While the company cannot make disclosure of the new owners' address, there might not be anything stopping the company from forwarding a letter from the prior owner to the new owners, which letter asks the new owners to respond.
The most effective and efficacious resolution of this dispute in favour of the prior owner is an agreement by the new owners to return the dog to the (apparently) rightful prior owner. This avoids legal costs of production and argument, the delay of a hearing, the uncertainty of Courts, and the quagmire of an appeal. As well, in certain jurisdictions, such a letter puts the onus on the new owners to respond - and if they do not they may be responsible for some of the costs of any legal action required to get their address.
I would argue, then, that the "proper course", so to speak, is to write the new owners care of ("c/o") the company who knows their address. If the new owners do not respond, then you can engage the legal system to compel the company to forward the letter.
All that failing, once a legal action commences there is generally an obligation on the company to make disclosure of information relevant to the resolution of the case. In this instance, the address of the to-be respondents (the current owners) would be relevant, as (1) they are entitled to notice that legal action has commenced so they may respond, and (2) their information is necessary to enforce any order that would require the return of the dog (and, arguably, to prevent the to-be respondents from fleeing their current address with the dog so as to escape enforcement).
He is discussing his copyrighted work. The two concepts are not the same, infact they are not even similar in any sense I can think of. So meaning one, and naming the other, serves no purpose other than to muddle the waters.
Sir –
Some food for thought:
Property is proprietary interest, whether copyright or otherwise, enforced by the state's monopoly on force under the rule of law. Ones exclusive proprietary right to a house or a car derives from the same rule of law – legislation and Courts – as does ones right to proprietary interest. Exchanging money for the deed to a house and working to create a copyright are both interests the state wishes to protect: business certainty and reward for effort. Effort of copying is a poor measure of property – car and home ownership passes by title – which can be transferred effortlessly by changing the numbers and names in a computer.
You are correct in asserting that taking copyright does not deprive the owner of their copy. However, there is putatively or ostensibly, depending on the case, a loss of enjoyment (for the purpose of licensing for profit or otherwise) by the copyright holder. Thus copyright infringement is more like trespass – you may argue that having someone sleeping on their lawn doesn't deprive the landowner of his right to that property (notwithstanding squatters rights), ergo there is no loss, and as such people should be allowed to sleep in anyone's lawn. However the property owner can argue that he/she has lost the enjoyment of their lawn, for which that have dutifully paid for the exclusive right to.
So three points of interest: 1. Copyright is "property" inasmuch as any other definition of state-sanctioned proprietary interest; 2. Infringement on copyright is not a "theft", as you say, because there is no loss of the property by the owner; 3 Copyright is analogous to trespass – the owner loses their proprietary interest in exclusive (or licensed) enjoyment of their works, without permission.
The notion of creating a diagnostic heuristic isn't particularly novel, and given the frailty of human memory and other inadequacies of the human brain it has the potential to eliminate a significant number of errors in medical diagnoses. The problem with a machine doing this, in my experience, is the diagnostic component -- many diagnoses are based upon the physician's qualitative interpretation of the patient's symptoms (i.e. as experienced diagnosticians).
Nevertheless, somebody clever will undoubtedly eventually create a medical diagnostic tool on a smart phone, which will be of incredible value – reducing the cost of both physicians and their diagnostic mistakes in the medical services industry. Let's just hope such an application doesn't become another pharmaceutical delivery medium (as I have heard physicians referred to by some marketing people in big pharma).
Re:There is a difference between "war" and "terror
on
Is Cyberwarfare Fiction?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Nuclear plants won't run without an external power source. It's a safety feature. If the plant can't get power from the grid, the reactor shuts down automatically.
Sir –
You're right that nuclear power plants need external power to operate as a safety feature - to keep the water pump providing coolant flowing so the reactor doesn't melt. However, the need to be connected to the grid differs from my experience working at nuclear power plants. At the plant I worked at (a CANDU reactor) if the reactor itself wasn't operational there was a grid-backup, a diesel backup, and a battery backup. The battery was the most impressive. The plant could be started and was designed to operate with any of these sources of power at any given time. Of course, other plants may have different, less redundant, designs — as you suggest.
I can understand and be empathetic towards companies that have their business destroyed because of the actions of another, such as fishermen having their livelihoods wiped out because of BP's oil leak.
Sir –
I agree with your post. Just as an incidental note, there is a great difference between bailing out car companies that fail to evolve and essentially acting as a public insurer of those involved in catastrophes such as the BP oil spill. The prior is the fault of the failing company or alternatively a side effect of the evolution of the economy. The latter is an uncertainty against which one cannot probably acquire private insurance. In no system ought the taxpayer be held accountable to save the prior - otherwise they would be the public insurer against incompetence (and therefore create a moral hazard - encouraging risk/profit taking), but may properly assist those in the position of the latter (to prevent undue hardship by those who could not have insured against this risk).
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, but I would emphasize some interesting points on your analysis.
The point of my post was to contrast oil and currency by drawing the distinction between oil futures and oil itself, and how the futures are analogous to currency whereas oil is not. Certainly, as oil futures get closer to expiration, much like a bond as it gets closer to maturity, the value of the future converges on the value of oil, the same way bonds converge on their face value. The further from expiration/settlement, the more speculation is the future (similar to how a bond yield can be different from the coupon rate).
Thus the value of oil futures is what the price of oil will be at the date of expiration/settlement — not what the price of oil is at the date of purchase. As production goes up and down as reality presses on, investors can make more efficient investments in the future value of oil, and hence the convergence of prices of the future and the real price of oil as the future approaches settlement. You are somewhat correct in the sense that at settlement oil and oil futures become the same, otherwise the exploitation known as arbitrage would occur. Alas, there is a healthy arbitrage market at settlement of oil futures as they are converted to cash or commodity not equal to the real value of oil at the time. The arbitrage does bring the oil futures and oil prices in line – not for the once-holder of the futures, but for the arbitrageur.
Traders must draw the distinction between futures and their underlying commodities. One is a speculative investment on the future value of a commodity, the other is a commodity. In the context of my post the distinction is important for a long number of reasons, but foremost because of the mentioned qualities of futures contracts: low transaction cost, liquidity and convertibility. Oil itself has none of these (economic) qualities.
Futures are, of course, a legal fiction created to facilitate market efficiency. It is the underlying legal fiction, much like our fiat currencies, that drives oil futures (and hence, in the eyes of laypeople, oil itself) towards what can be perceived to be something analogous to currency. However it is just that – a legal fiction giving rise to an analogy – and we ought not to rest great conclusions of import upon it without understanding the underlying forces and principles — notably how oil futures differ from fiat currencies.
Oil is almost as fungible as any national currency -- more so than most
Sir –
Oil futures are almost as fungible as any national currency. Oil itself is a physical quantity that is actually not very fungible at all because it goes bad, it must be physically transported to purchasers, and it must be refined in order to be useful. Oil futures, on the other hand, are — like currency — traded in title (i.e. low transaction cost), available in vast quantities (i.e. liquidity), and easily transferrable to other commodities and to currencies (i.e. convertibility). Unlike currency, oil futures eventually become oil (i.e. expiration), and oil future values are based on future expected demand (i.e. not fiat).
I think I understand what you meant, but it's important (and interesting) to draw the distinction between the trading of actual oil and oil futures.
Incidentally, these fees to wholesale clients are not for internet traffic. The internet traffic for e.g. Teksavvy does not typically travel over Bell's backbone - these independent providers have their own backbone internet providers, switched from the copper DSL lines to the independent ISP's backbone at the DSLAM (essentially). The fees the CRTC is imposing cover the cost of setting up and maintaining the "last mile" of copper between the household and the DSLAM. The backbones by these independent providers such as Teksavvy are hardly ever through Bell. Which means Bell doesn't pay for anything other than the DSLAM equipment and the copper wires - both of which are capital costs, subject to some pretty nominal maintenance costs.
So it's worse than double billing, in my opinion. Bell gets to charge premium rent on their capital investment, even though they aren't paying the real cost – for backbone traffic. The independent DSL providers are double billed - for backbone and for Bell's premium rent on the copper line to the DSLAM. While Bell did submit some evidence that their DSLAM's are saturated, I suspect they've intentionally failed to upgrade their DSLAM's precisely to bring about saturation as evidence before the CRTC of the need for fees.
Given the lack of competition for the "last mile", they might as well call this an anticompetitive tax.
Incidentally, Macrovision was the dominant analog signal encryption for quite some time. Macrovision was easier to decode - as you note, albeit difficult to decode perfectly.
It doesn't matter what port SSH is on. If an attacker is even remotely interested he'll run a port scan and find your SSH port soon enough.
Better to invest your time into properly configuring/locking-down SSH. Good luck to any attacker trying to gain access if you only allow authkey access. Putting SSH on a different port is only giving you a false sense of security.
Sir –
There are valid reasons to move the SSH port around, including:
1. It decreases the number of "script kiddie" attempts that do not look beyond the standard port for a known exploit (i.e. your server is no longer "low hanging fruit"); and
2. You can react to a port-scan from a single host - e.g. by blacklisting the IP the portscan came from.
Sophisticated, dedicated attackers can get around these. However, the vast majority of attempts will be made by people who are neither sophisticated nor dedicated (depending on what you're securing, of course).
All to say, moving the port around isn't just security through obscurity. It decreases the statistical phenomenon of unwanted access by a measurable degree by slightly raising the difficulty of detecting and exploiting a given service. I completely agree, though, that this ought not give a heightened sense of security - the SSH server ought to be appropriately hardened. Nevertheless, where there is an exploit of the SSH server (of which there are examples) in the wild, you may reduce your chances of your server beng exploited before the exploit is fixed by operating on a nonstandard port.
A better alternative to a non-standard port, for those so inclined, is port knocking.
As a matter of interest: A jury decides matters of fact. A judge decides matters of law (and fact, where there is no jury). There is no jury made law. There is judge made law, through the principle of stare decisis in common-law systems – known as binding precedents, which obliges judges of courts to follow the existing decisions of higher courts (and in some cases the same level of court).
This post is apparently written without regard to widely established facts. For example:
The majority of people in the US do have access to the high quality care, the fact that roughly 10 million US citizens do not have access to regular healthcare and need it is not a reason to penalise the other 300 million.
The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.
According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).
All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.
The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.
So if you happen not to be Canadian yet are the author of music that has been copied in Canada, how do you get into SOCAN? And it appears you need a UPC to get into SoundScan, and to get a UPC, you need at least some sort of label (even if not major). Besides, I didn't see anything on your flowchart about download sales (e.g. iTunes Store).
I participated in the effort to defeat this same proposal in 2002-2004. However these guys never quit. The good news is that they aren't particularly inspired – or inspiring.
It's noteworthy that I found out about the last go-around of this effort by the Canadian Private Copying Collective on Slashdot.
Because you never know when it's needed. The only time it's "unnecessary" to have some form of self defense handy is when you're already dead.
Sir —
I've been to many dangerous places around the world, and on numerous occasions I have been in situations where my life has been threatened. However not once have I been in a situation that would have been improved by my possession of a loaded handgun. Similarly, I've trained people in the special forces in hand-to-hand combat, but not once have I ever felt a need to resort to such skills in a threatening situation. That being said, I believe it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it – but more often the capacity for force is merely a facade that lulls people into a false sense of security, depriving the well-armed person of a defence that would actually save them: wits. Wits are an unparalleled form of self defence, and they compare decidedly well to force in their ability to protect one in the most dangerous and unpredictable of situations and in the relative absence of collateral damage.
The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.
— "The Right to Privacy", Warren and Brandeis, Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV, December 15, 1890.
In fact can anyone think of anything technically innovative that Microsoft ever put their name on, that wasn't originally bought, copied, 'embraced', assimilated, or blatantly stolen from some other company? I can't.
For those wanting a reference, the article "Microsoft, the Innovator?", Mar. 2001 by David Wheeler would seem to agree with your assertion, as does Microsoft: Hall of Innovation (not original link - original article seems to have been taken down). Both generally accord with my personal recollection.
International treaties and laws don't become binding on US citizens automatically, or just because the president signed them. All international agreements must be approved by congress and signed by the president before the agreement becomes binding on Americans.
This is called ratification. Many countries have such a two-step process. Incidentally, it is the Senate that ratifies treaties signed by the President of the United States (with a 2/3rds majority).
Congress cannot give up law making power to any other body. For example, Congress couldn't pass a law that says "from now on, the UN can make laws for the US." It would be unconstitutional. Laws cannot be constructed so as to bypass either/both houses because of the bicameralism principle. For example, congress passed a bill which gave power over deportation to the inspector general, but retained a veto over his actions for one house of congress. The issue came up to the Supreme Court, and a one house veto was considered unconstitutional because of bicameralism. Laws cannot be constructed to pass the president either, because of the presentment principle. US diplomats and negotiators have agreed to countless international laws, only to have the proposed laws killed or modified beyond recognition in congress.
Congress delegates authority to create laws to all sorts of regulatory authorities, ranging from the U.S. Treasury through the Environmental Protection Agency. There is nothing wrong with such delegation. The Senate can delegate to foreign authorities as well. For example, when the Senate ratified NAFTA they created an extra-national binational arbitral authority that can strike down or read into U.S. laws (Congress reacted poorly to this authority, but the U.S. Courts have upheld it, as I understand it), notably Chapter 19 (Anti-dumping and countervailing duties).
For the specific fears of the person I was talking with, SCOTUS has already held handgun bans unconstitutional. Even if somehow a gun ban got past congress & the president, the Supreme Court would strike it down immediately. Ditto for free speech, the Supreme Court has long pushed free speech jurisprudence beyond what was popular at the time. It was the Supreme Court striking down libel suits, media shutdowns, and restrictive speech laws. The Supreme Court has demonstrated ability and willingness to strike down unconstitutional laws & actions
It is unconstitutional for the U.S. federal government to create laws that would prevent gun ownership laws within states. States still have the sovereign right to ban guns, as I understand it.
The Supreme Court has two relevant powers with respect to free speech. First, they can read out or modify state and federal laws that are unconstitutional (thus protecting citizens from the state). Second, they can overturn any decision by lower courts in a civil dispute between two private people so as to uphold each individual's constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court had the power to review any law or action binding on a US citizen....
This statement is incorrect for a number of reasons. First, the Supreme Court of the United State can only hear two types of disputes: 1. those between the federation and states and between states (e.g. New York and California); and 2. appeals from the highest Court in any state, which appeals involve federal or constitutional questions.
Second, SCOTUS cannot directly review any decision made by foreign courts or arbitrators, whether those decisions apply to US citizens or not (they could, however, review lower-court decisions involving arbitrations and/or decisions of foreign courts- namely in the comity/enforcement context). Citizenship is irrelevant.
The inescapable conclusion is that the ACTA approach is hardly standard. Rather, it represents a major shift toward greater secrecy in the negotiation of international treaties on intellectual property in an obvious attempt to avoid public participation and scrutiny.
Sir —
As a matter of interest, ACTA represents a greater shift towards secrecy of negotiations of multilateral treaties. Bilateral treaties have traditionally been negotiated in secret, or at least in private.
I recall that before the 1900's most treaties (bilateral and multilateral) were negotiated -and often held- in secret, and I believe it was the post- World War I discussions that lead to open multilateral discussions. (I'd be much obliged for references on this).
People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans.
citation needed!
Sir —
With respect, the publicly available documentation of my assertion is extensive.
Government statistics, e.g.: * The USDA in a 1996 study found that at meat processing plants, "78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes... spread primarily by fecal material."
Slashdot Mirror
Have a look at the concept called "comity".
While the company cannot make disclosure of the new owners' address, there might not be anything stopping the company from forwarding a letter from the prior owner to the new owners, which letter asks the new owners to respond.
The most effective and efficacious resolution of this dispute in favour of the prior owner is an agreement by the new owners to return the dog to the (apparently) rightful prior owner. This avoids legal costs of production and argument, the delay of a hearing, the uncertainty of Courts, and the quagmire of an appeal. As well, in certain jurisdictions, such a letter puts the onus on the new owners to respond - and if they do not they may be responsible for some of the costs of any legal action required to get their address.
I would argue, then, that the "proper course", so to speak, is to write the new owners care of ("c/o") the company who knows their address. If the new owners do not respond, then you can engage the legal system to compel the company to forward the letter.
All that failing, once a legal action commences there is generally an obligation on the company to make disclosure of information relevant to the resolution of the case. In this instance, the address of the to-be respondents (the current owners) would be relevant, as (1) they are entitled to notice that legal action has commenced so they may respond, and (2) their information is necessary to enforce any order that would require the return of the dog (and, arguably, to prevent the to-be respondents from fleeing their current address with the dog so as to escape enforcement).
Food for thought.
Yep. Good thing the Internet was not built by corporations like Google, Amazon, Slashdot, CNN, etc....
Sir –
The Internet was not built by those companies. Those companies were built on the Internet.
Of those companies, the History of the Internet on Wikipedia mentions only Google, and that only in the narrow context of search engines.
Don't they know MD5 is deprecated. They should be using SHA-1. Off to a disappointing start already...
SHA-1 is deprecated, too. They should be using SHA-2, or if they really want to show off SHA-3.
He's not discussing "his property".
He is discussing his copyrighted work. The two concepts are not the same, infact they are not even similar in any sense I can think of. So meaning one, and naming the other, serves no purpose other than to muddle the waters.
Sir –
Some food for thought:
Property is proprietary interest, whether copyright or otherwise, enforced by the state's monopoly on force under the rule of law. Ones exclusive proprietary right to a house or a car derives from the same rule of law – legislation and Courts – as does ones right to proprietary interest. Exchanging money for the deed to a house and working to create a copyright are both interests the state wishes to protect: business certainty and reward for effort. Effort of copying is a poor measure of property – car and home ownership passes by title – which can be transferred effortlessly by changing the numbers and names in a computer.
You are correct in asserting that taking copyright does not deprive the owner of their copy. However, there is putatively or ostensibly, depending on the case, a loss of enjoyment (for the purpose of licensing for profit or otherwise) by the copyright holder. Thus copyright infringement is more like trespass – you may argue that having someone sleeping on their lawn doesn't deprive the landowner of his right to that property (notwithstanding squatters rights), ergo there is no loss, and as such people should be allowed to sleep in anyone's lawn. However the property owner can argue that he/she has lost the enjoyment of their lawn, for which that have dutifully paid for the exclusive right to.
So three points of interest:
1. Copyright is "property" inasmuch as any other definition of state-sanctioned proprietary interest;
2. Infringement on copyright is not a "theft", as you say, because there is no loss of the property by the owner;
3 Copyright is analogous to trespass – the owner loses their proprietary interest in exclusive (or licensed) enjoyment of their works, without permission.
The notion of creating a diagnostic heuristic isn't particularly novel, and given the frailty of human memory and other inadequacies of the human brain it has the potential to eliminate a significant number of errors in medical diagnoses. The problem with a machine doing this, in my experience, is the diagnostic component -- many diagnoses are based upon the physician's qualitative interpretation of the patient's symptoms (i.e. as experienced diagnosticians).
Nevertheless, somebody clever will undoubtedly eventually create a medical diagnostic tool on a smart phone, which will be of incredible value – reducing the cost of both physicians and their diagnostic mistakes in the medical services industry. Let's just hope such an application doesn't become another pharmaceutical delivery medium (as I have heard physicians referred to by some marketing people in big pharma).
Nuclear plants won't run without an external power source. It's a safety feature. If the plant can't get power from the grid, the reactor shuts down automatically.
Sir –
You're right that nuclear power plants need external power to operate as a safety feature - to keep the water pump providing coolant flowing so the reactor doesn't melt. However, the need to be connected to the grid differs from my experience working at nuclear power plants. At the plant I worked at (a CANDU reactor) if the reactor itself wasn't operational there was a grid-backup, a diesel backup, and a battery backup. The battery was the most impressive. The plant could be started and was designed to operate with any of these sources of power at any given time. Of course, other plants may have different, less redundant, designs — as you suggest.
I can understand and be empathetic towards companies that have their business destroyed because of the actions of another, such as fishermen having their livelihoods wiped out because of BP's oil leak.
Sir –
I agree with your post. Just as an incidental note, there is a great difference between bailing out car companies that fail to evolve and essentially acting as a public insurer of those involved in catastrophes such as the BP oil spill. The prior is the fault of the failing company or alternatively a side effect of the evolution of the economy. The latter is an uncertainty against which one cannot probably acquire private insurance. In no system ought the taxpayer be held accountable to save the prior - otherwise they would be the public insurer against incompetence (and therefore create a moral hazard - encouraging risk/profit taking), but may properly assist those in the position of the latter (to prevent undue hardship by those who could not have insured against this risk).
Sir –
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, but I would emphasize some interesting points on your analysis.
The point of my post was to contrast oil and currency by drawing the distinction between oil futures and oil itself, and how the futures are analogous to currency whereas oil is not. Certainly, as oil futures get closer to expiration, much like a bond as it gets closer to maturity, the value of the future converges on the value of oil, the same way bonds converge on their face value. The further from expiration/settlement, the more speculation is the future (similar to how a bond yield can be different from the coupon rate).
Thus the value of oil futures is what the price of oil will be at the date of expiration/settlement — not what the price of oil is at the date of purchase. As production goes up and down as reality presses on, investors can make more efficient investments in the future value of oil, and hence the convergence of prices of the future and the real price of oil as the future approaches settlement. You are somewhat correct in the sense that at settlement oil and oil futures become the same, otherwise the exploitation known as arbitrage would occur. Alas, there is a healthy arbitrage market at settlement of oil futures as they are converted to cash or commodity not equal to the real value of oil at the time. The arbitrage does bring the oil futures and oil prices in line – not for the once-holder of the futures, but for the arbitrageur.
Traders must draw the distinction between futures and their underlying commodities. One is a speculative investment on the future value of a commodity, the other is a commodity. In the context of my post the distinction is important for a long number of reasons, but foremost because of the mentioned qualities of futures contracts: low transaction cost, liquidity and convertibility. Oil itself has none of these (economic) qualities.
Futures are, of course, a legal fiction created to facilitate market efficiency. It is the underlying legal fiction, much like our fiat currencies, that drives oil futures (and hence, in the eyes of laypeople, oil itself) towards what can be perceived to be something analogous to currency. However it is just that – a legal fiction giving rise to an analogy – and we ought not to rest great conclusions of import upon it without understanding the underlying forces and principles — notably how oil futures differ from fiat currencies.
Oil is almost as fungible as any national currency -- more so than most
Sir –
Oil futures are almost as fungible as any national currency. Oil itself is a physical quantity that is actually not very fungible at all because it goes bad, it must be physically transported to purchasers, and it must be refined in order to be useful. Oil futures, on the other hand, are — like currency — traded in title (i.e. low transaction cost), available in vast quantities (i.e. liquidity), and easily transferrable to other commodities and to currencies (i.e. convertibility). Unlike currency, oil futures eventually become oil (i.e. expiration), and oil future values are based on future expected demand (i.e. not fiat).
I think I understand what you meant, but it's important (and interesting) to draw the distinction between the trading of actual oil and oil futures.
Sir –
Incidentally, these fees to wholesale clients are not for internet traffic. The internet traffic for e.g. Teksavvy does not typically travel over Bell's backbone - these independent providers have their own backbone internet providers, switched from the copper DSL lines to the independent ISP's backbone at the DSLAM (essentially). The fees the CRTC is imposing cover the cost of setting up and maintaining the "last mile" of copper between the household and the DSLAM. The backbones by these independent providers such as Teksavvy are hardly ever through Bell. Which means Bell doesn't pay for anything other than the DSLAM equipment and the copper wires - both of which are capital costs, subject to some pretty nominal maintenance costs.
So it's worse than double billing, in my opinion. Bell gets to charge premium rent on their capital investment, even though they aren't paying the real cost – for backbone traffic. The independent DSL providers are double billed - for backbone and for Bell's premium rent on the copper line to the DSLAM. While Bell did submit some evidence that their DSLAM's are saturated, I suspect they've intentionally failed to upgrade their DSLAM's precisely to bring about saturation as evidence before the CRTC of the need for fees.
Given the lack of competition for the "last mile", they might as well call this an anticompetitive tax.
Sir –
Incidentally, Macrovision was the dominant analog signal encryption for quite some time. Macrovision was easier to decode - as you note, albeit difficult to decode perfectly.
Security through obscurity?
It doesn't matter what port SSH is on. If an attacker is even remotely interested he'll run a port scan and find your SSH port soon enough.
Better to invest your time into properly configuring/locking-down SSH. Good luck to any attacker trying to gain access if you only allow authkey access. Putting SSH on a different port is only giving you a false sense of security.
Sir –
There are valid reasons to move the SSH port around, including:
1. It decreases the number of "script kiddie" attempts that do not look beyond the standard port for a known exploit (i.e. your server is no longer "low hanging fruit"); and
2. You can react to a port-scan from a single host - e.g. by blacklisting the IP the portscan came from.
Sophisticated, dedicated attackers can get around these. However, the vast majority of attempts will be made by people who are neither sophisticated nor dedicated (depending on what you're securing, of course).
All to say, moving the port around isn't just security through obscurity. It decreases the statistical phenomenon of unwanted access by a measurable degree by slightly raising the difficulty of detecting and exploiting a given service. I completely agree, though, that this ought not give a heightened sense of security - the SSH server ought to be appropriately hardened. Nevertheless, where there is an exploit of the SSH server (of which there are examples) in the wild, you may reduce your chances of your server beng exploited before the exploit is fixed by operating on a nonstandard port.
A better alternative to a non-standard port, for those so inclined, is port knocking.
Sir —
As a matter of interest: A jury decides matters of fact. A judge decides matters of law (and fact, where there is no jury). There is no jury made law. There is judge made law, through the principle of stare decisis in common-law systems – known as binding precedents, which obliges judges of courts to follow the existing decisions of higher courts (and in some cases the same level of court).
Sir —
This post is apparently written without regard to widely established facts. For example:
The majority of people in the US do have access to the high quality care, the fact that roughly 10 million US citizens do not have access to regular healthcare and need it is not a reason to penalise the other 300 million.
The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.
Further, according to Paul Krugman, the U.S. spends over 15% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice that of the U.K at around 8%.
According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).
All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.
The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.
So if you happen not to be Canadian yet are the author of music that has been copied in Canada, how do you get into SOCAN? And it appears you need a UPC to get into SoundScan, and to get a UPC, you need at least some sort of label (even if not major). Besides, I didn't see anything on your flowchart about download sales (e.g. iTunes Store).
You could have a claim under the NAFTA.
I participated in the effort to defeat this same proposal in 2002-2004. However these guys never quit. The good news is that they aren't particularly inspired – or inspiring.
It's noteworthy that I found out about the last go-around of this effort by the Canadian Private Copying Collective on Slashdot.
Because you never know when it's needed. The only time it's "unnecessary" to have some form of self defense handy is when you're already dead.
Sir —
I've been to many dangerous places around the world, and on numerous occasions I have been in situations where my life has been threatened. However not once have I been in a situation that would have been improved by my possession of a loaded handgun. Similarly, I've trained people in the special forces in hand-to-hand combat, but not once have I ever felt a need to resort to such skills in a threatening situation. That being said, I believe it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it – but more often the capacity for force is merely a facade that lulls people into a false sense of security, depriving the well-armed person of a defence that would actually save them: wits. Wits are an unparalleled form of self defence, and they compare decidedly well to force in their ability to protect one in the most dangerous and unpredictable of situations and in the relative absence of collateral damage.
Time is the goo ... that connects state one to state two.
Goo made up of units of the shortest appreciable differences in states.
... from the intellectuals of yore:
The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.
— "The Right to Privacy", Warren and Brandeis, Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV, December 15, 1890.
In fact can anyone think of anything technically innovative that Microsoft ever put their name on, that wasn't originally bought, copied, 'embraced', assimilated, or blatantly stolen from some other company? I can't.
For those wanting a reference, the article "Microsoft, the Innovator?", Mar. 2001 by David Wheeler would seem to agree with your assertion, as does Microsoft: Hall of Innovation (not original link - original article seems to have been taken down). Both generally accord with my personal recollection.
Sir —
A few notes.
International treaties and laws don't become binding on US citizens automatically, or just because the president signed them. All international agreements must be approved by congress and signed by the president before the agreement becomes binding on Americans.
This is called ratification. Many countries have such a two-step process. Incidentally, it is the Senate that ratifies treaties signed by the President of the United States (with a 2/3rds majority).
Congress cannot give up law making power to any other body. For example, Congress couldn't pass a law that says "from now on, the UN can make laws for the US." It would be unconstitutional. Laws cannot be constructed so as to bypass either/both houses because of the bicameralism principle. For example, congress passed a bill which gave power over deportation to the inspector general, but retained a veto over his actions for one house of congress. The issue came up to the Supreme Court, and a one house veto was considered unconstitutional because of bicameralism. Laws cannot be constructed to pass the president either, because of the presentment principle. US diplomats and negotiators have agreed to countless international laws, only to have the proposed laws killed or modified beyond recognition in congress.
Congress delegates authority to create laws to all sorts of regulatory authorities, ranging from the U.S. Treasury through the Environmental Protection Agency. There is nothing wrong with such delegation. The Senate can delegate to foreign authorities as well. For example, when the Senate ratified NAFTA they created an extra-national binational arbitral authority that can strike down or read into U.S. laws (Congress reacted poorly to this authority, but the U.S. Courts have upheld it, as I understand it), notably Chapter 19 (Anti-dumping and countervailing duties).
For the specific fears of the person I was talking with, SCOTUS has already held handgun bans unconstitutional. Even if somehow a gun ban got past congress & the president, the Supreme Court would strike it down immediately. Ditto for free speech, the Supreme Court has long pushed free speech jurisprudence beyond what was popular at the time. It was the Supreme Court striking down libel suits, media shutdowns, and restrictive speech laws. The Supreme Court has demonstrated ability and willingness to strike down unconstitutional laws & actions
It is unconstitutional for the U.S. federal government to create laws that would prevent gun ownership laws within states. States still have the sovereign right to ban guns, as I understand it.
The Supreme Court has two relevant powers with respect to free speech. First, they can read out or modify state and federal laws that are unconstitutional (thus protecting citizens from the state). Second, they can overturn any decision by lower courts in a civil dispute between two private people so as to uphold each individual's constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court had the power to review any law or action binding on a US citizen. ...
This statement is incorrect for a number of reasons. First, the Supreme Court of the United State can only hear two types of disputes:
1. those between the federation and states and between states (e.g. New York and California); and
2. appeals from the highest Court in any state, which appeals involve federal or constitutional questions.
Second, SCOTUS cannot directly review any decision made by foreign courts or arbitrators, whether those decisions apply to US citizens or not (they could, however, review lower-court decisions involving arbitrations and/or decisions of foreign courts- namely in the comity/enforcement context). Citizenship is irrelevant.
Third, SCOTUS can review any law or action th
Sir —
Well said.
The inescapable conclusion is that the ACTA approach is hardly standard. Rather, it represents a major shift toward greater secrecy in the negotiation of international treaties on intellectual property in an obvious attempt to avoid public participation and scrutiny.
Sir —
As a matter of interest, ACTA represents a greater shift towards secrecy of negotiations of multilateral treaties. Bilateral treaties have traditionally been negotiated in secret, or at least in private.
I recall that before the 1900's most treaties (bilateral and multilateral) were negotiated -and often held- in secret, and I believe it was the post- World War I discussions that lead to open multilateral discussions. (I'd be much obliged for references on this).
People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans.
citation needed!
Sir —
With respect, the publicly available documentation of my assertion is extensive.
Government statistics, e.g.: ... spread primarily by fecal material."
* The USDA in a 1996 study found that at meat processing plants, "78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes
Articles, e.g.:
* Fast Food Nation (book review)
Documentaries, e.g.:
* Food, Inc.
Websites, e.g.: SustainableTable.org: Slaughterhouses and Processing
Books, e.g.: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)
Google "slaughterhouse fecal matter", and related terms.
I'm surprised anyone would ask for a citation for this; I assumed it would be common knowledge.