciting, hip skillset of one decade means you see less of the people ten years ahead of you who are on somewhat removed skillsets and even less of the ones ten years ahead of them who are on even more removed skillsets. It's not that they don't exist - it's just that they work for totally different types of companies that do totally different things.
It makes me wonder if the now 50 something COBOL guys wonder why everyone's so old and how come no new blood ever enters the market.
Ironically, the music industry "claims" that they'd love to be able to charge $1.29 for an Usher track and $0.39 for an old Uriah Heep track.
Because, right now, a ten track CD of Uriah Heep music is just $3.99 new at retail compared to the $12.99 Usher album, right?
Surely no one is jaded enough to think that the promises of $0.39 tracks are so much bull in order to try gaining sympathy for unlocking the price structure to realise the real goal of $1.99 popular tracks and $0.99 less popular ones... with maybe the odd $0.79 for the absolute least popular and absolutely nothing at $0.39.
You know, it's an awfully large amount of money that you guys could better spend invading somewhere.
How about you guys keep IPv4 and righteous control of its domain name servers. We'll just take those spare extra bits in the IPv6 address space, the really expensive ones you don't really want anyway. Of course, we'll need a naming system for it, but you don't care about what you can't use, right?
Heck, to show our understanding, we'll even open up some new top level domains in our new system, just for you. We trust.jebus and.id will cover everything you could need? We were going to offer you part of our new.sci space as well but we understand you prefer to cover that with.jebus these days?
I was curious as to whether or not there were any resources for finding out which stations do what - like your example of WVIR vs. WSLS.
Also I heard that DirectTV, at least in some markets, has dropped some of its 1080i signals from 1920x1080i to 1280x1080i with the excuse that most HDTVs only natively support 720p (downscaling 1080i as needed) and thus 1280 horizontal is sufficient and lets them compress further, fitting more channels on to a single transponder which, from what I have read, costs satelite companies a lot more to rent than it does cable companies.
I'd be fascinated to see a table like the one at http://www.widemovies.com/dtvtransponders.html that shows how given local cable and satelite providers divide up their feeds - were such a resource to exist.
Part of this is motivated from the story on WebWire about 50% of users thinking they're getting HD because they have an HD ready set but no means of receiving a signal, aren't connecting their HD Cable box with the right cables, are watching the 480i versions of the channels also shown in 1080i further through the channel lists, etc.
Call it the obsessive nerd thing but I'd like to get a better understanding of what I'm actually viewing and also a better understanding so I can give advice to friends when they ask "So, is HD worth it? Is it better to get DirectTV or Cable? Are 720p sets that much worse than 1080i?
From seeing *most* HD channels turn out to be 1080i, a 1080i set seems to make sense as most channels would need downsampling from 1080i to 720p whereas, the other way around, relatively few channels need upsampling from 720p to 1080i. That much I gained from finding resources like CNet's. Knowing the provider/bandwidth answers would help in picking the best services (cable vs. HD vs. over the air) to avoid compression artifacts.
For me, the solution was to pass it over to the cable box to handle. I can tell the cable box what inputs my TV accepts (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i) and then it will only send in combinations of those modes. Accordingly, if I switch off everything but 1080i, everything gets upsampled (or, technically, kind of downsampled if a single frame of 720p vs. the 540 of 1080i) in the cable box without the flicker. The TV then never switches modes - it always gets a 1080i feed - and so no flicker.
The nerd part of me hates this solution. XBRs apparently resolve to something like 1400 scan lines. Thus I'm taking a signal, forcing it in to 1080i with the slight softening and disorting of a scaling algorithm and then doing it again to fit the TV's native 1400 lines. I'd much rather just do one rescale, in the TV, and have 720p politely just scale once, at roughly 2 lines per line of input, and stay really sharp. Sadly though, that brings the flicker.
You bought your laptop. You updated and installed antivirus software and antivirus update immediately?
And that was good enough?
If immediate updating and accepting exposure simply during the duration of updating then was good enough for you, what's changed? I trust you're going to update your anti virus definitions and windows updates before doing anything else? How is this really all that different to that period?
If anything, you've at least got anti virus software running now, albeit 9 months behind the times, that you likely didn't have when you bought the laptop.
Yes, there's a risk. I'm not going to pretend there isn't. The point is, it's no different a risk to the one you've taken in the past.
If you want, sure, go buy a hardware firewall (honestly, they're so cheap it's hard to justify not doing so). Install Linux instead of Windows. Make sure it's a nice secure flavor. Close off all the ports you don't specifically need. Maybe even build a first Linux box to act as a second firewall between your hardware firewall and your main Linux box. Patch daily, etc.
Alternatively that's all a pain in the ass and simply doing an initial update puts you at no more risk than you've already accepted in the past. The $50 firewall options make sense in terms of cost vs. reward but, beyond that, the main point remains:
An initial update is no worse than (and possibly quite a bit more secure than) the one I'm assuming you did when you first bought the laptop. If it was good enough then, what's changed?
Of course, high IQ, obsessive compulsive, geek types who get warm fuzzy feelings about complex solutions probably won't agree as it's a far less exciting or obsessive method. But it doesn't change that it was good enough for you in the past, does it?
Is it just the specific performance? Or is it the combination of a pattern of musical notes, words, and timings?
If you take away the instumentation, you're left with just the lyrics. So that shouldn't be copyrightable? That shouldn't be something an artist, having come up with it, has a right to profit from in any way they can find people willing to pay for?
If we establish that lyrics alone shouldn't be copyrightable, we're assuming that poetry shouldn't? As, afterall, poetry is basically a song without the music part.
Or do we accept that poets should be able to copyright their work as lyrics, in that sense, are the primary medium for their poems? If so, isn't that splitting hairs somewhat?
Shouldn't musicians have the right to profit off explaining their lyrics, how to play their songs, etc., through songbooks and other revenue streams that go beyond just the basic recording, if people are willing to pay for them?
I'll grant, those revenue streams are even more offensively priced and marketed than the CDs everyone complains about being a rip off. A typical guitar and lyric guide for a typical album from say Warner Bros Publications runs about $19.99 - you end up paying about twice for the how to play and no music as you would for the music itself. Were publishers to introduce a standard for lyrics, tab and staff being noted at every recording, mass production would bring the cost down to a negligible amount. At that point they could distribute lyrics as a text file on the CD and encoded in the iTunes download and then, via something similar to iTunes, distribute an accurate tab for $0.25/track or whatever - or enhanced CDs with tabs for every song for a couple of dollars extra for musicians. Instead, ignoring the net and modern tech, they have a limited variety available in dead tree form, that's hard to find, hard for music stores to stock, and thus makes the cost prohibitive.
But, again, it's that old question: Does music industry stupidity make it OK to violate copyright? There are two types of people: Those who petulently say "Well they suck so it's OK I do something bad" and then the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings of the world who say, "Yes, they are wrong. We will call them on that, but we will never lower ourselves in doing so." Who do you respect more?
I'm pretty sure you can maintain level flight in a well trimmed modern aircraft without any neural cells at all. Hell, an F-18 is actually designed to resume level flight if you pull a too high-G turn and pass out - anti-nonundeirregardless of your inputs and the F-22 is a full generation later.
But it's cooler if you have to chop some creature up to do it. Bonus points awarded for dismembered humice.
...People don't need this. It isn't vital and required for life, it's music they can live without.
The real stock market is determined by supply and demand. High street retail prices are similarly determined by supply and demand.
Is everything ever listed vital to life?
SCO stock, porn magazines and beer are all priced based on supply and demand and only one of them is vital to life.
SCO never became vital to life - but it did gain value when people thought they could gain by possessing it - and lost value when they realised they really couldn't. Similarly, vital or not, people have a perceived notion of what they can gain from music. I'd potentially buy Dock Of The Bay for a couple of bucks because, were there no other options, because I know it's worth it to me, even if I'd rarely pay $0.99 for most other tracks.
people are automatically conditioned to go to the EB-Games and GameStop stores at the malls, even if they give less in trade-ins and have horrible customer servicr;
lastly, kids come in with piles of junk games (Madden 2001, etc..), and get enough store credit to buy the latest greatest game that we only mark up like 5%-10%.
It sounds like you have two incompatible ideologies here:
You want to give great store credit for used games.
You don't like it when great store credit is used as it reduces profitability.
You pretty much have two choices when running a business. You can do things the way you think they "should" be - even if those ethics cost you money and may make the business tank - or you can study the economics of the situation and do things the way that are most profitable - and hopefully get rich by doing it.
It's a mistake that people see big business as unethical. That implies a deliberate desire to do evil. Big business generally isn't like that. What it is is completely removed from ethics either way - aethical if you will. If doing "evil" will make them richer, they do evil - but they're just as willing to do "good" if that'll turn a profit too.
EB and GameStop have analyzed the market. They've looked at what price points will get them the best rate of trade ins that still give the best markups to ensure the best profitability. It's a complex balance - ensuring enough titles come in to support that business but still keeping their prices low enough that they can make a reasonable markup without overcharging for those resales to the point where no one buys them or they occupy shelf space for months.
The big boys may be wrong. Body Shop made its fortune by identifying another angle at the same cosmetics market - realising people will pay more for a sense of earthy goodness. It may be the gaming industry has such an angle too - or maybe not.
The point is, you have two options:
A) If you want to run a successful business, do a business analysis. Look at where the profit margins lie. Look at whether there really is a market for "the ethical game store" that you can turn in to a profit or whether the profitable segment is in ripping off selfish kids who'll happily rip you off if they can get away with it while the few percent who'd like a nice ethical store won't really fund it. If the answer is genuinely positive, great, you've found an angle no one else has exploited and you'll get rich. If the cold hard numbers are negative, it sounds like you need to go the way of EB and GameStop... or you choose option B.
B) Accept that your feeling good about yourself and your business' fluffiness is more important to you than making money. It's great that there are people like you around. I'll happily buy from you, getting great deals and a great environment at your expense. But understand that, if it doesn't meet any business model, you are personally buying each and every one of those ethics.
Right now, it sounds like you're in B but in denial. If you really want denial, cool, go with it. But it does tend to lead to exactly the frustration you're describing - where you can't grasp why what "should" work doesn't.
New York and New Jersey camera stores are famous for this. The general scam runs something like this:
1) Advertise an incredibly low price that gets people's interest.
2) Take their credit card order, telling them the item's in stock.
3) Within a couple of days, phone the customer to ask them if they want to buy the accessories pack. This usually includes most of the things that were in the box to start with - like the charger, kit lens, etc. These cost several hundred more, making the camera more expensive than it would have been via a reputable dealer.
4) If they refuse, try berating them.
5) If they still refuse, announce that the model is out of stock - even though it was confirmed in stock when they ordered.
6) Wait for them to either give in and take the terrible deal or, if they do finally cancel on you, charge a 15% restocking fee for the camera you never took off the shelf. Either way, you sit on the money from their credit card for the whole period.
It's a pretty simple rule in the camera community: If the deal's too good to be true, it is.
You can use online reputation sites but they can be rigged. The store keeps sale details and then enters their own perfect feedback for any that don't get consumed.
Personally, I limit to the following:
B&H, Adorama: Both very reputable stores. Some people have minor issues but they do genuinely work hard. You can pretty much use them as baseline prices - if it costs more, you're paying too much, if it costs less, it's likely a scam.
Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. By using major retailers, whilst you won't get a great deal initially, you can often find a 10% sale for reward card members, 5% back in vouchers on the sale (which buys memory cards etc). and so on. Be careful of open boxes here. It's not unheard of for say a Canon 20D to be bought and then a Digital Rebel to be returned in the box.
Dell - Crazy as it may sound, they do have some great deals. The trick is to use sites like DealMeIn or HotDealsClub to find out when they have a great sale on.
NewEgg - even with an employee discount from working for one of the major manufacturers, NewEgg was within $20, had free shipping, and got it to me fast - which turned out far better than getting it with my discount.
Great, so now the drug companies are going to patent beer?
"Free as in beer" tag disappearing in five, four, three, two...
Leave them to their jobs as patent clerks.
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 4, Insightful
But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world?
We've been identifying those we think of as brilliant and world changing for centuries. We've also been laughing at those who think of themselves as brilliant or world changing and telling them to go back to the patent office or selling their lousy paintings and hanging out in Munich's beer halls.
This implies:
1) What we see as brilliant or world changing (whether world changing is good or bad) often isn't. What we don't understand and therefore, in our arrogance, can't identify as brilliance often is.
2) Ever notice how the truly brilliant ones are the ones who faced adversity? The ones who make a real difference seem to do so because they've learned to fight damn hard. The ones we tell are geniuses tend to expect things to be handed to them, are obsessed with their own genius, and rarely seem to really do anything that truly amazing - as opposed to simply being pretty successful and massively bipolar.
Given the second, perhaps the best thing we can do is not identify those poor kids? Adversity seems to harden the amazing ones; over attention seems to lessen them.
My impression of playing Call Of Duty 2 on a BestBuy Xbox 360: Slightly nicer graphics but, at the end of the day, you are trying to play a shooter on the same control mechanism everyone laughed at you (before owning you in deathmatches) for using on a PC back in the days of Doom 1.
If you like playing FPS' without a mouse, in a standalone system, without all the add on costs of upgrading a PC (arguments about a $400 XBox vs $400 X1800 aside), it's a great version of a great game. Me... Even using the scope, even gently nudging the analog sticks, I kept swinging either side of the guy in the window I'd have sniped and moved on from on the PC.
RPG: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion It's missed the launch window. It'll be all nice and shiny and run well by default on the XBox 360. Alternatively, the PC version has a much more obvious system for those who're in to mods etc.
If you want an RPG to pick up, play without needing to upgrade, then put down again, the XBox is for you. If you want an RPG to lose yourself in for the next two years while you build your own content, download stuff from the community, etc., the PC is your choice. The XBox will look nicer now but if you do play for those two years, and upgrade your PC throughout, it'll likely look better then.
The really interesting thing about Oblivion is the potential for threaded games finally making it to the PC. Rumor has it that most launch titles are barely threaded if at all (discounting the OS running on processors 1 and 2 while the game runs on 0). The developers on Oblivion say they've worked a lot on their threading. If this moves over to the PC, it'll be interesting to see how it performs on multiple core, multiple processor systems. It may be one of the first games to really show off those quirky rigs.
A judge should not react like an uneducated person. The act and circumstances are what count, not the feelings of a judge.
The judge said he would normally be inclined to leniency but that lying to the police meant that, when considering degree of intent, thus severity of the act, thus appropriate severity of the punishment, it implied Cuthbert knew what he was doing was wrong (as, if he felt he was in the right, why would he feel the need to lie?) and did it anyway.
The judge didn't act because he was in a bad mood. He weighed the factors he had available to consider Cuthbert's degree of guilt and found his lying to imply more guilt.
Plus, whether we like it or not, judges do go a lot harder on people who are proved to lie to the police, resist arrest, lie in court, etc., making examples of them to attempt to discourage such acts by others.
I've been, arguably, in that sort of a position. Upon getting a speeding ticket, I didn't bitch about how unfair it was, how the cop came up behind me in the dark, rode my ass until I accelerated to get out of his way, etc. I didn't try lying about what speed I was doing, I didn't try claiming his detection gear was faulty and demand a copy of the source code. I knew I was in the wrong, I admitted it, he wrote my speed down as lower than I admitted to to cut me a break, I got the negligible fine, I got on with my life.
Now, yes, I could have raced for my freedom until he managed to force me to stop. I could have lied about the speed I was doing. I could have been rude and surly. But, had I pulled all of that, I would have likely had him decide to cite me for my missing front plate, my empty wiper bottles, give me a breath test for good measure, take me in until he could verify the provisional license the DMV has issued for stupid reasons, etc. I'd have likely ended up with several hundred dollars of fines and rubber gloves in uncomfortable places.
Now, yes, we could all end up in his position tomorrow. And yes, they may be stupid laws. Yes, they may have more powers than they should. But it doesn't change the fact that most people, and this judge was one - just like the cop was in my case, are basically decent enough people who just want to do their jobs and give the honestly contrite as minor a slap on the wrist as possible whether the system is abusable or not. But, if you act like a jerk, try lying to them, treat them like idiots, then, yeah, they're likely to look for ways to screw you back.
The system's not perfect. But you can make it better or worse through your actions. Through his deliberate lying, Cuthbert made his situation much worse when coming in front of an otherwise apparently reasonable judge who would have let him off.
Daniel Cuthbert, recently a high-profile victim of the UK's outdated cybercrime laws
To be fair, if you look at what happened:
The judge indicated that he would normally have let Cuthbert go for the core act.
However, Cuthbert didn't just commit the core act, acknowledge what he'd done and then say sorry. Instead, when the police investigated, he concocted a lie about what he'd been doing, causing them to spend a lot more time and money investigating, and only told the truth when caught.
The judge outright stated that, whilst he would be inclined to simply give a slap on the wrists, the fact Cuthbert deliberately lied to the police led him to impose a harsher sentence.
The same holds true of pretty much any law. If the judge feels the law is dubious, unmerrited or whatever, he has freedom for leniency. If you piss them off by deliberately lying to the police though, don't expect them to go easy on you.
If the only argument over the old 14 days (or the 7 prior to Blair) is HD cracking then I take it there's a provision written in that, unless an encrypted hard drive is found, it will default back to 7 (or 14) rather than even the new 28?
Were that genuinely the case, I'm guessing the following could have been passed through: "Detention will remain at 14 days. If an encrypted hard drive is found, the suspect will be given the opportunity to provide keys to decrypt the data. Should they fail to do so, their detention may remain indefinite until fourteen days after all files on that drive are cracked. If they do give the keys, their detention may not extend beyond 14 days from that date."
That addresses any genuine concern with encrypted hard drives. It gives the police 14 days to investigate and charge or release once they have the drive cracked. Not only that but it gives you an incentive to hand over your keys if you know you're innocent as it gets you out faster - saving everyone time and money. It doesn't invade privacy anymore as, charged or released, they're not handing back the drive until they've cracked it and found the information anyway. The only people it could possibly effect are criminals or those so paranoid they'd rather rot until the same result is achieved anyway. Plus it allows longer if better encryption is used, etc. - making it a far better match to the problem.
That would have likely got passed. It's pretty hard to argue against it other than with a vague notion of not having to incriminate yourself (but handing keys to your files is no different to having to let the police execute a search warrant).
Except, something tells me, this isn't about an arbitrary 90 days being needed to crack hard drives. This is about how the state would, understandably, like as much freedom as possible to do their thing and thus the more they can put up a mock cause, and get a little more and a little more, the better.
It's like the patriot act. Even with arguments for a need for secrecy with fighting terrorism, even with arguments for a need for speed of action, warrants served by the FBI could still be reviewed in secret by judges after the event and those found to be without merrit publicised - to prevent any abuses. But the point isn't about preventing abuses, it's about using one hot topic justification to get away with all the other things they'd rather do but can't justify on their own merits.
I'm quite sure they've prevented quite a few armed robberies, murders, mob activities and all the rest of it with their new powers. I also know Karl Rove, scumbag that he is, has used it to populate the largest "political enemies list" in U.S. presidential history. And all this has to be secret to make it work against terrorism? Hmm. Don't think so. There're ways that'd stop terrorism just as effectively - as suggested above - but they don't let Karl do his little thing.
If a newbie gets just as positive an experience as a veteran, what incentive remains to practice, improve, etc.?
Games are rewarding because they're a challenge that you ultimately get to feel you're getting better at. Make newbies just as successful as veterans and you lose any sense of them improving and thus any reason to keep trying.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability
Personal Computer - to - Piece Of Total Sh!te?
A new feature under Messanger? I thought Windows had had that as a default part of the install for years?
Microsoft may have chosen a side in the ongoing optical disk war.
Microsoft is finally choosing sides and going with HD-DVD now? Wow, this is exciting news. Personally, I was left wondering after:
It was announced (though later dropped) that the 360 would support HD-DVD.
It was announced from the beginning that HD-DVD's DRM was less restrictive to what Microsoft wanted to do with Vista and thus their platform of choice.
It was rumoured that Bill Gates shouted out the head of Sony for the restrictive DRM on Blu Ray and how it conflicted with Microsoft's plans.
Microsoft has backed HD-DVD all along. Observing that they've finally chosen a side is like observing that the earth seems to have finally chosen to orbit around the sun or that fat kids have finally chosen a side in the cake-no cake debate.
About 30 seconds after you enter your first job, the 2nd language you learned at University will mean nothing compared to the on-the-job experience you have.
On the other hand, your GPA will follow you around forever.
If you know enough of one already to be confident (but not so over confident as to be cocky, cut corners and get poor grades), pick that one.
The advice others have given, about choosing the best prof, also holds true. The better prof will help you learn more and thus get better grades too. On the flip side though, they're helping others learn more and thus any grade curves will be harsher.
I hate to be so mercenary about it but, honestly, that's what University is really about. Forget all the foolish notions of learning, noble pursuits of knowledge, bettering yourself, etc. University is about getting out the far end, doing whatever you have to do to cope with crazy instructors, team projects where everyone else refuses to work, and all the other things people call "unfair." Of course it's unfair, it's supposed to be.
Your GPA isn't a measure of how well you've learned a bunch of exciting courses like Advanced Navel Lint Statistics 427 - it's a guide to employers about how well you can deal with such ridiculous situations because, trust me, it's only going to get more ridiculous in the working world.
So, focus on what gets you the best wins on your GPA and don't worry about the specifics of how you got it - as, trust me, that won't matter from the moment you land your first job.
This will only hit the garbage can AFTER we elect a democratically controlled senate/house.
Unfortunately, you did elect a democratically controlled sentate/house. It's just that a combination of events allowed most of the checks and balances to be overcome.
Ultimately, the 2000 election aside, a Republican president got elected in to office. In 2004 he got elected back in again. In 2008 he has to leave and either a Republican will be elected in to follow him or a Democrat to replace him. Pretty much democracy in action.
Congress and the Senate, similarly, were populated by votes. Granted there was some dubious redistricting by a guy who's now under criminal investigation - but those offices were all populated by votes and can have their population changed by votes. Again, pretty much democracy in action.
None of those offices, despite some glaring similarities, are dictatorships and, certainly, none of them are "for life" (save the Supreme Court but that's long been accepted). Every one of them can be changes [at regular intervals] by the will of the people. Thus, by definition, it is a democracy.
The problem is, when you allow the will of the people, you have to allow that people are stupid.
9/11 and the threat of the boogie man have worked as a great tool for scaring people and getting them to vote pro-conservative. It worked for the Nazi party in the 1940s, it worked for the Conservatives in Britain during the Falkands and the first Gulf war, and it's working for the Republicans now.
As Jimmy Carter pointed out on The Daily Show last night: "There's 9-10% of the population that, regardless of political affiliation, will always vote to support the current commander in chief whenever there's a war on and America's young men and women are fighting." Most of the margins are well within that 9-10% and, so long as there's a war on, it's an instant bonus for the party in power.
So, sadly, it is, by definition, a democratically elected government. It's just that part of democracy is allowing stupid people to vote, that stupid people can be manipulated, and that smart politicians will, eventually, find a way around almost any checks and balances. But that doesn't stop it being democratically elected.
If it makes its way from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office and becomes law, the measure will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment.
They all have a very lucrative market converting analog video signals (photons) in to digital video signals (MPEG4 etc.) in their video camera market.
What? Stupid laws sometimes get stupidly broad definitions?
And, before it's argued that the DRM encryption can't be embedded in to photons and thus cameras don't have to support it: How long do you really think it'll take for some nerd to figure out how to make a little colored light filter, pulsed laser emitter, or whatever it might be that ends up doing just that?
At which point, I'd pay money to see the nerd community hang these things in every major popular movie location (skyline of NYC, streets of LA, etc.) and then sue to have all copies of the MPAA's latest movies destroyed as their recording converted this analog watermark to digital (for processing in AVID, release on DVD, etc.) without respecting it. I wonder if losing the reels of every movie shot on location, having to replace every digital camera bought after the changeover, etc. would cost enough to make them regret this one? Do we get to sue them for the usual $250,000 per instance bull? Across a 2,500 theater release, that would close down most studios right there.
Dude, AnandTech's carried articles for years on underclocking our special ops troops, allowing passive cooling, so we can get closer to the goal of a "truly silent soldier." Get with the times!
Of course, all that extra sound insulation chaffes like a bitch.
The notion that:
...is a part of science - and a pretty important one. Blindly accepting theories without questioning them, if anything, is even closer to religion.
"By definition, most theories cannot be proved, they can only be disproved. The validity of a theory is perceived to increase the longer it goes without being disproved."
Granted, singling out one alternative to be taught, despite minimal to no proof of it, is poor science. You can inform students as to what makes a theory and what gives it validity and strength without citing alternatives - or, if you want to teach alternatives in a science classroom, explain the alternatives in terms of their scientific validity - which, sadly, places Christian creationism (which, let's face it, is the real purpose of this) on a par with his noodly appendages, Narnia, Middle Earth and giants that fall asleep to form mountains.
It's in this way that the ID argument undermined itself. If they just wanted the notion of theories and validity of theories discussed - that would be science but it would also question creationism even more than it does Darwinism. Instead, they took a reasonable scientific concept and then tried using that to weaken only one perspective and then promote a specific alternative for religious gain - and that's what the judge rightly identified as a failure of separation of church and state.
Had they stopped with "Theories should be questioned" though, whether it's uncomfortable for firm believers in Darwin or not, it was still science at that point and had a place in science classrooms.
30 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was COBOL.
20 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was C. They still saw some COBOL programmers around.
10 years ago, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds was Java. They still saw some C programmers around but just about never had anything to do with COBOL programmers who were still working - just at other companies with legacy mainframes.
Now, the exciting skillset for 20 year olds is AJAX. They still see some Java programmers around but just about never have anything to do with C programmers - who are still working just on non web related tasks - and absolutely never see the COBOL programmers who are still working - just absolutely removed, in totally different companies.
In another ten years time, the exciting skillset will be [whatever]. They will never see any AJAX programmers as they were all fired for knowing a silly over-hyped skillset. They will very rarely see Java programmers if at all, never see C programmers and absolutely not see the baby boomer COBOL programmers who are hitting retirement age anyway and bankrupting the nation.
Ten years after that, the hip skill will be COBOL as companies pay out the ass to maintain legacy code that no one still working knows how to work with. And thus the cycle will repeat.
So, it's not that old programmers don't have jobs. It's just that trends change and the exciting, hip skillset of one decade means you see less of the people ten years ahead of you who are on somewhat removed skillsets and even less of the ones ten years ahead of them who are on even more removed skillsets. It's not that they don't exist - it's just that they work for totally different types of companies that do totally different things.
It makes me wonder if the now 50 something COBOL guys wonder why everyone's so old and how come no new blood ever enters the market.
Ironically, the music industry "claims" that they'd love to be able to charge $1.29 for an Usher track and $0.39 for an old Uriah Heep track.
Because, right now, a ten track CD of Uriah Heep music is just $3.99 new at retail compared to the $12.99 Usher album, right?
Surely no one is jaded enough to think that the promises of $0.39 tracks are so much bull in order to try gaining sympathy for unlocking the price structure to realise the real goal of $1.99 popular tracks and $0.99 less popular ones... with maybe the odd $0.79 for the absolute least popular and absolutely nothing at $0.39.
You know, it's an awfully large amount of money that you guys could better spend invading somewhere.
.jebus and .id will cover everything you could need? We were going to offer you part of our new .sci space as well but we understand you prefer to cover that with .jebus these days?
How about you guys keep IPv4 and righteous control of its domain name servers. We'll just take those spare extra bits in the IPv6 address space, the really expensive ones you don't really want anyway. Of course, we'll need a naming system for it, but you don't care about what you can't use, right?
Heck, to show our understanding, we'll even open up some new top level domains in our new system, just for you. We trust
I was curious as to whether or not there were any resources for finding out which stations do what - like your example of WVIR vs. WSLS.
Also I heard that DirectTV, at least in some markets, has dropped some of its 1080i signals from 1920x1080i to 1280x1080i with the excuse that most HDTVs only natively support 720p (downscaling 1080i as needed) and thus 1280 horizontal is sufficient and lets them compress further, fitting more channels on to a single transponder which, from what I have read, costs satelite companies a lot more to rent than it does cable companies.
I'd be fascinated to see a table like the one at http://www.widemovies.com/dtvtransponders.html that shows how given local cable and satelite providers divide up their feeds - were such a resource to exist.
Part of this is motivated from the story on WebWire about 50% of users thinking they're getting HD because they have an HD ready set but no means of receiving a signal, aren't connecting their HD Cable box with the right cables, are watching the 480i versions of the channels also shown in 1080i further through the channel lists, etc.
Call it the obsessive nerd thing but I'd like to get a better understanding of what I'm actually viewing and also a better understanding so I can give advice to friends when they ask "So, is HD worth it? Is it better to get DirectTV or Cable? Are 720p sets that much worse than 1080i?
From seeing *most* HD channels turn out to be 1080i, a 1080i set seems to make sense as most channels would need downsampling from 1080i to 720p whereas, the other way around, relatively few channels need upsampling from 720p to 1080i. That much I gained from finding resources like CNet's. Knowing the provider/bandwidth answers would help in picking the best services (cable vs. HD vs. over the air) to avoid compression artifacts.
My Sony XBR does the same thing.
For me, the solution was to pass it over to the cable box to handle. I can tell the cable box what inputs my TV accepts (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i) and then it will only send in combinations of those modes. Accordingly, if I switch off everything but 1080i, everything gets upsampled (or, technically, kind of downsampled if a single frame of 720p vs. the 540 of 1080i) in the cable box without the flicker. The TV then never switches modes - it always gets a 1080i feed - and so no flicker.
The nerd part of me hates this solution. XBRs apparently resolve to something like 1400 scan lines. Thus I'm taking a signal, forcing it in to 1080i with the slight softening and disorting of a scaling algorithm and then doing it again to fit the TV's native 1400 lines. I'd much rather just do one rescale, in the TV, and have 720p politely just scale once, at roughly 2 lines per line of input, and stay really sharp. Sadly though, that brings the flicker.
You bought your laptop. You updated and installed antivirus software and antivirus update immediately?
And that was good enough?
If immediate updating and accepting exposure simply during the duration of updating then was good enough for you, what's changed? I trust you're going to update your anti virus definitions and windows updates before doing anything else? How is this really all that different to that period?
If anything, you've at least got anti virus software running now, albeit 9 months behind the times, that you likely didn't have when you bought the laptop.
Yes, there's a risk. I'm not going to pretend there isn't. The point is, it's no different a risk to the one you've taken in the past.
If you want, sure, go buy a hardware firewall (honestly, they're so cheap it's hard to justify not doing so). Install Linux instead of Windows. Make sure it's a nice secure flavor. Close off all the ports you don't specifically need. Maybe even build a first Linux box to act as a second firewall between your hardware firewall and your main Linux box. Patch daily, etc.
Alternatively that's all a pain in the ass and simply doing an initial update puts you at no more risk than you've already accepted in the past. The $50 firewall options make sense in terms of cost vs. reward but, beyond that, the main point remains:
An initial update is no worse than (and possibly quite a bit more secure than) the one I'm assuming you did when you first bought the laptop. If it was good enough then, what's changed?
Of course, high IQ, obsessive compulsive, geek types who get warm fuzzy feelings about complex solutions probably won't agree as it's a far less exciting or obsessive method. But it doesn't change that it was good enough for you in the past, does it?
What does the copyright on a song cover?
Is it just the specific performance? Or is it the combination of a pattern of musical notes, words, and timings?
If you take away the instumentation, you're left with just the lyrics. So that shouldn't be copyrightable? That shouldn't be something an artist, having come up with it, has a right to profit from in any way they can find people willing to pay for?
If we establish that lyrics alone shouldn't be copyrightable, we're assuming that poetry shouldn't? As, afterall, poetry is basically a song without the music part.
Or do we accept that poets should be able to copyright their work as lyrics, in that sense, are the primary medium for their poems? If so, isn't that splitting hairs somewhat?
Shouldn't musicians have the right to profit off explaining their lyrics, how to play their songs, etc., through songbooks and other revenue streams that go beyond just the basic recording, if people are willing to pay for them?
I'll grant, those revenue streams are even more offensively priced and marketed than the CDs everyone complains about being a rip off. A typical guitar and lyric guide for a typical album from say Warner Bros Publications runs about $19.99 - you end up paying about twice for the how to play and no music as you would for the music itself. Were publishers to introduce a standard for lyrics, tab and staff being noted at every recording, mass production would bring the cost down to a negligible amount. At that point they could distribute lyrics as a text file on the CD and encoded in the iTunes download and then, via something similar to iTunes, distribute an accurate tab for $0.25/track or whatever - or enhanced CDs with tabs for every song for a couple of dollars extra for musicians. Instead, ignoring the net and modern tech, they have a limited variety available in dead tree form, that's hard to find, hard for music stores to stock, and thus makes the cost prohibitive.
But, again, it's that old question: Does music industry stupidity make it OK to violate copyright? There are two types of people: Those who petulently say "Well they suck so it's OK I do something bad" and then the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings of the world who say, "Yes, they are wrong. We will call them on that, but we will never lower ourselves in doing so." Who do you respect more?
I'm pretty sure you can maintain level flight in a well trimmed modern aircraft without any neural cells at all. Hell, an F-18 is actually designed to resume level flight if you pull a too high-G turn and pass out - anti-nonundeirregardless of your inputs and the F-22 is a full generation later.
But it's cooler if you have to chop some creature up to do it. Bonus points awarded for dismembered humice.
...People don't need this. It isn't vital and required for life, it's music they can live without.
The real stock market is determined by supply and demand. High street retail prices are similarly determined by supply and demand.
Is everything ever listed vital to life?
SCO stock, porn magazines and beer are all priced based on supply and demand and only one of them is vital to life.
SCO never became vital to life - but it did gain value when people thought they could gain by possessing it - and lost value when they realised they really couldn't. Similarly, vital or not, people have a perceived notion of what they can gain from music. I'd potentially buy Dock Of The Bay for a couple of bucks because, were there no other options, because I know it's worth it to me, even if I'd rarely pay $0.99 for most other tracks.
lastly, kids come in with piles of junk games (Madden 2001, etc..), and get enough store credit to buy the latest greatest game that we only mark up like 5%-10%.
It sounds like you have two incompatible ideologies here:
You pretty much have two choices when running a business. You can do things the way you think they "should" be - even if those ethics cost you money and may make the business tank - or you can study the economics of the situation and do things the way that are most profitable - and hopefully get rich by doing it.
It's a mistake that people see big business as unethical. That implies a deliberate desire to do evil. Big business generally isn't like that. What it is is completely removed from ethics either way - aethical if you will. If doing "evil" will make them richer, they do evil - but they're just as willing to do "good" if that'll turn a profit too.
EB and GameStop have analyzed the market. They've looked at what price points will get them the best rate of trade ins that still give the best markups to ensure the best profitability. It's a complex balance - ensuring enough titles come in to support that business but still keeping their prices low enough that they can make a reasonable markup without overcharging for those resales to the point where no one buys them or they occupy shelf space for months.
The big boys may be wrong. Body Shop made its fortune by identifying another angle at the same cosmetics market - realising people will pay more for a sense of earthy goodness. It may be the gaming industry has such an angle too - or maybe not.
The point is, you have two options:
A) If you want to run a successful business, do a business analysis. Look at where the profit margins lie. Look at whether there really is a market for "the ethical game store" that you can turn in to a profit or whether the profitable segment is in ripping off selfish kids who'll happily rip you off if they can get away with it while the few percent who'd like a nice ethical store won't really fund it. If the answer is genuinely positive, great, you've found an angle no one else has exploited and you'll get rich. If the cold hard numbers are negative, it sounds like you need to go the way of EB and GameStop... or you choose option B.
B) Accept that your feeling good about yourself and your business' fluffiness is more important to you than making money. It's great that there are people like you around. I'll happily buy from you, getting great deals and a great environment at your expense. But understand that, if it doesn't meet any business model, you are personally buying each and every one of those ethics.
Right now, it sounds like you're in B but in denial. If you really want denial, cool, go with it. But it does tend to lead to exactly the frustration you're describing - where you can't grasp why what "should" work doesn't.
New York and New Jersey camera stores are famous for this. The general scam runs something like this:
1) Advertise an incredibly low price that gets people's interest.
2) Take their credit card order, telling them the item's in stock.
3) Within a couple of days, phone the customer to ask them if they want to buy the accessories pack. This usually includes most of the things that were in the box to start with - like the charger, kit lens, etc. These cost several hundred more, making the camera more expensive than it would have been via a reputable dealer.
4) If they refuse, try berating them.
5) If they still refuse, announce that the model is out of stock - even though it was confirmed in stock when they ordered.
6) Wait for them to either give in and take the terrible deal or, if they do finally cancel on you, charge a 15% restocking fee for the camera you never took off the shelf. Either way, you sit on the money from their credit card for the whole period.
It's a pretty simple rule in the camera community: If the deal's too good to be true, it is.
You can use online reputation sites but they can be rigged. The store keeps sale details and then enters their own perfect feedback for any that don't get consumed.
Personally, I limit to the following:
B&H, Adorama: Both very reputable stores. Some people have minor issues but they do genuinely work hard. You can pretty much use them as baseline prices - if it costs more, you're paying too much, if it costs less, it's likely a scam.
Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. By using major retailers, whilst you won't get a great deal initially, you can often find a 10% sale for reward card members, 5% back in vouchers on the sale (which buys memory cards etc). and so on. Be careful of open boxes here. It's not unheard of for say a Canon 20D to be bought and then a Digital Rebel to be returned in the box.
Dell - Crazy as it may sound, they do have some great deals. The trick is to use sites like DealMeIn or HotDealsClub to find out when they have a great sale on.
NewEgg - even with an employee discount from working for one of the major manufacturers, NewEgg was within $20, had free shipping, and got it to me fast - which turned out far better than getting it with my discount.
Great, so now the drug companies are going to patent beer?
"Free as in beer" tag disappearing in five, four, three, two...
But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world?
We've been identifying those we think of as brilliant and world changing for centuries. We've also been laughing at those who think of themselves as brilliant or world changing and telling them to go back to the patent office or selling their lousy paintings and hanging out in Munich's beer halls.
This implies:
1) What we see as brilliant or world changing (whether world changing is good or bad) often isn't. What we don't understand and therefore, in our arrogance, can't identify as brilliance often is.
2) Ever notice how the truly brilliant ones are the ones who faced adversity? The ones who make a real difference seem to do so because they've learned to fight damn hard. The ones we tell are geniuses tend to expect things to be handed to them, are obsessed with their own genius, and rarely seem to really do anything that truly amazing - as opposed to simply being pretty successful and massively bipolar.
Given the second, perhaps the best thing we can do is not identify those poor kids? Adversity seems to harden the amazing ones; over attention seems to lessen them.
FPS: Call Of Duty
My impression of playing Call Of Duty 2 on a BestBuy Xbox 360: Slightly nicer graphics but, at the end of the day, you are trying to play a shooter on the same control mechanism everyone laughed at you (before owning you in deathmatches) for using on a PC back in the days of Doom 1.
If you like playing FPS' without a mouse, in a standalone system, without all the add on costs of upgrading a PC (arguments about a $400 XBox vs $400 X1800 aside), it's a great version of a great game. Me... Even using the scope, even gently nudging the analog sticks, I kept swinging either side of the guy in the window I'd have sniped and moved on from on the PC.
RPG: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
It's missed the launch window. It'll be all nice and shiny and run well by default on the XBox 360. Alternatively, the PC version has a much more obvious system for those who're in to mods etc.
If you want an RPG to pick up, play without needing to upgrade, then put down again, the XBox is for you. If you want an RPG to lose yourself in for the next two years while you build your own content, download stuff from the community, etc., the PC is your choice. The XBox will look nicer now but if you do play for those two years, and upgrade your PC throughout, it'll likely look better then.
The really interesting thing about Oblivion is the potential for threaded games finally making it to the PC. Rumor has it that most launch titles are barely threaded if at all (discounting the OS running on processors 1 and 2 while the game runs on 0). The developers on Oblivion say they've worked a lot on their threading. If this moves over to the PC, it'll be interesting to see how it performs on multiple core, multiple processor systems. It may be one of the first games to really show off those quirky rigs.
A judge should not react like an uneducated person. The act and circumstances are what count, not the feelings of a judge.
The judge said he would normally be inclined to leniency but that lying to the police meant that, when considering degree of intent, thus severity of the act, thus appropriate severity of the punishment, it implied Cuthbert knew what he was doing was wrong (as, if he felt he was in the right, why would he feel the need to lie?) and did it anyway.
The judge didn't act because he was in a bad mood. He weighed the factors he had available to consider Cuthbert's degree of guilt and found his lying to imply more guilt.
Plus, whether we like it or not, judges do go a lot harder on people who are proved to lie to the police, resist arrest, lie in court, etc., making examples of them to attempt to discourage such acts by others.
I've been, arguably, in that sort of a position. Upon getting a speeding ticket, I didn't bitch about how unfair it was, how the cop came up behind me in the dark, rode my ass until I accelerated to get out of his way, etc. I didn't try lying about what speed I was doing, I didn't try claiming his detection gear was faulty and demand a copy of the source code. I knew I was in the wrong, I admitted it, he wrote my speed down as lower than I admitted to to cut me a break, I got the negligible fine, I got on with my life.
Now, yes, I could have raced for my freedom until he managed to force me to stop. I could have lied about the speed I was doing. I could have been rude and surly. But, had I pulled all of that, I would have likely had him decide to cite me for my missing front plate, my empty wiper bottles, give me a breath test for good measure, take me in until he could verify the provisional license the DMV has issued for stupid reasons, etc. I'd have likely ended up with several hundred dollars of fines and rubber gloves in uncomfortable places.
Now, yes, we could all end up in his position tomorrow. And yes, they may be stupid laws. Yes, they may have more powers than they should. But it doesn't change the fact that most people, and this judge was one - just like the cop was in my case, are basically decent enough people who just want to do their jobs and give the honestly contrite as minor a slap on the wrist as possible whether the system is abusable or not. But, if you act like a jerk, try lying to them, treat them like idiots, then, yeah, they're likely to look for ways to screw you back.
The system's not perfect. But you can make it better or worse through your actions. Through his deliberate lying, Cuthbert made his situation much worse when coming in front of an otherwise apparently reasonable judge who would have let him off.
Daniel Cuthbert, recently a high-profile victim of the UK's outdated cybercrime laws
To be fair, if you look at what happened:
The judge indicated that he would normally have let Cuthbert go for the core act.
However, Cuthbert didn't just commit the core act, acknowledge what he'd done and then say sorry. Instead, when the police investigated, he concocted a lie about what he'd been doing, causing them to spend a lot more time and money investigating, and only told the truth when caught.
The judge outright stated that, whilst he would be inclined to simply give a slap on the wrists, the fact Cuthbert deliberately lied to the police led him to impose a harsher sentence.
The same holds true of pretty much any law. If the judge feels the law is dubious, unmerrited or whatever, he has freedom for leniency. If you piss them off by deliberately lying to the police though, don't expect them to go easy on you.
If the only argument over the old 14 days (or the 7 prior to Blair) is HD cracking then I take it there's a provision written in that, unless an encrypted hard drive is found, it will default back to 7 (or 14) rather than even the new 28?
Were that genuinely the case, I'm guessing the following could have been passed through:
"Detention will remain at 14 days. If an encrypted hard drive is found, the suspect will be given the opportunity to provide keys to decrypt the data. Should they fail to do so, their detention may remain indefinite until fourteen days after all files on that drive are cracked. If they do give the keys, their detention may not extend beyond 14 days from that date."
That addresses any genuine concern with encrypted hard drives. It gives the police 14 days to investigate and charge or release once they have the drive cracked. Not only that but it gives you an incentive to hand over your keys if you know you're innocent as it gets you out faster - saving everyone time and money. It doesn't invade privacy anymore as, charged or released, they're not handing back the drive until they've cracked it and found the information anyway. The only people it could possibly effect are criminals or those so paranoid they'd rather rot until the same result is achieved anyway. Plus it allows longer if better encryption is used, etc. - making it a far better match to the problem.
That would have likely got passed. It's pretty hard to argue against it other than with a vague notion of not having to incriminate yourself (but handing keys to your files is no different to having to let the police execute a search warrant).
Except, something tells me, this isn't about an arbitrary 90 days being needed to crack hard drives. This is about how the state would, understandably, like as much freedom as possible to do their thing and thus the more they can put up a mock cause, and get a little more and a little more, the better.
It's like the patriot act. Even with arguments for a need for secrecy with fighting terrorism, even with arguments for a need for speed of action, warrants served by the FBI could still be reviewed in secret by judges after the event and those found to be without merrit publicised - to prevent any abuses. But the point isn't about preventing abuses, it's about using one hot topic justification to get away with all the other things they'd rather do but can't justify on their own merits.
I'm quite sure they've prevented quite a few armed robberies, murders, mob activities and all the rest of it with their new powers. I also know Karl Rove, scumbag that he is, has used it to populate the largest "political enemies list" in U.S. presidential history. And all this has to be secret to make it work against terrorism? Hmm. Don't think so. There're ways that'd stop terrorism just as effectively - as suggested above - but they don't let Karl do his little thing.
If a newbie gets just as positive an experience as a veteran, what incentive remains to practice, improve, etc.?
Games are rewarding because they're a challenge that you ultimately get to feel you're getting better at. Make newbies just as successful as veterans and you lose any sense of them improving and thus any reason to keep trying.