Yay for people who *dont read the link in the article*. This is not reinventing the wheel. Its taking two of the wheels from an SUV, and using them on a bicycle.
Minotaur is Mozilla Mail, just without the rest of Mozilla. And as I curently use Mozilla Mail for its spam filters, but have to use IE for work reasons, this will be something I will use.
What if everyone in america reading this phones up/writes letters to the producer of their DVDs asking for them to provide or make available a system for making legal same quality backups of their DVDs. My reading of the DMCA implies that the producers of these DVDs must allow for or provide systems that allow continued fair use backups. As this medium turns out to *require* backups of the media, then it is upon the producers to provide a solution.
Get your letter writing campaigns underway. And remeber, if they send you back something saying that they have no systems available, thats just them saying 'well you have to find your own systems'... Heck, thats a licence to use of DECSS.
However, the problem is that many american 'gun groups' are verhmently opposed to mandatory education for gun licensing as 'unconstitutional restrictions'. While the gun manufactors will be just happy to see everyone forced to use their new more expensive 'gun safety' systems.
Point 1. The contract has no bearing here. The contract for the network allows you to take an amount of bandwidth. It does not grant you ability to take more. Without the contract, you dont get any. It is illegal to steal a service. So taking more bandwidth than your contract grants you is plain theft.
Point 2. Its more like people buying kits that promise free cabel TV. That they thought there was nothing illegal about it dosnt make a defense. Does not knowing that your ment to check your breaklights stop you getting pulled over and fined for it? Stupidity is not a defence, you should always act to ensure you know what you are doing.
In cases where the packaged software does not tell the user that they were doing something ilegal, then maybe. However, if it was trivial to find this out, then you still have no defence.
FBI 'raids' have already occured on people uncapping their hardware to take up more bandwidth. And all the same arguments were provided last time this was on slashdot.
Lets sum them up.
1) This is lame, its not like its a real crime!
Answer : This is a real crime. Uncapping your modem increases your use of the ISP's equipment. Not only does this steal from the ISP, it is also detrimental to the other users of the service.
2) Why is the FBI involved, thats Overkill?
Answer: The FBI are involved because the only two agencies with jursdiction in america over Network Crimes which may pass in and out of normal police lines are the Secret Service and the FBI. Who do you prefer to have knocking on your door?
3) I bought this modem, its my property and I am alowed to change the settings on it as I wish.
Answer: Okay, lets make an analogy. I own some magnetic swipe plastic cards. Using a card programer I also own, I program these cards to match other peoples credit cards. I then go out and buy stuff. I've only used my property to do that, so its not illegal right?
4) They can solve this problem at the router side anyway! They dont have to mess around the users.
This is just flat wrong. Any distributed network, especialy wan systems that share contention, can be damaged by individual network stations. There is no way to get around this. You can only stop them off at the network segments you directly control, but by then the proformance of any network segments prior to that may have been degraded. A badly configured modem/home router sending oddly configured packets in an atempt to 'fix' their access can do bad things to a network.
One day, a man was hit by a bicycle. The man got so angry, he demanded the cyclist pay him five dollars. And the cyclist did so because he was too busy to argue.
Then the man thought 'Maybe I should throw myself in from of another bicycle to get five dollars'. And so he did.
Five bicycles later, he thinks 'If I get five dollars from bicycles, I can get twenty from cars'. And he threw himself into on comming trafic.
Henson own the show. However, SciFi channel own an option to the next 88 episodes produced. They are not excersing this option, but neither are they releasing Henson to work with another network. Escentialy, they have killed the show.
The major thing about this mission that is new is that Beagle 2 contains an automated MassSpec. These things are normaly huge, and would have been imposable to get to mars at the time of Viking. But the Beagle 2 designers have worked on miniturizing and compacting one into the space and wieght available.
This is where the "Beagle 2 will look for life" is coming from. Viking told us general stuff, Rover gave us Geology, Beagle 2 will go for an indepth investigation of exactly what the soil in the area it lands is composed of.
Theres a small flaw in this design. Handspring and Palm cradles are designed so that you push the PDA in downwards then backwards to 'lock' in place. Not locking the PDA in place leaves you with non-secure connectors, and I've had computers reboot because of static discharge over 'not quite conected' PDAs in cradles. Since the 'bay' design only allows you to put the PDA in sideways without 'locking' it, this is a major problem.
In the UK mobile phone theft are becoming epidemic. These thefts are usualy violent and brutal, and in several cases have resulted in deaths.
These crimes have been rising due to several of the Mobile Phone networks deciding that it was not cost effective to impliment already known systems to track and disable stolen phones. This includes tracking, identifying and disabling bogus IEMI.
Since this has resulted in a crime wave, and the Industry (with a few notable exceptions) is not moving to rectify, the goverment felt the public demand to step in. As the companies are reluctant to spend the resources on tracking this under fraud statutes, legislation is being presented to make it illegal to modify the IEMI.
The thinking behind this is simple. At the moment you can have a phone 'unlocked', legaly, with no questions asked. This makes it much easier for gangs to fence stolen phones, and gives an incentive to criminals to target mobile phones. This has resulted in violent atacks to steal them.
Thus, if you tighten the restrictions on ability to 'unlock' mobile phones you put a stopper in the illegal trade.
There is a well known country that is still in the dark ages when it comes to voting. For it is well known that the United Kingdom still uses hand writen marks on paper. A situation barely changed for centuries.
Of course, this system works. Is unambiguious. Hard to defraud. And can have all the votes for an entire country done in one night.
But it dosnt use spiffy new technology, or make a profit for any contractors other than balot paper printers.
Just to play devil's advocat, here is the oposite side of the argument.
This question is made more dificult because the statute of limitations on libel is so small partialy because publishing is considered a timely issue. An article in a paper published a year ago is less damaging to you than one published yesterday.
But on the internet, a webpage published a year ago is still there. It still comes up in search engines today, and is just as potentialy damaging as it was a year ago.
Advertising and asosiated PR are not protected speech. They are corporate statements, and are required to be the truth.
This is defined escentialy by Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942) in that "purely commercial speech" has no constitutional protection.
Later, Central Hudson Gas and Electric v. Public Service Commission (1980) provided the 'Hudson Test' to determine if an Advertisment was editorial or political speech and if it was still suitable to restrict it.
I think the point is where they asked 'How much did this cost you?'
The FBI only get involved where demonstratable damages have been involved. Having had their fingers burned too many times during 'League of Doom' times when 'Damages' turned out to be neglable.
Some people may be wondering why the FBI was involved with this. The answer is simple. This constitutes fraud.
If you were to wire up a box on your phone to enable you to get free calls then you'd find your self in the same situation. And its escentialy the same crime as uncaping your cable modem/dsl router. As stealing phone calls detriments the ability of the whole network from ordinary users, so does stealing bandwidth.
I find myself stressing this again, Bandwidth Is Not Free. Bandwidth is not an artificialy restricted resource. It is a true limited resource, there is only so much you can put over a cable, and you need to ofset the costs of maintenece on that cable and the initial cost of laying it in the first place.
Doing it is illegal. Its also easy to trace. So they called the people who have jurisdiction for wire frauds and computer crime. its as simple as that. ISPs regularly warn users not to do this, and when they do, its justifyable to take it up with the authorities.
Wether its rational to do search and seazure of equipment is another matter, that may put the FBI in the wrong.
Yes, our goverment does want the power to read our e-mails. And to know who and when we called someone on the phone...
But can we name a country where this already takes place? Heres a hint, 'Carnivore'.
I guess the upside of this is that it is out in the public a law. You can overturn a law. You can demonstrate a law to be unworkable. You can show a law to be in conflict with other laws.
A country passes legislation that it's elected goverment should have control of its internet policy, and not a quasi-goverment 'board' of unelected officials.
Is it right for ICANN to mandate things upon an elected goverment? Is it right for an elected goverment to mandate things on ICANN?
These are issues that need to be adressed, this is just an issue of a goverment wanting to 'control the internet'. South africa do have a bad history of being controled by foreign commities after all.
I also find it mildly offensive that the Slashdot edditors automaticaly assosiate South Africa with Gun Toating Totalitarianism.
I think the comment on "whether a website can or cannot meet that standard" is misleading. This is Not an issue.
It is an utter falicy to asume that the Internet is somehow detached from common laws. These rules still apply, and it is no use claiming that there is 'no juisdiction'. Especialy when the law in question is one common to almost all of the world.
What this is about is if it is okay to indirectly threaten the life of someone. In my opinion, the indirect urging of someones death is proportionaly responcable for that death. Regardless of if the threat is published on the web, in a news letter, by samizdat or on the side of cows.
It is ironic that the site names its self after Nuremberg, yet claims the same defence.
Slashdot Mirror
Yay for people who *dont read the link in the article*. This is not reinventing the wheel. Its taking two of the wheels from an SUV, and using them on a bicycle.
Minotaur is Mozilla Mail, just without the rest of Mozilla. And as I curently use Mozilla Mail for its spam filters, but have to use IE for work reasons, this will be something I will use.
What if everyone in america reading this phones up/writes letters to the producer of their DVDs asking for them to provide or make available a system for making legal same quality backups of their DVDs. My reading of the DMCA implies that the producers of these DVDs must allow for or provide systems that allow continued fair use backups. As this medium turns out to *require* backups of the media, then it is upon the producers to provide a solution.
Get your letter writing campaigns underway. And remeber, if they send you back something saying that they have no systems available, thats just them saying 'well you have to find your own systems'... Heck, thats a licence to use of DECSS.
However, the problem is that many american 'gun groups' are verhmently opposed to mandatory education for gun licensing as 'unconstitutional restrictions'. While the gun manufactors will be just happy to see everyone forced to use their new more expensive 'gun safety' systems.
So, you end up with legislation in the wrong way.
The problem here is that it will take days, maybe weeks to do this. Hospitals want the data flowing *Now*.
So the answer is - Yes. In a situation where 100% uptime is demanded, the only solution is redundant systems.
Okay.
Point 1. The contract has no bearing here. The contract for the network allows you to take an amount of bandwidth. It does not grant you ability to take more. Without the contract, you dont get any. It is illegal to steal a service. So taking more bandwidth than your contract grants you is plain theft.
Point 2. Its more like people buying kits that promise free cabel TV. That they thought there was nothing illegal about it dosnt make a defense. Does not knowing that your ment to check your breaklights stop you getting pulled over and fined for it? Stupidity is not a defence, you should always act to ensure you know what you are doing.
In cases where the packaged software does not tell the user that they were doing something ilegal, then maybe. However, if it was trivial to find this out, then you still have no defence.
Because of complaints from people who wanted to use their own modems and hardware, or use non-standard set ups and routers.
Security Convenience
You cant have it both ways.
Its that it also impacts on a wire network which is being used by other people that brings the FBI in.
FBI 'raids' have already occured on people uncapping their hardware to take up more bandwidth. And all the same arguments were provided last time this was on slashdot.
Lets sum them up.
1) This is lame, its not like its a real crime!
Answer : This is a real crime. Uncapping your modem increases your use of the ISP's equipment. Not only does this steal from the ISP, it is also detrimental to the other users of the service.
2) Why is the FBI involved, thats Overkill?
Answer: The FBI are involved because the only two agencies with jursdiction in america over Network Crimes which may pass in and out of normal police lines are the Secret Service and the FBI. Who do you prefer to have knocking on your door?
3) I bought this modem, its my property and I am alowed to change the settings on it as I wish.
Answer: Okay, lets make an analogy. I own some magnetic swipe plastic cards. Using a card programer I also own, I program these cards to match other peoples credit cards. I then go out and buy stuff. I've only used my property to do that, so its not illegal right?
4) They can solve this problem at the router side anyway! They dont have to mess around the users.
This is just flat wrong. Any distributed network, especialy wan systems that share contention, can be damaged by individual network stations. There is no way to get around this. You can only stop them off at the network segments you directly control, but by then the proformance of any network segments prior to that may have been degraded. A badly configured modem/home router sending oddly configured packets in an atempt to 'fix' their access can do bad things to a network.
One day, a man was hit by a bicycle. The man got so angry, he demanded the cyclist pay him five dollars. And the cyclist did so because he was too busy to argue.
Then the man thought 'Maybe I should throw myself in from of another bicycle to get five dollars'. And so he did.
Five bicycles later, he thinks 'If I get five dollars from bicycles, I can get twenty from cars'. And he threw himself into on comming trafic.
And was squashed by a pickup truck.
Henson own the show. However, SciFi channel own an option to the next 88 episodes produced. They are not excersing this option, but neither are they releasing Henson to work with another network. Escentialy, they have killed the show.
"Site membership will be gratis".
Gratis being an olde word meaning 'Free'.
Pen and Paper. Clearly marked.
Easy to use. Easy to count. Easy to Spot Errors. Easy to Secure.
Dosnt even need elctricity.
Why isnt it used?
The major thing about this mission that is new is that Beagle 2 contains an automated MassSpec. These things are normaly huge, and would have been imposable to get to mars at the time of Viking. But the Beagle 2 designers have worked on miniturizing and compacting one into the space and wieght available.
This is where the "Beagle 2 will look for life" is coming from. Viking told us general stuff, Rover gave us Geology, Beagle 2 will go for an indepth investigation of exactly what the soil in the area it lands is composed of.
Theres a small flaw in this design. Handspring and Palm cradles are designed so that you push the PDA in downwards then backwards to 'lock' in place. Not locking the PDA in place leaves you with non-secure connectors, and I've had computers reboot because of static discharge over 'not quite conected' PDAs in cradles. Since the 'bay' design only allows you to put the PDA in sideways without 'locking' it, this is a major problem.
This story needs a little background information.
In the UK mobile phone theft are becoming epidemic. These thefts are usualy violent and brutal, and in several cases have resulted in deaths.
These crimes have been rising due to several of the Mobile Phone networks deciding that it was not cost effective to impliment already known systems to track and disable stolen phones. This includes tracking, identifying and disabling bogus IEMI.
Since this has resulted in a crime wave, and the Industry (with a few notable exceptions) is not moving to rectify, the goverment felt the public demand to step in. As the companies are reluctant to spend the resources on tracking this under fraud statutes, legislation is being presented to make it illegal to modify the IEMI.
The thinking behind this is simple. At the moment you can have a phone 'unlocked', legaly, with no questions asked. This makes it much easier for gangs to fence stolen phones, and gives an incentive to criminals to target mobile phones. This has resulted in violent atacks to steal them.
Thus, if you tighten the restrictions on ability to 'unlock' mobile phones you put a stopper in the illegal trade.
There is a well known country that is still in the dark ages when it comes to voting. For it is well known that the United Kingdom still uses hand writen marks on paper. A situation barely changed for centuries.
Of course, this system works. Is unambiguious. Hard to defraud. And can have all the votes for an entire country done in one night.
But it dosnt use spiffy new technology, or make a profit for any contractors other than balot paper printers.
Just to play devil's advocat, here is the oposite side of the argument.
This question is made more dificult because the statute of limitations on libel is so small partialy because publishing is considered a timely issue. An article in a paper published a year ago is less damaging to you than one published yesterday.
But on the internet, a webpage published a year ago is still there. It still comes up in search engines today, and is just as potentialy damaging as it was a year ago.
Advertising and asosiated PR are not protected speech. They are corporate statements, and are required to be the truth.
This is defined escentialy by Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942) in that "purely commercial speech" has no constitutional protection.
Later, Central Hudson Gas and Electric v. Public Service Commission (1980) provided the 'Hudson Test' to determine if an Advertisment was editorial or political speech and if it was still suitable to restrict it.
I think the point is where they asked 'How much did this cost you?'
The FBI only get involved where demonstratable damages have been involved. Having had their fingers burned too many times during 'League of Doom' times when 'Damages' turned out to be neglable.
Some people may be wondering why the FBI was involved with this. The answer is simple. This constitutes fraud.
If you were to wire up a box on your phone to enable you to get free calls then you'd find your self in the same situation. And its escentialy the same crime as uncaping your cable modem/dsl router. As stealing phone calls detriments the ability of the whole network from ordinary users, so does stealing bandwidth.
I find myself stressing this again, Bandwidth Is Not Free. Bandwidth is not an artificialy restricted resource. It is a true limited resource, there is only so much you can put over a cable, and you need to ofset the costs of maintenece on that cable and the initial cost of laying it in the first place.
Doing it is illegal. Its also easy to trace. So they called the people who have jurisdiction for wire frauds and computer crime. its as simple as that. ISPs regularly warn users not to do this, and when they do, its justifyable to take it up with the authorities.
Wether its rational to do search and seazure of equipment is another matter, that may put the FBI in the wrong.
Yes, our goverment does want the power to read our e-mails. And to know who and when we called someone on the phone...
But can we name a country where this already takes place? Heres a hint, 'Carnivore'.
I guess the upside of this is that it is out in the public a law. You can overturn a law. You can demonstrate a law to be unworkable. You can show a law to be in conflict with other laws.
Its a lot better than 'policy' and 'guidelines'.
For 'just a' read 'not just a'
Okay, lets look at this in another light.
A country passes legislation that it's elected goverment should have control of its internet policy, and not a quasi-goverment 'board' of unelected officials.
Is it right for ICANN to mandate things upon an elected goverment? Is it right for an elected goverment to mandate things on ICANN?
These are issues that need to be adressed, this is just an issue of a goverment wanting to 'control the internet'. South africa do have a bad history of being controled by foreign commities after all.
I also find it mildly offensive that the Slashdot edditors automaticaly assosiate South Africa with Gun Toating Totalitarianism.
The DRC may know something about this. After all, when you've been exploring all, you like to play a nice relaxing game.
I think the comment on "whether a website can or cannot meet that standard" is misleading. This is Not an issue.
It is an utter falicy to asume that the Internet is somehow detached from common laws. These rules still apply, and it is no use claiming that there is 'no juisdiction'. Especialy when the law in question is one common to almost all of the world.
What this is about is if it is okay to indirectly threaten the life of someone. In my opinion, the indirect urging of someones death is proportionaly responcable for that death. Regardless of if the threat is published on the web, in a news letter, by samizdat or on the side of cows.
It is ironic that the site names its self after Nuremberg, yet claims the same defence.