Just because a tool can be used in a particular fashion, doesn't make that use legal. I do agree that a good lawyer may be able to argue along similar lines to yours to get him off. The problem is that could get expanded out to cover other, less questionable, situations. For example, if someone is on a broadband connection with a Windows 98 machine and file sharing enabled, I can technically connect to their system using standard Windows sharing. If they had made their whole C: drive available, intending it to be accessible on their home network, I could get to anything on the system. Technically, I am only using the tools as they were designed, but I am still using them to access a system I should not be accessing. That's where I see the breakdown in the argument, this area was not supposed to be accessed and the guy had to try to access it.
I think sirwired hit it for the analogy. The normal procedure was bypassed to complete the sale. Though, the counter argument to this would be that the guy in the article did, in a manner of speaking, use the normal procedure (This is where the analogy starts to break down). So the question becomes, is it valid to utilitze an automated system to buy something, before the seller intends for that system to be used? Since there was not a public posting of the sale, I think it would be a safe assumption that there was no intention to sell, at that time, and so that invalidates the claim that the seller had made an affirmative action to sell something. Of course, that is going to hinge on the question of, if they had set the item to auctionable in their database, is that an affirmative action? I have a feeling that this is probably going to be one of those times were the courts are going to have to look at the implications of both answers and try to rule in a way to protect society from the consequences. If we allow this type of action it is going to create a huge burden on sellers to make sure that everything is completly locked down. On the other hand, invalidating sales where the buyer figured out the system and circumvented it does not seem to create a burden.
I personally don't see how he has a leg to stand on
Without going into the argument about the enforcibility of EULA's in general, this one specifically probably isn't going to last long. Whether the makes of Second Life like it or not they have essentially created a banking situation. All of the in-game items have a real world value, by design. The laws in the US regulate pretty heavily what a bank or financial institution can and can't do. One thing they are not allowed to do is just close an account and keep or discard what is currently contained in the account.
Along the same lines, the guy committed fraud. And he's probably going to end up nailed for it. But the SL makers will probably have to, at least, refund him the value of the assets they were holding for him.
At a guess their TOS and/or EULA claims about not being responsible for continued access are going to last in court about as long as a snowball in hell. Because it can be directly shown that the in game assets have a real world value, and they are acting as a broker for such assets, they are probably about to be introduced to all of the laws pertaining to being an asset broker. This is one of the reasons MMOG's are trying really hard to prevent virtual items from becomming property, it would essentially transform the MMOG companies into banks, and they would get saddled with all of the laws which go with them.
Now, in this particular instance, the guy is probably going to lose (or I damn well hope so). He manipulated a computer system to profit. Yes, the system should have been secured better, still insted of reporting the flaw he exploited it for financial gain. In most states that's called fraud. Just because you discover a security weakness, does not mean you can exploit said weakness. Better yet, by the time the trial is over, he will be on public record admitting that he did this. I expect that this will later be used at his criminal trial to show that he willfully exploted a system weakness to commit fraud. Not a smart choice.
The other thing I see comming out of this is that Second Life is either going to end up shut down or suddenly find that it has to start paying a lot of attention to banking laws. You cannot just setup shop as a company to hold someone's assets, and then expect to be able to disclaim responsibility. I expect that this is giong to make for some very interesting articles on slashdot over the next few years.
I am not a lawyer so this is just talking out my arse. But I don't think that having the intention to sell something is going to be the same as actually moving to sell soemthing.
To use an analogy, and probably get bogged down in the details of it: I have a monitor sitting in my garage which I intend to sell, and I forget to close the garage some times. I have not, however, actually put it up for sale. Assuming that someone knew my intention, and saw it sitting in my garage; would they be justified in going into my garage, taking the monitor and leaving a 10 dollar bill in it's place? They might claim that all they did was buy the monitor I was planning on selling. Considering that I never got to be involved in setting the price, and there was no real agreement, this would end up as a wierd case of theft, and probably show up on Fark.
On top of that, they guy admits to using a security flaw in the system to do this. This goes back to the argument about locks on doors. Even if the lock on my front door is a really horrible brand, and not worth two cents, it is still breaking and entering to pick it and come into my house.
And the 14th Amendment. However, sadly the government sees it the opposite way. If the Amendment doesn't strictly prohibit them from doing something (like what the NSA is doing) then the government will continue until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
you and I must be reading different 14th amendments. The only thing I see in there that comes close to this is: Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
There's nothing in there to permit the federal government to do anything it pleases. On the other hand, yes the Supreme Court needs to be the one to make this decision and with the way that they have been ruling in the past 100 years, I'm not expecting much.
Why is there less of a push for a privacy amendment than there is for a let-Arnold-run-for-president amendment?
One is a pointless waste of time, which does not endager the continued centralization of power away from the people. The other would threaten the work already performed on carefully constructing a police state that the people will accept. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Telephone conversations would fall more in line with the "papers" as odd as this seems. Keep in mind that, at the time the Constitution was written, phones did not exist. The main form of communication was physical mail, and "papers" was meant to cover this. In much the same way that I do not own the phone lines, over which my conversation carries I do not own the US Postal system. Still, when I send a letter I have a reasonable expectation of privacy of that letter. Since the Constitution was intended as a living document, to be interpreted as times changes, the courts have extended the Fourth Amendment to cover telephone conversations.
Also, if you want to get really nitpicky about what is actually written in the US Constitution look at the 9th and 10th Amendments closely.
Amendment IXThe enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Just because it isn't listed, does not mean it does not exist. The Bill of Rights was not meant to be an all inclusive list. In fact, what we are seeing now is an example of one of the arguments against it: that people would treat it as an exhustive list and use it as an excuse to claim that other rights do not exist. For example, even if there isn't an explicit right to privacy doesn't mean we don't have one.
Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
This one has been dead for a while. Essentially it says that any power not explicitly given to the Federal Government in the Constitution cannot be wielded by the Federal Government. If you ever get bored spend some time reading the Constitution and try to justify every part of the current Federal Government within it's mandate, I've not been able to do this.
I don't think it's that far of a streach to assume that they knew from the get go that this program would never have passed Constitutional muster. With FISA warrants the NSA/FBI/CIA/ can go do what they want, and then ask the court if it was OK up to 72 hours after the collection has started. Evenatully they have to go back to the court and ask for an extension, if they want to keep it up. The down side is that they have to actually state what they are after and stop collecting once they have it. Somehow, the TLA groups decided that this was "cumbersome". How in the world is it cumbersome to ask for permission, in a secret court, after you have already started collecting? It's not. The only reason to avoid going before the FISA court and asking permission is that you know, or are reasonably certain that they will say, "no." Both of the programs, which have come to light recently, are in the same boat. The NSA must have assumed that the courts would have shut them down, so they did everything they could to avoid the courts. Now that they have been caught red-handed they are trying to find an excuse to avoid being nailed to the wall for it. On the same token, the congressional members who were briefed and didn't raise objections should be thrown out of office for failing the public trust.
None of that is really suprising, humans do not invent new ideas, all they do is synthesise all of the information and ideas they have been exposed to and put it together in new ways. If you spend enough time with any fictional race you can eventually pick apart what influences the author had in the back of his head when that race was created. Some times this will be obvious, some times it won't.
Also, JRR Tolkien didn't just make up all of his races, most of them existed in various folklore and mythology in much the same way he presented them. For example, how much different is Elrond from Oberon? Orcs, trolls, goblins, are all there in old folklore, Tolkien just put it all together in a really good way. Though it is true that modern fantasy derives heavily from his work.
Riiiiight, I think you'll find that there are assholes on both sides. When you get bored with your current character try a horde character and go out to Hillsbrad. Some of the quests out there, like the entire Battle for Hillsbrad chain, are nearly impossibe because of alliance out there ganking.
And Strangle Thorn Vale is just a clusterfuck. Both sides are out there ganking all day long.
In all, I find that the horde players tend to be eaiser to deal with, as allies. Barrens chat is bad, but the amount of crap spewing on the General Channel, and being yelled in Goldshire is just over whelming.
What I can't wait to see is who gets sued when one of the ads hosting servers gets hacked. For example, this topic reminded me about the ads in Rainbow 6:Lockdown. Since I first played it, I thought it would be funny to replace the in-game ads with porn. Now, the ads are just comming from some web server, donwloaded and then displayed, how hard will it be to find out what site the game is looking at, redirect the host to a local web server, and send whatever images I want?
How long before someone decides it would be funny to hack the ad server and goatse everyone playing that game?
Keep in mind that the security system is installed by the lowest bidder. If that camera wasn't required to have full video capture, the contracter would not go high end where it was not needed, in order to keep his bid down and profits up. Yes, the militray does spend a lot of money on security, and when they have an area they want fully covered, that is in the spec. If they didn't see the need for it though, it would not have ended up there.
First of all, I'll think you'll find the US was not officially at war with anybody, it was all "advisors to the south vietnam government etc"
Ok, so Vietnam was not a fully declared war, it was an congressionally authorized military action. It was still a recognized militay action. It's expect that people will die in such.
Secondly, killing kids is killing kids, doesn't matter if it's in a war or not.
And if said kid is shooting a rifle your way, is it the same? Or what about a kid holding a live gernade (sans spoon) running at you? Yes, there were certainly some questionable actions in the Vietnam Conflict, but many of the kids killed were far from innocent bystanders, whether by their own choice, or the actions of the adults takeing care of them. Killing kids is not something that should be done if it can be avoided, unfortunatly it's not always an option.
And last but not least, 3 million people is a lot more than 20 odd people in a school. Columbine sucked, but let's try to keep things in perspective, ok?
I'm not the one who tried to draw equivilence between these wars and Columbine.
You never did answer my question: is there any difference, in your mind, between two kids killing their classmates in a school and a military action? (changed to avoid the splitting of hairs).
but if there was just a SINGLE camera taking care of the Dep. of Defense of the most powerful country in the world and it had a capture rate so slow that it couldn't grab the frame where the the 747 appeared, you'd need at least to fire somebody because it's insane.
Why? The type of threat that camera was protecting against wasn't going to be moving at high speed. You don't need to store full motion video when you can be reasonably sure that someone breaking in isn't going to cover the entire field of vision in 1 second. Moreover, there are probably plenty of sensors inside the Pentagon and around all points of entrance to keep things secure. Overall, video is a poor way to secure a building. It's far too easy for a guard to not see something. On the other hand the electronic monitoring devices don't fall asleep and don't blink.
Hell, I would bet that the Pentagon's security system includes enough sensors in the grounds around the building that they would be able to track you as you walked in. There are sensor systems which use a buried cable in the ground and trigger an alarm anytime you walk over the cable. [1] Fact is, you don't just walk into a secured area, without being noticed. Yes, like that one reporter, you might get into an unsecured area of a secure base; good luck getting to anything the military wants secured (inside jobs not withstanding).
It's not suprising at all that this camera is just capturing 1 frame every second. That's fairly normal to keep storage costs down. A camera isn't going to be used to secure an area, it's just used to get pictures of the people who your security system detected comming in.
Spoken like someone who has no clue how security cameras work.
Most security cameras don't record continuous 30 frame per second video. It's impractical from a storage point of view and not usually needed. Very often security cameras will only take 1 image every second, this interval changes somewhat though. Looking at the video, this seems to be the case. The only time full 30fps video is captured is when the area needs a high level of security to justify the cost of storage (tapes or hard drives), the side of a building probably isn't going to cut it.
While I do find the whole idea distrubing, I don't see a reason to stop it.
What happened at Columbine was a sad tragedy, though mostly a symptom of the underlying problems with our society. However, no matter how sad an occurance, I still can't see why we would need censorship about it. If the author of this game really wants to make such a game, he is free to do so. If someone wants to stand up and call the two kids, who commited these acts, heroes, so be it. Now, there may be some backlash, e.g. everyone calls you an asshole and no one is willing to associate with you, but then those are just the consequences of your actions.
Yup, this guy was stupid to make this game. Jack Thompson will probably be all over it, calling for censorship. Many normal people will also be so horrified by this game that they might agree with Thompson. The creator is probably going to face repercussions, like death threats and lack of job opportunities. I still support his right to make the game.
It is standard police procedure in a criminal investigation to subpoena or to get a search warrant for telephone records. Nothing new or sensational to see here, move along.
This would be nothing new, if this is what they had done. Instead, the NSA coerced the phone companies into giving them information which would normally require a warrant to get. They then handed that data over to the FBI to weed out leaks.
The problem isn't that they have the data, it's how they got it. If the FBI wanted to conduct and investigation about a leak, great, that's part of their job. They could then request a warrant for the records, look at them and go from there. It's that whole pesky fourth amendment which this is running afoul of:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What the NSA did was grab information, which should be private, without the whole "Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." We are supposed to be a nation of laws, that applies doubly to the government. The reason for warrants to to provide oversight of the executive branch by the judicial branch and by the public. Yes, there are times where it is necessary to keep a warrant from being public, this is what the FISA act did, it setup a process by which security agencies could react to a situation, and get a warrant retroactivly. Bush's claim that the process impedes investigations is pure bullshit. What it impedes is his unchecked power to do as he pleases. The NSA/FBI/CIA can go get whatever data they want, and ask a judge about it after the fact. They can do everything they have done, including the wiretappung and data collection when they want to do it. The only restriction placed on it is that they have to go before a judge within 72 hours and justify their actions. Sending a lawyer over to the FISA court, after the fact, does nothing to impede investigations, unless those investigations violate the Constitution.
What they are doing is trying to silence the leaks which make them look bad. The current administration has been beat up pretty bad over it's actions. Those actions would not have been know without the leaks; so, they aim to silence the leakers.
Never claimed it was, just trying to give the parent some information to make his life eaiser. On the other hand, how is 6 steps, none of which involve removing one's hand from the mouse (and one of which could be skipped) all that difficult? The problem with it is that it's a fairly unknown feature, beyond that, it pretty much follows the same interface assumptions normally made in windows applications. For most windows apps, you can normally right-click on something to change its properties. If you ever have a chance to watch a user with an application, which breaks this assumption, you'll get to see some confused looks. This is one of the reasons that the Mac -> Windows jump, and the opposite as well, cause such problems: the interface asumptions are different. Same problem with Windows -> Linux. Users get used to one set of assumptions, and they don't really want to re-learn them.
In the end, I recommend that people use whatever system does the job they need done, all things being equal, pick the one you like. For writing documents, email and surfing the web, just use the OS you are most comfortable with. It's because of this that I now find myself supporting a Mac (yes, I do system support). I have one user who is used to a Mac, and likes working with it. Of course, because of some of the programs we use he also uses a PC for some of his work, but that cannot be avoided (our primary application is Windows only, and there are no equivilent alternatives).
I suppose you think that the process you described to restore the Classic Start menu behavior is a lot easier/intuitive for a newbie to figure out than any similar configuration operations on a Linux system - assuming that a newbie would even know that such an operation could be performed.
No, it's a PITA. MS has always been good at making things easy on the average user, the Start menu was pretty good but XP has managed to screw that up, I'm even more worried about Vista. But then, another thing MS has always been good at is driving the market to what MS wants. The point I was making was that the complaint about information overload was solvable, if you were willing to put some time into it.
For a similar change on a Linux system, I don't expect that it would be that much different. The only thing I would worry about on a Linux system is that it would probably be different, depending on which GUI I am using. Overall, I'm sure that a user, who had a clue you could do such, would be able to google for either process. The only possible hitch on the Linux side would be that they might not know that they need to differentiate between KDE and Gnome (we'll ignore others for brevity). But, considering that such a user has gotten that far, I would expect them to make it the rest of the way.
We all get comfortable with what we use regularly. The parent post was decrying the assumptions made with a windows system, calling it being "blinded by the 'Windows Way'. He then turns around and complains about PC's not doing things the 'Mac Way'. Each OS makes certain assumptions and certain trade-offs, none of them are more "right" than the others. In the end, you should try to use the best tool for the job. For example, my home server runs Debian becase it's easy to setup and administer. It does not even have a GUI installed, everything is done via command line. I don't need the overhead of a GUI to run a web/mail/ftp server. On my home desktop I run XP because I like to play games. Yes, WINE can make that possible on Linux, I just don't see then need to screw around with it. I want to go out and buy a game, install it, and play; not spend an hour trying to make it work. Linux does not offer me anything on my desktop to make it worth the work.
The Dock is designed so that it doesn't matter whether an application is running or not, and when you think about it, it shouldn't matter to the user whether an application is running.
Speaking of being blinded to alternatives... It damn well does matter what is running and what isn't. Every program you have spinning its wheels in the background is eating up memory. I don't want a copy of Visio or Word running in the background when I am trying to play a game, when I close it, I want it to close. If it doesn't close, or I leave it open, I want an indication of that.
Now, the Start menu, I'll agree with you on, partly. The co-mingling of system functions and program functions is annoying. Why MS decided to let system functions get outside the control panel, I'll never know. Though, I do think that the Run command should be in the program list, as it is a program. Then again, I'm an old DOS junkie, so maybe I just like knowing my old friend the command line is there for me. (Am I the only one who still does network drive mapping at the command line?)
The Start menu in Vista is absolutely ridiculous, I use OS X mostly, but also have a PC, and EVERY time I open that thing I have to stare at it for 2-3 seconds before the information overload is over. It is crazy
You do know you can customize that right? First off, I would recommend going back to the classic menu (I prefer this myself).
Right-Click the Start menu
Click Properties in the context menu
Select the Start Menu tab
Select the radio button for Classic Start Menu
If you feel so inclined check out the Customize options
Once you are done, click the OK button
Next, organize your program folders, so that they make sense to you. Click and drag stuff where you want it. To alphabetize a folder, right click in it and click Sort by Name.
But then, like the author of TFA, I guess you just don't want to spend time at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because a tool can be used in a particular fashion, doesn't make that use legal. I do agree that a good lawyer may be able to argue along similar lines to yours to get him off. The problem is that could get expanded out to cover other, less questionable, situations. For example, if someone is on a broadband connection with a Windows 98 machine and file sharing enabled, I can technically connect to their system using standard Windows sharing. If they had made their whole C: drive available, intending it to be accessible on their home network, I could get to anything on the system. Technically, I am only using the tools as they were designed, but I am still using them to access a system I should not be accessing. That's where I see the breakdown in the argument, this area was not supposed to be accessed and the guy had to try to access it.
I think sirwired hit it for the analogy. The normal procedure was bypassed to complete the sale. Though, the counter argument to this would be that the guy in the article did, in a manner of speaking, use the normal procedure (This is where the analogy starts to break down). So the question becomes, is it valid to utilitze an automated system to buy something, before the seller intends for that system to be used? Since there was not a public posting of the sale, I think it would be a safe assumption that there was no intention to sell, at that time, and so that invalidates the claim that the seller had made an affirmative action to sell something. Of course, that is going to hinge on the question of, if they had set the item to auctionable in their database, is that an affirmative action? I have a feeling that this is probably going to be one of those times were the courts are going to have to look at the implications of both answers and try to rule in a way to protect society from the consequences. If we allow this type of action it is going to create a huge burden on sellers to make sure that everything is completly locked down. On the other hand, invalidating sales where the buyer figured out the system and circumvented it does not seem to create a burden.
I personally don't see how he has a leg to stand on
Without going into the argument about the enforcibility of EULA's in general, this one specifically probably isn't going to last long. Whether the makes of Second Life like it or not they have essentially created a banking situation. All of the in-game items have a real world value, by design. The laws in the US regulate pretty heavily what a bank or financial institution can and can't do. One thing they are not allowed to do is just close an account and keep or discard what is currently contained in the account.
Along the same lines, the guy committed fraud. And he's probably going to end up nailed for it. But the SL makers will probably have to, at least, refund him the value of the assets they were holding for him.
At a guess their TOS and/or EULA claims about not being responsible for continued access are going to last in court about as long as a snowball in hell. Because it can be directly shown that the in game assets have a real world value, and they are acting as a broker for such assets, they are probably about to be introduced to all of the laws pertaining to being an asset broker. This is one of the reasons MMOG's are trying really hard to prevent virtual items from becomming property, it would essentially transform the MMOG companies into banks, and they would get saddled with all of the laws which go with them.
Now, in this particular instance, the guy is probably going to lose (or I damn well hope so). He manipulated a computer system to profit. Yes, the system should have been secured better, still insted of reporting the flaw he exploited it for financial gain. In most states that's called fraud. Just because you discover a security weakness, does not mean you can exploit said weakness. Better yet, by the time the trial is over, he will be on public record admitting that he did this. I expect that this will later be used at his criminal trial to show that he willfully exploted a system weakness to commit fraud. Not a smart choice.
The other thing I see comming out of this is that Second Life is either going to end up shut down or suddenly find that it has to start paying a lot of attention to banking laws. You cannot just setup shop as a company to hold someone's assets, and then expect to be able to disclaim responsibility. I expect that this is giong to make for some very interesting articles on slashdot over the next few years.
I am not a lawyer so this is just talking out my arse. But I don't think that having the intention to sell something is going to be the same as actually moving to sell soemthing.
To use an analogy, and probably get bogged down in the details of it: I have a monitor sitting in my garage which I intend to sell, and I forget to close the garage some times. I have not, however, actually put it up for sale. Assuming that someone knew my intention, and saw it sitting in my garage; would they be justified in going into my garage, taking the monitor and leaving a 10 dollar bill in it's place? They might claim that all they did was buy the monitor I was planning on selling. Considering that I never got to be involved in setting the price, and there was no real agreement, this would end up as a wierd case of theft, and probably show up on Fark.
On top of that, they guy admits to using a security flaw in the system to do this. This goes back to the argument about locks on doors. Even if the lock on my front door is a really horrible brand, and not worth two cents, it is still breaking and entering to pick it and come into my house.
And the 14th Amendment. However, sadly the government sees it the opposite way. If the Amendment doesn't strictly prohibit them from doing something (like what the NSA is doing) then the government will continue until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
you and I must be reading different 14th amendments. The only thing I see in there that comes close to this is:
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
There's nothing in there to permit the federal government to do anything it pleases. On the other hand, yes the Supreme Court needs to be the one to make this decision and with the way that they have been ruling in the past 100 years, I'm not expecting much.
Are there any laws that mean anything to this administration?
Lots, most of them just happen to have been written by people working for Stalin.
Why is there less of a push for a privacy amendment than there is for a let-Arnold-run-for-president amendment?
One is a pointless waste of time, which does not endager the continued centralization of power away from the people. The other would threaten the work already performed on carefully constructing a police state that the people will accept. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Telephone conversations would fall more in line with the "papers" as odd as this seems. Keep in mind that, at the time the Constitution was written, phones did not exist. The main form of communication was physical mail, and "papers" was meant to cover this. In much the same way that I do not own the phone lines, over which my conversation carries I do not own the US Postal system. Still, when I send a letter I have a reasonable expectation of privacy of that letter. Since the Constitution was intended as a living document, to be interpreted as times changes, the courts have extended the Fourth Amendment to cover telephone conversations.
Also, if you want to get really nitpicky about what is actually written in the US Constitution look at the 9th and 10th Amendments closely.
Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Just because it isn't listed, does not mean it does not exist. The Bill of Rights was not meant to be an all inclusive list. In fact, what we are seeing now is an example of one of the arguments against it: that people would treat it as an exhustive list and use it as an excuse to claim that other rights do not exist. For example, even if there isn't an explicit right to privacy doesn't mean we don't have one.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
This one has been dead for a while. Essentially it says that any power not explicitly given to the Federal Government in the Constitution cannot be wielded by the Federal Government. If you ever get bored spend some time reading the Constitution and try to justify every part of the current Federal Government within it's mandate, I've not been able to do this.
I don't think it's that far of a streach to assume that they knew from the get go that this program would never have passed Constitutional muster. With FISA warrants the NSA/FBI/CIA/ can go do what they want, and then ask the court if it was OK up to 72 hours after the collection has started. Evenatully they have to go back to the court and ask for an extension, if they want to keep it up. The down side is that they have to actually state what they are after and stop collecting once they have it. Somehow, the TLA groups decided that this was "cumbersome". How in the world is it cumbersome to ask for permission, in a secret court, after you have already started collecting? It's not. The only reason to avoid going before the FISA court and asking permission is that you know, or are reasonably certain that they will say, "no." Both of the programs, which have come to light recently, are in the same boat. The NSA must have assumed that the courts would have shut them down, so they did everything they could to avoid the courts. Now that they have been caught red-handed they are trying to find an excuse to avoid being nailed to the wall for it. On the same token, the congressional members who were briefed and didn't raise objections should be thrown out of office for failing the public trust.
None of that is really suprising, humans do not invent new ideas, all they do is synthesise all of the information and ideas they have been exposed to and put it together in new ways. If you spend enough time with any fictional race you can eventually pick apart what influences the author had in the back of his head when that race was created. Some times this will be obvious, some times it won't.
Also, JRR Tolkien didn't just make up all of his races, most of them existed in various folklore and mythology in much the same way he presented them. For example, how much different is Elrond from Oberon? Orcs, trolls, goblins, are all there in old folklore, Tolkien just put it all together in a really good way. Though it is true that modern fantasy derives heavily from his work.
Riiiiight, I think you'll find that there are assholes on both sides. When you get bored with your current character try a horde character and go out to Hillsbrad. Some of the quests out there, like the entire Battle for Hillsbrad chain, are nearly impossibe because of alliance out there ganking.
And Strangle Thorn Vale is just a clusterfuck. Both sides are out there ganking all day long.
In all, I find that the horde players tend to be eaiser to deal with, as allies. Barrens chat is bad, but the amount of crap spewing on the General Channel, and being yelled in Goldshire is just over whelming.
Hmm, use Jack Thompson to stop in-game ads. Brilliant!
What I can't wait to see is who gets sued when one of the ads hosting servers gets hacked. For example, this topic reminded me about the ads in Rainbow 6:Lockdown. Since I first played it, I thought it would be funny to replace the in-game ads with porn. Now, the ads are just comming from some web server, donwloaded and then displayed, how hard will it be to find out what site the game is looking at, redirect the host to a local web server, and send whatever images I want?
How long before someone decides it would be funny to hack the ad server and goatse everyone playing that game?
Keep in mind that the security system is installed by the lowest bidder. If that camera wasn't required to have full video capture, the contracter would not go high end where it was not needed, in order to keep his bid down and profits up. Yes, the militray does spend a lot of money on security, and when they have an area they want fully covered, that is in the spec. If they didn't see the need for it though, it would not have ended up there.
First of all, I'll think you'll find the US was not officially at war with anybody, it was all "advisors to the south vietnam government etc"
Ok, so Vietnam was not a fully declared war, it was an congressionally authorized military action. It was still a recognized militay action. It's expect that people will die in such.
Secondly, killing kids is killing kids, doesn't matter if it's in a war or not.
And if said kid is shooting a rifle your way, is it the same? Or what about a kid holding a live gernade (sans spoon) running at you? Yes, there were certainly some questionable actions in the Vietnam Conflict, but many of the kids killed were far from innocent bystanders, whether by their own choice, or the actions of the adults takeing care of them. Killing kids is not something that should be done if it can be avoided, unfortunatly it's not always an option.
And last but not least, 3 million people is a lot more than 20 odd people in a school. Columbine sucked, but let's try to keep things in perspective, ok?
I'm not the one who tried to draw equivilence between these wars and Columbine.
You never did answer my question: is there any difference, in your mind, between two kids killing their classmates in a school and a military action? (changed to avoid the splitting of hairs).
but if there was just a SINGLE camera taking care of the Dep. of Defense of the most powerful country in the world and it had a capture rate so slow that it couldn't grab the frame where the the 747 appeared, you'd need at least to fire somebody because it's insane.
Why? The type of threat that camera was protecting against wasn't going to be moving at high speed. You don't need to store full motion video when you can be reasonably sure that someone breaking in isn't going to cover the entire field of vision in 1 second. Moreover, there are probably plenty of sensors inside the Pentagon and around all points of entrance to keep things secure. Overall, video is a poor way to secure a building. It's far too easy for a guard to not see something. On the other hand the electronic monitoring devices don't fall asleep and don't blink.
Hell, I would bet that the Pentagon's security system includes enough sensors in the grounds around the building that they would be able to track you as you walked in. There are sensor systems which use a buried cable in the ground and trigger an alarm anytime you walk over the cable. [1] Fact is, you don't just walk into a secured area, without being noticed. Yes, like that one reporter, you might get into an unsecured area of a secure base; good luck getting to anything the military wants secured (inside jobs not withstanding).
It's not suprising at all that this camera is just capturing 1 frame every second. That's fairly normal to keep storage costs down. A camera isn't going to be used to secure an area, it's just used to get pictures of the people who your security system detected comming in.
Spoken like someone who has no clue how security cameras work.
Most security cameras don't record continuous 30 frame per second video. It's impractical from a storage point of view and not usually needed. Very often security cameras will only take 1 image every second, this interval changes somewhat though. Looking at the video, this seems to be the case. The only time full 30fps video is captured is when the area needs a high level of security to justify the cost of storage (tapes or hard drives), the side of a building probably isn't going to cut it.
While I do find the whole idea distrubing, I don't see a reason to stop it.
What happened at Columbine was a sad tragedy, though mostly a symptom of the underlying problems with our society. However, no matter how sad an occurance, I still can't see why we would need censorship about it. If the author of this game really wants to make such a game, he is free to do so. If someone wants to stand up and call the two kids, who commited these acts, heroes, so be it. Now, there may be some backlash, e.g. everyone calls you an asshole and no one is willing to associate with you, but then those are just the consequences of your actions.
Yup, this guy was stupid to make this game. Jack Thompson will probably be all over it, calling for censorship. Many normal people will also be so horrified by this game that they might agree with Thompson. The creator is probably going to face repercussions, like death threats and lack of job opportunities. I still support his right to make the game.
So there is no difference, in your mind, between two kids killing their classmates in a school and a declared war?
Thanks for the info, I support one Mac and don't get to play with it much, so I am a newbie on OSX.
It is standard police procedure in a criminal investigation to subpoena or to get a search warrant for telephone records. Nothing new or sensational to see here, move along.
This would be nothing new, if this is what they had done. Instead, the NSA coerced the phone companies into giving them information which would normally require a warrant to get. They then handed that data over to the FBI to weed out leaks.
The problem isn't that they have the data, it's how they got it. If the FBI wanted to conduct and investigation about a leak, great, that's part of their job. They could then request a warrant for the records, look at them and go from there. It's that whole pesky fourth amendment which this is running afoul of:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What the NSA did was grab information, which should be private, without the whole "Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." We are supposed to be a nation of laws, that applies doubly to the government. The reason for warrants to to provide oversight of the executive branch by the judicial branch and by the public. Yes, there are times where it is necessary to keep a warrant from being public, this is what the FISA act did, it setup a process by which security agencies could react to a situation, and get a warrant retroactivly. Bush's claim that the process impedes investigations is pure bullshit. What it impedes is his unchecked power to do as he pleases. The NSA/FBI/CIA can go get whatever data they want, and ask a judge about it after the fact. They can do everything they have done, including the wiretappung and data collection when they want to do it. The only restriction placed on it is that they have to go before a judge within 72 hours and justify their actions. Sending a lawyer over to the FISA court, after the fact, does nothing to impede investigations, unless those investigations violate the Constitution.
What they are doing is trying to silence the leaks which make them look bad. The current administration has been beat up pretty bad over it's actions. Those actions would not have been know without the leaks; so, they aim to silence the leakers.
Never claimed it was, just trying to give the parent some information to make his life eaiser. On the other hand, how is 6 steps, none of which involve removing one's hand from the mouse (and one of which could be skipped) all that difficult? The problem with it is that it's a fairly unknown feature, beyond that, it pretty much follows the same interface assumptions normally made in windows applications. For most windows apps, you can normally right-click on something to change its properties. If you ever have a chance to watch a user with an application, which breaks this assumption, you'll get to see some confused looks. This is one of the reasons that the Mac -> Windows jump, and the opposite as well, cause such problems: the interface asumptions are different. Same problem with Windows -> Linux. Users get used to one set of assumptions, and they don't really want to re-learn them.
In the end, I recommend that people use whatever system does the job they need done, all things being equal, pick the one you like. For writing documents, email and surfing the web, just use the OS you are most comfortable with. It's because of this that I now find myself supporting a Mac (yes, I do system support). I have one user who is used to a Mac, and likes working with it. Of course, because of some of the programs we use he also uses a PC for some of his work, but that cannot be avoided (our primary application is Windows only, and there are no equivilent alternatives).
I suppose you think that the process you described to restore the Classic Start menu behavior is a lot easier/intuitive for a newbie to figure out than any similar configuration operations on a Linux system - assuming that a newbie would even know that such an operation could be performed.
No, it's a PITA. MS has always been good at making things easy on the average user, the Start menu was pretty good but XP has managed to screw that up, I'm even more worried about Vista. But then, another thing MS has always been good at is driving the market to what MS wants. The point I was making was that the complaint about information overload was solvable, if you were willing to put some time into it.
For a similar change on a Linux system, I don't expect that it would be that much different. The only thing I would worry about on a Linux system is that it would probably be different, depending on which GUI I am using. Overall, I'm sure that a user, who had a clue you could do such, would be able to google for either process. The only possible hitch on the Linux side would be that they might not know that they need to differentiate between KDE and Gnome (we'll ignore others for brevity). But, considering that such a user has gotten that far, I would expect them to make it the rest of the way.
We all get comfortable with what we use regularly. The parent post was decrying the assumptions made with a windows system, calling it being "blinded by the 'Windows Way'. He then turns around and complains about PC's not doing things the 'Mac Way'. Each OS makes certain assumptions and certain trade-offs, none of them are more "right" than the others. In the end, you should try to use the best tool for the job. For example, my home server runs Debian becase it's easy to setup and administer. It does not even have a GUI installed, everything is done via command line. I don't need the overhead of a GUI to run a web/mail/ftp server. On my home desktop I run XP because I like to play games. Yes, WINE can make that possible on Linux, I just don't see then need to screw around with it. I want to go out and buy a game, install it, and play; not spend an hour trying to make it work. Linux does not offer me anything on my desktop to make it worth the work.
Speaking of being blinded to alternatives... It damn well does matter what is running and what isn't. Every program you have spinning its wheels in the background is eating up memory. I don't want a copy of Visio or Word running in the background when I am trying to play a game, when I close it, I want it to close. If it doesn't close, or I leave it open, I want an indication of that.
Now, the Start menu, I'll agree with you on, partly. The co-mingling of system functions and program functions is annoying. Why MS decided to let system functions get outside the control panel, I'll never know. Though, I do think that the Run command should be in the program list, as it is a program. Then again, I'm an old DOS junkie, so maybe I just like knowing my old friend the command line is there for me. (Am I the only one who still does network drive mapping at the command line?)
The Start menu in Vista is absolutely ridiculous, I use OS X mostly, but also have a PC, and EVERY time I open that thing I have to stare at it for 2-3 seconds before the information overload is over. It is crazy
You do know you can customize that right? First off, I would recommend going back to the classic menu (I prefer this myself).
- Right-Click the Start menu
- Click Properties in the context menu
- Select the Start Menu tab
- Select the radio button for Classic Start Menu
- If you feel so inclined check out the Customize options
- Once you are done, click the OK button
Next, organize your program folders, so that they make sense to you. Click and drag stuff where you want it. To alphabetize a folder, right click in it and click Sort by Name.But then, like the author of TFA, I guess you just don't want to spend time at it.