I'd like to think, though perhaps I am being overgenerous and idealistic, that the majority of readers saw this from the start as the hoax that is was.
This story was a perfect example of bad urban legends
Unnamed student tries to get a book from the library (Little Red Book, old, wide circulation, Mao's Communist regime no longer much of a threat)
Is visited by 2 members of DHS (thought they handled ingress / outgress issues mostly - this would be a job of the FBI) who show up with a copy of the book (so they're deciding on the spot whether or not to release a book?) after readng through library records (Bork Bork Bork, and no, that's not the Sweedish Chef)
This is then blaimed on a poly-sci course, which is supposed to teach all of these topics, with no specifics, etc
I've got a bridge to sell you. And a nice Nigerian official to help with the downpayment
These BS statements are ripe for snopes. I'm more worried by the extreme reactions than to the indifference on an obviously bogus claim
It does quite the opposite. Any piece of untruthful paranoid rhetoric like this does nothing but dilute the real abuses going on. It adds a level of suspicion and disbelief to anyone with a legimate claim. Really hope you are being facetious with the forced manufacturing claim
Can you please explain what the implications of the friend/foe/neutral system mean? I've noticed the icon over the past few hours, but have no idea what will happen to me, or my friend or fo, if I so mark them.
Normally I would be very cynical of Verizon (I even use AT&T for local phone service - I won't give Verizon any business), I've witnessed what's going on first hand on a daily basis. The east side of lower Manhattan south of Wall St (where I live) was largely uneffected by outages, but north of there, and south of Canal, seem to have face difficulty. I think what's happening is that Verizon (who I see every night working their butts of and have talked to many employees of in the last three months) has given priority in restoring service to their business rather than residential customers.
For example, my father's law firm, which is about 5 blocks north of my apartment, lost service for a few weeks but it was restored....and I'm still able to order in delivery from restaurants in China Town.
Like I said, I see these guys out 24/7 and have even given candy out to them....they just seem to be prioritizing business over residential lines
Not that I'm a fan of Verizon, or use them for any type of service whatsoever, but to say that large areas of Manhattan are still lacking phone service is quite an exaggeration.
According to the NY Times article, only 10,000 of the 300,000 (or 3%) damaged lines have not been restored, most of those in Chinatown the surrounding area. I personally live only a few blocks south of where the WTC once stood and never lost phone service for a second, and everyone else that I know in NYC that had lost service had it restored very quickly. I see Verizon workers working 24/7 in this and other areas trying to restore lost services.
Fabio has (allegedly) a custom made Krell Reference amplifier - one of a few in existence, with Dan D'agastino (ownder and founder of Krell, www.krellonline.com) owning another. These beasts put out 650 Watts/Channel at 8ohms and will drive a load as low as.5ohms with a clean division.
If I'm not mistaken it looked like all of his other gear (cd players, preamps) were Krell as well. The amp goes for around 250k (for a pair of monoblocks - these don't come multichannel and you don't want them to), weighs several hundred pounds, and sounds CLEAN. You can make out every detail of the recording at full volume or at minimal volume. The cd players looked like model 25's, a top loading design, which retails for about $25k.
Alas, I had to settle for an intergrated amp/preamp combination - quite a bit cheaper but blows anything you can find in a retail store out of the water in terms of clarity and soundstage
I'm a sysadmin with a degree in Psychology. The Meyers Briggs personality inventory, while fun to play with, is about as accurate and incisive as a horoscope. It is an overly simplified and extremely large grained multiple choice personality inventory that can place the subject into one of 16 personality 'types' based on 4 broad categories (introverted / extroverted, thinking / feeling etc) and is prone to subject induced biases as well.
If you are looking for a comprensive personality inventory, this is not it. Try an MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) as well as TIT and TAT (thematic inventories that do not rely on multiple choice answers, rather a psychologist grades respsonses to set images to deduce one's personality traits)
Would I use the results of an MB inventory in a hiring decision? No way. It may be more useful in finding an intial 'place' for someone, but I would be very cautious so as not to pigeonhole them based on what a personality inventory thinks they would do best in.
Well, anything with the bank details, amount, and signature is technically a check, however, one can't exactly go around changing the terms of it.
The check from the phone-co to you is issued to you by them on their terms. They can change the terms of the check by appending it, crossing stuff out, etc, if they sign or initial the changes, just like if you make a mistake when writing a check and want to correct it.
You do not, however, for a second, have the right to change the terms of their check. Crossing out the fine print does not invalidate it unless you are the one issuing the check. I also believe it would be fraud.
Look at it this way - imagine adding a few extra 0's to the end of your next paycheck. Is that legal? Didn't think so
But by that very logic - if the GPL fails, that is if it is found invalid on its face, than any provision or clause of it is equally invalid. The self-destruct clause would therefore be invalid and not applicable.
I've had that particular pun floating around in my head for quite some time now and was just waiting for a good chance to try it out - talking to RMS was definately good.
And to answer some other questions...speaking to RMS in person was much more informative than reading about him and his ideals here on./ Not only does he make much more sense in person, but he also seems to be a pretty nice guy
But impaladin can also be: the name of a distribution, toolkit, consultant....pretty much any noun that is portable and uses GNU
Actually, as far as I know, that is not entirely true.
In most states that I am aware of (NY, NJ, CT, CA), you cannot own a gun only if you have recently received involuntary inpatient psychiatric care - which pretty much requires you to be labeled as a "danger to yourself and others", which I believe is a perfectly reasonable condition for denying gun ownership. It usually also requires several parties (lawyers, judges, doctors) to have a person comitted like this.
Well, AOL is getting the money because it is AOL that suffered the damages. Not only is the spam a waste of disk space and bandwidth (which AOL claims could have been sold to legitimate advertises - those that pay for it), but these guys fraudulently used the AOL name (probably changed the email headers) which could potentially harm the reputation of AOL (in the eyes of its members, wise-guy!)
Not only did these guys keep spamming away, they were also completely unresponsive to any request to stop, even throwing their court papers out the window when they were served.
Now, I'm not an AOL fan by any stretch, but this time they deserve the $
I've got one (won it in that contest over the summer) and love it, though I haven't had any wrist problems in the past. It's a great keyboard - very compact with none of that extra windows crap included, but it can be a bit of a pain having to hold down a function key to use the arrows
Yes, the series was fantastic, with 2 book exceptions. I agree with 3 being terrible, but I much preferred God Emperor (#4) to the 2nd book. #3 was definately the worst. There is a 7th book now however - House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson was released several weeks ago - it's a prequel and I liked it very much - we even get to find out how the Baron got so fat
As for the movies...well, I am a huge David Lynch fan and was very disappointed with the results. Dune is, however, the only film I know of where the 'directors' cut is shorter than the extended release. Lynch had to petition the guild to have his name taken off of that horror which is now attributed to the psuedonym Alan Smithee
The sci-fi channel has actually been talking about doing this for several years now - I keep hearing rumors that they will do it 'real soon now' but nothing ever comes to light. Remember, the film was originally going to be shot by a few different production companies before DeLaurentis finally did it - and if you liked the visualization that Lynch introduced, it was originally supposed to be doing, if I recall, by HR Giger
But I babble - need more coffee. Bashar, by the way, is a reference to a military rank, equal to about that of a colonel or general, in the Dune universe. Though you may be thinking of the later books and Miles Teg et al, Bashars to surface earler on. I believe Dune mentions Sardaukar Bashar's...
Well, as many people here seem to be forgetting, the 4th ammendment only covers searches conducted by the government or an agent of said government (the police, fbi, fcc, somebody acting on behalf of the police, etc...)
CMU is not, as far as I know, any kind of government agent - therefore though they may be guilty of breaking into computers, it is by no means "illegal search and seizure"
No, your question was not whether it was "right", but whether or not it was "a right". I hope you see a difference.
"A right" is a power granted by the consent of society - the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to party, etc. In this case, the government does have "a right" to regulate the post in whatever way they see fit, as the power was granted to them by the Constitution, a document forged by, and ratified by, the people.
Whether it is "right", well, that is a moral dilemna and anyone's views on that are pretty much their own, especially since we are not looking at atrocities or crimes against humanity here, but delivering mail.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly? If I want to have someone else deliver my mail, by what right does the government tell me I can't?
Actually, the governments right to do that is in the Constitution - Article I, Section 7 says that "The Congress shall have Power... To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" among other things
I find it very hard to swallow however, that evidence gained from illegal activity is admissible in court in all instances. If this were the standing precedence, why wouldn't the cops simply get non-cops to break into people's houses to search when they can't get a warrant? Why wouldn't they get non-cops to plant bugs and cameras in crack houses to get evidence?
Because in that case the non-cops would be acting on behalf of a judicial power and would be subject to the same rules as the cops (they would be a quasi-judicial power in a way). You have to be acting independantly of the government to be exempt from search warrants and the like.
This may explain why if you found a body in my basement during a B&E, I would get charged but if you went in and planted a camera for the specific purpose to taping what I do in my own house and that tape caught the killing, that would not be admissible. (However, I'm sure it would be enough to get me arrested and the body found subsequent would be enough to convict me. *grin* There is a big difference between evidence required to arrest/detain and evidence required to convict.)
Actually, I think the tape would be admissible, though if it weren't, you wouldn't get convicted. Huh? Well, if the tape gets you arrested, the arrest leads to the body, and the tape is found to be illegally obtained, then any evidence springing from that is also tainted. So if the tape is bad, anything found because of it is inadmissible
And for the MAC address? It's transmitted and not protected by any kind of expectation of privacy - once you broadcast it, knowingly or not, you pretty much lose any expectation of privacy. If I send out any email and am not aware of everything included in it, I can't then turn around and expect people to not read certain parts, they are there.
Laws regarding recording phone conversations vary from state to state. In some states what Tripp did was perfectly legal... in others, completely illegal and inadmissible by Starr. I guess he was lucky it was in DC. *grin*
Actually, what Tripp did (taping of a 2nd party w/o their consent) is illegal (AFAIK) under the law of DC (or wherever it actually happened) though she was not charged with any crime for this
That does not, however, make the evidence inadmissible as it was the finding of a private citizen. As long as you are not dealing with stolen evidence (or certain confidential or priveleged types of documents) and are not a judicial or quasi-juidicial power, improperly obtained evidence is not inadmissible
If I break into your house and find a body in the basement I can call the police. I might go down for B&E or trespass, but that body is sending you to jail for a long time - it doesn't matter if I wasn't supposed to find it.
Information obtained by a 3rd party without the defendants knowledge is very shaky ground in court, especially when it's a commercial 3rd party as Microsoft is. Again, thats not true at all. It doesnt matter whether the third party is a private citizen or a private corporation, as long as they do not wield judicial authority. You want proof? Look at US v Alvarez-Machain (112 S.Ct 2188 (1992)) or Ker v Illinois (119 US 443, 7 S.Ct 229) - rules of search and seizure only apply to those acting in official judicial capacity
So yes, you could log my keystrokes, or film me doing illegal things through the window of my house, or even listen in on my phone conversations as long as you are not a cop
Doesn't matter - the info obtained in this situation was not obtained by either a 'search' or by someone acting as a law enforcement agent.
Remember, Kenneth Starr couldn't tape record Monica Lewinsky's phone conversations w/o her consent or a warrant, but Linda Tripp could as she is a private citizen and not subjected to the same restrictions as law enforcement.
Not to mention that a search, or a phone tap, implies a breach of someone's assumed private communications - you have a reason to believe that things you say privately over your phone line, or in a letter, remain private. Anything you publically state (or post) does not carry any kind of reasonable expectation of privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to think, though perhaps I am being overgenerous and idealistic, that the majority of readers saw this from the start as the hoax that is was.
This story was a perfect example of bad urban legends
Unnamed student tries to get a book from the library (Little Red Book, old, wide circulation, Mao's Communist regime no longer much of a threat)
Is visited by 2 members of DHS (thought they handled ingress / outgress issues mostly - this would be a job of the FBI) who show up with a copy of the book (so they're deciding on the spot whether or not to release a book?) after readng through library records (Bork Bork Bork, and no, that's not the Sweedish Chef)
This is then blaimed on a poly-sci course, which is supposed to teach all of these topics, with no specifics, etc
I've got a bridge to sell you. And a nice Nigerian official to help with the downpayment
These BS statements are ripe for snopes. I'm more worried by the extreme reactions than to the indifference on an obviously bogus claim
It does quite the opposite. Any piece of untruthful paranoid rhetoric like this does nothing but dilute the real abuses going on. It adds a level of suspicion and disbelief to anyone with a legimate claim. Really hope you are being facetious with the forced manufacturing claim
See Wolf, Boy who Cried
Cmdr Taco,
Can you please explain what the implications of the friend/foe/neutral system mean? I've noticed the icon over the past few hours, but have no idea what will happen to me, or my friend or fo, if I so mark them.
So please, more details.
Thanks!
Jordan
Normally I would be very cynical of Verizon (I even use AT&T for local phone service - I won't give Verizon any business), I've witnessed what's going on first hand on a daily basis. The east side of lower Manhattan south of Wall St (where I live) was largely uneffected by outages, but north of there, and south of Canal, seem to have face difficulty. I think what's happening is that Verizon (who I see every night working their butts of and have talked to many employees of in the last three months) has given priority in restoring service to their business rather than residential customers.
For example, my father's law firm, which is about 5 blocks north of my apartment, lost service for a few weeks but it was restored....and I'm still able to order in delivery from restaurants in China Town.
Like I said, I see these guys out 24/7 and have even given candy out to them....they just seem to be prioritizing business over residential lines
Jordan
Not that I'm a fan of Verizon, or use them for any type of service whatsoever, but to say that large areas of Manhattan are still lacking phone service is quite an exaggeration.
According to the NY Times article, only 10,000 of the 300,000 (or 3%) damaged lines have not been restored, most of those in Chinatown the surrounding area. I personally live only a few blocks south of where the WTC once stood and never lost phone service for a second, and everyone else that I know in NYC that had lost service had it restored very quickly. I see Verizon workers working 24/7 in this and other areas trying to restore lost services.
Sure, Verizon is no angel, but gimme a break
Jordan
Fabio has (allegedly) a custom made Krell Reference amplifier - one of a few in existence, with Dan D'agastino (ownder and founder of Krell, www.krellonline.com) owning another. These beasts put out 650 Watts/Channel at 8ohms and will drive a load as low as .5ohms with a clean division.
If I'm not mistaken it looked like all of his other gear (cd players, preamps) were Krell as well. The amp goes for around 250k (for a pair of monoblocks - these don't come multichannel and you don't want them to), weighs several hundred pounds, and sounds CLEAN. You can make out every detail of the recording at full volume or at minimal volume. The cd players looked like model 25's, a top loading design, which retails for about $25k.
Alas, I had to settle for an intergrated amp/preamp combination - quite a bit cheaper but blows anything you can find in a retail store out of the water in terms of clarity and soundstage
I'm a sysadmin with a degree in Psychology. The Meyers Briggs personality inventory, while fun to play with, is about as accurate and incisive as a horoscope. It is an overly simplified and extremely large grained multiple choice personality inventory that can place the subject into one of 16 personality 'types' based on 4 broad categories (introverted / extroverted, thinking / feeling etc) and is prone to subject induced biases as well.
If you are looking for a comprensive personality inventory, this is not it. Try an MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) as well as TIT and TAT (thematic inventories that do not rely on multiple choice answers, rather a psychologist grades respsonses to set images to deduce one's personality traits)
Would I use the results of an MB inventory in a hiring decision? No way. It may be more useful in finding an intial 'place' for someone, but I would be very cautious so as not to pigeonhole them based on what a personality inventory thinks they would do best in.
Jordan
Well, anything with the bank details, amount, and signature is technically a check, however, one can't exactly go around changing the terms of it.
The check from the phone-co to you is issued to you by them on their terms. They can change the terms of the check by appending it, crossing stuff out, etc, if they sign or initial the changes, just like if you make a mistake when writing a check and want to correct it.
You do not, however, for a second, have the right to change the terms of their check. Crossing out the fine print does not invalidate it unless you are the one issuing the check. I also believe it would be fraud.
Look at it this way - imagine adding a few extra 0's to the end of your next paycheck. Is that legal? Didn't think so
Jordan
I have been known to use PureBooty - www.purebooty.com
Pretty good webmail with great interface, nice features (notification of new mail to other account, etc)
not to mention a really great name
Jordan
But by that very logic - if the GPL fails, that is if it is found invalid on its face, than any provision or clause of it is equally invalid. The self-destruct clause would therefore be invalid and not applicable.
Jordan
Thank you....
./ Not only does he make much more sense in person, but he also seems to be a pretty nice guy
I've had that particular pun floating around in my head for quite some time now and was just waiting for a good chance to try it out - talking to RMS was definately good.
And to answer some other questions...speaking to RMS in person was much more informative than reading about him and his ideals here on
But impaladin can also be: the name of a distribution, toolkit, consultant....pretty much any noun that is portable and uses GNU
Jordan
Actually, as far as I know, that is not entirely true.
In most states that I am aware of (NY, NJ, CT, CA), you cannot own a gun only if you have recently received involuntary inpatient psychiatric care - which pretty much requires you to be labeled as a "danger to yourself and others", which I believe is a perfectly reasonable condition for denying gun ownership. It usually also requires several parties (lawyers, judges, doctors) to have a person comitted like this.
Jordan
Well, AOL is getting the money because it is AOL that suffered the damages. Not only is the spam a waste of disk space and bandwidth (which AOL claims could have been sold to legitimate advertises - those that pay for it), but these guys fraudulently used the AOL name (probably changed the email headers) which could potentially harm the reputation of AOL (in the eyes of its members, wise-guy!)
Not only did these guys keep spamming away, they were also completely unresponsive to any request to stop, even throwing their court papers out the window when they were served.
Now, I'm not an AOL fan by any stretch, but this time they deserve the $
Jordan
I've got one (won it in that contest over the summer) and love it, though I haven't had any wrist problems in the past. It's a great keyboard - very compact with none of that extra windows crap included, but it can be a bit of a pain having to hold down a function key to use the arrows
Jordan
OK - 1 by 1
Yes, the series was fantastic, with 2 book exceptions. I agree with 3 being terrible, but I much preferred God Emperor (#4) to the 2nd book. #3 was definately the worst. There is a 7th book now however - House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson was released several weeks ago - it's a prequel and I liked it very much - we even get to find out how the Baron got so fat
As for the movies...well, I am a huge David Lynch fan and was very disappointed with the results. Dune is, however, the only film I know of where the 'directors' cut is shorter than the extended release. Lynch had to petition the guild to have his name taken off of that horror which is now attributed to the psuedonym Alan Smithee
The sci-fi channel has actually been talking about doing this for several years now - I keep hearing rumors that they will do it 'real soon now' but nothing ever comes to light. Remember, the film was originally going to be shot by a few different production companies before DeLaurentis finally did it - and if you liked the visualization that Lynch introduced, it was originally supposed to be doing, if I recall, by HR Giger
But I babble - need more coffee. Bashar, by the way, is a reference to a military rank, equal to about that of a colonel or general, in the Dune universe. Though you may be thinking of the later books and Miles Teg et al, Bashars to surface earler on. I believe Dune mentions Sardaukar Bashar's...
"Once more the drama begins"
Jordan
Well, as many people here seem to be forgetting, the 4th ammendment only covers searches conducted by the government or an agent of said government (the police, fbi, fcc, somebody acting on behalf of the police, etc...)
CMU is not, as far as I know, any kind of government agent - therefore though they may be guilty of breaking into computers, it is by no means "illegal search and seizure"
That's completely incorrect.
Any stout, by definition, is beer. The term stout derived from what used to be known as a "stout porter", porter being a working man's darker beer.
Maybe you are confusing lager (which Guiness is not) and ale (which it is)
No, your question was not whether it was "right", but whether or not it was "a right". I hope you
see a difference.
"A right" is a power granted by the consent of society - the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to party, etc. In this case, the government does have "a right" to regulate the post in whatever way they see fit, as the power was granted to them by the Constitution, a document forged by, and ratified by, the people.
Whether it is "right", well, that is a moral dilemna and anyone's views on that are pretty much their own, especially since we are not looking at atrocities or crimes against humanity here, but delivering mail.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly? If I want to have someone else deliver my mail, by what right does the government tell me I can't?
Actually, the governments right to do that is in
the Constitution - Article I, Section 7 says that
"The Congress shall have Power...
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" among
other things
Try reading it sometime
Try reading the FAQ - http://www.moller.com/faq/
it seems to address most of your, like:
Where will the Skycar be permitted to take off and land?
Only at FAA registered vertiports. Airports qualify as vertiports.
How high has it flown?
The M200X has flown to a height of forty feet. This has allowed us to determine its performance
out of ground effect.
So I guess it is intended to cruise a bit higher
than six feet, and I think it's pretty safe to assume that it carries more than 23 gallons of
gas.
Jordan
I find it very hard to swallow however, that evidence gained from illegal activity is admissible in court in all instances. If this were the standing precedence, why
wouldn't the cops simply get non-cops to break into people's houses to search when they can't get a warrant? Why wouldn't they get non-cops to plant bugs and
cameras in crack houses to get evidence?
Because in that case the non-cops would be acting on behalf of a judicial power and would be subject to the same rules as the cops (they would be a quasi-judicial power in a way). You have to be acting independantly of the government to be exempt from search warrants and the like.
This may explain
why if you found a body in my basement during a B&E, I would get charged but if you went in and planted a camera for the specific purpose to taping what I do in
my own house and that tape caught the killing, that would not be admissible. (However, I'm sure it would be enough to get me arrested and the body found
subsequent would be enough to convict me. *grin* There is a big difference between evidence required to arrest/detain and evidence required to convict.)
Actually, I think the tape would be admissible, though if it weren't, you wouldn't get convicted. Huh? Well, if the tape gets you arrested, the arrest leads to the body, and the tape is found to be illegally obtained, then any evidence springing from that is also tainted. So if the tape is bad, anything found because of it is inadmissible
And for the MAC address? It's transmitted and not protected by any kind of expectation of privacy - once you broadcast it, knowingly or not, you pretty much lose any expectation of privacy. If I send out any email and am not aware of everything included in it, I can't then turn around and expect people to not read certain parts, they are there.
Laws regarding recording phone conversations vary from state to state. In some states what Tripp did was perfectly legal ... in others, completely illegal and
inadmissible by Starr. I guess he was lucky it was in DC. *grin*
Actually, what Tripp did (taping of a 2nd party w/o their consent) is illegal (AFAIK) under the law of DC (or wherever it actually happened) though she was not charged with any crime for this
That does not, however, make the evidence inadmissible as it was the finding of a private citizen. As long as you are not dealing with stolen evidence (or certain confidential or priveleged types of documents) and are not a judicial or quasi-juidicial power, improperly obtained evidence is not inadmissible
If I break into your house and find a body in the basement I can call the police. I might go down for B&E or trespass, but that body is sending you to jail for a long time - it doesn't matter if I wasn't supposed to find it.
Information obtained by
a 3rd party without the defendants knowledge is very shaky ground in court, especially when it's a commercial 3rd party as Microsoft is.
Again, thats not true at all. It doesnt matter whether the third party is a private citizen or a private corporation, as long as they do not wield judicial authority. You want proof? Look at US v Alvarez-Machain (112 S.Ct 2188 (1992)) or Ker v Illinois (119 US 443, 7 S.Ct 229) - rules of search and seizure only apply to those acting in official judicial capacity
So yes, you could log my keystrokes, or film me doing illegal things through the window of my house, or even listen in on my phone conversations as long as you are not a cop
Doesn't matter - the info obtained in this situation was not obtained by either a 'search' or by someone acting as a law enforcement agent.
Remember, Kenneth Starr couldn't tape record Monica Lewinsky's phone conversations w/o her consent or a warrant, but Linda Tripp could as she is a private citizen and not subjected to the same restrictions as law enforcement.
Not to mention that a search, or a phone tap, implies a breach of someone's assumed private communications - you have a reason to believe that things you say privately over your phone line, or in a letter, remain private. Anything you publically state (or post) does not carry any kind of reasonable expectation of privacy.