You're ability to stop someone copying digital data off of a screen is sightly less possible than your ability to teleport to the moon.
There is no technological solution to piracy. Instead, it's far more beneficial to view it as a type of progressive taxation and approach it from a pragmatic perspective.
Computers are machines whose fundamental purpose is copying information. There is nothing you can realistically do to slow this down. There is no future in which computers become worse at copying.
Another comment in this thread rightly mentioned that piracy is more of a service problem then anything else. When a kid across the world can make it easier and faster to access your stuff, and do it for literally nothing, you're doing something wrong.
If you want to offer an online edition, you'll need to do more than just make it a digitized version of the print edition. Make it interactive, have little games, animations, integrated live information from RSS or Twitter feeds... be creative and make the online edition actually... y'know, *online*. You need give readers a reason to pay for your online edition, not just "because they should." These are also things that require server/client interaction and *can't* be automatically duplicated without an enormous amount of effort -- the kind of effort it would have taken to painstakingly duplicate a magazine or book two hundred years ago.
Let's see: you could let your driver's license and passport lapse, your credit cards expire, close your bank accounts, use only cash, keep your cash and birth certificate in a personal safe, cancel your phone lines, cancel your TV (maybe that part isn't so bad), cancel your internet connectivity and only use connections at coffee shops (and even then, use only TOR to surf), have no accounts with Google, Facebook, et al... am I missing anything?
I think that would go a fair ways towards anonymity, but, frankly still doesn't unsubscribe you from the "government citizen tracking program." There are still cameras, spooks, undercover agents, snitches, opportunistic assholes and so on. And it would be a pretty limited, boring and shitty way to live in the 21st century.
Really, you'd have to live in a cave and be 100% self-sufficient to avoid this. And even then, you might be stumbled upon by chance encounter.
I really think prison is being misused by most of the world, especially the United States.
I believe it should only ever be used to separate the most extremely, immediately, physically and irremediably dangerous from the rest of us to keep society safe. I'm talking about murderers, rapists, violent assailants, the kind of people who commit extreme acts and intend to keep doing them. Putting the drug dealers and possessors, scammers, petty thieves, civil disputers, drunks, the negligent and so on costs us more than benefits.
This euphemism of "paying your debt to society" by spending time in a cement box always elicits uproarious laughter from me... how is someone paying their debt when we're the ones footing the bill for their room and board??
Prison should never be about "paying your debt", not that it's even possible in that manner. If we want people to "pay their debt", garnish their wages and have them pay back the *exact people against whom they committed the acts*. If that's not enough, put them in community service or other work programs, where they'll actually be performing work that will repay society, not cost it.
Of course, there are underlying societal problems (poverty, increasing class inequality, antagonistic political attitudes, inadequate healthcare for the mentally ill) that are deeply rooted in reasons we send people to prison. It's just so much easier to throw them in a box than it is to address the real problems at their core. Law, it seems, has grown into this trolling monster that exists only to perpetuate itself while falsely purporting to serve the public.
It means he's suspended from practicing law. He cannot represent clients in any solicitary capacity, but he can still deal with any legal proceedings of his own, just like any citizen can technically do (just not practically)
My guess is that this creates a psychological game of chance that a would-be attacker might not risk; and perhaps searches are more thorough when personnel isn't having to rifle through *everyone's* stuff.
There are two things we know have strengthened security:
1) reenforced cockpit doors 2) passengers who know the deal and won't put up with any shit
We could make further *real* changes to improve security, like having highly trained and skilled air marshalls on every flight, hiring actual officers with actual skills to patrol airports instead of hiring glorified assembly line monkeys, searching bags strategically based on behavior and questioning... but those things are just too expensive in the "wrong" way (ie.: they don't line the coffers of porno-scan manufacturers and the bureaucrats who do then favors; it would kill the job creation program for unskilled, slack-jawed mouth breathers)
One area where I *want* to see monolithic mega-corps collude -- to disclose what private information they were forced to provide to the NSA. What's the NSA gonna do, shut down America's entire tech sector, thereby crippling their very own operations?
You're half way there: Orwell and Huxley were both right.
Most of us will gladly sell our privacy for trivialities and convenience, but there exist forces of evil in power as well. Our current surveillance state can only exist because both of these things are true.
Install $LightWeightDistro, configure Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype, enable auto login and that's all they'll ever need.
Don't give me some bullshit that it's too confusing for them. Clicking this obvious, labeled button does this obvious thing, there's nothing you can do to screw it up.
I'm only half kidding. As much fun as it is to mock Yahoo for being, well... Yahoo, they certainly deserve all the brownie points coming their way for defending their users' privacy.
And while the EFF is handing these out, they ought to give one to this guy.
According to this comment in the ArsTechnica discussion of their report on this story, the plantiff is actually a suspended lawyer who was formerly deployed and is now dealing with mental illness.
Maybe the commenter is taking the piss, but really... that's the only explanation that makes any sense.
Indeed, a plate number is not a human being (hmmm... sounds awfully familiar) and they should be required to capture both the plate number *and* a clear, recognizable photo of the driver's face. This should merely be evidence collected for the state (or crown, depending on where you live) and not considered a foregone conclusion.
Where I live, a facial photo is not required and there have been numerous occasions where the cameras were rigged.
My dad received a ticket for "speeding" in a construction zone on a Sunday afternoon WHEN NO ONE WAS WORKING. He was doing the posted speed limit, but not the implied lower speed limit for a construction zone that only applies when workers are present. Someone obviously "forgot" to switch the trap off. Reports of miscalibrated radars, hidden traps, shortened yellows and predatory enforcement abound.
And they know *exactly* how to keep you on the hook for it: a photo radar ticket is slightly less expensive than taking a day off to fight it in court, it doesn't count against your driving record (making less worthwhile to fight and they can keep dinging you endlessly) and court dates can be set *years* into the future.
Any photo radar system that doesn't require a human to be irrefutably identified a flat-out scam, plain and simple.
What exactly is the security issue that's significant enough to warrant such extreme and invasive measures? Is it such a prestigious institution that there are hoards of non-registered kids trying to sneak in? Is there a problem with rampant crime or extremely bad behaviour? What possible real reason could they have, other than, "hey, we got funding for this fancy new tech!" or conditioning them to the future of a police state?
Slashdot Mirror
Right, so, the lesson is ... move to North Dakota.
You'll freeze your ass off, but at least you'll have an ass to freeze off.
Does anyone know how this works?
Of course not, that's the point.
You're ability to stop someone copying digital data off of a screen is sightly less possible than your ability to teleport to the moon.
There is no technological solution to piracy. Instead, it's far more beneficial to view it as a type of progressive taxation and approach it from a pragmatic perspective.
Computers are machines whose fundamental purpose is copying information. There is nothing you can realistically do to slow this down. There is no future in which computers become worse at copying.
Another comment in this thread rightly mentioned that piracy is more of a service problem then anything else. When a kid across the world can make it easier and faster to access your stuff, and do it for literally nothing, you're doing something wrong.
If you want to offer an online edition, you'll need to do more than just make it a digitized version of the print edition. Make it interactive, have little games, animations, integrated live information from RSS or Twitter feeds ... be creative and make the online edition actually ... y'know, *online*. You need give readers a reason to pay for your online edition, not just "because they should." These are also things that require server/client interaction and *can't* be automatically duplicated without an enormous amount of effort -- the kind of effort it would have taken to painstakingly duplicate a magazine or book two hundred years ago.
Let's see: you could let your driver's license and passport lapse, your credit cards expire, close your bank accounts, use only cash, keep your cash and birth certificate in a personal safe, cancel your phone lines, cancel your TV (maybe that part isn't so bad), cancel your internet connectivity and only use connections at coffee shops (and even then, use only TOR to surf), have no accounts with Google, Facebook, et al ... am I missing anything?
I think that would go a fair ways towards anonymity, but, frankly still doesn't unsubscribe you from the "government citizen tracking program." There are still cameras, spooks, undercover agents, snitches, opportunistic assholes and so on. And it would be a pretty limited, boring and shitty way to live in the 21st century.
Really, you'd have to live in a cave and be 100% self-sufficient to avoid this. And even then, you might be stumbled upon by chance encounter.
And more about *distrusting* government.
I really think prison is being misused by most of the world, especially the United States.
I believe it should only ever be used to separate the most extremely, immediately, physically and irremediably dangerous from the rest of us to keep society safe. I'm talking about murderers, rapists, violent assailants, the kind of people who commit extreme acts and intend to keep doing them. Putting the drug dealers and possessors, scammers, petty thieves, civil disputers, drunks, the negligent and so on costs us more than benefits.
This euphemism of "paying your debt to society" by spending time in a cement box always elicits uproarious laughter from me ... how is someone paying their debt when we're the ones footing the bill for their room and board??
Prison should never be about "paying your debt", not that it's even possible in that manner. If we want people to "pay their debt", garnish their wages and have them pay back the *exact people against whom they committed the acts*. If that's not enough, put them in community service or other work programs, where they'll actually be performing work that will repay society, not cost it.
Of course, there are underlying societal problems (poverty, increasing class inequality, antagonistic political attitudes, inadequate healthcare for the mentally ill) that are deeply rooted in reasons we send people to prison. It's just so much easier to throw them in a box than it is to address the real problems at their core. Law, it seems, has grown into this trolling monster that exists only to perpetuate itself while falsely purporting to serve the public.
It means he's suspended from practicing law. He cannot represent clients in any solicitary capacity, but he can still deal with any legal proceedings of his own, just like any citizen can technically do (just not practically)
My guess is that this creates a psychological game of chance that a would-be attacker might not risk; and perhaps searches are more thorough when personnel isn't having to rifle through *everyone's* stuff.
There are two things we know have strengthened security:
1) reenforced cockpit doors
2) passengers who know the deal and won't put up with any shit
We could make further *real* changes to improve security, like having highly trained and skilled air marshalls on every flight, hiring actual officers with actual skills to patrol airports instead of hiring glorified assembly line monkeys, searching bags strategically based on behavior and questioning ... but those things are just too expensive in the "wrong" way (ie.: they don't line the coffers of porno-scan manufacturers and the bureaucrats who do then favors; it would kill the job creation program for unskilled, slack-jawed mouth breathers)
Chairs. Maybe Ballmer will start throwing them.
One area where I *want* to see monolithic mega-corps collude -- to disclose what private information they were forced to provide to the NSA. What's the NSA gonna do, shut down America's entire tech sector, thereby crippling their very own operations?
WTF editors? Edit!
Of no one.
Just piss off already
You're half way there: Orwell and Huxley were both right.
Most of us will gladly sell our privacy for trivialities and convenience, but there exist forces of evil in power as well. Our current surveillance state can only exist because both of these things are true.
...and continue to push oppressive laws that privatize and lock up culture.
I remember many years ago, I was able to listen into a nearby phone call (analog cell phones) if I tuned my Walkman radio to the right frequency.
And piss off a multi billion dollar telco while you're at it. What could possibly go wrong?
Install $LightWeightDistro, configure Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype, enable auto login and that's all they'll ever need.
Don't give me some bullshit that it's too confusing for them. Clicking this obvious, labeled button does this obvious thing, there's nothing you can do to screw it up.
I'm only half kidding. As much fun as it is to mock Yahoo for being, well... Yahoo, they certainly deserve all the brownie points coming their way for defending their users' privacy.
And while the EFF is handing these out, they ought to give one to this guy.
According to this comment in the ArsTechnica discussion of their report on this story, the plantiff is actually a suspended lawyer who was formerly deployed and is now dealing with mental illness.
... that's the only explanation that makes any sense.
Maybe the commenter is taking the piss, but really
Indeed, a plate number is not a human being (hmmm... sounds awfully familiar) and they should be required to capture both the plate number *and* a clear, recognizable photo of the driver's face. This should merely be evidence collected for the state (or crown, depending on where you live) and not considered a foregone conclusion.
Where I live, a facial photo is not required and there have been numerous occasions where the cameras were rigged.
My dad received a ticket for "speeding" in a construction zone on a Sunday afternoon WHEN NO ONE WAS WORKING. He was doing the posted speed limit, but not the implied lower speed limit for a construction zone that only applies when workers are present. Someone obviously "forgot" to switch the trap off. Reports of miscalibrated radars, hidden traps, shortened yellows and predatory enforcement abound.
And they know *exactly* how to keep you on the hook for it: a photo radar ticket is slightly less expensive than taking a day off to fight it in court, it doesn't count against your driving record (making less worthwhile to fight and they can keep dinging you endlessly) and court dates can be set *years* into the future.
Any photo radar system that doesn't require a human to be irrefutably identified a flat-out scam, plain and simple.
Because "nerd" doesn't just mean "computer nerd", it can also mean "law nerd"?
Not growing it
Have any number of qualified and competent engineers (good ol' America-loving ones, of course) pick it apart and analyze it. Boom, problem solved.
There's no danger, it's a chickenshit excuse to avoid the negative PR of a "terrorist vacuum cleaner."
What exactly is the security issue that's significant enough to warrant such extreme and invasive measures? Is it such a prestigious institution that there are hoards of non-registered kids trying to sneak in? Is there a problem with rampant crime or extremely bad behaviour? What possible real reason could they have, other than, "hey, we got funding for this fancy new tech!" or conditioning them to the future of a police state?