It is true that downloading copyrighted material using bittorrent is illegal
Nope, not necessarily. It may be, but there is copyrighted material that is legal to download, as the holder has given permission, for example. I'm sure there is also public domain material that's illegal to download.
The BBC have also made incorrect blanket statement regarding copy protected CD's. They often state that the protection is designed to "stop illegal copies". I have pointed out that it's designed to "stop any copies, legal or illegal", but they never correct it.
I think the problem lies not so much with Wikipedia, but the perception thereof. If you go there expecting every article to be high quality, proof read and in depth, then you will be disappointed, even though many articles are of that standard.
The issue of allowing unskilled people overwrite the actions of skilled people is tricky. Yes, there is nothing stopping brilliant prose being overwritten with substandard writing. Yes, the edit might get missed, but it often is noticed and the better piece reinstated. Sometimes the change is an improvement, but the original author can't see it as they've falling in love with their own way of writing. No, it's not perfect, but I cannot see anyway of solving it without creating more problems.
Wikipedia has never claimed to be accurate or completely neutral. However, it does strive to be so, and I think it does as good a job as can be expected.
I don't think that law has as many teeth as you seem to think.
According to 49(5)(a), the max punishment for not disclosing your key is two years. Compare that to whatever the max punishment is for having kiddie porn on your PC
What is the maximum punishment for doing nothing wrong, and simply forgetting a password? TWO YEARS
That's right - two years might seem a lot less than the punishment for kiddy porn, or whatever, but it's a hell of a lot more than anyone should be imprisioned for without any evidence of wrongdoing
Why can't the content be encrypted by the user via an asymmetric key scheme (like PGP) and decrypted again once it's reached the target system?
So Google can search the documents and return the results to the user, rather than requiring the user to download all their documents locally on every machine and then have to run a search themselves.
You don't by a dog and bark yourself, and if you sign up to service from a search engine company, you would expect them to do the searching, surely!
Wasn't the purpose of operating systems to run the hardware, and not the other way around? When did the shift arrive when you were expected to change your hardware to run a new OS?
No it isn't. They could store the data encrypted (index data and documents), using a private key known only to the user.
And where would the key be stored?
If the key was stored at Google, it would result with the same effective situation. If the key was stored at each each users machine, there is the difficulty of getting the user to input it when searching from different machines. Any key easily entered is likely to imply easily cracked encryption (people who use personal certs are probably not the market google is aiming at) Also, for google to search, they would need the key (reverting to original situation again), causing issues about how the key be safely transmitted to google. Because, without the key (or clean data), Google can't search, and it would defeat the issue to require the user to download the encrpyted data, decrpyt them, just to search the docs themselves.
The idea is that you send an e-mail, pay a penny. Or even a quarter of a cent. If you receive an e-mail, you would ideally get the entire amount that the sender paid. But, because of how businesses are, you'll likely get 70% of that. Ideally, most users would only have to pop in $5 a month.
And how would that work if a german user emailed an american friend via a server in the UK? Would they be paying in euro, dollars, or pounds?
Both of these accept submissions from the general public so you can't guarantee that what they choose to clasify the artists as will be in line with your own opinion.
Are there any guidelines on either regarding keeping the basic album information consistant? By that I mean, some compilatons are listed under "Various", others "Various Artists". Multi CD sets are sometimes "CD1 of 2", sometimes (CD one) - sometimes these happen within the same album! Bands aren't consistant either, some albums return "The Beatles", others just "Beatles". Very annoying!
Surely for those with direct access to the database, these changes would be mostly trivial?
Does anyone with market knowhow have an explanation for why a company would let it's stock go so high when it will suffer such extremes in value during currnent market fluctiations like right now?
Splitting stock has zero effect on the value of a company, and is mostly used as a marketing ploy. An 8% drop is still an 8% drop, whether the price is $100 or $10. It has nothing to do with keeping small investors out, if you can only afford to invest $1,000 in google, it makes no difference whatsoever if this is invested in 1 $1,000 share, or 100 $10 shares, the fraction you own of the company is exactly the same.
I know most companies split their stock when it gets expensive enough. Why not Google?
Several possible reasons: a) Because it makes no sense. b) because if the stock drops too much, they would have to a reverse split to keep it above the threashold for being listed, which looks very bad.
To be honest, I'd far rather they didn't have to fight this because they didn't actually keep the information in the first place.
I very much doubt that google keep the results of every search query. Anyone know for sure? What would be the point? Knowing that 10 people searched for "foo bar" might be interesting, but is it any use to know that person 1 get pages a,b,c and person 2 got pages b,c,d, etc? So, if this results are not stored, then the information of common search terms is useless, as they have no indication of how often these led to dodgy sites over time.
It looks like a fishing tactic to me, get all the common search terms, and then require google to turn over all people who searched for unamerican keywords, as they "must be terrorists, surely"? It's possible Google will (or can) only do this if the request is specific, i.e. give us people who searched for X, Y or Z, and this is just a way of compiling the list of X, Y and Z, using "save the children" as the usual excuse.
If you buy a CD through the normal channels, you have no right to do public performances. So the situation is the same for CDs and MP3s here.
Not quite. The situation here is that the DJ has bought the CD and has the licence to broadcast it. However, if they copy that CD to the hard disk, they have to pay an extra 200 quid to play it from there. The music is the same, the DJ has broadcast rights, but they have to pay extra to carry their collection around in a more portable format?
DJ plays CD, fine. DJ plays same CD via their computer, thanks very much, that's 200 quid - for what? Looks like a blatent rip off to me.
Why is a global free market for goods considered good, but that for labor bad by so many inhabitants of "developed" nations?
Because "developed" nations are the ones producing the goods.
And it's not just goods/labour, it applies to different types of goods too. If you look at some recent "free trade" agreements, it often boils down to free trade on goods which the stronger country exports, but not on those that the weaker one exports.
Then what is the difference between talking to someone in your car, and talking to someone on a hands free headset?
The person in the car can shut up up and yell at you if you're about to crash (or even simply become quiet when approaching a busy junction), the person on the phone will keep talking regardless of traffic conditions. After all, your passanger has more too lose if you crash than someone in the end of a phone!
Hmmm, maybe we should make people who are talking to people in traffic just as responsible?
The core technology is based on the TCP/IP. This is like telephone numbers. These are distributed all over the world as we speak and it would be close to impossible to break this up.
They are exactly like telephone numbers. A phone number has (international access code) + (area code) + (local number). Within a country, you can dial a local number, but when using the internet all addresses are usually FQDN, which is the phone equilavent of having a +(country code) in front of all calls, even if it's local. Would the UK be happpy if the US had the power to redirect all calls to +44 to a completely different country?
Yes, be like phone systems, have whatever numbers within your own borders, but the numbering of country codes (i.e. root DNS) should be outside any one countries power)
Since the only thing they have in space is the ISS it was odds on that they would chose this to crash into Earth. Reports say that it should be a spectacular show especially for the people it hits.
The last time a space station crashed, several people had a mir death experience!
Slashdot Mirror
We should be so lucky!
Because when AC and DC is involved, people get confused: It all goes wrong when a radio contestent is asked to spell AC/DC and can't.
Nope, not necessarily. It may be, but there is copyrighted material that is legal to download, as the holder has given permission, for example. I'm sure there is also public domain material that's illegal to download.
The BBC have also made incorrect blanket statement regarding copy protected CD's. They often state that the protection is designed to "stop illegal copies". I have pointed out that it's designed to "stop any copies, legal or illegal", but they never correct it.
The issue of allowing unskilled people overwrite the actions of skilled people is tricky. Yes, there is nothing stopping brilliant prose being overwritten with substandard writing. Yes, the edit might get missed, but it often is noticed and the better piece reinstated. Sometimes the change is an improvement, but the original author can't see it as they've falling in love with their own way of writing. No, it's not perfect, but I cannot see anyway of solving it without creating more problems.
Wikipedia has never claimed to be accurate or completely neutral. However, it does strive to be so, and I think it does as good a job as can be expected.
How about pointing it at a framed copy of the constitution and bill of rights? That would confuse them, since they don't seem to believe they exist!
What is the maximum punishment for doing nothing wrong, and simply forgetting a password? TWO YEARS
That's right - two years might seem a lot less than the punishment for kiddy porn, or whatever, but it's a hell of a lot more than anyone should be imprisioned for without any evidence of wrongdoing
So Google can search the documents and return the results to the user, rather than requiring the user to download all their documents locally on every machine and then have to run a search themselves.
You don't by a dog and bark yourself, and if you sign up to service from a search engine company, you would expect them to do the searching, surely!
So if you disagree with the idea, you can't even leave the country. Nice.
Operation "Barcode Britain" has begun
Wasn't the purpose of operating systems to run the hardware, and not the other way around? When did the shift arrive when you were expected to change your hardware to run a new OS?
And where would the key be stored?
If the key was stored at Google, it would result with the same effective situation. If the key was stored at each each users machine, there is the difficulty of getting the user to input it when searching from different machines. Any key easily entered is likely to imply easily cracked encryption (people who use personal certs are probably not the market google is aiming at) Also, for google to search, they would need the key (reverting to original situation again), causing issues about how the key be safely transmitted to google. Because, without the key (or clean data), Google can't search, and it would defeat the issue to require the user to download the encrpyted data, decrpyt them, just to search the docs themselves.
How scalable is the current system? Will there need to be a structural change if the number of editors continue to increase?
It already exits, you can create a Subpage for "Drafts of major article revisions"
And how would that work if a german user emailed an american friend via a server in the UK? Would they be paying in euro, dollars, or pounds?
Are there any guidelines on either regarding keeping the basic album information consistant? By that I mean, some compilatons are listed under "Various", others "Various Artists". Multi CD sets are sometimes "CD1 of 2", sometimes (CD one) - sometimes these happen within the same album! Bands aren't consistant either, some albums return "The Beatles", others just "Beatles". Very annoying!
Surely for those with direct access to the database, these changes would be mostly trivial?
Splitting stock has zero effect on the value of a company, and is mostly used as a marketing ploy. An 8% drop is still an 8% drop, whether the price is $100 or $10. It has nothing to do with keeping small investors out, if you can only afford to invest $1,000 in google, it makes no difference whatsoever if this is invested in 1 $1,000 share, or 100 $10 shares, the fraction you own of the company is exactly the same.
I know most companies split their stock when it gets expensive enough. Why not Google?
Several possible reasons: a) Because it makes no sense. b) because if the stock drops too much, they would have to a reverse split to keep it above the threashold for being listed, which looks very bad.
There is another company that has doesn't do stock splits, you may have heard of them: Berkshire Hathaway which is currently trading at about $90,000 per A share. Warren Buffet explains why they don't split thier stock in the 1983 letter to sharholders.
I very much doubt that google keep the results of every search query. Anyone know for sure? What would be the point? Knowing that 10 people searched for "foo bar" might be interesting, but is it any use to know that person 1 get pages a,b,c and person 2 got pages b,c,d, etc? So, if this results are not stored, then the information of common search terms is useless, as they have no indication of how often these led to dodgy sites over time.
It looks like a fishing tactic to me, get all the common search terms, and then require google to turn over all people who searched for unamerican keywords, as they "must be terrorists, surely"? It's possible Google will (or can) only do this if the request is specific, i.e. give us people who searched for X, Y or Z, and this is just a way of compiling the list of X, Y and Z, using "save the children" as the usual excuse.
Not quite. The situation here is that the DJ has bought the CD and has the licence to broadcast it. However, if they copy that CD to the hard disk, they have to pay an extra 200 quid to play it from there. The music is the same, the DJ has broadcast rights, but they have to pay extra to carry their collection around in a more portable format?
DJ plays CD, fine. DJ plays same CD via their computer, thanks very much, that's 200 quid - for what? Looks like a blatent rip off to me.
Because "developed" nations are the ones producing the goods.
And it's not just goods/labour, it applies to different types of goods too. If you look at some recent "free trade" agreements, it often boils down to free trade on goods which the stronger country exports, but not on those that the weaker one exports.
Before you make claims like that:
a) It's wise to check first - Shakespeare's name has been spelt several different ways
b) Be forgiving of typos.
Including a picture of an XBox 360, sold for the princly sum of £470, according to an article in the register.
The person in the car can shut up up and yell at you if you're about to crash (or even simply become quiet when approaching a busy junction), the person on the phone will keep talking regardless of traffic conditions. After all, your passanger has more too lose if you crash than someone in the end of a phone!
Hmmm, maybe we should make people who are talking to people in traffic just as responsible?
Evidence?? Court?? You are running an old version of UK, please upgrade where these bugs have been removed in an effort to improve security.
They are exactly like telephone numbers. A phone number has (international access code) + (area code) + (local number). Within a country, you can dial a local number, but when using the internet all addresses are usually FQDN, which is the phone equilavent of having a +(country code) in front of all calls, even if it's local. Would the UK be happpy if the US had the power to redirect all calls to +44 to a completely different country?
Yes, be like phone systems, have whatever numbers within your own borders, but the numbering of country codes (i.e. root DNS) should be outside any one countries power)
The last time a space station crashed, several people had a mir death experience!