I would, though, be fascinated to see if anybody ends up trying to shoot systems like this down, as delicately as possible of course. The overwhelming majority of toxins in the water supply are there as a product of industrial, agricultural, or "non-point" pollution, not any sort of terrorist activity(I can't actually think of any instances of such, beyond poison targeted at a few people, in prepared food or beverages).
In the case of drinking water contamination, such as at Camelford, human error is a far greater risk.
Every time I have to visit half a dozen websites to find out if there's a new version of the windows software I recommend for my students, I remember how this is not required on Linux. Even for apps that check for updates themselves, this usually requires running them or some background process to make it work.
There are (now) the likes of filehippo.com. However these may not cover all the apps you have installed and may not "play nice" with Vista/Windows 7. There are also Windows apps which have no upgrade path, you must first un-install the older version (and remember any custom configurations).
I don't have any problem with the idea of a central secure database where different agencies can access the parts of it they need to know to carry out their jobs. I think this is a great idea for efficiency.
One big database is inherently less secure than having several which only hold the specific information required.
Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken? Is a surprise that people pirate in such conditions? Shouldn't there be some acceptance that in a country where physical property is hard to come by/keep that people ignore intangible property?
That "physical property" including computers to run any software on as well as the electricity necessary to operate them. Maybe the BSA dosn't survey these countries at all they just make up some numbers...
i was under the impression in most countries with sane leadership and laws, government work was owned by the people.That may be true, but such countries appear rather uncommon now. Copyright being an area of law where sanity is in very short supply.
In truth, though, they are all just words on paper. Keep in mind that North Korea is also styled "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" in its Constitution.
Typically any country calling itself a "Democratic Republic" actually a dictatorship or oligarchy. I'm not aware of any examples of a country with such a name (or the equivalent in local language) which would be remotely democratic.
The problem I have is that I don't think a person that's supposed to be working on the behalf of their constituents should be able to claim copyrights on what they did while working in that capacity.
Possibly the real reason they don't like these videos is that they might show who is actually doing their job and who isn't. It probably isn't a bad idea to check over their "expenses" too...
Yes, I perceive this to be a problem too - if you're continuing to bring in millions of dollars per year in royalties and you (and your children) are guaranteed that gravy train for the rest of your life, it takes away a lot of the incentive to get off your butt and do more.
This situation being the exception rather than the rule. With long term copyright it's possible that someone may "flog a dead horse" believing that something will suddenly become popular after decades of obscurity. Something which AFAIK only ever tends to happen with something which was popular originally.
Copyright is a reasonable idea, but the implementation is horribly, horribly broken.
It's very much a case of "too much of a good thing is bad". Quite possibly also "too much" can be a worst situation than "too little/none at all". e.g. the only difference between a "medical drug" and a "poison" can be the dosage.
Here's an alternate idea: let people dial something like #11 during a call which records the connection as an annoyance in a database. If a pattern of annoyance develops from a particular source, a red light lights on the FTC directors desk and he calls out the black helicopters.
It might be more fun if the next time they they attempt to make a call no matter what they have dialled the call is connected to a terrorist reporting "hotline" and a random recorded terrorist threat played.
Nah... I'd rather have the $5.00.
You don't get it, the phone company does. More likely it's divided up between several phone companies...
Anything which makes unwanted bells go off in my house by remote control is an invasion of my peace and quiet. Get some laws passed that allow the victim to hit #5 on their phone to charge the caller $5.00, then I'll be happy.
Hopefully allowing it to be used several times in the call. Maybe also another option which will connect you to the phone of whoever is in charge of the company.
Even better idea that would add no new stuff - just make it illegal to call people on the do not call list. And allow people the sue if they are called even once.
How about having a key combination which when dialled by the recipient will generate a report to law enforcement.
I was never given a ticket because I wasn't doing anything wrong when I was pulled over. I was just followed and pulled over time, after time, after time. This isn't current history either. This happened in the mid 70's. This type of behavior by police officers has been going on for decades, although I would say that it's much worse now than it used to be as police officers now have an attitude that is much more "us against them" they did 30-35 years ago.
What's different now is that it is easier for people affected in such ways to publish what happened. Even "compare notes" in ways which can identify specific "trouble spots". Since the police hate such websites/blogs/etc that may fuel their attitude of "us against them".
You are phenomenally naive. Police harass people all of the time, and they get away with it all of the time, mostly because so many think that "Police can't just randomly detain citizens, and if they did there's recourse like suing the department for violating Supreme Court rulings."
Or "they must have done something to make the police officer react that way", "cops have a difficult job", etc, etc. There is just about always someone saying such things when a police officer seriously assaults (even kills) a member of the public. Even where there is plenty of photographic/video evidence to show otherwise.
A lot of people say it's only a small minority of cops who make the rest look bad. I disagree - for every one nice cop I meet, I run into five times as many bullying assholes.
Without proper research it's hard to know if this is the actual proportion or if there are a lot of good cops who are invisible to the law abiding public because they too busy doing a decent job... Of course it would be difficult to do any such research in a meaningful way.
An unintended consequence of camera-phones is nicer cops and less crime. It takes only seconds to upload a photo of a crime in action, whether a robbery or cops beating someone senseless.
The other consequence is the police attempting to find/lobby for laws which forbid members of the public photographing the police. Something the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" brigade is strangely quiet about.
I'm not saying that all cops are bad or are ignorant of the law - far from it.
You can probably add to that "incompetent when it comes catching actual criminals"..
But those who are seem to be popping up more often and getting away with more,
IMHO a major part of the problem is that whilst police officers should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than members of the public are all too often held to a much lower standard. Even to the point of cops quite literally "getting away with murder".
The way it's supposed to work (in the US, anyway) is that when someone creates a work, it's owned by society. However, understanding that people need to eat, they're given an exclusive right to distribute what they create for a *limited* time, the idea being that it will encourage them to keep creating new works, but that the work will revert back to society where it will enrich the cultural pool. Problem is, the whole concept of "limited time" is now one of a mere technicality, as copyright terms extend well beyond the length of the author's lifetime.
Which may well have the opposite effect. Whereas if the copyright term were for a moderate period of time (5-10 years) they would actually have a reason to continue to produce new works.
Daydreaming, and taking cat-naps at work are also helpful for productivity. Unfortunately Managers don't read science articles, and when they do they dismiss the results as a joke because they think they are smarter than scientists.
Even if this is the way said managers themselves work...
They government also broke the french DPA (no doubt, it is again similar to UK law) by forwarding on the email, which was by default considered private.
They would also, ironically, probably have broken copyright law too.
Slashdot Mirror
I would, though, be fascinated to see if anybody ends up trying to shoot systems like this down, as delicately as possible of course. The overwhelming majority of toxins in the water supply are there as a product of industrial, agricultural, or "non-point" pollution, not any sort of terrorist activity(I can't actually think of any instances of such, beyond poison targeted at a few people, in prepared food or beverages).
In the case of drinking water contamination, such as at Camelford, human error is a far greater risk.
Every time I have to visit half a dozen websites to find out if there's a new version of the windows software I recommend for my students, I remember how this is not required on Linux. Even for apps that check for updates themselves, this usually requires running them or some background process to make it work.
There are (now) the likes of filehippo.com. However these may not cover all the apps you have installed and may not "play nice" with Vista/Windows 7. There are also Windows apps which have no upgrade path, you must first un-install the older version (and remember any custom configurations).
Google Intern Views?
I can see "Google MPs expenses" being popular right now.
I don't have any problem with the idea of a central secure database where different agencies can access the parts of it they need to know to carry out their jobs. I think this is a great idea for efficiency.
One big database is inherently less secure than having several which only hold the specific information required.
Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken? Is a surprise that people pirate in such conditions? Shouldn't there be some acceptance that in a country where physical property is hard to come by/keep that people ignore intangible property?
That "physical property" including computers to run any software on as well as the electricity necessary to operate them. Maybe the BSA dosn't survey these countries at all they just make up some numbers...
i was under the impression in most countries with sane leadership and laws, government work was owned by the people.That may be true, but such countries appear rather uncommon now. Copyright being an area of law where sanity is in very short supply.
In truth, though, they are all just words on paper. Keep in mind that North Korea is also styled "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" in its Constitution.
Typically any country calling itself a "Democratic Republic" actually a dictatorship or oligarchy. I'm not aware of any examples of a country with such a name (or the equivalent in local language) which would be remotely democratic.
Actually, up here she's not the "British Queen" she's referred to as the "Queen of Canada."
She's queen of quite a lot of places...
The problem I have is that I don't think a person that's supposed to be working on the behalf of their constituents should be able to claim copyrights on what they did while working in that capacity.
Possibly the real reason they don't like these videos is that they might show who is actually doing their job and who isn't. It probably isn't a bad idea to check over their "expenses" too...
"... and lower than all but three Asian countries (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand)"
If their ability to understand geography is any guide then at best they might get things right a third of the time!
Corporations want to use older PCs, too. Getting an engineer out to replace 1 GB with 2 GB of DDR1 can be quite expensive.
The cost of the RAM probably isn't really a factor so much as the time involved...
Yes, I perceive this to be a problem too - if you're continuing to bring in millions of dollars per year in royalties and you (and your children) are guaranteed that gravy train for the rest of your life, it takes away a lot of the incentive to get off your butt and do more.
This situation being the exception rather than the rule. With long term copyright it's possible that someone may "flog a dead horse" believing that something will suddenly become popular after decades of obscurity. Something which AFAIK only ever tends to happen with something which was popular originally.
Copyright is a reasonable idea, but the implementation is horribly, horribly broken.
It's very much a case of "too much of a good thing is bad". Quite possibly also "too much" can be a worst situation than "too little/none at all". e.g. the only difference between a "medical drug" and a "poison" can be the dosage.
Here's an alternate idea: let people dial something like #11 during a call which records the connection as an annoyance in a database. If a pattern of annoyance develops from a particular source, a red light lights on the FTC directors desk and he calls out the black helicopters.
It might be more fun if the next time they they attempt to make a call no matter what they have dialled the call is connected to a terrorist reporting "hotline" and a random recorded terrorist threat played.
Nah... I'd rather have the $5.00.
You don't get it, the phone company does. More likely it's divided up between several phone companies...
Anything which makes unwanted bells go off in my house by remote control is an invasion of my peace and quiet. Get some laws passed that allow the victim to hit #5 on their phone to charge the caller $5.00, then I'll be happy.
Hopefully allowing it to be used several times in the call. Maybe also another option which will connect you to the phone of whoever is in charge of the company.
I was referring strictly to cold-target marketing (that is, contacting people who don't have a prior business relationship with the company).
Given that one of the people contacted didn't even have a car it sounds like what is going on is something akin to "phishing".
Even better idea that would add no new stuff - just make it illegal to call people on the do not call list. And allow people the sue if they are called even once.
How about having a key combination which when dialled by the recipient will generate a report to law enforcement.
I was never given a ticket because I wasn't doing anything wrong when I was pulled over. I was just followed and pulled over time, after time, after time. This isn't current history either. This happened in the mid 70's. This type of behavior by police officers has been going on for decades, although I would say that it's much worse now than it used to be as police officers now have an attitude that is much more "us against them" they did 30-35 years ago.
What's different now is that it is easier for people affected in such ways to publish what happened. Even "compare notes" in ways which can identify specific "trouble spots". Since the police hate such websites/blogs/etc that may fuel their attitude of "us against them".
You are phenomenally naive. Police harass people all of the time, and they get away with it all of the time, mostly because so many think that "Police can't just randomly detain citizens, and if they did there's recourse like suing the department for violating Supreme Court rulings."
Or "they must have done something to make the police officer react that way", "cops have a difficult job", etc, etc. There is just about always someone saying such things when a police officer seriously assaults (even kills) a member of the public. Even where there is plenty of photographic/video evidence to show otherwise.
A lot of people say it's only a small minority of cops who make the rest look bad. I disagree - for every one nice cop I meet, I run into five times as many bullying assholes.
Without proper research it's hard to know if this is the actual proportion or if there are a lot of good cops who are invisible to the law abiding public because they too busy doing a decent job... Of course it would be difficult to do any such research in a meaningful way.
I would guess you never tried "driving while Black" in L.A. Yes, police do randomly detain citizens.
As well as considerably worst. To the point where the LAPD could have reasonably had the motto "we treat you like a King".
It happens more in big cities here in America then in rural areas but it does happen, especially if they don't like your politics.
This is likely to be because cities tend to have a much higher population density than rural areas.
An unintended consequence of camera-phones is nicer cops and less crime. It takes only seconds to upload a photo of a crime in action, whether a robbery or cops beating someone senseless.
The other consequence is the police attempting to find/lobby for laws which forbid members of the public photographing the police. Something the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" brigade is strangely quiet about.
I'm not saying that all cops are bad or are ignorant of the law - far from it.
You can probably add to that "incompetent when it comes catching actual criminals"..
But those who are seem to be popping up more often and getting away with more,
IMHO a major part of the problem is that whilst police officers should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than members of the public are all too often held to a much lower standard. Even to the point of cops quite literally "getting away with murder".
The way it's supposed to work (in the US, anyway) is that when someone creates a work, it's owned by society. However, understanding that people need to eat, they're given an exclusive right to distribute what they create for a *limited* time, the idea being that it will encourage them to keep creating new works, but that the work will revert back to society where it will enrich the cultural pool. Problem is, the whole concept of "limited time" is now one of a mere technicality, as copyright terms extend well beyond the length of the author's lifetime.
Which may well have the opposite effect. Whereas if the copyright term were for a moderate period of time (5-10 years) they would actually have a reason to continue to produce new works.
Daydreaming, and taking cat-naps at work are also helpful for productivity. Unfortunately Managers don't read science articles, and when they do they dismiss the results as a joke because they think they are smarter than scientists.
Even if this is the way said managers themselves work...
They government also broke the french DPA (no doubt, it is again similar to UK law) by forwarding on the email, which was by default considered private.
They would also, ironically, probably have broken copyright law too.