There is currently an investigation underway to remove cameras from places that have not proven to be blackspots.
Assuming the camera isn't the cause of the problems. Speed cameras can have the effect of drivers slowing down and speeding up to try and ensure that they are below the speed limit when they pass the camera...
Since the data will be kept in a database in a "foreign" country where the person whom the details refer to has no legal recourse to oversee the data. How will I know who will use the data in the US-Visit database? How can I stop them when I'm not in the US? I can't.
There is also the problem of the US lacking any data protection legislation. Hence US based entities making a big song and dance about "privacy policies". This means that there is no requirment for such data to be kept secret or even accurate.
Great, you're correct, but US-Visit does nothing of the sort. You do realise that none of the September 11th hijackers used false documents to enter the US, right? They all used their own passports issued in their own names.
Actually more than a third of the alleged hijackers turned up alive. Basically if the Al-Quada Conspiracy theory was not advocated by the US Government it would have been instantly ridiculed.
How is this "big brother"ish? We are just supposed to let foriegners in willy-nilly to trapse about and not know anything about them? Hello!! Defense of borders is part of maintaining soverignty
I don't recall any reports of the US building a "wall" to protect its borders with Canada and Mexico. It's rather pointless to have all this "security" at ports when someone can simply walk across the border anyway.
The major manufacturers create their own "competition" to flood the market with at the most popular price ranges, often selling under 4 or 5 labels simultaneously, and not all of them at the same price level, despite identical guts.
The classic example of this is washing "powder". Which is why so many brands appear to come out with the same gimick all at once.
Whatever the origins of the drug war, some drugs are absolutely harmful in untrained hands (Note: I specifically said untrained hands... cocaine, opiates, and amphetamine derivatives do have legitimate medical uses, provided they're prescribed by someone with the proper expertise).
The thing is that the potential harmfulness of a drug. Including the "theraputic index" (the difference between a dosage which will do good and a dosage which will cause harm) has little to do with the legality of the drug. In the case of the Cannabis plant the legal status has even made clinical trials difficult.
I'm speaking particularly about hard drugs. Anyone who denies this either has a political agenda, or is not connected to reality.
The term "hard drugs" is itself highly political. Otherwise tobacco would be refered to as a "legal hard drug"...
In a perfectly Libertarian world, it wouldn't matter, because society wouldn't be liable for the costs of people drowning their bodies in illicit drugs. However, fortunately or not, society does end up paying.
Prohibition also has costs. Which include wars with well armed gangsters involved in black market supply and injuries caused by people using contaminated drugs. In the case of the American experiment in alcohol prohibition it was found that the price of prohibition was the greater one.
You know something funny? One of the longer running programs on the bbc and copied to dutch tv is "Have I got news for you" a program that has 1 host (now rotating on the bbc with celebs after the original hosts had a scandal) and two two man teams with a regular on each time and a celeb as guest.
Actually "Have I Got News for You" is a TV version of an even longer running programme on BBC Radio 4 called "The News Quiz". Since BBC radio and televison is available in the Netherlands the Dutch TV version could be taken from either.
The room's teacher hated it, because he only knew one system and this wasn't it.
Though he's have probably been just as upset changing from one version of Windows to another version of Windows. If he's the most extreme of this type then simply changing the colour scheme, screen resolution and shuffling icons around would throw him:)
So, exactly WHICH applications that run exclusively on WINDOWS are of such importance that the high schools cannot fulfill their mission statement without them?
The most common reasons are political rather than technical. Even fashion statements of the form "we must have this cos everyone else has it". Regardless of if a) every other school actually is using it, b) said application is actually a good educational tool and c) something else might well be a better educational tool.
Don't get me wrong, Windows absolutely should be in the school. But, in the name of diversity and fairness (and the fact that the graduates never know which type of box they may end up sitting at) the schools should also have *nix boxen as well.
But what version of Windows? Indeed it's only for older students that the argument "they should use windows because that is what they will be using when they leave school" even starts to make sense. Even then the work environment is far more diverse than many Windows advocates claim.
also add the cost reductions in only having to support one platform. runing 2 sets of file servers, managment stations etc is an unessasary expense.
Something like Linux will support just about any networking protocol ever invented. So you only need one set of file servers that way.
Also windows techs are a dime a dozen. mac or linux techs cost more. a tech who does both well is rare and expensive (i know, i am one).
There are a lot of "Windows monkeys" who know a little bit about Windows. But when it comes to people who actually know the sustem then you are probably into the "rare and expensive".
Bear in mind the school are buying the box, not the monitor, they don't want/need something portable (in fact, nailing it to the desk may be necessary)
RotFL...
and the desktop PC running Windows will run all their educational software easily.
It may run them, but the easily bit is debatable. Especially when you need 20 different packages on the same machine or serious hacking is required because all the development was done on a standalone machine with the result that the idiot program insists on saving all its data on the local HDD.
No, if Sveasoft (or whomever) gives you a copy of the binary without the source, then they must make the source available to anyone who asks, as per section 3b of the GPL.
No they are only obliged to distribute the source to any party they have distributed the binary to.
It should be noted that this restriction is only on the pre-release code. I can see your reasoning, but I don't agree with it.
The GPL (and coyright law) are only concerned with third party copying and distribution. Terms such as "pre-release", "beta", etc are irrelevent.
You know what? If they put a clause in their ToS that said "Violation of this ToS results in a $$$$$$ fine." and one of those terms was not redistributing the code I think that's probably still allowed.
If this was their own code they could put such conditions on distribution. As they are distrubuting other people's code then they need explicit permission from all the relevent copyright holders to redistribute under any other terms than the GPL.
Seriously, if SCO were a person acting this way towards other people in public, by now it'd be better than even money they'd have been put in hospital.
Actually the vast majority of corporations would be joining SCO were the idea of "legal person" applied in such matters as mental health.
this is a common thing. it's called value-based pricing. IMO, it's crap. personally I think the right way to go about this type of thing is to sell different versions of your product. you can limit the cheaper version however you want to create an incentive for the more expensive version.
Or more likely they create one version, deliberatly cripple it in order to make it look as though they have different versions. Then get upset when knowlage of how to undo their crippling hacks leaks...
Why not have your software measure how much real work it's doing. If over time it exceeds the amount of processing that the user paid for, then it starts to throttle itself back.
No doubt then they'd have to work out a way to charge you for using that additional functionality...
Under Bill C-12, it will soon be illegal in Canada to possess words describing teenage or child sexual activity that "would be" illegal - even if it's completely imaginary.
isn't this a replacement for a previous law which got struck down? Wouldn't this also be a backdoor way of raising the effective age of consent too. (In a very "Newspeak" way...)
I'm very interested to see what happens to fantasy/SF authors who write about long-lived or short-lived species...
Will that be before "Romeo and Juliet" is banned?
what happens with an elf child who is 100 years old, but looks like a 12-year-old human? What about Kes from Star Trek: Voyager? She's damn well under 18, even if she looks like an adult - there's no exception for non-humans.
Possibly a double standard where big corporate media will get away with things (e.g. it isn't "child porn" since the actor is over the age of whatever.)
What about time travel and relativity and suspended animation?
As well as regular historical fiction...
The law requires us to be able to apply current Canadian law to all conceivable imaginary worlds.
Including to fictional worlds which may well have consitutions and legal codes which are mutually exclusive with current Canadian law in all sorts of ways. These worlds need not even be fictional they could just as easily be taken Earth's history.
Websites assessed by the IWF as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act were targeted by BT.
The IWF is not a court, nor is it comprised mostly of expert lawyers. AFAIK it isn't given specfic statutory authority to interpret any law. Effectivly they are offering an opinion no more valid than that of any random member of the public.
So, you're probably going to prison (as a "nonce"), when you get out you're on the sex offenders list, and if the moral majority get their way, that list will be public. Odds on that list will contain errors.
Anyone can go to the library, find out where you live, then come round and set fire to your house while you're asleep. (Look what happened when The Sun printed some names and addresses from said list.)
Just hope you don't have a name the same as (or similar to) someone on the list. It also wouldn't be exactly PC for anyone to complain that rampaging lynch mobs bothered them more than people who liked to look at questionable photos.
I see the benefits of blocking in a school environment - it helps stop kids accidentally stumbling upon porn.
Depends on the age of the kids. If they are teenagers it's unlikely to be accidental. With younger kids it's the teachers who are more likely to be upset when this happens. What to block in a school environment is not always obvious. The commercial products might well block information relevent to education, e.g. as "hate speach", yet allow students to waste time and bandwith playing games.
The Sony Bono copyright extension act does nothing to reward or encourage the author...it removed many works from the public domain and established criminal sanctions for any fool who might use those works newly re-copywritten.
Which appears to be something the US Consitution does not allow in the first place...
Who pushed this law in the US? Disney. THE MOUSE almost went into the public domain and a company contemplated the demise of their core IP rights and promptly made certain THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.
The irony being that "THE MOUSE" may actually be in the public domain anyway.
Shouldn't copyright be used to *encourage new music*?? This is just sick. I
wish they would just STOP extending copyright. I wish the governments around
the world would just say, OKAY YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH.
Even better would be if when governments were next asked for another retrospective extension they would turn around and set a flat 20 year term on everything. Though no doubt that would have the middle men and those who produced a "one hit wonder" in the early 80's crying in their beer.
I don't think that that invalidates the concept of copyright, however; I can't see how else the creators of such works could be compensated if not for copyright. Musicians can tour, but authors, etc? Patronage would work for a small number of creators, but then only the truly exceptional and truly lucky would be able to create full-time.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that "unsucessful" authors are in the majority and even sucessful authors need not be motivated by the idea of making money from their work. e.g. JK Rowling did not create Harry Potter because she hoped to become the best selling author in history. Even if you can demonstrate that copyright provides a prositive incentive for creation there is the issue of how much (and what form of) copyright is optimal.
The practical reality (if you look at software) is that there is a definite shelf life for works... I suspect that fewer that 0.1% of stuff created has any economic value past a generation
For many works the "self life" could probably be meaningfully measured in single digit years (even months).
so there are arguments that government policy should be against rent-seeking behaviour on those accumulating back-catalogs.
Such behaviour also tends to be destructive to the vast majority of works, those which have short shelf lives, since these works may cease to exist before they ever become public domain. Copyrights of the form "life plus X" mean that Copyright Libraries simply cannot function in their intended way.
Slashdot Mirror
That's nothing, a friend was asked to sign a 'government' housing contract that said he could be evicted for:
Using the house for imorral perpouses( I read this as praying to the wrong god, or at the wrong time of day).
Probably means something to do with prostitution. That's the problem of with using jargon, it may have a completly different actual meaning.
There is currently an investigation underway to remove cameras from places that have not proven to be blackspots.
Assuming the camera isn't the cause of the problems. Speed cameras can have the effect of drivers slowing down and speeding up to try and ensure that they are below the speed limit when they pass the camera...
Since the data will be kept in a database in a "foreign" country where the person whom the details refer to has no legal recourse to oversee the data. How will I know who will use the data in the US-Visit database? How can I stop them when I'm not in the US? I can't.
There is also the problem of the US lacking any data protection legislation. Hence US based entities making a big song and dance about "privacy policies". This means that there is no requirment for such data to be kept secret or even accurate.
Great, you're correct, but US-Visit does nothing of the sort. You do realise that none of the September 11th hijackers used false documents to enter the US, right? They all used their own passports issued in their own names.
Actually more than a third of the alleged hijackers turned up alive. Basically if the Al-Quada Conspiracy theory was not advocated by the US Government it would have been instantly ridiculed.
How is this "big brother"ish? We are just supposed to let foriegners in willy-nilly to trapse about and not know anything about them? Hello!! Defense of borders is part of maintaining soverignty
I don't recall any reports of the US building a "wall" to protect its borders with Canada and Mexico. It's rather pointless to have all this "security" at ports when someone can simply walk across the border anyway.
The major manufacturers create their own "competition" to flood the market with at the most popular price ranges, often selling under 4 or 5 labels simultaneously, and not all of them at the same price level, despite identical guts.
The classic example of this is washing "powder". Which is why so many brands appear to come out with the same gimick all at once.
Whatever the origins of the drug war, some drugs are absolutely harmful in untrained hands (Note: I specifically said untrained hands... cocaine, opiates, and amphetamine derivatives do have legitimate medical uses, provided they're prescribed by someone with the proper expertise).
The thing is that the potential harmfulness of a drug. Including the "theraputic index" (the difference between a dosage which will do good and a dosage which will cause harm) has little to do with the legality of the drug. In the case of the Cannabis plant the legal status has even made clinical trials difficult.
I'm speaking particularly about hard drugs. Anyone who denies this either has a political agenda, or is not connected to reality.
The term "hard drugs" is itself highly political. Otherwise tobacco would be refered to as a "legal hard drug"...
In a perfectly Libertarian world, it wouldn't matter, because society wouldn't be liable for the costs of people drowning their bodies in illicit drugs. However, fortunately or not, society does end up paying.
Prohibition also has costs. Which include wars with well armed gangsters involved in black market supply and injuries caused by people using contaminated drugs.
In the case of the American experiment in alcohol prohibition it was found that the price of prohibition was the greater one.
Coax is ok, TP is a nice hack, both do... what they were designed to do. Fiber is better,
How is fibre better? It's more expensive and complex to install. Especially if the idea is to replace existing cable...
You know something funny? One of the longer running programs on the bbc and copied to dutch tv is "Have I got news for you" a program that has 1 host (now rotating on the bbc with celebs after the original hosts had a scandal) and two two man teams with a regular on each time and a celeb as guest.
Actually "Have I Got News for You" is a TV version of an even longer running programme on BBC Radio 4 called "The News Quiz". Since BBC radio and televison is available in the Netherlands the Dutch TV version could be taken from either.
The room's teacher hated it, because he only knew one system and this wasn't it.
:)
Though he's have probably been just as upset changing from one version of Windows to another version of Windows. If he's the most extreme of this type then simply changing the colour scheme, screen resolution and shuffling icons around would throw him
So, exactly WHICH applications that run exclusively on WINDOWS are of such importance that the high schools cannot fulfill their mission statement without them?
The most common reasons are political rather than technical. Even fashion statements of the form "we must have this cos everyone else has it". Regardless of if a) every other school actually is using it, b) said application is actually a good educational tool and c) something else might well be a better educational tool.
Don't get me wrong, Windows absolutely should be in the school. But, in the name of diversity and fairness (and the fact that the graduates never know which type of box they may end up sitting at) the schools should also have *nix boxen as well.
But what version of Windows? Indeed it's only for older students that the argument "they should use windows because that is what they will be using when they leave school" even starts to make sense. Even then the work environment is far more diverse than many Windows advocates claim.
also add the cost reductions in only having to support one platform. runing 2 sets of file servers, managment stations etc is an unessasary expense.
Something like Linux will support just about any networking protocol ever invented. So you only need one set of file servers that way.
Also windows techs are a dime a dozen. mac or linux techs cost more. a tech who does both well is rare and expensive (i know, i am one).
There are a lot of "Windows monkeys" who know a little bit about Windows. But when it comes to people who actually know the sustem then you are probably into the "rare and expensive".
Bear in mind the school are buying the box, not the monitor, they don't want/need something portable (in fact, nailing it to the desk may be necessary)
RotFL...
and the desktop PC running Windows will run all their educational software easily.
It may run them, but the easily bit is debatable. Especially when you need 20 different packages on the same machine or serious hacking is required because all the development was done on a standalone machine with the result that the idiot program insists on saving all its data on the local HDD.
No, if Sveasoft (or whomever) gives you a copy of the binary without the source, then they must make the source available to anyone who asks, as per section 3b of the GPL.
No they are only obliged to distribute the source to any party they have distributed the binary to.
It should be noted that this restriction is only on the pre-release code. I can see your reasoning, but I don't agree with it.
The GPL (and coyright law) are only concerned with third party copying and distribution. Terms such as "pre-release", "beta", etc are irrelevent.
You know what? If they put a clause in their ToS that said "Violation of this ToS results in a $$$$$$ fine." and one of those terms was not redistributing the code I think that's probably still allowed.
If this was their own code they could put such conditions on distribution. As they are distrubuting other people's code then they need explicit permission from all the relevent copyright holders to redistribute under any other terms than the GPL.
Seriously, if SCO were a person acting this way towards other people in public, by now it'd be better than even money they'd have been put in hospital.
Actually the vast majority of corporations would be joining SCO were the idea of "legal person" applied in such matters as mental health.
this is a common thing. it's called value-based pricing. IMO, it's crap. personally I think the right way to go about this type of thing is to sell different versions of your product. you can limit the cheaper version however you want to create an incentive for the more expensive version.
Or more likely they create one version, deliberatly cripple it in order to make it look as though they have different versions. Then get upset when knowlage of how to undo their crippling hacks leaks...
Why not have your software measure how much real work it's doing. If over time it exceeds the amount of processing that the user paid for, then it starts to throttle itself back.
No doubt then they'd have to work out a way to charge you for using that additional functionality...
Under Bill C-12, it will soon be illegal in Canada to possess words describing teenage or child sexual activity that "would be" illegal - even if it's completely imaginary.
isn't this a replacement for a previous law which got struck down?
Wouldn't this also be a backdoor way of raising the effective age of consent too. (In a very "Newspeak" way...)
I'm very interested to see what happens to fantasy/SF authors who write about long-lived or short-lived species...
Will that be before "Romeo and Juliet" is banned?
what happens with an elf child who is 100 years old, but looks like a 12-year-old human? What about Kes from Star Trek: Voyager? She's damn well under 18, even if she looks like an adult - there's no exception for non-humans.
Possibly a double standard where big corporate media will get away with things (e.g. it isn't "child porn" since the actor is over the age of whatever.)
What about time travel and relativity and suspended animation?
As well as regular historical fiction...
The law requires us to be able to apply current Canadian law to all conceivable imaginary worlds.
Including to fictional worlds which may well have consitutions and legal codes which are mutually exclusive with current Canadian law in all sorts of ways.
These worlds need not even be fictional they could just as easily be taken Earth's history.
Websites assessed by the IWF as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act were targeted by BT.
The IWF is not a court, nor is it comprised mostly of expert lawyers. AFAIK it isn't given specfic statutory authority to interpret any law. Effectivly they are offering an opinion no more valid than that of any random member of the public.
So, you're probably going to prison (as a "nonce"), when you get out you're on the sex offenders list, and if the moral majority get their way, that list will be public.
Odds on that list will contain errors.
Anyone can go to the library, find out where you live, then come round and set fire to your house while you're asleep. (Look what happened when The Sun printed some names and addresses from said list.)
Just hope you don't have a name the same as (or similar to) someone on the list. It also wouldn't be exactly PC for anyone to complain that rampaging lynch mobs bothered them more than people who liked to look at questionable photos.
I see the benefits of blocking in a school environment - it helps stop kids accidentally stumbling upon porn.
Depends on the age of the kids. If they are teenagers it's unlikely to be accidental. With younger kids it's the teachers who are more likely to be upset when this happens.
What to block in a school environment is not always obvious. The commercial products might well block information relevent to education, e.g. as "hate speach", yet allow students to waste time and bandwith playing games.
The Sony Bono copyright extension act does nothing to reward or encourage the author...it removed many works from the public domain and established criminal sanctions for any fool who might use those works newly re-copywritten.
Which appears to be something the US Consitution does not allow in the first place...
Who pushed this law in the US? Disney. THE MOUSE almost went into the public domain and a company contemplated the demise of their core IP rights and promptly made certain THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.
The irony being that "THE MOUSE" may actually be in the public domain anyway.
Shouldn't copyright be used to *encourage new music*?? This is just sick. I wish they would just STOP extending copyright. I wish the governments around the world would just say, OKAY YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH.
Even better would be if when governments were next asked for another retrospective extension they would turn around and set a flat 20 year term on everything. Though no doubt that would have the middle men and those who produced a "one hit wonder" in the early 80's crying in their beer.
I don't think that that invalidates the concept of copyright, however; I can't see how else the creators of such works could be compensated if not for copyright. Musicians can tour, but authors, etc? Patronage would work for a small number of creators, but then only the truly exceptional and truly lucky would be able to create full-time.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that "unsucessful" authors are in the majority and even sucessful authors need not be motivated by the idea of making money from their work. e.g. JK Rowling did not create Harry Potter because she hoped to become the best selling author in history.
Even if you can demonstrate that copyright provides a prositive incentive for creation there is the issue of how much (and what form of) copyright is optimal.
The practical reality (if you look at software) is that there is a definite shelf life for works ... I suspect that fewer that 0.1% of stuff created has any economic value past a generation
For many works the "self life" could probably be meaningfully measured in single digit years (even months).
so there are arguments that government policy should be against rent-seeking behaviour on those accumulating back-catalogs.
Such behaviour also tends to be destructive to the vast majority of works, those which have short shelf lives, since these works may cease to exist before they ever become public domain. Copyrights of the form "life plus X" mean that Copyright Libraries simply cannot function in their intended way.