Dude, if you want to oppose these people, fine. But use some real reasoning; Not just some flim-flam appeal to simple majority: "There are more of us, therefor we are right."
Not that I'm disagreeing with your basic point, but for all of recorded history, the morally correct action of a society is the action that the majority would take in a similar situation.
In fact, communism was proclaimed as being a "free government" specifically because it's states purpose is to free manking of the inherent slavery in a shared moral society - by phrasing moral questions with the framework "I should act in the manner that I would want the majority of people to act if they were in my shoes," it gives the individual the freedom of personal choice while still providing for a moral and ethical structure for society...
To paraphrase the above, for most of human history, the test of "rightness" has in fact been measured by which group has more people... or in extreme situations, can bring more force to convince the other group.
There is no need to be guilty of breaking the law in the US to fall foul of it.
I fail to see how this comment relates to a discussion of the relative merits of illegally downloading music vs. being given it for free. One is clearly against the law and the other is not...
In a more general case, litigation in cases where someone has clearly not broken the law is a good thing - it has a sort of reverse chilling effect, and I would welcome an opportunity to test something that I considered fair use that some content producer is trying to litigate me out of doing...
Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
As if you even needed immunity from litigation, or you had some intrinsic right to this music. The only people that need immunity from litigation are those breaking the law
Here's a content producer. They want to GIVE you their content for free online, in a distribution model simliar to one that most of slashdot has been having wet dreams about since Napster 1.0 was released. Shit know when you got it good and stop your bitchin lol!
If someone wants to give me something for free I'm not going to whine just because they want me to do a certain thing with it - free restricted music is better than no music at all...
By 'iStore' I assume you're referring to iTunes. Maybe not, but it seems like it to me. You are simply wrong about losing iTunes tracks and never being able to recover them. Apple does, in fact, let you re-download tracks that you've bought in case they get deleted. I might also mention that being able to 'download all you want' from the Windows Media online stores doesn't mean that you actually OWN those tracks, just that you're renting them in the same manner that you can 'get shipped all the movies you want' from NetFlix.
Or maybe you knew this and were trolling all along.
When someone comes into an article and incorrectly / infactually pumps a product I don't recognize in a post that only has the most passing relationship with the thread, I don't call that trolling, I call that astroturfing...
The attack is not about the garbage characters - it's about what came first. The garbage characters ARE the attack themself, they don't need to carry a virus or something to be malicious... Point being, let's say you sign a document saying you're going to give me 15% of revenue. I change it to 20% and start adding random characters at the end until I get a document that maintains the same hash, meaning I can "prove" that the second document is the one you signed...
Oh yes I agree with you - the subcontext here is that Microsoft is doing this in the name of customer security, but their actual motivation, as this article indicates, is the Palladium DRM system - a system built to ensure a cryptographically secure code path from BIOS image to user space, in order to allow content creators to control how consumers can use their content.
This move is speculated to lock out other operating systems, non-approved keyboards and mice, capture devices, and basically turn your computer into a puppet. I don't know how much that's true but you can be sure of this - Macrovision on steroids is just the start of it.
Is the technology itself a good implementation? Sure, has to be, I've been wanting them to do something like this for a while - but will they put it to responsible uses for the consumer's best benefit?
I doubt it. They have openly acknowledged they are developping these functions in conjunction with content industry associations like the MPAA. The recording industry is tired of trying to legislate and take away rights from the consumer legally - they're just going to change the technology so it's not possible for us to not comply with their wishes, regardless what the law of the land may say...
I think this is a matter that'll one day have to be solved in the courts... assuming the fair use laws even cover consumer rights in this case, I'm not too familiar with them...
given a plaintext+cyphertext pair a meet-in-the-middle attack might be possible, but the search space is still on the order of 2^128
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, two 2^64 search spaces take approximately the same amount of time as one 2^65 search space, which is what you're talking about in a meet-in-the-middle attack... with a known p/c pair
Do the math wise ass, complexity of brute-forcing 128 1-bit passes is the same as complexity of brute-forcing single 128-bit pass -- 2^128
Assuming its a non-grouping encryption for a 1-bit key. Grouping is a property of an algorithm f() that tests whether f(f(p, k1), k2) == f(p, k3). If its true, then any double-encrypted message from that algorithm will have a third key to singly-decrypt the same message. DES was vulnerable to such a scheme until the S-boxes were modified to do key-dependant bit reordering...
I can't think of many algorithms that would satisfy that criteria! In which case, you simply guess 0 for an even number of keys values 1 and 1 for an odd number, and you're done.
Even if it is non-grouping, you're still likely talking about significantly less horsepower to break than a true 128-bit key, due to optimisations like meet-in-the-middle attacks...
Not generally. A planet is a big thing; a little localized outgassing probably wouldn't even be detectable a few meters away...
On the other hand, the polar caps themselves take up and release significant amounts of CO2 seasonally... though I would speculate that even that is an insignificant amount of mass...
You're going to have problems with webcams. The biggest problem is synchronization; getting them all to take their frames at the same time. Pinnacle Imaging is a scientific imaging device vendor that publishes res and framerate specs for all their cameras, and some of their cameras support frame synchronization... but a quite a price.
When I was looking into it for a local doctor's office that wanted to do gait analysis research (something near and dear to my heart since i have a game leg and still no real explanation for why), the min we could get the hardware for was about $2200 IIRC... nw that was three years ago as usual the prices have dropped somewhat by now...
If you read my other post in this story the Action Replay MAX includes a Genesis emulator for PS2.
Yes I know I could do it on my PC but gaming in the living room comfortably with my wife in the setting intended for those games sounds much better to me.
Anyways... thanks for the list of games to try out!!!!!
appreciate the sentiment, but this announcement is newsworthy (to me) mainly because of the announcement of these games for the *PSP*. The PS2 is a neat system, but if I'm playing a fixed console, why don't I just fire up the games on my original Genesis (à la Mega Drive over here)? Better still, I can play them on my PC, and take advantage of save states and save state 'hacking' to make the game do interesting things. I can also take screenshots / recordings easier on the PC, and I can store my *entire* game collection in a fairly small space, and take it with me on a USB stick.
You can do all those things on the PS2 today. Action Replay Max includes a USB stick for PS2 Save Games (including a memory manager to copy to/from memory cards), and it can play media files and genesis roms either from USB or DVD drive.
Picked it up last week from Best Buy for $40. Looking for genesis roms tonight.
But I'm only intimately familiar with early revs of P4; if you know what rev this was added in I would be interested.
I stumbled on it while researching the Intel Performance pack, which uses the various MMX/SSE/SSE2/etc features of a processor to implement a nice fast floating point library. A few of the functions use this and a few of the other zero-cycle instructions to get performance down below the 0.5 instructions/cycle mark...
I spent a few minutes trolling intel.com trying to find some document that mentions this - there are zero-cycle instructions on the P4 (reg-reg mov, fxch, a few others) but I couldn't find anything about this so I may have been mistaken or confused...
lol forth was one of my first languages... how I missed the rot!!!!
But yeah forth's big two advantages; most operations map to atomic instructions, and postfix notation matches instruction order. Again assuming you have a stack machine....
Couldn't you program a stack computer just as well with a prefix functional language like Scheme?
Sure you can - and it compiles to postfix notation anyways, rather ineffeiciently I might add (get it, add????)
let's say you wanted to write a function like: function addsubandmultiply(b, c, d, e) { a = (b + c) * (d - e); return a; }
and you've got assembly level instructions such as mov, add, sub, mult, push, and pop, as well as the very stack-centric stor and lod, allowing you to move one or more stack variables to memory and the reverse.
A typical register based computer might compile the above as:
pop b pop c pop d pop e mov b, ax mov c, bx add bx mov ax, temp_memory mov d, ax mov e, bx sub bx mov temp_memory, bx mult bx push a
Whereas a stack-based computer might compile as:
add stor temp_memory sub lod temp_memory mult
In a stack based computer, operations are carried out directly on your stack... it's very convenient, since most languages compile function calls to use the stack anyways, and as you can see not having to deal with an accumulator register makes for much terser code. Between 20 - 40% of your compiled code is spent moving data in and out of the accumulator register, since most instructions depend on specific data being in that register - to the point that they introduced zero-cycle add/mov functionality in the P4 line - basically, if your code performs an add and then movs ax immediately out to memory (like the above code - and possibly the most common arithmetic operation in compiled code), if the pipeline and data caches are all available, the P4 will execute both instructions with enough time to put something else in the instruction pipeline that cycle. It's not really a zero-cycle function - you can do something like 2.5 (add,mov,add,mov,add) a cycle if you stack them back to back to back, for instance...
Yes, Intel released a benchmark for it. No, I can't imagine why you would want to keep adding and moving the results around memory - maybe some esoteric functions like a fibbanoci generator or even a DSP algorithm of some sort might need to do it, but I don't think it'll be all that often... or that any compiler would have an optimisation to specifically output that sequence if appropriate...
I mean seriously, everyone that owned a virtual boy probably owned half the title library. I know I did.
Still have my virtual boy somewhere too. Man I gotta go looking for that thing.
Why isn't there an emulator for it that's shutter-glasses compatible by now?
For that matter, why doesn't at least one of the consoles support a 3d mode? I know, 3D at TV resolutions isn't that great (especially since it depends on the interlacing to work) but come on it'd be practically free to implement... and you don't even have to rearchitect the shutterglasses, they've already got that part working for VHS and DVD...
Remember the old Sega shutterglasses? That you could play zaxxon on?
Those were the days lol.
Funny part is, there's enough surplus hardware out there from various game manufacturers (anyone remember that sensor thing nintendo used to make? And the powerglove and blah blah blah) to make a much better VR system than is in consumer reach these days...
Did anyone see the guy that made himself a gargoyle Neal Stephenson style for Second Life?
If you're a Stephenson fan and you've never played Second Life you should - its obvious the company that makes it is staffed by Stephenson fans who basically wanted to create the Metaverse...
Back on topic - seriously, what's the target audience here? Those that loved the virtual boy and thus played every game, or those that didn't and therefore don't know what the were "missing out" on...
It seems like there should be a remote mini helping component
Maybe a little webcam image recognizer that can take multiple webcam views and make an overhead map out of it
Then the remote players can drag the pieces on the map and the DM just sees the move they want to make with which piece - system can even give exact directions, or detect when the mini is "close enough" to the target position
The attitude should surely be, "if you ain't got nothing to hide..." ; it's what they are increasingly coming to expect from the rest of us.
If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to watch me?
Quite possibly equally as important, since when does having something to hide equate to law breaking?
There are lots of moments in my day I wouldn't want cops to see.
I also wouldn't want my mom or wife to see them.
I'm not doing anything illegal or immoral - I'm picking my nose, scratching my crotch, taking a dump. I'm sneaking that extra cookie, posting on slashdot while at work (shhhhh don't tell anyone gosh!!!!)
Maybe my front door lock is stuck and I just need to slide into my back seat to unlock it. Yes it happened to me yesterday. No big deal - but I still wish that guy and his three kids hadn't walked up to the car on that side to watch me do it.
Back to the original topic - the cops probably have similar purposes in mind. The difference being, when I'm picking my nose on my own time I don't owe anybody any explanation.
If you're doing a shitty job making an arrest or unjustly beating someone, you owe every taxpayer in America an explanation. Maybe not personally, no, but your jobs is quite clear. We (everyone in this country) pool together our monies and give them (the police) some of it, as well as a document (constitution) and its various ammendments rules and regulations (US legal system), telling them to enforce everything they find there, and do absolutely nothing to the contrary.
A police officer off duty has as much a right to privacy as any other citizen.
If a police officer is on duty, he has just as much a right to expect and endure scrutiny.
You know I recently had this same conversation with a guy in my neighborhood.
This crackhead that goes around begging for $10. When he needs a fix bad enough he offers to mow yards. If that still doesn't work, he seems to just pick a yard and start mowing and then demand money.
I told him the exact same thing you should tell them. I never agreed to give you that money. Just because you say I owe you money doesn't make it true. (then I said leave and never come back or I'm calling the police but that part doesn't seem to apply here lol)
Call them and tell them that. Don't let them talk to you about cancellation contracts. Tell them you never agreed nor were informed about a cancellation fee, and that you do not intend to pay the cancellation fee or pay any more fees for the ISP, regardless of what they might think you owe them. Tell them you'll pay the telco bill if they seperate it, and that if they refuse to do so you intend to seek council. Try to say all the above without letting them speak. Then call VISA and tell them to block the authorization.
About that last part on the telco, I don't know what the equivalent in your municipality is, but here in the US, if a utility company is the only company that offers that service in the area, it is illegal for them to refuse service to anyone. They can demand inordinately high deposits, but they can't refuse service. Each municipality has a local board meant to enforce these laws, usually called the Utility Comission or Utility Board.
If they keep dicking you around, find out what the local equivalent is. Call them, explain the situation, see if you can get them in a conference call with the ISP. In most municipalities that utility comission has only one administrative duty; to revoke the ability of corrupt utilities to make a profit off of their citizens, by pulling their monopoly. It doesn't happen often, but most companies in my experience will gladly roll over before risking pissing off the local utilities board...
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, if you want to oppose these people, fine. But use some real reasoning; Not just some flim-flam appeal to simple majority: "There are more of us, therefor we are right."
Not that I'm disagreeing with your basic point, but for all of recorded history, the morally correct action of a society is the action that the majority would take in a similar situation.
In fact, communism was proclaimed as being a "free government" specifically because it's states purpose is to free manking of the inherent slavery in a shared moral society - by phrasing moral questions with the framework "I should act in the manner that I would want the majority of people to act if they were in my shoes," it gives the individual the freedom of personal choice while still providing for a moral and ethical structure for society...
To paraphrase the above, for most of human history, the test of "rightness" has in fact been measured by which group has more people... or in extreme situations, can bring more force to convince the other group.
There is no need to be guilty of breaking the law in the US to fall foul of it.
I fail to see how this comment relates to a discussion of the relative merits of illegally downloading music vs. being given it for free. One is clearly against the law and the other is not...
In a more general case, litigation in cases where someone has clearly not broken the law is a good thing - it has a sort of reverse chilling effect, and I would welcome an opportunity to test something that I considered fair use that some content producer is trying to litigate me out of doing...
Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
As if you even needed immunity from litigation, or you had some intrinsic right to this music. The only people that need immunity from litigation are those breaking the law
Here's a content producer. They want to GIVE you their content for free online, in a distribution model simliar to one that most of slashdot has been having wet dreams about since Napster 1.0 was released. Shit know when you got it good and stop your bitchin lol!
If someone wants to give me something for free I'm not going to whine just because they want me to do a certain thing with it - free restricted music is better than no music at all...
I'm sure other people caught this...
Windows 98 generic USB flash driver,
So what exactly good is THAT gonna give you? lol
By 'iStore' I assume you're referring to iTunes. Maybe not, but it seems like it to me. You are simply wrong about losing iTunes tracks and never being able to recover them. Apple does, in fact, let you re-download tracks that you've bought in case they get deleted. I might also mention that being able to 'download all you want' from the Windows Media online stores doesn't mean that you actually OWN those tracks, just that you're renting them in the same manner that you can 'get shipped all the movies you want' from NetFlix.
Or maybe you knew this and were trolling all along.
When someone comes into an article and incorrectly / infactually pumps a product I don't recognize in a post that only has the most passing relationship with the thread, I don't call that trolling, I call that astroturfing...
The attack is not about the garbage characters - it's about what came first. The garbage characters ARE the attack themself, they don't need to carry a virus or something to be malicious... Point being, let's say you sign a document saying you're going to give me 15% of revenue. I change it to 20% and start adding random characters at the end until I get a document that maintains the same hash, meaning I can "prove" that the second document is the one you signed...
Oh yes I agree with you - the subcontext here is that Microsoft is doing this in the name of customer security, but their actual motivation, as this article indicates, is the Palladium DRM system - a system built to ensure a cryptographically secure code path from BIOS image to user space, in order to allow content creators to control how consumers can use their content.
This move is speculated to lock out other operating systems, non-approved keyboards and mice, capture devices, and basically turn your computer into a puppet. I don't know how much that's true but you can be sure of this - Macrovision on steroids is just the start of it.
Is the technology itself a good implementation? Sure, has to be, I've been wanting them to do something like this for a while - but will they put it to responsible uses for the consumer's best benefit?
I doubt it. They have openly acknowledged they are developping these functions in conjunction with content industry associations like the MPAA. The recording industry is tired of trying to legislate and take away rights from the consumer legally - they're just going to change the technology so it's not possible for us to not comply with their wishes, regardless what the law of the land may say...
I think this is a matter that'll one day have to be solved in the courts... assuming the fair use laws even cover consumer rights in this case, I'm not too familiar with them...
given a plaintext+cyphertext pair a meet-in-the-middle attack might be possible, but the search space is still on the order of 2^128
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, two 2^64 search spaces take approximately the same amount of time as one 2^65 search space, which is what you're talking about in a meet-in-the-middle attack... with a known p/c pair
Do the math wise ass, complexity of brute-forcing 128 1-bit passes is the same as complexity of brute-forcing single 128-bit pass -- 2^128
Assuming its a non-grouping encryption for a 1-bit key. Grouping is a property of an algorithm f() that tests whether f(f(p, k1), k2) == f(p, k3). If its true, then any double-encrypted message from that algorithm will have a third key to singly-decrypt the same message. DES was vulnerable to such a scheme until the S-boxes were modified to do key-dependant bit reordering...
I can't think of many algorithms that would satisfy that criteria! In which case, you simply guess 0 for an even number of keys values 1 and 1 for an odd number, and you're done.
Even if it is non-grouping, you're still likely talking about significantly less horsepower to break than a true 128-bit key, due to optimisations like meet-in-the-middle attacks...
Wow that may in fact be the absolute clearest I've ever heard anyone convey that idea ever.
Kudos to both of you (clicking fans link now lol)
The problem with simple ROT and EOR cipher schemes is that, for any K1(x) and K2(x) there exists a K3(x) such that K3(x) = K2(K1(x)).
Well that, and the output is not statistically random...
BTW, did you mean XOR?
It was a bit more than just search, it was complete records of internet usage from the ISP.
No it wasn't, it was strictly search terms and if they clicked on a link, what link they clicked on - that's it
Not generally. A planet is a big thing; a little localized outgassing probably wouldn't even be detectable a few meters away...
On the other hand, the polar caps themselves take up and release significant amounts of CO2 seasonally... though I would speculate that even that is an insignificant amount of mass...
You're going to have problems with webcams. The biggest problem is synchronization; getting them all to take their frames at the same time. Pinnacle Imaging is a scientific imaging device vendor that publishes res and framerate specs for all their cameras, and some of their cameras support frame synchronization... but a quite a price.
When I was looking into it for a local doctor's office that wanted to do gait analysis research (something near and dear to my heart since i have a game leg and still no real explanation for why), the min we could get the hardware for was about $2200 IIRC... nw that was three years ago as usual the prices have dropped somewhat by now...
If you read my other post in this story the Action Replay MAX includes a Genesis emulator for PS2.
Yes I know I could do it on my PC but gaming in the living room comfortably with my wife in the setting intended for those games sounds much better to me.
Anyways... thanks for the list of games to try out!!!!!
appreciate the sentiment, but this announcement is newsworthy (to me) mainly because of the announcement of these games for the *PSP*. The PS2 is a neat system, but if I'm playing a fixed console, why don't I just fire up the games on my original Genesis (à la Mega Drive over here)? Better still, I can play them on my PC, and take advantage of save states and save state 'hacking' to make the game do interesting things. I can also take screenshots / recordings easier on the PC, and I can store my *entire* game collection in a fairly small space, and take it with me on a USB stick.
You can do all those things on the PS2 today. Action Replay Max includes a USB stick for PS2 Save Games (including a memory manager to copy to/from memory cards), and it can play media files and genesis roms either from USB or DVD drive.
Picked it up last week from Best Buy for $40. Looking for genesis roms tonight.
But I'm only intimately familiar with early revs of P4; if you know what rev this was added in I would be interested.
I stumbled on it while researching the Intel Performance pack, which uses the various MMX/SSE/SSE2/etc features of a processor to implement a nice fast floating point library. A few of the functions use this and a few of the other zero-cycle instructions to get performance down below the 0.5 instructions/cycle mark...
I spent a few minutes trolling intel.com trying to find some document that mentions this - there are zero-cycle instructions on the P4 (reg-reg mov, fxch, a few others) but I couldn't find anything about this so I may have been mistaken or confused...
lol forth was one of my first languages... how I missed the rot!!!!
But yeah forth's big two advantages; most operations map to atomic instructions, and postfix notation matches instruction order. Again assuming you have a stack machine....
If only every language could be a simple lol...
Couldn't you program a stack computer just as well with a prefix functional language like Scheme?
Sure you can - and it compiles to postfix notation anyways, rather ineffeiciently I might add (get it, add????)
let's say you wanted to write a function like:
function addsubandmultiply(b, c, d, e) {
a = (b + c) * (d - e);
return a;
}
and you've got assembly level instructions such as mov, add, sub, mult, push, and pop, as well as
the very stack-centric stor and lod, allowing you to move one or more stack variables to memory and
the reverse.
A typical register based computer might compile the above as:
pop b
pop c
pop d
pop e
mov b, ax
mov c, bx
add bx
mov ax, temp_memory
mov d, ax
mov e, bx
sub bx
mov temp_memory, bx
mult bx
push a
Whereas a stack-based computer might compile as:
add
stor temp_memory
sub
lod temp_memory
mult
In a stack based computer, operations are carried out directly on your stack... it's very convenient,
since most languages compile function calls to use the stack anyways, and as you can see not having
to deal with an accumulator register makes for much terser code. Between 20 - 40% of your compiled code is spent moving data in and out of the accumulator register, since most instructions depend on
specific data being in that register - to the point that they introduced zero-cycle add/mov functionality in the P4 line - basically, if your code performs an add and then movs ax immediately
out to memory (like the above code - and possibly the most common arithmetic operation in compiled code), if the pipeline and data caches are all available, the P4 will
execute both instructions with enough time to put something else in the instruction pipeline that
cycle. It's not really a zero-cycle function - you can do something like 2.5 (add,mov,add,mov,add) a cycle if you stack them back to back to back, for instance...
Yes, Intel released a benchmark for it. No, I can't imagine why you would want to keep adding and moving the results around memory - maybe some esoteric functions like a fibbanoci generator or even a DSP algorithm of some sort might need to do it, but I don't think it'll be all that often... or that any compiler would have an optimisation to specifically output that sequence if appropriate...
I mean seriously, everyone that owned a virtual boy probably owned half the title library. I know I did.
Still have my virtual boy somewhere too. Man I gotta go looking for that thing.
Why isn't there an emulator for it that's shutter-glasses compatible by now?
For that matter, why doesn't at least one of the consoles support a 3d mode? I know, 3D at TV resolutions isn't that great (especially since it depends on the interlacing to work) but come on it'd be practically free to implement... and you don't even have to rearchitect the shutterglasses, they've already got that part working for VHS and DVD...
Remember the old Sega shutterglasses? That you could play zaxxon on?
Those were the days lol.
Funny part is, there's enough surplus hardware out there from various game manufacturers (anyone remember that sensor thing nintendo used to make? And the powerglove and blah blah blah) to make a much better VR system than is in consumer reach these days...
Did anyone see the guy that made himself a gargoyle Neal Stephenson style for Second Life?
If you're a Stephenson fan and you've never played Second Life you should - its obvious the company that makes it is staffed by Stephenson fans who basically wanted to create the Metaverse...
Back on topic - seriously, what's the target audience here? Those that loved the virtual boy and thus played every game, or those that didn't and therefore don't know what the were "missing out" on...
It seems like there should be a remote mini helping component
Maybe a little webcam image recognizer that can take multiple webcam views and make an overhead map out of it
Then the remote players can drag the pieces on the map and the DM just sees the move they want to make with which piece - system can even give exact directions, or detect when the mini is "close enough" to the target position
You know, I wonder how many of his readers have really shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"... I mean, how do you even say that? Where do you even start?
The really sad part is it took this long for, out of all of slashdot, someone to bring the question up lol
The attitude should surely be, "if you ain't got nothing to hide..." ; it's what they are increasingly coming to expect from the rest of us.
If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to watch me?
Quite possibly equally as important, since when does having something to hide equate to law breaking?
There are lots of moments in my day I wouldn't want cops to see.
I also wouldn't want my mom or wife to see them.
I'm not doing anything illegal or immoral - I'm picking my nose, scratching my crotch, taking a dump. I'm sneaking that extra cookie, posting on slashdot while at work (shhhhh don't tell anyone gosh!!!!)
Maybe my front door lock is stuck and I just need to slide into my back seat to unlock it. Yes it happened to me yesterday. No big deal - but I still wish that guy and his three kids hadn't walked up to the car on that side to watch me do it.
Back to the original topic - the cops probably have similar purposes in mind. The difference being, when I'm picking my nose on my own time I don't owe anybody any explanation.
If you're doing a shitty job making an arrest or unjustly beating someone, you owe every taxpayer in America an explanation. Maybe not personally, no, but your jobs is quite clear. We (everyone in this country) pool together our monies and give them (the police) some of it, as well as a document (constitution) and its various ammendments rules and regulations (US legal system), telling them to enforce everything they find there, and do absolutely nothing to the contrary.
A police officer off duty has as much a right to privacy as any other citizen.
If a police officer is on duty, he has just as much a right to expect and endure scrutiny.
You know I recently had this same conversation with a guy in my neighborhood.
This crackhead that goes around begging for $10. When he needs a fix bad enough he offers to mow yards. If that still doesn't work, he seems to just pick a yard and start mowing and then demand money.
I told him the exact same thing you should tell them. I never agreed to give you that money. Just because you say I owe you money doesn't make it true. (then I said leave and never come back or I'm calling the police but that part doesn't seem to apply here lol)
Call them and tell them that. Don't let them talk to you about cancellation contracts. Tell them you never agreed nor were informed about a cancellation fee, and that you do not intend to pay the cancellation fee or pay any more fees for the ISP, regardless of what they might think you owe them. Tell them you'll pay the telco bill if they seperate it, and that if they refuse to do so you intend to seek council. Try to say all the above without letting them speak. Then call VISA and tell them to block the authorization.
About that last part on the telco, I don't know what the equivalent in your municipality is, but here in the US, if a utility company is the only company that offers that service in the area, it is illegal for them to refuse service to anyone. They can demand inordinately high deposits, but they can't refuse service. Each municipality has a local board meant to enforce these laws, usually called the Utility Comission or Utility Board.
If they keep dicking you around, find out what the local equivalent is. Call them, explain the situation, see if you can get them in a conference call with the ISP. In most municipalities that utility comission has only one administrative duty; to revoke the ability of corrupt utilities to make a profit off of their citizens, by pulling their monopoly. It doesn't happen often, but most companies in my experience will gladly roll over before risking pissing off the local utilities board...
lol I had forgotten the of TheDraw!
I used it religously though. There was a period of a couple years when not a day went by without me opening it...