Well, yes and no. The vast majority of the states have single-party consent laws when it comes to wire-tapping. The courts have expanded the wire-tapping laws to include you standing there with a tape recorder recording someone speaking that's not even on the telephone. If you live in one of these such states you can lawfully record the conversation and it will be allowed as evidence. I was actually going to suggest this earlier but fell asleep before I could type it out. Get a digital recorder that interfaces with your computer and store the file on your hard drive. That'd be a lot easier than storing hundreds of mini-casettes (assuming you'll eventually have hundreds of such events you wish to record over time.
I bought a radar detector from a Best Buy in '97. It lasted a whole week and a half before it shot craps on me. It wouldn't pick up any radar guns. The marshall in the town where my former HS was left his gun on all the time. We knew it when we were in HS and the kids in school at the time confirmed that. I drove by home a dozen times. Hell I even parked in front of his car. Nothing. Nadda. The thing used to go off all the time in the week and a half leading up to when it stopped working. I took it back the next time I was near the store which was a few days later. It was actually day 15 from the date of purchase. I found out that this was significant because apparently they only give you 14 days to return merchandise without a restocking fee (they restock bad hardware? hmm....). I actually got to speak with the guy in charge of returns at the time (some mid-level manager). He was a real grouch. He treated me like an absolute idiot. "Are you sure you had it turned on? Was it facing forard? [It had a 360 degree sight] Did you place it in your window or did you put it in your glovebox, kid? [I about took a swing at him after that one]" He plugged it into a 12v AC/DC adapter and pointed it at his computer monitor. He claimed his computer was running software to test radar detectors. (I shit you not) He then handed it back to me and said it was working fine. I told him he "hadn't even bothered to turn it on when he faked the test". Oh man, did he get pissed. He started spouting crap about how he was an electronics genius and knew everything there was to know about computers and radar detectors. [I'm para-phrasing but it's pretty close to exactly what he said] He told me he'd take it back for a 15% restocking fee and walked off. It was comical. I would have laughed but I was too stunned by his outburst. He was rude before. He was beligerent this time. I just stood there not knowing where I should go for a manager, go home and call Best Buy customer service and vent, or say fuck it and eat my lost money. It was like something out of a movie where you're yelling at the character to run down the jackass and whip his ass bloody. Only I was the one standing there with my jaw on the counter. As my wits started to come back to me I started to get real pissed. I wanted this guy's head on a spiked platter. I wanted my $$ back more though. That's when genius struck me. On the wall next to the counter and the computer this jerk "tested" my radar detector on was the work schedule for the folks at the return counter. Low and behold this guy (Jeff seems right) was going on vacation the next day for a 4-day weekend. I was coming back to town the next day for a class in a Comp course I was taking (the drive was the reason I bought the radar detector to begin with). Hmmm... The gears ground slowing but grind they did. I noted the guy's name and headed for the door. On the way out I asked a salesdroid on the floor what the head manager's name was. I don't have a clue what that one was now. The next day after my class I stopped by the store. I hung around the software section until the lunch crowd showed up. I slipped into line and waited my turn. When I got there I made sure to speak loud enough for all to hear that I'd spoke with the manager the day before about a defective Uniden radar they'd sold me a few weeks earlier (and I name dropped his name I'd learned the day before). I told the returns person (dumb looking guy come to think of it) that the manager was all to willing to help remedy the problem and that he'd had Jeff something, the jackass returns guys, call me about the defective unit. I then let it slip that the Jeff guy was a bit of a grouch (to which the returns guy snickered) but that he said he was told to take care of the situation and take the defective unit back. I then told the new returns guy that I'd brought all of the packaging I still had back with me and that I'd take my $$ back. I made sure to speak loudly and to emphasize "defective" in my speech. It worked like
Does anyone else see the obvious use for their patent (besides killing a tree and fleecing the patent lawyers' pockets)? I think the answers is really quite simple. Microsoft has no legal recourse against those that write viruses and worms. Most (if not all) of these viruses and worms have to elevate their privileges to do something as Administrator in order to spread. With this patent Microsoft would be able to sue the virus/worm creator with patent infringement. Doesn't that seem like an obvious use of this patent to anyone else? Of course those that they sue would have a pretty easy (but costly) time of proving prior art to invalidate MS's patent and dismiss their claims. Or can they? Does the owner of the prior art have to introduce the claim themselves or can someone else do it for them? Hmmm...
This sounds almost exactly like what I encountered when I bought my AppleVision 1710 in '97 off the Apple Dev Purchase Plan. It cost me $660 (even) for the 17" monitor. A month after I got it I notice odd pink and green casts in the white backgrounds (easiest to see there). Then it started shuddering. I called tech support. They had me take it to a local shop. It was verfied to be borked and they replaced it with a refurb (I was pissed). Still the refurb didn't look too bad. It lasted about a week before it did the same thing. They replaced it with another refurb. This one did it right out of the box. It also has dozens of signs of physical abuse. Big scratches, deep grooves and gouges, etc. Someone tried to pry off the piece in top the middle of the monitor that housed some part, I forget what, with a screwdriver. I called back this time and pitched a holy shit fit. When they tried to replace it with another refurb I completely came unfucked. I quoted direct from my state's statutes on our lemon law. I went on and on and on. They passed me from person to person to person. Eventually I got a nice guy named Ron who asked me what I'd like them to do to remedy the situation. I said the monitor was a month old when it first started acting up. Hell the damned thing was new. I told them they should replace my monitor that was damn near new when it broke with another new monitor that worked. By this time they had discontinued that AppleVision 1710 and came out with the AppleVision 750 and ColorSync 17. The first didn't have the same specs. It offered a lower max res with a lower max refresh. It was also had something like.1" smaller viewable. That was of course the monitor Ron offered. I started winding up my unfucking speech about our lemon law and he backed down. He then asked me which monitor would be acceptable. I told him flat out that the ColorSync 17 was the exact replacement for the 1710; it had the same specs, used almost exactly the same parts (with only a couple exceptions), and looked almost identical to the 1710 (literally, the body panels would have been identical except for the molded model name and a plastic screw bracket on the back). He said that would be fine and that he'd have one sent out to me right away. He said I could keep the existing screwed up monitor until the other was installed and working (even offered to have someone install it for me, LOL) and then I could ship it back at their expense. The experience with him was quite pleasant. That monitor worked for almost exactly a year and a day. Then it died a horrible smokey death. Too bad too. It had a nice picture.
Moral of the story: If tech support/customer service is jacking you around, do a little research about your state's lemon laws (or applicable laws in your area), call back, and come unfucked on whoever answers the phone. If you don't get results you'll at least feel better.:-)
Computer security is another one of those fields that requires its own study time to be competent in, and most people aren't interested or don't want to spend the time.
I can think of more than a few so-called sys and net admins that this very remark describes to a tee. In fact the same could be said about their very area of expertise.
California. What can I say about California that no one else has? Let me see. One town in California tried this past year (might have succeded by now) to outlaw.50 caliber rifles. They were all up in arms about how they could be used to shot the large refinery fuel tanks near their community. For starters rounds much smaller than a.50 caliber round will puncture a steel storage tank. Hell a 30-06 loaded heavy will puncture the tank at 200 yards easy. Their logic was that no one had any legitimate reason to own a.50 caliber firearm. I've only ever seen.50cal blackpowder rifles. That's a popular sport and has entire hunting seasons dedicated to it. 50AE J+P rounds also make an excellent personal defense round. Basically that city council fell prey to the typical sensationalism pumped out by anti-gun groups which is commonly amplified by the media. Fun stuff. There's no logical reason to ban.50cal weapons. Much smaller rounds can cause just as much damage. It was probably just some campaign rhetoric to get some councilmeber re-elected.
I also happen to know a little bit about how California created its banned weapon list. IIRC the list was compiled for California's AG and possibly California's Lt. Governor from a few years back. I recall reading about correspondence between the two that talked about the creation of the list. They basically said they didn't want to involve the state's bureau of investigation to have them look at their statistics and give their professional assesment. The reason being was that it would take longer than they wanted to wait and the recommendations by the CBI wouldn't support the position these two individuals wanted to take. So basically lets ignore the pros and make our own uneducated decision. Genius in action. So how did this dynamic duo create the banned weapon list? Well it was really quite simple. Too simple. They took a book of firearms (blue book for guns?), flipped through it, and picked out the guns that looked (LOOKED) dangerous. In case you didn't get that the first time let me repeat myself. They picked out the guns that *****LOOKED***** dangerous regardless of whether or not they really are. They banned weapons that looked like assault [sic] weapons (I'm intentionally using the phrase "assault weapons" incorrectly but in the same way commonly misused for political reasons). If they happened across a picture of a deer rifle in an ominous-looking synthetic stock they banned the gun outright (after all we all know it's the mean looking stock that makes the big bad piece of pipe more deadly, right?). They didn't however ban the same weapon, a common deer rifle, in a wood grain stock. Identical actions. Different stocks. I guess the gun isn't lethal when it has a dark walnut stock. Go figure. My personal favorite was a shotgun they banned. I can't for the life of my remember what model it was but it looked a lot like the grease gun (M3A1). It looked like four pieces of pipe, 2 for the stubby handles and 2 screwed together for the barrel and chamber. A gun like that can only be described as fugly. The gun wasn't the heavy duty 10-gauge or the quite common 12-gauge badass. It wasn't the not so common 16-gauge (I have a 16ga Savage) or the ubber common 20ga. Forget about the small 24ga or the tiny 28ga. The banned shotgun wasn't even a 32ga or the teeny freaking tiny 36ga (actual, not relic). The banned shotgun was a.410. A .410!!! That is damned tiny. Think pencil. It gets even better. This oh so lethal.410 shotgun is somewhat unique. It doesn't use a tube magazine like most shotguns. It can't use a drum magazine like you see in the gangster movies. This ubber dangerous shotgun in a single-shot breech-loading bolt-action shotgun. One shot. That's all you get. Then you have to eject the spent cartridge, pop in a new one, an
I haven't submitted any patches to Linus but I have to other projects. I was thinking though that by submitting a patch to Linus that they required you to transfer your copyright with it. I guess I've seen non-Linus copyright statements in the kernel source though so I guess that wouldn't be right either. It just seems like I saw that once on kernel.org. Still I think Darl and clan are screwed.
I think your last bit is on the mark. Licensing something under the GPL does not assign copyrights. You retain the copyrights to your code, even though it is GPL licensed.
That makes more sense. I was confusing the two I think. So still if the licensing scheme is found to be invalid the works are still covered under my own (or Linus's) copyright and do not fall into the public domain. Right? That makes the most sense overall I think.
Both rovers have been exploring more than twice as long as they were designed to last. And even though the Martian winter is at its coldest, engineers are confident that the rovers will continue, despite showing signs of mortality."
I'd definitely say the rovers have been money well spent. I'm impressed by how long they've lived past their estimated KIA date. Most impressive. If only more NASA projects could be as successful.
If the GPL is found to be invalid would SCO still be allowed to distribute someone else's copyrighted works? See here's what I'm wondering. I add a few features to the Linux kernel and assign ownership of that code to Linus under the provisions in the GPL (I think I'm thinking about this correctly). Later the GPL is found to be invalid (which I don't think it is nor do I ever think it will be found that way by another other than money-grubbing closed sources whores like MS). Wouldn't the copyrights revert back to me the original owner? Or would the revert to Linus? Either way I do not believe they would revert to the public domain, or would they? If they didn't revert to the public domain no matter if the GPL was found to be invalid or not, the code is still copyrighted even if it is unlicensed. SCO would still be infringing on my copyrighted works regardless of whether or not the scheme I chose for licensing is valid or not. Just because something isn't licensable doesn't mean that SCO has use it willy nilly. It's still copyrighted regardless.
Am I thinking about that correctly? I don't know who the copyright would revert to if the GPL was found to be invalid but I'm fairly confident about the rest. Then again does the GPL deal in copyright at all? Maybe I'm just giving Linus the copyrights to my code and Linus is using the GPL to license access to all the code. Hmmm... I need a flowchart.
The problem with showing only events where The Glorious US wins is that it panders to a rather degoutant idea: that America Rules All.
I have a response to this that should lay the matter to rest. NBC (an American broadcasting station) showed the basketball game between Puerto Rico and the US. Need I say anything more? In case you didn't happen to catch the game, the highlights, or the commentary from late-night talk shows we (the US) seriously got our asses handed to us in a 19 point ass-whoopin'. Puerto Rico kicked our asses up and down the court. That alone should lay to rest the notion that US broadcasting stations only show the events that portray the US team in a good light.
Frankly I'd rather have one universal broadcast of all events from the IOC. No favortism. Just the athletes doing what they do best.
Civil Action. The previews showed a bigass explosion (ok, their editing made it look real big). The movie, however, was like a made for TV (Hallmark Channel) melodrama. It was nothing like the previews. It also sucked. I can handle a crappy scifi or even a crappy chick flick. This movie was so bad I couldn't even sleep through it. Argh.
I've often wondered why this very business method wouldn't work in the music business. Part of the problem, I think, is that music success nowadays is too dependant on radio. The whole indy process keeps those that can't afford to push bribe their way into radio stations from being heard. I think this is a business method that Apple should embrace with iTunes. The artist could pay $X dollars to sell their music on iTunes. The artist could then make 50% of the procedes. Apple could even charge to burn the music to CDs and mail it out. I think this would work very well.
I sent my reply to soon. I forgot to say that I recall a ruling in a state spam case where the recipient tried to sue under one state's spam law because they automatically forwarded their mail from another provider in another state without spam laws to the state with the spam law. The judge through it out.
If my email inbox is forwarded to my phone via SMS, does that mean I can sue for normal spam?
Nice idea but I'm afraid not. The intended recipient is your email address, which is where delivery takes place. Forwarding mail to your cell phone is one of your own actions. It's like forwarding your home phone to your cell. Telemarketers can't call your cell but they can call your home (unless you tell them not to or sign up for the DNCL). It's not possible for the telemarketer to know that his call to your home ends up getting forwarded to a restricted number, your cell. Just like it's not possible for a telemarketer to know that a number they dial that's not on the DNCL will be forwarded to one that is. The forwarding is your own action and not the fault of the sender.
I doubt it. You have a prior commercial relationship with the sender and unless you explicitly tell them to stop the transmissions you would have no basis for a complaint. Tell them to stop and they don't and you'll have something to complain about. It's really quite simple. The same applies to spam. Establish a commercial relationship with Company X and they can start sending you commercial messages. Tell them to stop and they must. If they don't then you can complain.
IIRC (and I know I am) a US Federal court has held that port scanning was perfectly legal. If I had the time I'd find the docket number and link for ya'll. I thought I'd throw that into the discussion.
I've been running PortSentry since it first came out. What's the been, 5 years now? I've never had any problems. Any compotent sysadm shouldn't. I could see how our's would have problems if they didn't know what to whitelist.
Sentry Tools is what you need, specifically PortSentry.
Craig Rowland wrote these tools before Cisco bought him out. He still makes 2 of the 3 available on Sourceforge. PortSentry is pretty damned slick. I only had one unfulfilled feature request.
Not to mention that a while back it was shown that you could defeat many biometric fingerprint scanners like this with silly putty, has that been fixed?
MacGyver did it with sheetrock dust and his jacket.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yes and no. The vast majority of the states have single-party consent laws when it comes to wire-tapping. The courts have expanded the wire-tapping laws to include you standing there with a tape recorder recording someone speaking that's not even on the telephone. If you live in one of these such states you can lawfully record the conversation and it will be allowed as evidence. I was actually going to suggest this earlier but fell asleep before I could type it out. Get a digital recorder that interfaces with your computer and store the file on your hard drive. That'd be a lot easier than storing hundreds of mini-casettes (assuming you'll eventually have hundreds of such events you wish to record over time.
I bought a radar detector from a Best Buy in '97. It lasted a whole week and a half before it shot craps on me. It wouldn't pick up any radar guns. The marshall in the town where my former HS was left his gun on all the time. We knew it when we were in HS and the kids in school at the time confirmed that. I drove by home a dozen times. Hell I even parked in front of his car. Nothing. Nadda. The thing used to go off all the time in the week and a half leading up to when it stopped working. I took it back the next time I was near the store which was a few days later. It was actually day 15 from the date of purchase. I found out that this was significant because apparently they only give you 14 days to return merchandise without a restocking fee (they restock bad hardware? hmm....). I actually got to speak with the guy in charge of returns at the time (some mid-level manager). He was a real grouch. He treated me like an absolute idiot. "Are you sure you had it turned on? Was it facing forard? [It had a 360 degree sight] Did you place it in your window or did you put it in your glovebox, kid? [I about took a swing at him after that one]" He plugged it into a 12v AC/DC adapter and pointed it at his computer monitor. He claimed his computer was running software to test radar detectors. (I shit you not) He then handed it back to me and said it was working fine. I told him he "hadn't even bothered to turn it on when he faked the test". Oh man, did he get pissed. He started spouting crap about how he was an electronics genius and knew everything there was to know about computers and radar detectors. [I'm para-phrasing but it's pretty close to exactly what he said] He told me he'd take it back for a 15% restocking fee and walked off. It was comical. I would have laughed but I was too stunned by his outburst. He was rude before. He was beligerent this time. I just stood there not knowing where I should go for a manager, go home and call Best Buy customer service and vent, or say fuck it and eat my lost money. It was like something out of a movie where you're yelling at the character to run down the jackass and whip his ass bloody. Only I was the one standing there with my jaw on the counter. As my wits started to come back to me I started to get real pissed. I wanted this guy's head on a spiked platter. I wanted my $$ back more though. That's when genius struck me. On the wall next to the counter and the computer this jerk "tested" my radar detector on was the work schedule for the folks at the return counter. Low and behold this guy (Jeff seems right) was going on vacation the next day for a 4-day weekend. I was coming back to town the next day for a class in a Comp course I was taking (the drive was the reason I bought the radar detector to begin with). Hmmm... The gears ground slowing but grind they did. I noted the guy's name and headed for the door. On the way out I asked a salesdroid on the floor what the head manager's name was. I don't have a clue what that one was now. The next day after my class I stopped by the store. I hung around the software section until the lunch crowd showed up. I slipped into line and waited my turn. When I got there I made sure to speak loud enough for all to hear that I'd spoke with the manager the day before about a defective Uniden radar they'd sold me a few weeks earlier (and I name dropped his name I'd learned the day before). I told the returns person (dumb looking guy come to think of it) that the manager was all to willing to help remedy the problem and that he'd had Jeff something, the jackass returns guys, call me about the defective unit. I then let it slip that the Jeff guy was a bit of a grouch (to which the returns guy snickered) but that he said he was told to take care of the situation and take the defective unit back. I then told the new returns guy that I'd brought all of the packaging I still had back with me and that I'd take my $$ back. I made sure to speak loudly and to emphasize "defective" in my speech. It worked like
Does anyone else see the obvious use for their patent (besides killing a tree and fleecing the patent lawyers' pockets)? I think the answers is really quite simple. Microsoft has no legal recourse against those that write viruses and worms. Most (if not all) of these viruses and worms have to elevate their privileges to do something as Administrator in order to spread. With this patent Microsoft would be able to sue the virus/worm creator with patent infringement. Doesn't that seem like an obvious use of this patent to anyone else? Of course those that they sue would have a pretty easy (but costly) time of proving prior art to invalidate MS's patent and dismiss their claims. Or can they? Does the owner of the prior art have to introduce the claim themselves or can someone else do it for them? Hmmm...
Moral of the story: If tech support/customer service is jacking you around, do a little research about your state's lemon laws (or applicable laws in your area), call back, and come unfucked on whoever answers the phone. If you don't get results you'll at least feel better. :-)
I can think of more than a few so-called sys and net admins that this very remark describes to a tee. In fact the same could be said about their very area of expertise.
I also happen to know a little bit about how California created its banned weapon list. IIRC the list was compiled for California's AG and possibly California's Lt. Governor from a few years back. I recall reading about correspondence between the two that talked about the creation of the list. They basically said they didn't want to involve the state's bureau of investigation to have them look at their statistics and give their professional assesment. The reason being was that it would take longer than they wanted to wait and the recommendations by the CBI wouldn't support the position these two individuals wanted to take. So basically lets ignore the pros and make our own uneducated decision. Genius in action. So how did this dynamic duo create the banned weapon list? Well it was really quite simple. Too simple. They took a book of firearms (blue book for guns?), flipped through it, and picked out the guns that looked (LOOKED) dangerous. In case you didn't get that the first time let me repeat myself. They picked out the guns that *****LOOKED***** dangerous regardless of whether or not they really are. They banned weapons that looked like assault [sic] weapons (I'm intentionally using the phrase "assault weapons" incorrectly but in the same way commonly misused for political reasons). If they happened across a picture of a deer rifle in an ominous-looking synthetic stock they banned the gun outright (after all we all know it's the mean looking stock that makes the big bad piece of pipe more deadly, right?). They didn't however ban the same weapon, a common deer rifle, in a wood grain stock. Identical actions. Different stocks. I guess the gun isn't lethal when it has a dark walnut stock. Go figure. My personal favorite was a shotgun they banned. I can't for the life of my remember what model it was but it looked a lot like the grease gun (M3A1). It looked like four pieces of pipe, 2 for the stubby handles and 2 screwed together for the barrel and chamber. A gun like that can only be described as fugly. The gun wasn't the heavy duty 10-gauge or the quite common 12-gauge badass. It wasn't the not so common 16-gauge (I have a 16ga Savage) or the ubber common 20ga. Forget about the small 24ga or the tiny 28ga. The banned shotgun wasn't even a 32ga or the teeny freaking tiny 36ga (actual, not relic). The banned shotgun was a .410. A .410 !!! That is damned tiny. Think pencil. It gets even better. This oh so lethal .410 shotgun is somewhat unique. It doesn't use a tube magazine like most shotguns. It can't use a drum magazine like you see in the gangster movies. This ubber dangerous shotgun in a single-shot breech-loading bolt-action shotgun. One shot. That's all you get. Then you have to eject the spent cartridge, pop in a new one, an
I haven't submitted any patches to Linus but I have to other projects. I was thinking though that by submitting a patch to Linus that they required you to transfer your copyright with it. I guess I've seen non-Linus copyright statements in the kernel source though so I guess that wouldn't be right either. It just seems like I saw that once on kernel.org. Still I think Darl and clan are screwed.
That makes more sense. I was confusing the two I think. So still if the licensing scheme is found to be invalid the works are still covered under my own (or Linus's) copyright and do not fall into the public domain. Right? That makes the most sense overall I think.
I'd definitely say the rovers have been money well spent. I'm impressed by how long they've lived past their estimated KIA date. Most impressive. If only more NASA projects could be as successful.
Advertising to the Lowest Common Denominator(tm)?
Am I thinking about that correctly? I don't know who the copyright would revert to if the GPL was found to be invalid but I'm fairly confident about the rest. Then again does the GPL deal in copyright at all? Maybe I'm just giving Linus the copyrights to my code and Linus is using the GPL to license access to all the code. Hmmm... I need a flowchart.
Quite nicely I think.
I have a response to this that should lay the matter to rest. NBC (an American broadcasting station) showed the basketball game between Puerto Rico and the US. Need I say anything more? In case you didn't happen to catch the game, the highlights, or the commentary from late-night talk shows we (the US) seriously got our asses handed to us in a 19 point ass-whoopin'. Puerto Rico kicked our asses up and down the court. That alone should lay to rest the notion that US broadcasting stations only show the events that portray the US team in a good light.
Frankly I'd rather have one universal broadcast of all events from the IOC. No favortism. Just the athletes doing what they do best.
Thanks for the link. The only problem I see now is that they don't have any country artists onboard yet. :-)
Civil Action. The previews showed a bigass explosion (ok, their editing made it look real big). The movie, however, was like a made for TV (Hallmark Channel) melodrama. It was nothing like the previews. It also sucked. I can handle a crappy scifi or even a crappy chick flick. This movie was so bad I couldn't even sleep through it. Argh.
Is this an example of the astroturfing we were warned about?
I've often wondered why this very business method wouldn't work in the music business. Part of the problem, I think, is that music success nowadays is too dependant on radio. The whole indy process keeps those that can't afford to push bribe their way into radio stations from being heard. I think this is a business method that Apple should embrace with iTunes. The artist could pay $X dollars to sell their music on iTunes. The artist could then make 50% of the procedes. Apple could even charge to burn the music to CDs and mail it out. I think this would work very well.
I sent my reply to soon. I forgot to say that I recall a ruling in a state spam case where the recipient tried to sue under one state's spam law because they automatically forwarded their mail from another provider in another state without spam laws to the state with the spam law. The judge through it out.
Nice idea but I'm afraid not. The intended recipient is your email address, which is where delivery takes place. Forwarding mail to your cell phone is one of your own actions. It's like forwarding your home phone to your cell. Telemarketers can't call your cell but they can call your home (unless you tell them not to or sign up for the DNCL). It's not possible for the telemarketer to know that his call to your home ends up getting forwarded to a restricted number, your cell. Just like it's not possible for a telemarketer to know that a number they dial that's not on the DNCL will be forwarded to one that is. The forwarding is your own action and not the fault of the sender.
I doubt it. You have a prior commercial relationship with the sender and unless you explicitly tell them to stop the transmissions you would have no basis for a complaint. Tell them to stop and they don't and you'll have something to complain about. It's really quite simple. The same applies to spam. Establish a commercial relationship with Company X and they can start sending you commercial messages. Tell them to stop and they must. If they don't then you can complain.
IIRC (and I know I am) a US Federal court has held that port scanning was perfectly legal. If I had the time I'd find the docket number and link for ya'll. I thought I'd throw that into the discussion.
I've been running PortSentry since it first came out. What's the been, 5 years now? I've never had any problems. Any compotent sysadm shouldn't. I could see how our's would have problems if they didn't know what to whitelist.
Sentry Tools is what you need, specifically PortSentry.
Craig Rowland wrote these tools before Cisco bought him out. He still makes 2 of the 3 available on Sourceforge. PortSentry is pretty damned slick. I only had one unfulfilled feature request.
Thanks for a great tool.
MacGyver did it with sheetrock dust and his jacket.