The Justice Department has drafted legislation allowing the U.S. attorney general to lock up foreigners deemed to be terrorist suspects and order them deported without presenting any evidence
In the UK, the governement here _still_ have the ability to imprision without trial indefinitely on the statute books, when it was brought in a "temporary" measure from 1971-1975. Operation Internment had a terrible backlash which, instead of reducing the problem, gained tremendous support for those imprisoned. The UK act ("prevention of terrorism act") still has to be renewed annually, but it always is - who would vote against it with a name like that? So, the whole idea made things worse, and even the clause of an annual review wasn't a sufficent counterbalance to remove it from the laws.
Giving up freedoms to defend freedoms, is like comiting suicide in self defence.
Free speech is alive and well in the US, but we have to be accurate about the meaning of free in this new coporation context. "Free speech" now means free as in "beer" not free as in "speech", which allows you to say anything that doesn't cost anything. As soon as what you say costs something, (i.e. affects someone's bottom line), it is no longer free speech, and will no longer be protected. As an aside, so long as you are over 21, you are free to drink alcohol, and this "allowance" is free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Welcome to doublethink America, where because liberty has a price of eternal vigilance, it can no longer be regarded as free.
Your client then encodes it, and sends the encoding to a local or remote server with the trained neural net. It returns with the results, and your client either dumps the email to your inbox or your spam folder
You'd have to also ensure that ISP's are clued up enough to turn off this feature for abuse@ mailboxes for obvious reasons! --
As long as they teach about fair use it is not a problem.
Um, what fair use? In the UK there is no such thing. If you read the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 you will see that there is no mention of fair use, the closest thing is "fair dealing" which is described under "Acts Permitted in relation to Copyright Works". You will not that while making a copy for personal _study_ is permitted, a copy for personal _use_ is not. So, even making an MP3 of a CD you own is illegal, regardless of whether or not you distribute it.
Fair use does not exist in the UK, so many things that you can do legally in the US, are illegal over here. And if there is ever an international agreement on copyright, which do you think is more likely to happen - fair use rights get eroded further (by legal or technical means) in the US, or the UK grant fair use rights to match those in the US? --
I don't know about you, but I'd rather see ONE quality Linux DVD player than five unfinished ones, each in a different stage of brokenness
In an ideal world, one good player would be a better situation, but in the current case of dvd players, I don't think so. One player made by one company/group means one single point of failure, and single point to be closed down/intimidated.
Whack-A-Mole is a very easy game to play if there is only one mole, you know.
--
He could be right, he could the wrong; the ambiguity in language calls this into question
IANAL, but because this was ambigious, and was admitted to be so (because it needed clarifing) would it not fall directly under the principle of "contra proferentem"?
(Verba fortius accipiuntur contra proferentem: Latin: a principle of construction whereby if words of a contract are ambiguous, of two equally possible meanings, they should be interpreted against the author of the words and not against the other party)
Help fight spam by reporting the spammers to their service providers.
I would also recommend reporting it to the ISP whose domain name was used in the return address. The reason for this is that even though the "mail from" address is the quickest way to reject email, the problem is that in 99% of the cases it's forged. If the return address was valid, filtering would be a lot easier.
So, it would be nice to impress on ISP's that someone using their domain name in the return address is a bad thing One way is to point out that you filter at the SMTP level, and lots of spams are coming with their domain as the return address. Say that while you understand the spam is not coming through their servers, it is using their address, so you will be blocking all email from their domain with a suitable message unless they take action against the users forging their address.
For an example message you could bounce email with a "your ISP's name is used as a return address for a high number of messages, so all messages from them are being rejected. If you wish to email this site, please use a different ISP". If many people started doing this, would not ISP's take domain forging a lot more seriously and make forging domains as unacceptable as spamming itself. Also, you'd have an ISP complaing against another ISP, which I'd hope have a lot more force than plain users.
--
Under which [fair use] I have the right to make backup copies in case the original is damaged, I also have the right to listen to/watch the product in any format I choose on any device I choose.
Only if copyright law allows you that fair use, for example in UK copyright law, there is no such thing as "fair use".
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't believe me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved, that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, in the UK, you can only legally access a work in extremely limited ways, and you can be found guilty until you can prove otherwise
--
...because in the UK, there is no such thing as "fair use"
If it's fair use to share a recording with a few of your friends
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't beleive me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, you can only access a work in extremeely limited ways, and you're guilty until you can prove otherwise
--
Any 'intellectual property physical property' comparison is a troll.
That's a bit of an overgeneralisation in my opinion. I think there are lots of common points between physical property and intellectual property. Obviously not in all cases, scarcity being one aspect.
Here's a short extract of something I wrote recently, which compares IP and phyiscal property. Please read it all before you call this a troll too:
Many people don't like the term "intelluctal property", because how can you "own" an idea, a thought, especially where your idea are often based on other peoples input which was freely given to society. While I personally hate the term for that reason too, I think it's interesting to note the parrallels between property owners in the past, and IP owners today. Historically, if you were a landowner, you had huge power over your tenents, only landowners had a vote, and if a disagreement was between a landowner and a non-landowner, the scales tilted heavily to the landowners side.
Are we entering a similar era with intelluctal "property" where only the IP owners have power, laws are passed to heavily benefit only IP owners, and battles between IP owners and normal people are totally one sided? Look at all many of the company battles today are over IP, the company attacked can often only defend if they have an IP defence, so companys are arming themselves with "patent portfolios" - not for research purposes, but purely for attack and defence
Is creativity now simply a unit of currency, something to be bought and sold, a weapon to be used for attack and defence, and managed so it increases the bottom line and benefit to society is only "allowed" if it adds to the renenue?
Is that really what the meaning behind copyright law should be?
Society's laws should benefit society, and if a law benefits a group of people, it should be as a means to that end, and not an end in itself.
In the past property was power, even if the property type is different, has anything else changed? --
This is EXACTLY why the MPAA went after 2600 in the DeCSS case. Easy target. It's a hacker site for cryin' out loud... despite what we all know, the courts were going to rule against 2600 despite the merits of the case. Same thing... choose an easy target, establish legal precedent, and use that precedent to win against more worthy opponents.
It's sickening that this is how our court system works...
It works both ways. Pick an easy target where someone is obviously infringing on fair use rights, and sue and win. Then work up the ladder to less "obvious" ones.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander..
Or did you ever think that if a law is always pushed in one direction, it's not surprising that it moves in that direction? If you want it to stay where it is - push back!
I told her that that was not clear on the rebate form and we started the arguing process,but she was not going to see it my way. I write this because I am tired of seeing the mail in rebate programs sucking us all in.
If they try this scam of "we really meant this", please refer them to the legal doctrine of contra proferentem, a canon of construction in contract law that counsels in favor of construing ambiguities in contract language against the drafter.
(this doctrine is refered to, in cases by several US courts from the first circuit to the eleventh.)
If you *really* want to confuse them, quote the phrase it dervives from, viz. verba chartarum fortuis accipiuntur contra proferentum, the words of a contract are construed more strictly against the person proclaiming them
Linux is linux. At what point does it become Debian? (or Redhat, or whatever). If I install it as suse, and then, upgrade some key components, is it now Debian? Is it still Suse?
Patch for running under Redhat follows:
#!/bin/sh
echo "welcome to SUSE Linux"/etc/issue ./staroffice
echo "Welcome to Redhat" >/etc/issue
Just disable smart-host in sendmail.cf, kill -hup sendmail and bob's yer uncle.
Try doing that on some ISP's and it doesn't make a difference. Login to some of the free isps, and try and connect to a remote host on the SMTP port, and you'll find you're connected to your ISP's email server, not the one you asked for. I've seen this happen with at least two ISPs, and heard evidence of more.
You turn off the smarthost? The ISP turns on packet forwarding. --
Sort of like having Ray Kroc (sp? from McDonalds) giving a speech about Big Macs in front of a Burger King banner.
Well, in London's Picadilly Circus, there is a huge McDonalds ad in lights, (which I've heard they pay £5m a year for). Guess what is directly underneath it? You got it - A burger king! --
If those items or the auction of those items are causing grief to any individual or to a group in particular then Yahoo is morally responsible to take it off
A few quick points:
What if the removal of these auction item causes grief to individuals, is Yahoo then morally responsible to reinstate them?
"Offence can not be given unless the recipient is willing to take it."
So when they (Metallica, et al) submit these names, did they just list whoever had something with the word "Metallica" in their index or do they have to prove (again, under pains of perjury) that this was an actual Metallica song?
Regardless of if they did or not, if the people in question *aren't* trading ilegally, then that would be one hell of a class action libel suit to bring! --
There's a much better way to do this. I modified our POP server at a previous employer such that it placed an IP on an approved relay list for up to two hours after a valid authentication
I have also this set up, but there is one problem. People dial up check their email, fine, and disconnect. Then they compose replies and reconnect (Ususally with a different IP, of course:( Alas, Outlook attempts to send email before it checks, so all those replies would be rejected. (It only has a send/recieve button, not two different "check" and "send" buttons) So, now they all have a little app that does a pop3 login, which they have to run before sending anything. --
Patent application: Title: Use of wildcard DNS records to generate high server usage charts
Description: for i = 1 to 100,000,000,000 launch_netcraft_test(www$i.myserver.com) next
Desired result: next month's news... "Server X showed a 98% increase in usage in web sites globally, driven mostly by a large number of new sites in the myserver.com domain."
Not directly related to W2k, but an example of possible "levering" of influence could be the news that one of the people wanting to take over the running of the UK lottery, is teaming up with Mr Gates. (BBC news article here)
According to the article, he will "advise on encryption and data warehousing." (Can you really see him being imparitial about what systems to go for?) but the most worring quote was when he said "The lottery terminals in the past have not used PC technology and there hasn't been a way of leveraging all the things which are going on with the internet" (emphasis mine)
Begin with lottery tickets, maybe, but how long do you think it could be before you can only order online with windows?
When "one-click" shopping from Amazon came out, I was concerned because of the security aspects, and this warning seems to cover one of the possible ways that it could be abused. AFAIK, when at amazon, if you have OneClickShopping turned on, it sends the cookie when you click on a url and you buy the product without any further confirmation.
However, because of the non confirmation aspect, what is to stop someone sending/posting a message which includes a image link to that "buy" url? Unless Amazon have a security check to stop this, it would be the ultimite spam email - everyone who read it would buy your product!
Can someone confirm/check if there are safeguards (eg referrers) that stop this simple abuse of OneClickShopping?
A little bit of grammer check (this really gets on my nerves) 'maths' is not necessarily proper grammer.
Well, you are displaying a cultural bias here. In the UK and Ireland, for example, we call mathematics, maths for short, and find the word "math" that americans use strange. Are we "right", or are you "right", or is it just a cultural difference? Do you mark someone who spells "colour" as "color" incorrect? Or vice versa?
(Also, it doesn't look to good to correct someone's grammar, when you spell the word grammar wrong yourself!) This is not meant as a flame, just a comment that what you regard as "wrong" could, in different circumstances be correct, and what you regard as correct, be regarded as strange elsewhere. There are no absolute wrongs or rights in language, just differences in usuage.
Personally, what I find most annoying is people who think that their way is "right" and any way is "wrong", when it is basically comes down to personal preference/culture. (be that vi/emacs kde/gnome colour/color maths/maths etc etc)
It's easy for people on/. to talk about not letting big corperations push them about, but I'd guess that it's a lot more difficult when you actually have to do so, in face of being arrested.
Considering that you compiled promptly with the original cease and desist order, do you envisage a situatition where you have had enough, and admit "guilt", to get off with a "warning", or will you struggle to be complete exhonerated?
IMO, It's important to resist, because of the precedent it could set, but it's on thing to talk the talk, and different to walk the walk.
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK, the governement here _still_ have the ability to imprision without trial indefinitely on the statute books, when it was brought in a "temporary" measure from 1971-1975. Operation Internment had a terrible backlash which, instead of reducing the problem, gained tremendous support for those imprisoned. The UK act ("prevention of terrorism act") still has to be renewed annually, but it always is - who would vote against it with a name like that? So, the whole idea made things worse, and even the clause of an annual review wasn't a sufficent counterbalance to remove it from the laws.
Giving up freedoms to defend freedoms, is like comiting suicide in self defence.
I don't remember which book of his it was, but it started with a plane hitting the capitol building,
It was called Executive Orders and the comparasion between today and the first chapter of the book is frightening.
(First chapter is about a passagner plane from Japan being hijacked and blown up in captiol building.)
Welcome to doublethink America, where because liberty has a price of eternal vigilance, it can no longer be regarded as free.
You'd have to also ensure that ISP's are clued up enough to turn off this feature for abuse@ mailboxes for obvious reasons!
--
Um, what fair use? In the UK there is no such thing. If you read the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 you will see that there is no mention of fair use, the closest thing is "fair dealing" which is described under "Acts Permitted in relation to Copyright Works". You will not that while making a copy for personal _study_ is permitted, a copy for personal _use_ is not. So, even making an MP3 of a CD you own is illegal, regardless of whether or not you distribute it.
Fair use does not exist in the UK, so many things that you can do legally in the US, are illegal over here. And if there is ever an international agreement on copyright, which do you think is more likely to happen - fair use rights get eroded further (by legal or technical means) in the US, or the UK grant fair use rights to match those in the US?
--
In an ideal world, one good player would be a better situation, but in the current case of dvd players, I don't think so. One player made by one company/group means one single point of failure, and single point to be closed down/intimidated.
Whack-A-Mole is a very easy game to play if there is only one mole, you know.
--
IANAL, but because this was ambigious, and was admitted to be so (because it needed clarifing) would it not fall directly under the principle of "contra proferentem"?
(Verba fortius accipiuntur contra proferentem: Latin: a principle of construction whereby if words of a contract are ambiguous, of two equally possible meanings, they should be interpreted against the author of the words and not against the other party)
--
I would also recommend reporting it to the ISP whose domain name was used in the return address. The reason for this is that even though the "mail from" address is the quickest way to reject email, the problem is that in 99% of the cases it's forged. If the return address was valid, filtering would be a lot easier.
So, it would be nice to impress on ISP's that someone using their domain name in the return address is a bad thing One way is to point out that you filter at the SMTP level, and lots of spams are coming with their domain as the return address. Say that while you understand the spam is not coming through their servers, it is using their address, so you will be blocking all email from their domain with a suitable message unless they take action against the users forging their address.
For an example message you could bounce email with a "your ISP's name is used as a return address for a high number of messages, so all messages from them are being rejected. If you wish to email this site, please use a different ISP". If many people started doing this, would not ISP's take domain forging a lot more seriously and make forging domains as unacceptable as spamming itself. Also, you'd have an ISP complaing against another ISP, which I'd hope have a lot more force than plain users.
--
Only if copyright law allows you that fair use, for example in UK copyright law, there is no such thing as "fair use".
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't believe me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved, that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, in the UK, you can only legally access a work in extremely limited ways, and you can be found guilty until you can prove otherwise
--
If it's fair use to share a recording with a few of your friends
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't beleive me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, you can only access a work in extremeely limited ways, and you're guilty until you can prove otherwise
--
That's a bit of an overgeneralisation in my opinion. I think there are lots of common points between physical property and intellectual property. Obviously not in all cases, scarcity being one aspect.
Here's a short extract of something I wrote recently, which compares IP and phyiscal property. Please read it all before you call this a troll too:
In the past property was power, even if the property type is different, has anything else changed?--
It's sickening that this is how our court system works...
It works both ways. Pick an easy target where someone is obviously infringing on fair use rights, and sue and win. Then work up the ladder to less "obvious" ones.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander..
Or did you ever think that if a law is always pushed in one direction, it's not surprising that it moves in that direction? If you want it to stay where it is - push back!
--
No, this is not always true, see the case of Visa condoms being denied, even though it's nothing to do with credit cards.
--
If they try this scam of "we really meant this", please refer them to the legal doctrine of contra proferentem, a canon of construction in contract law that counsels in favor of construing ambiguities in contract language against the drafter.
(this doctrine is refered to, in cases by several US courts from the first circuit to the eleventh.)
If you *really* want to confuse them, quote the phrase it dervives from, viz. verba chartarum fortuis accipiuntur contra proferentum, the words of a contract are construed more strictly against the person proclaiming them
IANAL, btw :)
--
Linux is linux. At what point does it become Debian? (or Redhat, or whatever). If I install it as suse, and then, upgrade some key components, is it now Debian? Is it still Suse?
/etc/issue
./staroffice /etc/issue
:))
Patch for running under Redhat follows:
#!/bin/sh
echo "welcome to SUSE Linux"
echo "Welcome to Redhat" >
Simple, really
--
Try doing that on some ISP's and it doesn't make a difference. Login to some of the free isps, and try and connect to a remote host on the SMTP port, and you'll find you're connected to your ISP's email server, not the one you asked for. I've seen this happen with at least two ISPs, and heard evidence of more.
You turn off the smarthost? The ISP turns on packet forwarding.
--
Sort of like having Ray Kroc (sp? from McDonalds) giving a speech about Big Macs in front of a Burger King banner.
Well, in London's Picadilly Circus, there is a huge McDonalds ad in lights, (which I've heard they pay £5m a year for). Guess what is directly underneath it? You got it - A burger king!
--
A few quick points:
--
So when they (Metallica, et al) submit these names, did they just list whoever had something with the word "Metallica" in their index or do they have to prove (again, under pains of perjury) that this was an actual Metallica song?
Regardless of if they did or not, if the people in question *aren't* trading ilegally, then that would be one hell of a class action libel suit to bring!
--
There's a much better way to do this. I modified our POP server at a previous employer such that it placed an IP on an approved relay list for up to two hours after a valid authentication
:( Alas, Outlook attempts to send email before it checks, so all those replies would be rejected. (It only has a send/recieve button, not two different "check" and "send" buttons) So, now they all have a little app that does a pop3 login, which they have to run before sending anything.
I have also this set up, but there is one problem. People dial up check their email, fine, and disconnect. Then they compose replies and reconnect (Ususally with a different IP, of course
--
Patent application:
Title: Use of wildcard DNS records to generate high server usage charts
Description:
for i = 1 to 100,000,000,000
launch_netcraft_test(www$i.myserver.com)
next
Desired result:
next month's news...
"Server X showed a 98% increase in usage in web sites globally, driven mostly by a large number of new sites in the myserver.com domain."
--
Not directly related to W2k, but an example of possible "levering" of influence could be the news that one of the people wanting to take over the running of the UK lottery, is teaming up with Mr Gates. (BBC news article here)
According to the article, he will "advise on encryption and data warehousing." (Can you really see him being imparitial about what systems to go for?) but the most worring quote was when he said "The lottery terminals in the past have not used PC technology and there hasn't been a way of leveraging all the things which are going on with the internet" (emphasis mine)
Begin with lottery tickets, maybe, but how long do you think it could be before you can only order online with windows?
--
When "one-click" shopping from Amazon came out, I was concerned because of the security aspects, and this warning seems to cover one of the possible ways that it could be abused. AFAIK, when at amazon, if you have OneClickShopping turned on, it sends the cookie when you click on a url and you buy the product without any further confirmation.
However, because of the non confirmation aspect, what is to stop someone sending/posting a message which includes a image link to that "buy" url? Unless Amazon have a security check to stop this, it would be the ultimite spam email - everyone who read it would buy your product!
Can someone confirm/check if there are safeguards (eg referrers) that stop this simple abuse of OneClickShopping?
--
A little bit of grammer check (this really gets on my nerves) 'maths' is not necessarily proper grammer.
Well, you are displaying a cultural bias here. In the UK and Ireland, for example, we call mathematics, maths for short, and find the word "math" that americans use strange. Are we "right", or are you "right", or is it just a cultural difference? Do you mark someone who spells "colour" as "color" incorrect? Or vice versa?
(Also, it doesn't look to good to correct someone's grammar, when you spell the word grammar wrong yourself!)
This is not meant as a flame, just a comment that what you regard as "wrong" could, in different circumstances be correct, and what you regard as correct, be regarded as strange elsewhere. There are no absolute wrongs or rights in language, just differences in usuage.
Personally, what I find most annoying is people who think that their way is "right" and any way is "wrong", when it is basically comes down to personal preference/culture. (be that vi/emacs kde/gnome colour/color maths/maths etc etc)
Live. Learn. Love. Laugh.
--
It's easy for people on /. to talk about not letting big corperations push them about, but I'd guess that it's a lot more difficult when you actually have to do so, in face of being arrested.
Considering that you compiled promptly with the original cease and desist order, do you envisage a situatition where you have had enough, and admit "guilt", to get off with a "warning", or will you struggle to be complete exhonerated?
IMO, It's important to resist, because of the precedent it could set, but it's on thing to talk the talk, and different to walk the walk.
--