If something is legitimately part of the public record, then it should be as easy to access as possible.
If easy access pushes questions as to whether or not such-and-such is legitimately part of the public record, so much the better -- these questions need to be raised, or the default answer becomes whatever the bureaucrats who operate the system want it to be.
in most cases requires that the publisher knows it isn't true
Actually, the standard (for people who aren't public figures, at least) is broad enough to encompass "reckless disregard" for whether or not an accusation is true.
Whether or not fingering someone as a criminal on the sole basis of IP address constitutes "reckless disregard" is left as an excersize for the/. crew.
How Dumb Do They Think We Are?
on
RIAA To Target CD-R
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced today that the number of units shipped domestically from record companies to retail outlets and special markets (music clubs and mail order) and their corresponding dollar value fell in the first six months of 2001.
So -- did the flack who wrote this really expect anyone to conclude from this anything other than, "Yup, we're in a recession..."
Nope; it looks like they recklessly fingered a private citizen as a criminal and disseminated that "mistake" for the express purpose of causing damage to that citizen. This is technically known as "libel" (I assume that the message to the ISP was in written rather than oral form; in the latter case, the term is "slander".)
You have the *freedom* NOT to pay for said CD or DVD if you do not agree to the terms of the copyright/license/usage restrictions.
The only "terms" I agreed to are those inherent to copyright law (i.e. not to produce and distribute additional copies of the work).
The sellers of the work have no legal standing to invent additional restictions on the copy I purchased after the fact, any more than the people who sold you your computer can suddenly decide that you aren't allowed to post to/. any more.
the United States National Archives are holding a contest of sorts to see if anyone can finally figure out what was erased on the infamous Watergate tape that pushed Nixon's downfall over the brink
But as the stock market drooped and the zeal for all things tech withered last fall, Random House began to hedge its bets. The original low price of $5 for each e-book download was doubled.
Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....
Most systems with high-end CPUs have the real bottleneck somewhere else (memory, motherboard, graphics). A lot of systems out there would benefit more from another 128 MB RAM than another 0.2 GHz of CPU speed.
How do we protect the economic value of copyrighted works in a world of "free" copying and distribution?
Er, the same way you protect the economic value of small portable objects in a world of nimble fingers -- 1)take reasonable security precautions and 2)prosecute the specific individuals who are caught stealing (not those who might steal, not those who possess the ability to steal, nor even those who teach the fine art of prestidigitation... those who do steal).
The nature of an electronic document calls for a completely different kind of law to protect it, as compared to the laws governing the copyright of a printed book, for example.
If that is your position, then you should advocate that Adobe et al advance it through the only honest approach -- an amendment to the U. S. Constitution which would make such a "different kind of law" (copyright protection decoupled from the public interest and having no time limit) legal. /.
One thing which stands out about this is that the FBI guys didn't get a wiretap order. This is obviously not a good thing. IIRC, they got a search warrant, and assummed (wrongly IMHO) that the warrant included the right to search his computer
There's a reasonable case that a search warrant for documents includes a search of the current contents of the target's computer. However, the keystroke sniffer, placed for the purpose of making it possible to monitor future communications, clearly falls into the "wiretap" category rather than the "search" category.
(The reason the two are different, and the latter requires a higher standard, is that a search can be executed in the presence of the suspect. This serves as a deterrent against illegal expansion of the search into a fishing expedition. Wiretaps, obviously, cannot be known to the suspect until after the fact, which makes them more open to abuse.) /.
The problem is that jury nullification has no standing as precedent (i.e. the law remains on the books and it all starts over again with the next case).
Nullification en masse (as in the case of jurors routinely refusing to convict Underground Railroad conductors or alcohol prohibition violators) can eventually convince prosecutors to quit wasting their efforts on a certain type of case, but a single case just doesn't matter. /.
it seems to take about 30 seconds longer for the CD player to recognize it
Is this a portable player (or can you reproduce the results on a portable player)? If so:
1. Take the portable player, the bad CD, and a good CD back to the record store.
2. Put the bad CD in the portable player and press "Play".
3. After about 10-15 seconds, start grumbling about the POS CD they sold you. Be sure to press "Stop" before it actually starts.
4. If the clerk says the problem might be the player, repeat step 2 with the good CD.
5. If the clerk insists that you can only get a second copy of the same CD, take it, check that it doesn't work any differently, return, and repeat steps 1-3 (and possibly step 4 if the clerk is particularly clueless).
These printers spit out square pieces of paper, with what appear to be random clouds of dots. But these are actually a form of "barcode" that indicate what choices were made.
Any marking on the ballot which is not human-readable is an open invitation to spoofing -- a machine could be fixed to print the "random cloud of dots" for a favored candidate no matter what selection the voter made, with nobody the wiser.
The idea of a printer to produce the final ballot form is a good one, as long as the printout can be read and verified by the voter before casting the vote.
/.
However, along with that, strict rules on how the butterfly ballow can be presented should be determined. E.g. nothing with the potental confusion as with the Florida ballot.
The only way to avoid potential confusion is a ballot with the names clearly written on it. This could be automated to an extent (have the voter select using a keypad and have the machine print the corresponding name on the ballot).
Done properly, it wouldn't really be all that expensive, especially with machine-printed ballots designed to be both human and machine readable (OCR is quite straighforward when it has to deal with only one font specifically designed for clarity).
In addition to the cheap punchcards, each voting site would have a 'ballot check' machine, which electronically scans the punched card and reports any no-votes or duplicated votes, and allows the voter to either redo their card, or to sign off on the ballet to state that that was their intent
Again, I'd lose the punchcards and use ballot forms printed by machine in response to voter selection. For verification, have the printed form drop behind a window so that the voter can read it (but not tamper with it), and either cast it or void it and start over.
Also, there's a human element to address: the rules need to be quite clear that, given that the system has made it as easy as reasonably possible to cast an unambiguous vote, you have a responsibility to do so -- and if you still screw it up YOUR VOTE WILL NOT COUNT, PERIOD!
In conjunction with that, each butterfly ballot book would have a DIFFERENT ORDERING of the names within each race.
This is a snafu waiting to happen if implemented with punch cards. However, with the above described system, there's no reason why the keypads couldn't have all different orders of the names, since what appears on the final ballot form (the printed name) wouldn't vary.
This case just confirms the basic problem with Brin's concept (i.e. if you think that the people in power will in fact permit universal surveillance results to be available to Joe Sixpack, particularly in cases where it shows their own misconduct, I want to know what you're smoking and where you got it). /.
Or, strongly recommend that they come up with a number instead of the open-ended "limited term" language. Judging from the copyright laws as they existed in the early days of the Republic, they'd have probably come up with a 20-30 year maximum. /.
The person carrying out this campaign against McOwen is certainly clueless, likely vindictive, likely monomaniacal, and *committed*. Once a person like that starts a campaign, they'll push it as far as possible. They won't know when to give up.
That's why, as I said originally, the laws against distorting evidence in order to create a proseuction case out of blue smoke and mirrors need to be rigorously enforced. /.
I'd be more than happy with a simple reprimand. It's a matter of fairness after all -- we think the charges against Mr. McOwen are excessive; it would behoove us not to levy similar charges against the prosecuter's office.
The cases are not similar. Fabricating evidence in a criminal prosecution (the original premise was that the prosecutors would deserve a reprimand for "falsifying financial figures to achieve a felony prosecution") is a far more serious crime than anything McOwen is accused of doing.
/.
Slashdot Mirror
If easy access pushes questions as to whether or not such-and-such is legitimately part of the public record, so much the better -- these questions need to be raised, or the default answer becomes whatever the bureaucrats who operate the system want it to be.
Actually, the standard (for people who aren't public figures, at least) is broad enough to encompass "reckless disregard" for whether or not an accusation is true.
Whether or not fingering someone as a criminal on the sole basis of IP address constitutes "reckless disregard" is left as an excersize for the
So -- did the flack who wrote this really expect anyone to conclude from this anything other than, "Yup, we're in a recession..."
Er, they did levy a fine without trial, unless you're going to assert that Net access has no monetary value.
Nope; it looks like they recklessly fingered a private citizen as a criminal and disseminated that "mistake" for the express purpose of causing damage to that citizen. This is technically known as "libel" (I assume that the message to the ISP was in written rather than oral form; in the latter case, the term is "slander".)
Moderators: Just Say No to drugs....
You have the *freedom* NOT to pay for said CD or DVD if you do not agree to the terms of the copyright/license/usage restrictions.
The only "terms" I agreed to are those inherent to copyright law (i.e. not to produce and distribute additional copies of the work).
The sellers of the work have no legal standing to invent additional restictions on the copy I purchased after the fact, any more than the people who sold you your computer can suddenly decide that you aren't allowed to post to /. any more.
It's [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED]....
Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....
Most systems with high-end CPUs have the real bottleneck somewhere else (memory, motherboard, graphics). A lot of systems out there would benefit more from another 128 MB RAM than another 0.2 GHz of CPU speed.
Er, the same way you protect the economic value of small portable objects in a world of nimble fingers -- 1)take reasonable security precautions and 2)prosecute the specific individuals who are caught stealing (not those who might steal, not those who possess the ability to steal, nor even those who teach the fine art of prestidigitation... those who do steal).
This ain't quantum physics, folks.
/.
If that is your position, then you should advocate that Adobe et al advance it through the only honest approach -- an amendment to the U. S. Constitution which would make such a "different kind of law" (copyright protection decoupled from the public interest and having no time limit) legal.
/.
There's a reasonable case that a search warrant for documents includes a search of the current contents of the target's computer. However, the keystroke sniffer, placed for the purpose of making it possible to monitor future communications, clearly falls into the "wiretap" category rather than the "search" category.
(The reason the two are different, and the latter requires a higher standard, is that a search can be executed in the presence of the suspect. This serves as a deterrent against illegal expansion of the search into a fishing expedition. Wiretaps, obviously, cannot be known to the suspect until after the fact, which makes them more open to abuse.)
/.
Nullification en masse (as in the case of jurors routinely refusing to convict Underground Railroad conductors or alcohol prohibition violators) can eventually convince prosecutors to quit wasting their efforts on a certain type of case, but a single case just doesn't matter.
/.
This turns out to be a mutation of an April Fool's Day joke, as revealed in the font of knowledge.
/.
Is this a portable player (or can you reproduce the results on a portable player)? If so:
/.
Any marking on the ballot which is not human-readable is an open invitation to spoofing -- a machine could be fixed to print the "random cloud of dots" for a favored candidate no matter what selection the voter made, with nobody the wiser.
The idea of a printer to produce the final ballot form is a good one, as long as the printout can be read and verified by the voter before casting the vote.
/.
The only way to avoid potential confusion is a ballot with the names clearly written on it. This could be automated to an extent (have the voter select using a keypad and have the machine print the corresponding name on the ballot).
Done properly, it wouldn't really be all that expensive, especially with machine-printed ballots designed to be both human and machine readable (OCR is quite straighforward when it has to deal with only one font specifically designed for clarity).
In addition to the cheap punchcards, each voting site would have a 'ballot check' machine, which electronically scans the punched card and reports any no-votes or duplicated votes, and allows the voter to either redo their card, or to sign off on the ballet to state that that was their intent
Again, I'd lose the punchcards and use ballot forms printed by machine in response to voter selection. For verification, have the printed form drop behind a window so that the voter can read it (but not tamper with it), and either cast it or void it and start over.
Also, there's a human element to address: the rules need to be quite clear that, given that the system has made it as easy as reasonably possible to cast an unambiguous vote, you have a responsibility to do so -- and if you still screw it up YOUR VOTE WILL NOT COUNT, PERIOD!
In conjunction with that, each butterfly ballot book would have a DIFFERENT ORDERING of the names within each race.
This is a snafu waiting to happen if implemented with punch cards. However, with the above described system, there's no reason why the keypads couldn't have all different orders of the names, since what appears on the final ballot form (the printed name) wouldn't vary.
/.
This case just confirms the basic problem with Brin's concept (i.e. if you think that the people in power will in fact permit universal surveillance results to be available to Joe Sixpack, particularly in cases where it shows their own misconduct, I want to know what you're smoking and where you got it).
/.
Or, strongly recommend that they come up with a number instead of the open-ended "limited term" language. Judging from the copyright laws as they existed in the early days of the Republic, they'd have probably come up with a 20-30 year maximum.
/.
After 6.0, I think I'll let you go first....
/.
So, do you have to enter your serial number in reverse order to register in the Southern Hemisphere?
/.
How do they get the script viruses to run on Macs?
/.
That's why, as I said originally, the laws against distorting evidence in order to create a proseuction case out of blue smoke and mirrors need to be rigorously enforced.
/.
The cases are not similar. Fabricating evidence in a criminal prosecution (the original premise was that the prosecutors would deserve a reprimand for "falsifying financial figures to achieve a felony prosecution") is a far more serious crime than anything McOwen is accused of doing.
/.
Reprimanded, shreprimanded. It should achieve their own felony prosecution.
/.