Meanwhile, none of these measures would find a glass or obsidian (sharper than a razor) knife strapped to your leg. Which is just one thing I thought of off hand. I sure hope all terrorists are idiots. I just don't think they are.
Even if you come up with a screening method to detect this you are still playing the "movie plot" game. Once screening methods are known, people are likely to come up with ways to render them ineffective. (Though smuggling is a more likely motivation than terrorism.)
Random searches and detentions where the victim had no way to confront the charges were one of the key hallmarks of the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both.
Actually a truely random method of selecting people for additional searches is likely to be more effective than any kind of list/profiling. Any terrorist group with a braincell between them can quickly find out which of their operatives is allowed to board with the minimum of searches if there is any non random element involved.
You're too dangerous to be allowed to fly... but not dangerous enough to be arrested... even with the "enhanced" authority of the PATRIOT Act (I & II).
An interesting question to ask would be if people who have been responsible for "air rage" get added to such lists. If such people don't automatically get listed then it rather indicates that safety of flights isn't the aim.
It does look like Google provided this more as an online service, albeit an indefinite one. So your analogy is apt. Though only providing refunds as store credit is a little skeezy.
Unless Google has been very careful to vet exactly where their customers are it could well be illegal. It's also non trivial exactly how much of a refund is right for an indefinite subscription service. (Together with issues like what should happen if the original transaction was not from a US Doller account...)
Movies (and music, and software) are traditionally considered products, not services.
Typically anywhere which has laws protecting customers in relation to the supply of goods also has laws (probably as part of the same statutes) applying to the provision of services. It's possible that these may impose obligations on the supplier. There can also be a distinction between withdrawing a service from new supply and stopping an ongoing service. What tends to fall between the cracks of customer protection law is software licencing. But here there is less ambiguity...
It might be possible for an attacker to exploit the buffer overflow in order to cause the reader to execute software chosen by the attacker. For example, the attacker might insert code that recognizes his forged passport as valid,
Or other forged passports as valid.
or that recognizes somebody else's passport (who may have flew in on the same flight) as invalid.
They need not be on the same flight. Possibly not even on the same day, depending how the system might be hackable. If their intention were disruption of air transport they'd probably want to invalidate the passports of aircrew, especially pilots.
On a side note, I wonder how long I'd last in the real world if I sold physical products which could, if I so desired, evaporate overnight with no prior warning and the purchaser having done nothing wrong? And then I started making them evaporate?
You'd better hope that your (ex) customers hadn't paid you in "evaporatable" money:)
Mainly because many implementations depend on being able to regularly phone home - and if "home" ceases to exist (or, for that matter, continues to exist but decides it's not taking any more calls, as in this case), all the media you've paid good money for essentially evaporates.
Or even "change their number" or just stop taking calls from you...
I still don't see the difference-- at least not one that would justify one being a service and the other not-- between renting information delivered on a disc or tape, and renting information delivered on the wire. It's the same content, merely a difference in delivery method. DRM protection, in rental instances, serves merely to enforce the terms in the same way that the physical nature of a tape or disc, and associated physical property ownership laws, more naturally do.
This is actually an inherent limitation with physical media. Having to track physical media (and deal with damages) is an overhead for a lending library. There is also the complex business of working out how many physical copies are needed. Video Rental Businesses are typically private lending libraries. Where such a library is instead supplying content/data divorced from any physical media an undamaged copy of every work the library holds is always available. This also needs that there is no longer a need for a loans and reservations system. Making a purely electronic version behave like a version tied to a physical media is additional work. Doing so purely so that you can also add the overhead of a library dealing in physical media makes little sense. It's a bit like having someone with a red flag walk in front of early cars, thus limiting them to walking speed and preventing any possibility of competition with horse drawn transport...
The "creator" (I prefer author) is rewarded for what he does, not for how many times I listen to his work.
Where the work in question is a "motion picture drama" the "creator" tends to be a rather large group of people. Though probably the majority are actually just paid for their work, only some getting per copy royalties (probably actually a fixed fee plus royalties...)
For starters, I don't care what the terms of service say - any company infringing on my government-issued rights isn't getting any sympathy from me.
The general term is "law of the land" which is the collection of statute, case and common law applicable to whereever you happen to be. The terms of a contract/service are only valid where they operate within this framework.
What would you do if Blockbuster told you that the DVD you rented from the store could only be played between 1am and 6am on Thursday, and you could only play it on the DVD player in your basement next to the furnace? Just because a company claims something in their "terms of agreement" doesn't make it law.
A lot of times companies will use bluff and put in terms they know are questionable (even void).
otherwise companies would be making the law, which they have no right to do.
Problem is that all too often they are. Since someone paid (either by business or extreamist political interests) to lobby politicans is far more able to get their message across than a random member of the public who has a job and a life.
Ok so the time shifting may be legal, but still, doing it in a way that Netflix does not want you to do it in - break the +Netflix+ terms of service, no? Which would, in effect, be "illegal" according to Netflix.
Just because Netflix thinks that means nothing. It would be for a competent court to decide which of Netflix's terms and condictions are valid and applicable.
Consumer-friendliness has nothing to do with it. They lowered their rates because of increased competition.
Companies do not lower rates because they love their customers and want to do kind things for them and make them as happy as they can. They do so because they believe it is in their best interest to do so -- and saying it is in their best interest to do so means that it will in their judgment make them more money (in the short term or long term).
In a competative market "Consumer-friendliness" may well be in the interests of a business. Since it can lead to word of mouth recommendations and more repeat business.
Some guys with box cutters hijack some planes and smash them into buildings, killing thousands. Terrible tragedy, I agree, very much unlike random highway accidents. But that doesn't mean that the proper reaction to this is a direct attack on what's left of the values that made this a great culture instead of, say, securing the cockpit with a sturdy, lockable door.
A more fundermental thing to do would be a proper investigation. Going off killing even more people on the basis of conspiracy theories is undoubtedly the wrong course of action.
As far as the Islamic problems in Europe, from my (admittedly limited) understanding of the problem, most of the European countries with serious issues are those that have done their best to disenfranchise the immigrants. The UK definitely has its share of crazy Muslims, but as I understand it they haven't caused nearly as much trouble as the Algerian population in France, or the Chechnyans in Russia.
Algeria is a former French colony and Chechnya wants to be independent from Russia.
There already a handful of international groups that all they do is try and help with GPL enforcement. However, according to US copyright law, the actual person(s) would would need to handle the enforcement by way of trial would be the one(s) who own the copyright on DOSBox, and then licensed it via the GPL.
Actually the power to delegate copyright enforcement does exist. Otherwise the likes of the Business Software Alliance couldn't exist.
They filtered out "wristwatch" in Earth and Beyond because of the word in the middle of it, too. (Starts and ends with the Ts.)
A classic problem with poorly defined regular expressions as "profanity filters". It might help to "throw a dictionary at it" as part of testing. i.e. Before letting people see how daft it actually is...
Reminds me of games that try to filter out all 'bad' words and end up filtering out words like 'fanny' because they mean 'butt' in the US and apparently refer to women's genitalia in the UK. How people NAMED Fanny deal with that, I can't imagine.
Even more difficult if they are called "Fanny Babcock". IIRC Someone actually compiled a webpage entitled "Smut which only a machine could identify".
This -does- give full permission to wiretap anybody without a warrent. Anyone can be wiretapped without oversight as long as the claim is made that they are suspected of communicating with said foreign suspects.
How many members of the US government should be getting their phones tapped right now (but are not)?
I think a massive surveillance camera network would create a safer, more open society so long as one key condition is met: the public and the police share access. I should be able to hit nyc.gov and view any camera at any time, including past recordings. Give me that and the police can install as many cameras as they want.
How about for every one in a public location two must go inside a police station or police vehicle.
I don't understand why people find it easier to believe that the all-powerful Al-Qaeda videos are doctored by Osama and his crew than the videos are made by foreign agents who are fabricating the needed vindication for the decision to go to war and justification for continuing it.
Possibly because the whole Al-Qaeda as some global terrorist conspiracy is easier for them to accept than the idea that "Western" governments might contain a sizable quantity of power mad dishonest crooks.
But these particular images appear to be doctored to enhance the message or provide a visually appealing background. They're probably doctored by the source. Therefore the doctored versions are what the original creators intended to express. So there's no reason for us to ignore these videos.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile, none of these measures would find a glass or obsidian (sharper than a razor) knife strapped to your leg. Which is just one thing I thought of off hand. I sure hope all terrorists are idiots. I just don't think they are.
Even if you come up with a screening method to detect this you are still playing the "movie plot" game. Once screening methods are known, people are likely to come up with ways to render them ineffective. (Though smuggling is a more likely motivation than terrorism.)
Random searches and detentions where the victim had no way to confront the charges were one of the key hallmarks of the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both.
Actually a truely random method of selecting people for additional searches is likely to be more effective than any kind of list/profiling. Any terrorist group with a braincell between them can quickly find out which of their operatives is allowed to board with the minimum of searches if there is any non random element involved.
You're too dangerous to be allowed to fly ... but not dangerous enough to be arrested ... even with the "enhanced" authority of the PATRIOT Act (I & II).
An interesting question to ask would be if people who have been responsible for "air rage" get added to such lists. If such people don't automatically get listed then it rather indicates that safety of flights isn't the aim.
It does look like Google provided this more as an online service, albeit an indefinite one. So your analogy is apt. Though only providing refunds as store credit is a little skeezy.
Unless Google has been very careful to vet exactly where their customers are it could well be illegal. It's also non trivial exactly how much of a refund is right for an indefinite subscription service. (Together with issues like what should happen if the original transaction was not from a US Doller account...)
Movies (and music, and software) are traditionally considered products, not services.
Typically anywhere which has laws protecting customers in relation to the supply of goods also has laws (probably as part of the same statutes) applying to the provision of services. It's possible that these may impose obligations on the supplier. There can also be a distinction between withdrawing a service from new supply and stopping an ongoing service.
What tends to fall between the cracks of customer protection law is software licencing. But here there is less ambiguity...
It might be possible for an attacker to exploit the buffer overflow in order to cause the reader to execute software chosen by the attacker. For example, the attacker might insert code that recognizes his forged passport as valid,
Or other forged passports as valid.
or that recognizes somebody else's passport (who may have flew in on the same flight) as invalid.
They need not be on the same flight. Possibly not even on the same day, depending how the system might be hackable.
If their intention were disruption of air transport they'd probably want to invalidate the passports of aircrew, especially pilots.
On a side note, I wonder how long I'd last in the real world if I sold physical products which could, if I so desired, evaporate overnight with no prior warning and the purchaser having done nothing wrong? And then I started making them evaporate?
:)
You'd better hope that your (ex) customers hadn't paid you in "evaporatable" money
Mainly because many implementations depend on being able to regularly phone home - and if "home" ceases to exist (or, for that matter, continues to exist but decides it's not taking any more calls, as in this case), all the media you've paid good money for essentially evaporates.
Or even "change their number" or just stop taking calls from you...
I still don't see the difference-- at least not one that would justify one being a service and the other not-- between renting information delivered on a disc or tape, and renting information delivered on the wire. It's the same content, merely a difference in delivery method. DRM protection, in rental instances, serves merely to enforce the terms in the same way that the physical nature of a tape or disc, and associated physical property ownership laws, more naturally do.
This is actually an inherent limitation with physical media. Having to track physical media (and deal with damages) is an overhead for a lending library. There is also the complex business of working out how many physical copies are needed. Video Rental Businesses are typically private lending libraries.
Where such a library is instead supplying content/data divorced from any physical media an undamaged copy of every work the library holds is always available. This also needs that there is no longer a need for a loans and reservations system. Making a purely electronic version behave like a version tied to a physical media is additional work. Doing so purely so that you can also add the overhead of a library dealing in physical media makes little sense. It's a bit like having someone with a red flag walk in front of early cars, thus limiting them to walking speed and preventing any possibility of competition with horse drawn transport...
The "creator" (I prefer author) is rewarded for what he does, not for how many times I listen to his work.
Where the work in question is a "motion picture drama" the "creator" tends to be a rather large group of people. Though probably the majority are actually just paid for their work, only some getting per copy royalties (probably actually a fixed fee plus royalties...)
For starters, I don't care what the terms of service say - any company infringing on my government-issued rights isn't getting any sympathy from me.
The general term is "law of the land" which is the collection of statute, case and common law applicable to whereever you happen to be. The terms of a contract/service are only valid where they operate within this framework.
What would you do if Blockbuster told you that the DVD you rented from the store could only be played between 1am and 6am on Thursday, and you could only play it on the DVD player in your basement next to the furnace? Just because a company claims something in their "terms of agreement" doesn't make it law.
A lot of times companies will use bluff and put in terms they know are questionable (even void).
otherwise companies would be making the law, which they have no right to do.
Problem is that all too often they are. Since someone paid (either by business or extreamist political interests) to lobby politicans is far more able to get their message across than a random member of the public who has a job and a life.
Ok so the time shifting may be legal, but still, doing it in a way that Netflix does not want you to do it in - break the +Netflix+ terms of service, no? Which would, in effect, be "illegal" according to Netflix.
Just because Netflix thinks that means nothing. It would be for a competent court to decide which of Netflix's terms and condictions are valid and applicable.
Consumer-friendliness has nothing to do with it. They lowered their rates because of increased competition.
Companies do not lower rates because they love their customers and want to do kind things for them and make them as happy as they can. They do so because they believe it is in their best interest to do so -- and saying it is in their best interest to do so means that it will in their judgment make them more money (in the short term or long term).
In a competative market "Consumer-friendliness" may well be in the interests of a business. Since it can lead to word of mouth recommendations and more repeat business.
4xAA is a compulsory That would seem to me to be the biggest change, that it requires batteries now.
:)
Presumably Microsoft will be calling one of the new features "EverReady Boost"
Some guys with box cutters hijack some planes and smash them into buildings, killing thousands. Terrible tragedy, I agree, very much unlike random highway accidents. But that doesn't mean that the proper reaction to this is a direct attack on what's left of the values that made this a great culture instead of, say, securing the cockpit with a sturdy, lockable door.
A more fundermental thing to do would be a proper investigation. Going off killing even more people on the basis of conspiracy theories is undoubtedly the wrong course of action.
As far as the Islamic problems in Europe, from my (admittedly limited) understanding of the problem, most of the European countries with serious issues are those that have done their best to disenfranchise the immigrants. The UK definitely has its share of crazy Muslims, but as I understand it they haven't caused nearly as much trouble as the Algerian population in France, or the Chechnyans in Russia.
Algeria is a former French colony and Chechnya wants to be independent from Russia.
I suspect the 'evil frequency' isn't referring to the wavelength of light emitted, but instead to the pulse pattern.
Maybe Mythbusters can test this out as a followup to "Brown Note".
There already a handful of international groups that all they do is try and help with GPL enforcement. However, according to US copyright law, the actual person(s) would would need to handle the enforcement by way of trial would be the one(s) who own the copyright on DOSBox, and then licensed it via the GPL.
Actually the power to delegate copyright enforcement does exist. Otherwise the likes of the Business Software Alliance couldn't exist.
They filtered out "wristwatch" in Earth and Beyond because of the word in the middle of it, too. (Starts and ends with the Ts.)
A classic problem with poorly defined regular expressions as "profanity filters". It might help to "throw a dictionary at it" as part of testing. i.e. Before letting people see how daft it actually is...
Reminds me of games that try to filter out all 'bad' words and end up filtering out words like 'fanny' because they mean 'butt' in the US and apparently refer to women's genitalia in the UK. How people NAMED Fanny deal with that, I can't imagine.
Even more difficult if they are called "Fanny Babcock". IIRC Someone actually compiled a webpage entitled "Smut which only a machine could identify".
This -does- give full permission to wiretap anybody without a warrent. Anyone can be wiretapped without oversight as long as the claim is made that they are suspected of communicating with said foreign suspects.
How many members of the US government should be getting their phones tapped right now (but are not)?
I think a massive surveillance camera network would create a safer, more open society so long as one key condition is met: the public and the police share access. I should be able to hit nyc.gov and view any camera at any time, including past recordings. Give me that and the police can install as many cameras as they want.
How about for every one in a public location two must go inside a police station or police vehicle.
I don't understand why people find it easier to believe that the all-powerful Al-Qaeda videos are doctored by Osama and his crew than the videos are made by foreign agents who are fabricating the needed vindication for the decision to go to war and justification for continuing it.
Possibly because the whole Al-Qaeda as some global terrorist conspiracy is easier for them to accept than the idea that "Western" governments might contain a sizable quantity of power mad dishonest crooks.
But these particular images appear to be doctored to enhance the message or provide a visually appealing background. They're probably doctored by the source. Therefore the doctored versions are what the original creators intended to express. So there's no reason for us to ignore these videos.
But you do need to identify the source.
Would that be just like the public outcry over Dmitry Sklyarov resulted in his swift and speedy release?
He wasn't American and female...