Theoretically Insurance companies aren't tracking against your will, they are simply offering you a discount if you agree to the tracking. I don't actually have a problem with that, however I DO have a problem with where I see this leading. Unfortunately I forsee a time where it's no longer a "discount" for tracking, but a very large premium for not tracking, and that is definitely not right.
As long as insurance is mandated by the government, the government also needs to mandate that the insurance companies do so in a fair, reasonable, and non-privacy-invading way.
Maybe it's just me... but if you want your company vehicle to not be tracked, wouldn't it be easier to disconnect the tracker than to buy a GPS jammer? Either way your boss is going to know something is up by the lack of data.
(And yes, I'm speaking as someone with a company vehicle that is tracked by GPS, and although I've never felt the need, I know many of my co-workers have cut either the antenna or power leads to the trackers in their vehicles)
This was described as a loose connection on a cable, and unlike a timezone change which is a known quantity, loose connections are notoriously variable. When they found the loose cable and tightened it it made a difference of 60ns, but at the time of the original experiment that same loose connection could have accounted for 0ns or 300ns or who knows what other value. Loose connections are flakey, they do weird things.
So while you can simply re-do the math when working with a known static variable change, when dealing with something like this it seems far more prudent to re-run the test after fixing the problem.
The "true believers" are a lost cause, you can't convince them, you can't change their minds. What you CAN do is teach the uneducated, those without good critical thinking skills who may be swayed by a "true believer". By publicly exposing the frauds you don't help the "true believers" but you do help the public at large.
We don't need to convert every fraud to reason and science, we just need to make the mainstream public opinion realize how ridiculous these frauds really are.
Of course if someone does dowsing for free or for fun, then no big deal.
No, No, No, A thousand times No! Doing something for free does not mean doing it without harm. To take your example, imagine someone offers to locate all the buried pipes and wires in your yard for free before you begin construction, you let him, and he gets it all wrong. Now when the backhoe cuts the gas line and there is a very real possibility of property damage, injury, or even death, was it "no big deal". The harm isn't if they charge for the locate, the harm is if they don't do it right and you believed that they would.
The harm being done is not by the charging of money for the service (thought I'll admit that too is slightly harmful) The REAL harm in the vast majority of pseudo-scientific cases is either damage caused by the procedure, or the procedure being used instead of a real and proven procedure. Neither of which has anything to do with the cost charged by the pseudo-science practitioner.
Encryption may be a "new" area for the law, but I find it hard to believe they've never tried to get the combination to a safe. Obviously it's easier to crack a safe than break strong encryption, but I'd suspect some form of legal precedent to exist in this area regardless, and the similarity between the two seems quite significant.
You do actually bring up a good point though, I looked for an operating temperature range for these and couldn't find one. Does anyone know?
I've been considering a couple of outdoor applications, and while a case is easy enough to build, I'd rather not have to include a heater or an active cooling system if it can be avoided.
If the numbers are truly on your side, the guns aren't necessary at all. If they aren't the guns can't help you.
The problem isn't whether or not you have a gun. The problem is in convincing enough of the population to join you that the members of the armed forces see it as anything more than a few terrorists to put down.
- Stop heating our homes with anything other than wood (other avenue of pollution)
Build them with adequate insulation and they don't need heating at all.
I would like to see you invent a way of insulating a house that is so good that for 5 months with average temperatures around -15c no heat at all is required to keep it warm and comfortable inside (say a minimum of 18c)
Nobody has done it yet, you'd be rich in no time!
I agree that more insulation would be better, but to avoid needing any heating at all would mean either a drastic improvement to the best available insulation for residential construction, or to abandon my entire country. (Even the US would loose at least a third of it's usable area that way I'm sure)
Stop generating electricity with anything other than wind and solar (inadequate with current technology)
And hydro, wave, and tide. etc. No one is suggesting switching from fossil fuels to renewables overnight. Just that it can happen a lot faster than it is doing.
Hydro is in itself very damaging to the environment, one of the worst available. Unless you are advocating for nuclear, you're not advocating an adequate solution to our electricity needs (even if we all cut back dramatically)
When I view something with suspicion, it is usually because it is something that indicates a risk to myself, either because of an attack of some form, or because of a likelihood of being misinformed.
Seeing a website hosted on port 82 is weird and unusual, but I can't think of a single risk associated with it that could not just as easily happen on port 80, therefore as odd as it is, I don't see it as "suspicious" in any way that should convince me to avoid visiting it.
What is heroic about breaking one of their primary functions? Admittedly I haven't used filesonic, however I have shared large files on MegaUpload (and no, they weren't files controlled by any media cartels) with the primary purpose of allowing someone other than myself to download them. ISPs don't like you running your own servers without paying 4 times as much for 1/4 of the speed (I used to go that route...) and you can't email someone a 600MB file, so it's really handy to have services like this.
If they were to "become (a) hero" they would take a stand and block all US IP addresses, ensure their servers, DNS, and staff were outside the USA, and continue business as usual. Enough sites do this and maybe the American public will eventually realize what a mess they've allowed their government to create and do something about it. Until then, no sane business would ever take the risk of doing business over the internet with the USA. The rest of the world awaits, and we don't need the USA
Why any site that allows users to upload any content at all would risk having equipment, staff, or customers inside the USA at this point is beyond me.
If I was running such a site I would make sure the DNS was under a non-us country code, all employees were located outside the USA (And knew not to travel there for any reason), the servers would be hosted outside the USA, and I would block any US IPs. Not doing this puts you at a HUGE risk that just isn't worth it. All it takes is a few users to upload things that aren't popular with some rich lobby group in the USA and you're out of business, all your assets confiscated, and on your way to prison...
Let the USA rot in it's own internet backwater, the rest of the world doesn't need it. Maybe enough sites blocking american visitors would start to make some of them actually care enough to clean up their mess.
I must say I was shocked when I found out that the settings on these things can be modified wirelessly. While it's very convenient for the hospital to be able to make changes without surgery, it's also more than a bit worrysome from a security standpoint...
incorrect. Prior art is still relevant, it's just now you need the courts to decide it instead of the patent office (not that the patent office ever cared anyway)
sure... but being that there are thousands to choose from so it's easier just to realize that copyright has only existed for a very short portion of human history.
Shakespeare, Davinci, Mozart, none of them required copyright to create.
many different ways, but none that will pay my descendents for 70 years after I'm dead. If I want my children to have money, I have to save it the old fashioned way (ie without lobbyists)
Re:The only reason I keep my copy Encarta 95 aroun
on
A Copyright Nightmare
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· Score: 1
Do you have a public performance license for that video? if not, showing others could still be illegal (even though encarta likely paid for the rights to show you the video in the first place). It's not good enough to legally acquire a copy of a copyrighted work, you often need to ALSO legally acquire a separate license to be able to show it to anyone.
Copyright is so screwed up that it just isn't funny any more.
We could always drop back even further and find a time where the idiocy that is copyright did not exist at all, and yet arguably many of the greatest artistic works ever created still came to pass...
Why should we provide for their family? My work doesn't provide for my family past my death, if I want to do that I have to save my earnings and invest them for the future. Why should Artists/Authors be any different?
There are all sorts of things content providers WANT... there are all sorts of things we all WANT. That doesn't mean that there is any good reason to give it to them.
Naturally copyright wouldn't exist at all. The existence of it is an artificial limitation of people's rights. To limit people's rights requires a good reason. If we decide to do so then the trade off must be carefully considered to give the maximum benefit to society as a whole, not to the minuscule percentage of society engaged in the creation of artistic works.
Too much prior art... of course if you have enough money prior art is much less relevant and you can still use it to drag all sorts of companies through the court system for decades on end... (at which point it doesn't really matter if you "win" or "loose" as the lawyers will be rich, and the opposing company will be bankrupt)
Being that the point to copyright is to cause authors/artists to create things and then for those things to be available in the public domain, What possible reason is there for the copyright term to be LONGER than the artists life? For that matter, if I still earned a paycheque from the work I did 10 years ago, what incentive would I have to continue to go to work tomorrow? To create incentive for artists/authors to create more, we have to SHORTEN copyright to the minimum possible time to allow them to make a profit.
And that is all assuming that you believe that copyright is necessary at all. The world got along for a very long time without it, and I'm sure it would do well without it again.
As for patents, their purpose is to cause the inventor to publish how their invention works, something that modern patents do extremely poorly. I'd say we should reject any patent that does not contain enough information to reproduce the exact device described, also reject any and all business or design patents. (Honestly I think we should simply abolish patents, but my above list is the absolute minimum to make them sane)
Slashdot Mirror
Theoretically Insurance companies aren't tracking against your will, they are simply offering you a discount if you agree to the tracking.
I don't actually have a problem with that, however I DO have a problem with where I see this leading. Unfortunately I forsee a time where it's no longer a "discount" for tracking, but a very large premium for not tracking, and that is definitely not right.
As long as insurance is mandated by the government, the government also needs to mandate that the insurance companies do so in a fair, reasonable, and non-privacy-invading way.
Maybe it's just me... but if you want your company vehicle to not be tracked, wouldn't it be easier to disconnect the tracker than to buy a GPS jammer? Either way your boss is going to know something is up by the lack of data.
(And yes, I'm speaking as someone with a company vehicle that is tracked by GPS, and although I've never felt the need, I know many of my co-workers have cut either the antenna or power leads to the trackers in their vehicles)
This was described as a loose connection on a cable, and unlike a timezone change which is a known quantity, loose connections are notoriously variable. When they found the loose cable and tightened it it made a difference of 60ns, but at the time of the original experiment that same loose connection could have accounted for 0ns or 300ns or who knows what other value. Loose connections are flakey, they do weird things.
So while you can simply re-do the math when working with a known static variable change, when dealing with something like this it seems far more prudent to re-run the test after fixing the problem.
Heaven forbid a politician be subject to the same loss of privacy they wish on the rest of us!
The "true believers" are a lost cause, you can't convince them, you can't change their minds. What you CAN do is teach the uneducated, those without good critical thinking skills who may be swayed by a "true believer". By publicly exposing the frauds you don't help the "true believers" but you do help the public at large.
We don't need to convert every fraud to reason and science, we just need to make the mainstream public opinion realize how ridiculous these frauds really are.
Of course if someone does dowsing for free or for fun, then no big deal.
No, No, No, A thousand times No! Doing something for free does not mean doing it without harm. To take your example, imagine someone offers to locate all the buried pipes and wires in your yard for free before you begin construction, you let him, and he gets it all wrong. Now when the backhoe cuts the gas line and there is a very real possibility of property damage, injury, or even death, was it "no big deal". The harm isn't if they charge for the locate, the harm is if they don't do it right and you believed that they would.
The harm being done is not by the charging of money for the service (thought I'll admit that too is slightly harmful) The REAL harm in the vast majority of pseudo-scientific cases is either damage caused by the procedure, or the procedure being used instead of a real and proven procedure. Neither of which has anything to do with the cost charged by the pseudo-science practitioner.
Encryption may be a "new" area for the law, but I find it hard to believe they've never tried to get the combination to a safe. Obviously it's easier to crack a safe than break strong encryption, but I'd suspect some form of legal precedent to exist in this area regardless, and the similarity between the two seems quite significant.
You do actually bring up a good point though, I looked for an operating temperature range for these and couldn't find one. Does anyone know?
I've been considering a couple of outdoor applications, and while a case is easy enough to build, I'd rather not have to include a heater or an active cooling system if it can be avoided.
If the numbers are truly on your side, the guns aren't necessary at all. If they aren't the guns can't help you.
The problem isn't whether or not you have a gun. The problem is in convincing enough of the population to join you that the members of the armed forces see it as anything more than a few terrorists to put down.
- Stop heating our homes with anything other than wood (other avenue of pollution)
Build them with adequate insulation and they don't need heating at all.
I would like to see you invent a way of insulating a house that is so good that for 5 months with average temperatures around -15c no heat at all is required to keep it warm and comfortable inside (say a minimum of 18c)
Nobody has done it yet, you'd be rich in no time!
I agree that more insulation would be better, but to avoid needing any heating at all would mean either a drastic improvement to the best available insulation for residential construction, or to abandon my entire country. (Even the US would loose at least a third of it's usable area that way I'm sure)
Stop generating electricity with anything other than wind and solar (inadequate with current technology)
And hydro, wave, and tide. etc. No one is suggesting switching from fossil fuels to renewables overnight. Just that it can happen a lot faster than it is doing.
Hydro is in itself very damaging to the environment, one of the worst available. Unless you are advocating for nuclear, you're not advocating an adequate solution to our electricity needs (even if we all cut back dramatically)
When I view something with suspicion, it is usually because it is something that indicates a risk to myself, either because of an attack of some form, or because of a likelihood of being misinformed.
Seeing a website hosted on port 82 is weird and unusual, but I can't think of a single risk associated with it that could not just as easily happen on port 80, therefore as odd as it is, I don't see it as "suspicious" in any way that should convince me to avoid visiting it.
I'm posting on an international website that happens to be hosted in the US and has a large number of US users.
It also has a lot of non-US users.
What is heroic about breaking one of their primary functions?
Admittedly I haven't used filesonic, however I have shared large files on MegaUpload (and no, they weren't files controlled by any media cartels) with the primary purpose of allowing someone other than myself to download them.
ISPs don't like you running your own servers without paying 4 times as much for 1/4 of the speed (I used to go that route...) and you can't email someone a 600MB file, so it's really handy to have services like this.
If they were to "become (a) hero" they would take a stand and block all US IP addresses, ensure their servers, DNS, and staff were outside the USA, and continue business as usual. Enough sites do this and maybe the American public will eventually realize what a mess they've allowed their government to create and do something about it. Until then, no sane business would ever take the risk of doing business over the internet with the USA. The rest of the world awaits, and we don't need the USA
Ever emailed yourself a 600+MB file?
Why any site that allows users to upload any content at all would risk having equipment, staff, or customers inside the USA at this point is beyond me.
If I was running such a site I would make sure the DNS was under a non-us country code, all employees were located outside the USA (And knew not to travel there for any reason), the servers would be hosted outside the USA, and I would block any US IPs. Not doing this puts you at a HUGE risk that just isn't worth it. All it takes is a few users to upload things that aren't popular with some rich lobby group in the USA and you're out of business, all your assets confiscated, and on your way to prison...
Let the USA rot in it's own internet backwater, the rest of the world doesn't need it. Maybe enough sites blocking american visitors would start to make some of them actually care enough to clean up their mess.
I must say I was shocked when I found out that the settings on these things can be modified wirelessly. While it's very convenient for the hospital to be able to make changes without surgery, it's also more than a bit worrysome from a security standpoint...
I think actions like this prove this to already be the case...
incorrect. Prior art is still relevant, it's just now you need the courts to decide it instead of the patent office (not that the patent office ever cared anyway)
sure... but being that there are thousands to choose from so it's easier just to realize that copyright has only existed for a very short portion of human history.
Shakespeare, Davinci, Mozart, none of them required copyright to create.
many different ways, but none that will pay my descendents for 70 years after I'm dead. If I want my children to have money, I have to save it the old fashioned way (ie without lobbyists)
Do you have a public performance license for that video? if not, showing others could still be illegal (even though encarta likely paid for the rights to show you the video in the first place). It's not good enough to legally acquire a copy of a copyrighted work, you often need to ALSO legally acquire a separate license to be able to show it to anyone.
Copyright is so screwed up that it just isn't funny any more.
We could always drop back even further and find a time where the idiocy that is copyright did not exist at all, and yet arguably many of the greatest artistic works ever created still came to pass...
Why should we provide for their family? My work doesn't provide for my family past my death, if I want to do that I have to save my earnings and invest them for the future. Why should Artists/Authors be any different?
There are all sorts of things content providers WANT... there are all sorts of things we all WANT. That doesn't mean that there is any good reason to give it to them.
Naturally copyright wouldn't exist at all. The existence of it is an artificial limitation of people's rights. To limit people's rights requires a good reason. If we decide to do so then the trade off must be carefully considered to give the maximum benefit to society as a whole, not to the minuscule percentage of society engaged in the creation of artistic works.
Too much prior art... of course if you have enough money prior art is much less relevant and you can still use it to drag all sorts of companies through the court system for decades on end... (at which point it doesn't really matter if you "win" or "loose" as the lawyers will be rich, and the opposing company will be bankrupt)
Being that the point to copyright is to cause authors/artists to create things and then for those things to be available in the public domain, What possible reason is there for the copyright term to be LONGER than the artists life? For that matter, if I still earned a paycheque from the work I did 10 years ago, what incentive would I have to continue to go to work tomorrow? To create incentive for artists/authors to create more, we have to SHORTEN copyright to the minimum possible time to allow them to make a profit.
And that is all assuming that you believe that copyright is necessary at all. The world got along for a very long time without it, and I'm sure it would do well without it again.
As for patents, their purpose is to cause the inventor to publish how their invention works, something that modern patents do extremely poorly. I'd say we should reject any patent that does not contain enough information to reproduce the exact device described, also reject any and all business or design patents. (Honestly I think we should simply abolish patents, but my above list is the absolute minimum to make them sane)