IANAL (but it's what I'm considering going into), but a few people have mentioned that their own trash could be used against them as evidence. This got me thinking... I doubt it's very good evidence. Their argument allowing searches is that it's been sitting out on public property. I think that very fact would be an excellent reasopn for why anything gathered should be supressed -- can the police prove that the bloody rag in the trash can was put there by me, and not by someone else? The trash can was on public property for days; thousands of people have walked by it.
It might give the authorities enough to get a search warrant, but I'd think a good defense lawyer could ensure that your trash wasn't what put you in jail.
As someone currently in school, I think computers are both the best thing to happen to education, and the worst.
The other day, I found myself pulling out a calculator for something ridiculously easy; I think it was adding two 2-digit numbers -- I could have done it in my head, and it certainly would have been quicker than finding the calculator and plugging the numbers in.
That said, I think it's also worked miracles. The Internet, in my opinion, is a tremendous advancement in research: Given a couple minutes, I can find practically anything on Google. I can type up a research paper, and have multiple drafts, simply making minor revisions, instead of re-typing (or writing by hand again) the entire thing. I can even discuss whether or not computers are good with people all over the world on Slashdot. With my calculator, I can check my work, and be confident that my answer is right. Even more exciting is that, in theory, rather than go off to college next year, I could lie around the house and get my education online. I don't plan on it, but there's huge potential.
I think that, for the most part, computers are a good thing for education. They enable us to do much more than was even considered possible before the advent of computers, and they let us do it in a microsecond. The problem comes when people grow overreliant on computers, to the point where they forget how to divide numbers, don't know what an encylopedia is, and go to a library only to use the computer there. But used in 'proper doses,'I think computers are great for education.
Memory is a really strange thing: sometimes I can't remember the name of something (someone I haven't seen in ages, or maybe some obscure term), but I can remember the length of it -- such as that it's six letters long. Other times, I know a letter or two -- it begins with a b, and has a w in it. (These are random examples, not anything in particular.)
The thing I think is really weird is that I don't necessarily count the letters when I see the word. It's not like I, in the process of memorizing it, think "Slashdot: 8 letters... 8 letters, Slashdot..." But years later, I might think "What was that site I used to go to all the time? It had eight letters, and I think there was an S..."
It seems like a really strange thing to remember -- in theory, I shouldn't know the length without knowing the word. Am I the only one whose memory works this way?
YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING AN IP ADDRESS! The government can spy on you with it...;)
Or, as one of my not-so-computer literate teachers explained it, "Your computer broadcast an IP address to every computer on the Internet. That's why you get so much spam."
Because it could fall in the wrong hands... Would you be upset if I had your credit card number?
Worse yet, you could be arrested on a 'suspicious pattern' of activity. You looked at an Arabic website two weeks before September 11th? You must have planned it. The police will be at your door shortly. See anything wrong with this picture?
The scenario that I seem to hear as logic for owning a gun isn't someone breaking in. Suppose (I hope this never happens, but just suppose -- there are a lot of loonies in today's world) that a deranged serial killer picks you as his next victim. Then, having a gun would put the odds in your favor.
I agree with your sentiment, though, about the people who think that they have the right to gun down anyone who comes near their house. Even if someone breaks in, I'd like to think they'd still give them ample warning to get out -- if nothing else, because "I pulled out my gun and chased some guy out of my house" sounds a lot better to the police than "I shot him repeatedly. I think he might have been trying to rob me." But in the event of an armed robbery, I think it's entirely legal, moral, and ethical to do whatever it takes to defend yourself. Whether sitting back and letting them rob you is better than firing on them is really a combination of "It depends on the circumstances" and your own judgement.
tr.v. tasked, tasking, tasks
1. To assign a task to or impose a task on.
2. To overburden with labor; tax.
Another entry at dictionary.com even gives an example sentence:
v 1: assign a task to; "I tasked him with looking after the children"
So it is in fact correct to use "task" as a verb. (Now if you want to get really nitpicky, one might argue that it would be more correct to say "My boss tasked me...", since task seems to refer to the process of assigning a task, not receiving a task.)
I have no doubt that Kapor can produce something that blows away Outlook. What I do doubt, however, is how successful it will be: I think Windows 98 is probably one of the worst operating systems ever. But it still seems to be the number one OS in use. Put simply, a lot of Microsoft products are popular only because they're a global superpower -- it doesn't seem to matter to 90% of the world that there is something much better than what they're using, even if it's free: they either don't know, or don't care.
Yes, Kapor can likely succeed in surpassing Outlook. And Windows-using Slashdot users might love it. But I think the hardest part, harder even than writing the program, will be getting the 'average' computer users to understand why they should use it. Most people seem to have an 'allegience' to Microsoft, and refuse to believe that anything (especially anything cheaper) could possibly be better.
This is probably a bit of a stretch, but it's true...
While reading this story, ironically enough, I played an MP3 I had downloaded from Gnucleus (a Gnutella client) using a multi-host download. One of the hosts seems to have been one of the RIAA servers that sends out static; for a few seconds in the middle of the song, there's this horrible (loud) clicking and popping. I have no desire to be the one to try it, but how cool would it be if I sued them for damage to my ears (when listening to the MP3 I downloaded from them) and won. It's actually not as ridiculous as it might sound -- if I steal a candy bar, and it turns out to have cyanide and razor blades in it, I'm almost positive that I could still sue / file criminal charges -- you can't 'booby trap' things if they cause injury.
As I said, it's a stretch, but I'd love to see the RIAA ordered to pay a tremendous fine for causing hearing loss / damage to speakers.
Umm... ear = eye... I guess when you sue them for damage to your *eye*, you could throw in that it caused so much mental anguish that you confuse your eyes with your ears.
(Totally off-topic: I think Slashcode should limit the posting rate to *two* comments every two minutes, with no delay between the two -- it's really not that uncommon to make an idiotic mistake, and post a reply immediately.)
If you could make even a halfway-plausible explanation of this, you could potentially be a multi-millionaire. "Your JPEG popup ad has contributed to an irreversable damage of my ear!"
In my opinion, this isn't a case of "Should they be able to Photoshop fingerprints," but rather, "What type of modifications, and to what extent, are allowable?" I could draw entirely fictitious fingerprints in Photoshop; obviously, this would be an injustice if used as evidence. However, Photoshop is also great at salvaging bad photos -- with a bit of practice, I can 'feed' it a horrible underexposed image with a nasty green tone, and get a nearly-flawless image out. In my mind, this is no different than the adjustments people make in the darkroom -- if the forensics team used a film camera, and enhanced the contrast when developing them to make them look better, I bet no one would care in the least bit.
What I think might make more sense is if they were required to furnish both the originals and the 'post-Photoshop' version -- the defense could verify the work themselves if they wished. (If nothing else, they could probably find someone off the street to testify that, to him, he's not sure how they got the Photoshopped version, and that it doesn't look 'real'.
This might be enormously geeky, but if they really wanted to prove the integrity of the images, couldn't they bring in the computer and open up the Photoshop file, showing their work through the "History" window? You'd be able to show the result of "Open" (the original image), and then click on each thing you did to it to show the difference.
I'm an Adelphia customer... I ran Ethereal (on my internal LAN, through NAT -- so I shouldn't be seeing anything from the cable modem anyway). I'm getting flooded with a bunch of "V2 Membership Report"s, from various and sundry hosts on the network, using IGMP (Internet Group Membership Protocol, I believe). They all seem to be local, but I've never understood what they meant.
Is that what these are? They're being multicast to 239.255.255.250, which is reserved by ARIN (a multicast netblock?)
I've always regarded these as random garbage, but never as a security risk. (Although I can see why they would be.) Is this what the article is referring to?
I suppose you're right; I hadn't considered this. I'd like to think that they couldn't meet the burden of proof; they should have to prove that you knew he was drunk, and continued to serve him anyway.
(BTW, I have to ask: Is your.sig actually true? Has this been tested?)
I'm not saying your point is entirely invalid, but in the case of serving someone twenty consecutive beers, you are truly being negligent, even if you still (in my mind) shouldn't be liable. A more accurate analogy would be suing Anheuser-Busch for negligence because I consumed too much and wrecked my car -- how could they possibly have known what I would do with their product?
IANAL, but... Shouldn't his lawyer have objected to the question, deeming it completely irrelevent? As others have pointed out, the software wasn't written in the United States -- if the question was "Isn't it true that when you brought the software into the US, you didn't care whether it violated laws in the US?" it might make sense.
I don't see this any different as asking an American murder suspect, in US court, "Isn't it true that at the time of murder, you didn't care if what you were doing was illegal in Tajikistan?"
A lot of people seem to be of the mind that they can run a T1 to their house and start a massive hosting company, serving countless websites.
While 1.5 Mbps is a substantial amount of bandwidth, DSL/cable modems are becoming increasingly common. I maintain a server hosted on a T1 that's mainly used for web browsing during the day, and when I do bandwidth-intensive file transfer from my cable modem, I'm able to come very close to filling the T1. While serving normal webpages does work flawlessly, I just wanted to point out that if you offer downloads -- or even just use lots of images/Flash -- your bandwidth will disappear surprisingly quickly. A single user with a cable modem can be eating up all your bandwidth. (Again, I'm not suggesting that a T1 is now worthless, just advising people -- if the T1 is shared with numerous other sites, if a single one is somewhat active, you may have precious little bandwidth.)
An interesting counter-argument would be that those who use it to commit 'civil right' violations are probably discriminating against 'Fields of Endeavor' -- so you're discriminating against discriminators, if that makes sense.
Just today I found a need (not a chance to use, but a *need*) for a subquery. While contemplating copying and pasting (it's only like 30 rows) data between database tables, I happened to see this article.
How easy is it to switch over from MySQL to PostgreSQL? Is there a simple tool to convert between the two? (And as a sidenote... The machine I want to do this on is a third-hand computer, a 300 MHz, 128 MB RAM webserver... Am I going to notice a performance hit if I put PostgreSQL on it?)
Someone finally noticed! My signature got truncated a character too soon, but I figured it was more amusing that way... I think it's supposed to say 2000; you're the first to ever comment on that. Yay!:)
Plus, a lot of people with mission-critical servers don't upgrade the kernels -- they have a "If it ain't broken, fix it." There's no reason to reboot your webserver raking in big bucks just so you're running the latest, shiniest, kernel. Of course, the people who ignore the big security issues and just don't want to ruin their 500+ day uptimes... are idiots.:)
Any for the record... I use Debian, and am running 2.4.19. And I'm pretty sure that even the "main" distribution of Debian now comes with a 2.4 kernel.
What I've always wondered is this -- don't they notice that their program doesn't compile, and fix it before releasing it? It's easy to forget a semicolon on the end of a line, but I can't say I've ever released a program that had fatal compile errors. Is there something behind the scenes I'm missing?
I've never understood the desire to convert everyone and everything to using Linux. My computer runs Linux. I can run Windows under VMware when the need arises, but my computer is first and foremost a Linux machine.
However, my family uses Windows. Most of my friends use Windows. Have I mentioned Linux? Of course. Have I forcibly converted them? Absolutely not.
Don't get me wrong -- Linux evangelization is a great thing. People should know that better software exists. But I simply don't understand the rationale of people who want to see Linux on everything. Frankly, I like Linux the way it is (was) -- almost an 'elite club' of computer geeks. I'm not implying that we shouldn't let people use Linux, or that we should keep it a closely guarded secret. I just don't see why we think that my grandma should run Linux -- yes, it can be very easy to use. But what does it matter if she runs Windows or Linux? Her box came with Windows, and it still runs Windows. Today, if it came with Linux, it might run Linux, but if it came with Windows, it would also run Windows.
The point of this lunatic diatribe is this: I think we should 'evangelize' Linux to some extent, but we should really rethink the "Linux on everything!" approach -- do we really want millions of people using Linux? (Applogies if this sounds like a troll, or some sort of insane rant... But I'm trying to pose a serious question.)
Slashdot Mirror
It might give the authorities enough to get a search warrant, but I'd think a good defense lawyer could ensure that your trash wasn't what put you in jail.
The other day, I found myself pulling out a calculator for something ridiculously easy; I think it was adding two 2-digit numbers -- I could have done it in my head, and it certainly would have been quicker than finding the calculator and plugging the numbers in.
That said, I think it's also worked miracles. The Internet, in my opinion, is a tremendous advancement in research: Given a couple minutes, I can find practically anything on Google. I can type up a research paper, and have multiple drafts, simply making minor revisions, instead of re-typing (or writing by hand again) the entire thing. I can even discuss whether or not computers are good with people all over the world on Slashdot. With my calculator, I can check my work, and be confident that my answer is right. Even more exciting is that, in theory, rather than go off to college next year, I could lie around the house and get my education online. I don't plan on it, but there's huge potential.
I think that, for the most part, computers are a good thing for education. They enable us to do much more than was even considered possible before the advent of computers, and they let us do it in a microsecond. The problem comes when people grow overreliant on computers, to the point where they forget how to divide numbers, don't know what an encylopedia is, and go to a library only to use the computer there. But used in 'proper doses,'I think computers are great for education.
Memory is a really strange thing: sometimes I can't remember the name of something (someone I haven't seen in ages, or maybe some obscure term), but I can remember the length of it -- such as that it's six letters long. Other times, I know a letter or two -- it begins with a b, and has a w in it. (These are random examples, not anything in particular.) The thing I think is really weird is that I don't necessarily count the letters when I see the word. It's not like I, in the process of memorizing it, think "Slashdot: 8 letters... 8 letters, Slashdot..." But years later, I might think "What was that site I used to go to all the time? It had eight letters, and I think there was an S..." It seems like a really strange thing to remember -- in theory, I shouldn't know the length without knowing the word. Am I the only one whose memory works this way?
Or, as one of my not-so-computer literate teachers explained it, "Your computer broadcast an IP address to every computer on the Internet. That's why you get so much spam."
Worse yet, you could be arrested on a 'suspicious pattern' of activity. You looked at an Arabic website two weeks before September 11th? You must have planned it. The police will be at your door shortly. See anything wrong with this picture?
I agree with your sentiment, though, about the people who think that they have the right to gun down anyone who comes near their house. Even if someone breaks in, I'd like to think they'd still give them ample warning to get out -- if nothing else, because "I pulled out my gun and chased some guy out of my house" sounds a lot better to the police than "I shot him repeatedly. I think he might have been trying to rob me." But in the event of an armed robbery, I think it's entirely legal, moral, and ethical to do whatever it takes to defend yourself. Whether sitting back and letting them rob you is better than firing on them is really a combination of "It depends on the circumstances" and your own judgement.
tr.v. tasked, tasking, tasks 1. To assign a task to or impose a task on. 2. To overburden with labor; tax.
Another entry at dictionary.com even gives an example sentence:
v 1: assign a task to; "I tasked him with looking after the children"
So it is in fact correct to use "task" as a verb. (Now if you want to get really nitpicky, one might argue that it would be more correct to say "My boss tasked me...", since task seems to refer to the process of assigning a task, not receiving a task.)
Yes, Kapor can likely succeed in surpassing Outlook. And Windows-using Slashdot users might love it. But I think the hardest part, harder even than writing the program, will be getting the 'average' computer users to understand why they should use it. Most people seem to have an 'allegience' to Microsoft, and refuse to believe that anything (especially anything cheaper) could possibly be better.
While reading this story, ironically enough, I played an MP3 I had downloaded from Gnucleus (a Gnutella client) using a multi-host download. One of the hosts seems to have been one of the RIAA servers that sends out static; for a few seconds in the middle of the song, there's this horrible (loud) clicking and popping. I have no desire to be the one to try it, but how cool would it be if I sued them for damage to my ears (when listening to the MP3 I downloaded from them) and won. It's actually not as ridiculous as it might sound -- if I steal a candy bar, and it turns out to have cyanide and razor blades in it, I'm almost positive that I could still sue / file criminal charges -- you can't 'booby trap' things if they cause injury.
As I said, it's a stretch, but I'd love to see the RIAA ordered to pay a tremendous fine for causing hearing loss / damage to speakers.
(Totally off-topic: I think Slashcode should limit the posting rate to *two* comments every two minutes, with no delay between the two -- it's really not that uncommon to make an idiotic mistake, and post a reply immediately.)
If you could make even a halfway-plausible explanation of this, you could potentially be a multi-millionaire. "Your JPEG popup ad has contributed to an irreversable damage of my ear!"
What I think might make more sense is if they were required to furnish both the originals and the 'post-Photoshop' version -- the defense could verify the work themselves if they wished. (If nothing else, they could probably find someone off the street to testify that, to him, he's not sure how they got the Photoshopped version, and that it doesn't look 'real'.
This might be enormously geeky, but if they really wanted to prove the integrity of the images, couldn't they bring in the computer and open up the Photoshop file, showing their work through the "History" window? You'd be able to show the result of "Open" (the original image), and then click on each thing you did to it to show the difference.
I'm an Adelphia customer... I ran Ethereal (on my internal LAN, through NAT -- so I shouldn't be seeing anything from the cable modem anyway). I'm getting flooded with a bunch of "V2 Membership Report"s, from various and sundry hosts on the network, using IGMP (Internet Group Membership Protocol, I believe). They all seem to be local, but I've never understood what they meant.
Is that what these are? They're being multicast to 239.255.255.250, which is reserved by ARIN (a multicast netblock?)
I've always regarded these as random garbage, but never as a security risk. (Although I can see why they would be.) Is this what the article is referring to?
I suppose you're right; I hadn't considered this. I'd like to think that they couldn't meet the burden of proof; they should have to prove that you knew he was drunk, and continued to serve him anyway. (BTW, I have to ask: Is your .sig actually true? Has this been tested?)
I'm not saying your point is entirely invalid, but in the case of serving someone twenty consecutive beers, you are truly being negligent, even if you still (in my mind) shouldn't be liable. A more accurate analogy would be suing Anheuser-Busch for negligence because I consumed too much and wrecked my car -- how could they possibly have known what I would do with their product?
I don't see this any different as asking an American murder suspect, in US court, "Isn't it true that at the time of murder, you didn't care if what you were doing was illegal in Tajikistan?"
While 1.5 Mbps is a substantial amount of bandwidth, DSL/cable modems are becoming increasingly common. I maintain a server hosted on a T1 that's mainly used for web browsing during the day, and when I do bandwidth-intensive file transfer from my cable modem, I'm able to come very close to filling the T1. While serving normal webpages does work flawlessly, I just wanted to point out that if you offer downloads -- or even just use lots of images/Flash -- your bandwidth will disappear surprisingly quickly. A single user with a cable modem can be eating up all your bandwidth. (Again, I'm not suggesting that a T1 is now worthless, just advising people -- if the T1 is shared with numerous other sites, if a single one is somewhat active, you may have precious little bandwidth.)
An interesting counter-argument would be that those who use it to commit 'civil right' violations are probably discriminating against 'Fields of Endeavor' -- so you're discriminating against discriminators, if that makes sense.
Just today I found a need (not a chance to use, but a *need*) for a subquery. While contemplating copying and pasting (it's only like 30 rows) data between database tables, I happened to see this article.
How easy is it to switch over from MySQL to PostgreSQL? Is there a simple tool to convert between the two? (And as a sidenote... The machine I want to do this on is a third-hand computer, a 300 MHz, 128 MB RAM webserver... Am I going to notice a performance hit if I put PostgreSQL on it?)
Someone finally noticed! My signature got truncated a character too soon, but I figured it was more amusing that way... I think it's supposed to say 2000; you're the first to ever comment on that. Yay! :)
Any for the record... I use Debian, and am running 2.4.19. And I'm pretty sure that even the "main" distribution of Debian now comes with a 2.4 kernel.
People complain about duplicate stores... Imagine what I thought when I read about a 2.2 kernel being newly released! :)
I know, I hate it when people whing!
What I've always wondered is this -- don't they notice that their program doesn't compile, and fix it before releasing it? It's easy to forget a semicolon on the end of a line, but I can't say I've ever released a program that had fatal compile errors. Is there something behind the scenes I'm missing?
However, my family uses Windows. Most of my friends use Windows. Have I mentioned Linux? Of course. Have I forcibly converted them? Absolutely not.
Don't get me wrong -- Linux evangelization is a great thing. People should know that better software exists. But I simply don't understand the rationale of people who want to see Linux on everything. Frankly, I like Linux the way it is (was) -- almost an 'elite club' of computer geeks. I'm not implying that we shouldn't let people use Linux, or that we should keep it a closely guarded secret. I just don't see why we think that my grandma should run Linux -- yes, it can be very easy to use. But what does it matter if she runs Windows or Linux? Her box came with Windows, and it still runs Windows. Today, if it came with Linux, it might run Linux, but if it came with Windows, it would also run Windows.
The point of this lunatic diatribe is this: I think we should 'evangelize' Linux to some extent, but we should really rethink the "Linux on everything!" approach -- do we really want millions of people using Linux? (Applogies if this sounds like a troll, or some sort of insane rant... But I'm trying to pose a serious question.)