There's an unofficial.iso torrent up on The Pirate Bay, for those finding the mirrors slow. Not a lot of people using it at the moment, but we can change that.
Some of the MD5s are different; I haven't investigated why yet.
First, let me mention that I vehemently agree that our voting system really needs to change. I'm not trying to argue that. But...
Everyone registered as a citizen gets a voting ticket by regular mail well before the election.
What happens if yours never comes? I know there were major problems with absentee ballots being mailed to US citizens living abroad. As in, few of them received them more than a day before the deadline to return them. Now imagine this happening widespread across the US. Under an Administration that people hvae come to distrust.
Even if everyone gets them, I can see a lot of people losing them. And if people can go get a new one, it raises the question of what happened to the old one--was it really lost (or never arrived), or does someone else have it? Anyone who thinks that fake IDs don't exist should visit a college campus. So then the tickets would be making it easier for people to 'double-vote.'
Once again, I agree that the system needs to change, and it needs to change in a big way. It just seems like voting 'tickets' will do nothing but keep legitimate voters from being able to vote.
I doubt they said he was guilty, but they can still end up influencing a jury.
For example, if some crazy lunatic came up to the street and told me that you had told them you killed five people, "Slashdot user Gerv allegedly admitted to killing five people" is entirely accurate. Poor journalism, and unethical, but not untrue: the crazy lunatic alleged it, and I said that it was alleged.
Furthermore, suppose that, on television, they spend all day speculating on gruesome ways you could have hidden the bodies, had you killed anyone, as well as discussion of possible motives for killing people. They never say you did do it, but anyone watching doesn't see anything but discussion of the gruesome murders that you probably committed.
I agree with your overall point (that the UK system makes a lot of sense), just thought I'd explain why I think that the constant speculation and the like that we see here in the US isn't really any better than "stat[ing] a man is guilty of an offence," which would be libel (or slander, depending on the medium).
But a better analogy would be if you went over to your boss's house without being invited, and proceeded to insult him, on his front porch, while he was standing in the doorway asking you, over and over again, to please take your foot out of his door and get off his property. And then, when he tried to fire you, you had him arrested.
No, the guy's no saint. Yes, it seems that the sticker could probably be bigger. (Incidentally, this guy isn't more than 15 miles from me--I ought to go check out the size of the sticker.) But when you're standing on someone else's front porch with the homeowner, I'm not sure you really have much of an expectation of privacy.
I know you're kidding, but you bring up another good point.
I used to grapple with how you could 'prove' that a machine was running the 'right' code, and displaying some sort of signature was the obvious solution.
But really, how would I know whether the machine was running... echo(sha1($system_rom)); or echo("d46b82a7f4dad427760124c777c0b56fe642afbc");
I can't think of a way to allow a potentially compromised machine to prove that it's running the 'right' software, unless I'm allowed to analyze the ROM/disk in my own computer. (Which wouldn't scale well if everyone tried this.)
The only real solution that I can think of is to have independent contractors verify the software the machines are running. (But then: can you trust the contractors?)
I'm not sure card readers are really all that useful, unless you can get everyone there obsessed with security.
Doors inherently allow multiple people. Whenever I swipe into a building, I hold the door for the people behind me. If I'm coming out of a building, I hold the door for anyone coming in. (This is on a college campus, though, not exactly a facility needing super-security.) Heck, I've opened doors to other buildings because someone was standing outside who forgot their card.
Unless you can convince me, and even harder, Joe Average, that letting a door slam in someone's face is okay, I think everyone's going to hold the door for people, or stop in the dead of winter to let what's presumably a fellow student / co-worker into their building.
I suppose the way to fix it is to insist that only one person may use the door at a time, and threaten to terminate on the spot anyone allowing anyone to enter the building with them. And then actually enforce the rule.
but it wouldn't have killed them to temporarily suspend all traffic for an emergency broadcast.
It would, in two ways: - Loss of revenue: people are burning through minutes, maybe even encountering overages. If you're the cell provider, are you going to want to stop all those calls? - What's to say that the calls weren't emergency calls? Are you going to terminate the call made from an emergency management official to, say, police headquarters, in order to send him a memo saying that the power is out?
I'm not saying the system is all bad, just that placing a really high priority on sending these memos isn't going to be to everyone's advantage.
What do you think the point is of passing huge numbers of unenforceable laws?
I think the reason we have so many unenforceable laws is nothing more than dumb politicians who try to get involved in things that they don't need to. While I agree that the laws end up being used to allow selective enforcement, I don't think anyone ever sat down and thought, "What sort of unenforceable laws can I come up with today so that the police can single people out?"
To quote (or perhaps paraphrase) someone's sig that I happened across earlier: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance." I don't think it's a deliberate conspiracy, as much as a bunch of dumb laws.
Outside a private place... for the purpose of... recording... sounds originating in such place which would not ordinarily be audible or comprehensible outside such place.
Wouldn't the sounds (conversation) originating outside his house (a "private place") ordinarily be audible outside his house? And I think one would have a very difficult time arguing that a front porch met the same standards as restrooms or locker rooms as "a private place," so whether any of this even applies is debatable.
The second place the law might not fit is:
such person unlawfully and without the consent of the persons entitled to privacy therein installs or uses...
Short of the text we're discussing, I'm not sure there's anything indicating that a homeowner installing a camera on his own home, and posting signs warning of its presence, is in any way unlawful. More importantly there's the second part of text I bolded (maybe a word?). I would argue that if you're standing on the front porch of someone else's home, you are in no way entitled to privacy there. (And much less so if you're standing on the front porch of someone else's home, in front of a video camera with a sign warning you of its presence.)
Granted, IANAL, but one shouldn't have to be one to understand the laws.
classifying an entire group of people based on their appearance is okay sometimes... and not okay other times
First, I'm not trying to defend it. Your post made me think a bit, so I'm going to post my thoughts.:)
Part of the reason is that I'm white, and most people using the term "redneck" are white. A lot of black people use "the N word," and it's seen as okay. I'm making fun of my own race (although, I suppose, a different 'class'), so it's not bad.
I think the other reason is that minorities always get special 'protection.' Hate crime examples aside, consider a real life example. I overheard someone telling a joke about Jews, and went off on them about how incredibly inappropriate it was. And yet when someone tells a joke about Catholics, I laugh. Why is one disgustingly inappropriate and the other light-hearted and funny, if they're both negative stereotypes of a religion?
uneven treatment like this makes it even more difficult than it already is to have any kind of honest discussion about race in the US.
I absolutely agree. A recent attempt at discussing racism in one of my college classes was completely siderailed by discusion of whether it was okay to use "the N word" while discussing the word itself, as well as whether "black person" or "African-American" was preferable, or if they even meant the same thing, and whether a more preferable term existed.
Anyway, this is straying wildly offtopic. My apologies.
The side-conversations that develop are one of my favorite parts about Slashdot.
That was my point. I'd rather not accidentally find one either way, but if I'm going to, I'd rather do so in an environment where I can close the browser and have that be the end of it, rather than having the police show up within the hour.
Family photograph from a country where theyre open about nudity(okay, would still be illegal here, but you get what I'm getting at).
I'm by no means an expert (or a lawyer), but I seem to recall that the definition of child pornography is that they're under 18, and in a sexual context. In theory, then, it might be legal to have a nude picture of someone under 18; for example, someone who was just born (they don't wear clothes in the womb), or a child on a nude beach. I'd certainly be suspicious of the latter, but you might be able to make a case for its legality.
I don't think those are the guys we want, though. We want the ones that are more difficult to catch, because they're the ones that are going to be distributing, or even creating, the stuff.
I don't see it as a selling point at all. I'd prefer an ISP that didn't offer this filtering. (Don't get me wrong: pedophiles deserve to be arrested, and child porn is gross.)
There are two reasons I oppose it. The first is that I don't believe my ISP should be doing anything but giving me access to the 'whole' Internet. It already irks me when they start blocking ports. Now they're going to be doing content analysis on what I'm looking at? Is that really any different than if the USPS opened my mail to see if I'm mailing people child porn?
My second concern is that I'm uber-paranoid, and have always worried that a porn site is going to work in some people who are, say, 17, and I'm going to be unknowingly accessing child porn. Now if it happens once my ISP will send the police after me? And take it one step further--suppose it becomes like the Goatse guy. Some jackass saves a 'common' child porn image, and starts posting it in conspicuous places, trying to fool people into clicking it all the time. Except this time, you're not just disgusted, you're labeled a pedophile by your ISP and arrested for possession of child porn.
People should absolutely be going after child porn, but there's no need to move closer to 1984 to do so.
You're right it would. And they'd have your name (confirmed real, since the check can be traced back to your account), along with a written confession that you pirated ten songs.
Perhaps you'd be better off contacting the band and stating that you love their music, but refuse to further the RIAA, and suggest they break away from them. Wouldn't be as effective, at least not in the long wrong, but at least you're not mailing a signed confession of piracy to the RIAA, with proof that it's really you.
Never underestimate the power of being an ass when you're not treated fairly..
As someone on the other side of the counter (well, retail customer service, not in the telecom industry), I'd like to propose just the opposite: never underestimate the power of being friendly. I find that, without trying, I tend to reciprocate the customer's attitude. While I wouldn't intentionally cause more problems for a customer (although there are plenty of people who would), there's a world of difference between what I have to do for you in order to keep my job, and what I could do for you if I was so inclined. As an example, people will often come in tell me that they were overcharged earlier in the day, but they don't have a receipt to show it. I have no obligation to do anything in this case, and my manager will back me up on this. However, I know from experience that he'll trust my judgment if I refund the difference without a receipt, and that I can make a good case for why I felt compelled to throw in some extra store credit. So what determines whether I tell you I can't help you, or whether I bend the rules and even throw in some bonuses? Mostly, whether you're being a jerk or being friendly.
The point at which a customer starts yelling, by the way, is the point at which we ask if they'd like to leave the premises with or without police involvement. If someone's wronged you, don't give them an excuse to get a restraining order against you. (Although it only happens once in a blue moon, there are outstanding restraining orders where I work. A friend who works, ironically enough, in a Verizon store mentioned a few weeks ago that they'd had to take one out against someone.)
The way I see it, if customer service reps are the people you're asking to do something for you, doesn't it stand to reason that you'd want to get on their good side?
Sad to see they've thrown the Firefox minimalist philosophy out the window
It's a separate project. I get what you're saying, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me if someone wants to start their own browser based on Firefox. (And I've seen reports, although I have absolutely no clue how true they are, that Flock outperforms Firefox.)
Features that less than 1% of 1% of their users will ever even look at
I use RSS feeds. I blog. I use Flickr. Every one of the features they mention sounds like something I'd use often. It's not like these are obscure technologies.
How well do these cards handle noise from the computer? For quite some time now, I've wanted to put a handful of cards into a machine and set up a 'scanner' that would log everything to MP3 files. My concern is that every computer I've ever owned has spewed noise over various portions of the spectrum; I can only imagine what would happen if I put it inside a computer. Or are the cards really well-shielded somehow? (And for that matter, are they worth the money? I seem to recall them being very expensive.)
Slashdot Mirror
There's an unofficial .iso torrent up on The Pirate Bay, for those finding the mirrors slow. Not a lot of people using it at the moment, but we can change that.
Some of the MD5s are different; I haven't investigated why yet.
First, let me mention that I vehemently agree that our voting system really needs to change. I'm not trying to argue that. But...
Everyone registered as a citizen gets a voting ticket by regular mail well before the election.
What happens if yours never comes? I know there were major problems with absentee ballots being mailed to US citizens living abroad. As in, few of them received them more than a day before the deadline to return them. Now imagine this happening widespread across the US. Under an Administration that people hvae come to distrust.
Even if everyone gets them, I can see a lot of people losing them. And if people can go get a new one, it raises the question of what happened to the old one--was it really lost (or never arrived), or does someone else have it? Anyone who thinks that fake IDs don't exist should visit a college campus. So then the tickets would be making it easier for people to 'double-vote.'
Once again, I agree that the system needs to change, and it needs to change in a big way. It just seems like voting 'tickets' will do nothing but keep legitimate voters from being able to vote.
I doubt they said he was guilty, but they can still end up influencing a jury.
For example, if some crazy lunatic came up to the street and told me that you had told them you killed five people, "Slashdot user Gerv allegedly admitted to killing five people" is entirely accurate. Poor journalism, and unethical, but not untrue: the crazy lunatic alleged it, and I said that it was alleged.
Furthermore, suppose that, on television, they spend all day speculating on gruesome ways you could have hidden the bodies, had you killed anyone, as well as discussion of possible motives for killing people. They never say you did do it, but anyone watching doesn't see anything but discussion of the gruesome murders that you probably committed.
I agree with your overall point (that the UK system makes a lot of sense), just thought I'd explain why I think that the constant speculation and the like that we see here in the US isn't really any better than "stat[ing] a man is guilty of an offence," which would be libel (or slander, depending on the medium).
Now that Goatse has apparently become illegal, maybe Slashdot ought to add a button to report it!
Better yet, let's let the RIAA go to Iraq, to get a feel for the piracy situation first-hand.
Heck, I'd be willing to pool my money with other Slashdotters to finance their trip to the battlegrounds of Iraq!
But a better analogy would be if you went over to your boss's house without being invited, and proceeded to insult him, on his front porch, while he was standing in the doorway asking you, over and over again, to please take your foot out of his door and get off his property. And then, when he tried to fire you, you had him arrested.
No, the guy's no saint. Yes, it seems that the sticker could probably be bigger. (Incidentally, this guy isn't more than 15 miles from me--I ought to go check out the size of the sticker.) But when you're standing on someone else's front porch with the homeowner, I'm not sure you really have much of an expectation of privacy.
I know you're kidding, but you bring up another good point.
I used to grapple with how you could 'prove' that a machine was running the 'right' code, and displaying some sort of signature was the obvious solution.
But really, how would I know whether the machine was running...
echo(sha1($system_rom));
or
echo("d46b82a7f4dad427760124c777c0b56fe642afbc");
I can't think of a way to allow a potentially compromised machine to prove that it's running the 'right' software, unless I'm allowed to analyze the ROM/disk in my own computer. (Which wouldn't scale well if everyone tried this.)
The only real solution that I can think of is to have independent contractors verify the software the machines are running. (But then: can you trust the contractors?)
Another problem however is that telus provides their phone service too.
Being borderline scammed by the company sounds like an outstanding reason to find a new phone company, too.
I'm not sure card readers are really all that useful, unless you can get everyone there obsessed with security.
Doors inherently allow multiple people. Whenever I swipe into a building, I hold the door for the people behind me. If I'm coming out of a building, I hold the door for anyone coming in. (This is on a college campus, though, not exactly a facility needing super-security.) Heck, I've opened doors to other buildings because someone was standing outside who forgot their card.
Unless you can convince me, and even harder, Joe Average, that letting a door slam in someone's face is okay, I think everyone's going to hold the door for people, or stop in the dead of winter to let what's presumably a fellow student / co-worker into their building.
I suppose the way to fix it is to insist that only one person may use the door at a time, and threaten to terminate on the spot anyone allowing anyone to enter the building with them. And then actually enforce the rule.
but it wouldn't have killed them to temporarily suspend all traffic for an emergency broadcast.
It would, in two ways:
- Loss of revenue: people are burning through minutes, maybe even encountering overages. If you're the cell provider, are you going to want to stop all those calls?
- What's to say that the calls weren't emergency calls? Are you going to terminate the call made from an emergency management official to, say, police headquarters, in order to send him a memo saying that the power is out?
I'm not saying the system is all bad, just that placing a really high priority on sending these memos isn't going to be to everyone's advantage.
If you badmouth the Patriot Act, you're a traitor. It's right there in the name!
Actually, it's the USAPATRIOT Act. I prefer the 'proper' name, as it doesn't falsely imply that a true patriot would support it.
What do you think the point is of passing huge numbers of unenforceable laws?
I think the reason we have so many unenforceable laws is nothing more than dumb politicians who try to get involved in things that they don't need to. While I agree that the laws end up being used to allow selective enforcement, I don't think anyone ever sat down and thought, "What sort of unenforceable laws can I come up with today so that the police can single people out?"
To quote (or perhaps paraphrase) someone's sig that I happened across earlier: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance." I don't think it's a deliberate conspiracy, as much as a bunch of dumb laws.
Wouldn't the sounds (conversation) originating outside his house (a "private place") ordinarily be audible outside his house? And I think one would have a very difficult time arguing that a front porch met the same standards as restrooms or locker rooms as "a private place," so whether any of this even applies is debatable.
The second place the law might not fit is:
Short of the text we're discussing, I'm not sure there's anything indicating that a homeowner installing a camera on his own home, and posting signs warning of its presence, is in any way unlawful. More importantly there's the second part of text I bolded (maybe a word?). I would argue that if you're standing on the front porch of someone else's home, you are in no way entitled to privacy there. (And much less so if you're standing on the front porch of someone else's home, in front of a video camera with a sign warning you of its presence.)
Granted, IANAL, but one shouldn't have to be one to understand the laws.
Your basically masturbating smoke all over everyone around you
This is possibly the funniest thing I've read all week. If only I had mod points.
classifying an entire group of people based on their appearance is okay sometimes... and not okay other times
:)
First, I'm not trying to defend it. Your post made me think a bit, so I'm going to post my thoughts.
Part of the reason is that I'm white, and most people using the term "redneck" are white. A lot of black people use "the N word," and it's seen as okay. I'm making fun of my own race (although, I suppose, a different 'class'), so it's not bad.
I think the other reason is that minorities always get special 'protection.' Hate crime examples aside, consider a real life example. I overheard someone telling a joke about Jews, and went off on them about how incredibly inappropriate it was. And yet when someone tells a joke about Catholics, I laugh. Why is one disgustingly inappropriate and the other light-hearted and funny, if they're both negative stereotypes of a religion?
uneven treatment like this makes it even more difficult than it already is to have any kind of honest discussion about race in the US.
I absolutely agree. A recent attempt at discussing racism in one of my college classes was completely siderailed by discusion of whether it was okay to use "the N word" while discussing the word itself, as well as whether "black person" or "African-American" was preferable, or if they even meant the same thing, and whether a more preferable term existed.
Anyway, this is straying wildly offtopic. My apologies.
The side-conversations that develop are one of my favorite parts about Slashdot.
Unless you're an exhibitionist.
That was my point. I'd rather not accidentally find one either way, but if I'm going to, I'd rather do so in an environment where I can close the browser and have that be the end of it, rather than having the police show up within the hour.
Family photograph from a country where theyre open about nudity(okay, would still be illegal here, but you get what I'm getting at).
I'm by no means an expert (or a lawyer), but I seem to recall that the definition of child pornography is that they're under 18, and in a sexual context. In theory, then, it might be legal to have a nude picture of someone under 18; for example, someone who was just born (they don't wear clothes in the womb), or a child on a nude beach. I'd certainly be suspicious of the latter, but you might be able to make a case for its legality.
This may catch the easy suspects though.
I don't think those are the guys we want, though. We want the ones that are more difficult to catch, because they're the ones that are going to be distributing, or even creating, the stuff.
Used as a selling point for their ISPs
I don't see it as a selling point at all. I'd prefer an ISP that didn't offer this filtering. (Don't get me wrong: pedophiles deserve to be arrested, and child porn is gross.)
There are two reasons I oppose it. The first is that I don't believe my ISP should be doing anything but giving me access to the 'whole' Internet. It already irks me when they start blocking ports. Now they're going to be doing content analysis on what I'm looking at? Is that really any different than if the USPS opened my mail to see if I'm mailing people child porn?
My second concern is that I'm uber-paranoid, and have always worried that a porn site is going to work in some people who are, say, 17, and I'm going to be unknowingly accessing child porn. Now if it happens once my ISP will send the police after me? And take it one step further--suppose it becomes like the Goatse guy. Some jackass saves a 'common' child porn image, and starts posting it in conspicuous places, trying to fool people into clicking it all the time. Except this time, you're not just disgusted, you're labeled a pedophile by your ISP and arrested for possession of child porn.
People should absolutely be going after child porn, but there's no need to move closer to 1984 to do so.
That would get the RIAA's attention real quick
You're right it would. And they'd have your name (confirmed real, since the check can be traced back to your account), along with a written confession that you pirated ten songs.
Perhaps you'd be better off contacting the band and stating that you love their music, but refuse to further the RIAA, and suggest they break away from them. Wouldn't be as effective, at least not in the long wrong, but at least you're not mailing a signed confession of piracy to the RIAA, with proof that it's really you.
Never underestimate the power of being an ass when you're not treated fairly..
As someone on the other side of the counter (well, retail customer service, not in the telecom industry), I'd like to propose just the opposite: never underestimate the power of being friendly. I find that, without trying, I tend to reciprocate the customer's attitude. While I wouldn't intentionally cause more problems for a customer (although there are plenty of people who would), there's a world of difference between what I have to do for you in order to keep my job, and what I could do for you if I was so inclined. As an example, people will often come in tell me that they were overcharged earlier in the day, but they don't have a receipt to show it. I have no obligation to do anything in this case, and my manager will back me up on this. However, I know from experience that he'll trust my judgment if I refund the difference without a receipt, and that I can make a good case for why I felt compelled to throw in some extra store credit. So what determines whether I tell you I can't help you, or whether I bend the rules and even throw in some bonuses? Mostly, whether you're being a jerk or being friendly.
The point at which a customer starts yelling, by the way, is the point at which we ask if they'd like to leave the premises with or without police involvement. If someone's wronged you, don't give them an excuse to get a restraining order against you. (Although it only happens once in a blue moon, there are outstanding restraining orders where I work. A friend who works, ironically enough, in a Verizon store mentioned a few weeks ago that they'd had to take one out against someone.)
The way I see it, if customer service reps are the people you're asking to do something for you, doesn't it stand to reason that you'd want to get on their good side?
Sad to see they've thrown the Firefox minimalist philosophy out the window
It's a separate project. I get what you're saying, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me if someone wants to start their own browser based on Firefox. (And I've seen reports, although I have absolutely no clue how true they are, that Flock outperforms Firefox.)
Features that less than 1% of 1% of their users will ever even look at
I use RSS feeds. I blog. I use Flickr. Every one of the features they mention sounds like something I'd use often. It's not like these are obscure technologies.
Wait... *idea*
[root@internet]# flock --exclusive http://www.myspace.com/*
[root@internet]# alias "flock --unlock" "flock --exclusive"
Yes, Flock is an awesome browser.
How well do these cards handle noise from the computer? For quite some time now, I've wanted to put a handful of cards into a machine and set up a 'scanner' that would log everything to MP3 files. My concern is that every computer I've ever owned has spewed noise over various portions of the spectrum; I can only imagine what would happen if I put it inside a computer. Or are the cards really well-shielded somehow? (And for that matter, are they worth the money? I seem to recall them being very expensive.)