Re:I know what I would do...
on
Paintable LCDs
·
· Score: 1
I would imagine that, in the end, you would just have to end up using this stuff as a better form of the current camoflogue. You would have it pre-programmed with the patternes for different environments, and it would switch depending upon what type of area you are in. i.e. as you crawl from under a bush to dirt, the suit would change color and pattern from a green, bushy color, to a brown dirt color. This would eliminate the problem of not having the right type of camoflogue on. Not to mention, that color matching could be done on the fly, to allow for better blending.
As an avid paintballer, I see this as a wonderful replacement to my current set of BDU's. They are great when I am in a foresty environment, but if I play a game where there is more dirt/desert, I stick out pretty badly.
As for the predator type camoflogue that keeps getting mentioned, I doubt that this stuff would work, for reasons already mentioned (angle, movement, etc.) We're gonna net to learn to bend light around an object before we get that sort of thing going.
One thing that seems to keep getting missed in all of this, is that Google has offices in Germany, conducts business in Germany, and should therefore make sure that they don't violate the laws in Germany. Seriously, if you are going to have a presence in a country, you shouldn't go flaunting their laws, just because its legal in your home country.
By way of disclosure, I am an American, and the thought of this sort of limitation on what Google can link to is distasteful to me; however Google has offices in Germany, and Germany has laws preventing this sort of thing. So, if a German court decides that Google was wrong in what they did, Google should suffer the consequences. End of Story. If you don't like the laws of a country, don't set up operations there, its that simple. I would expect US based companies to follow German laws, if they have a presence there, and I would expect German companies to follow US laws if they have a presence here(Russian companies too!). The only time I would expect a company to be exempt from a law, is if they don't have a physical presence.
As such, I could post a copy of the offending article, and be relativly safe, as long as I stay out of Germany. And a German national could crack the CD protections of the RIAA, and be realtively safe, as long as they stay out of the US. Its either that, or a lot of people need to start preparing a hell of a legal defence for violating Shira law by viewing porn.
Good, now that we have finally dispelled this horrible myth that school was about learning, we can finally get down to the true importance of schooling, which is, of course, indoctrinating childeren and young adults so that they don't think for themselves. After all, it would be dangerous if we actually encouraged cooperation, thinking and bettering one's self. Everyone should just sit down, shut-up and eat the crap that is feed to you everyday, without question. Moreover, you need to be properly prepared for a life of mindless repetative tasks doled out to you by the corporate heads.
Don't think, don't learn, and don't even try to do anything we haven't told you to do. It is this doctrine that you are going to school for. the sooner everyone accepts this, the better.
Oh, and by the way, while we are on the subject of not learning, please remit all of your books to the central bonfire for burning, we don't want you looking in those. Seig Heil!
I've also had one of those teachers that was better than the rest of the, feed you facts and assign mindless work, types. In my case it was a physics teacher that challenged us to think, and went out of his way to show us the better aspects of the discpline. Sadly, when I hit college, I ran into one of the worst physics teachers I have ever met. End result, I gave up on the subject and went into computers. But I digress. I went back to visit the good teacher, wanted to see how he was, and happened to be on the campus anyhow. Sadly, the system had finally broken him. He had become the same as the rest of the teachers, dull, and only feeding the students the basics of the subject that they needed to pass the class. It seems to be one of the more horrible parts of this screwed up education system. If a teacher tries to excel, and get his/her students to think, they just end up getting brow beat into submission by the rest of the system.
have a friend in the Army who is a CIo for a military hospital [he has a basic understanding of technology]. He has been told that he will be working for Microsoft next year!
That's ok, I've got a friend in the Army that is doing most of the admin work for the buildings he is stuck in right now. (Not sure the exact Army term for the unit size.)
He's a smart enough guy, but the fact that he had never even added RAM to his own machine before he got shipped out there kinda indicates his level of computer knowledge, a.k.a. not even enough to really be dangerous. Now, to his credit, he is picking it up fast, and knows to ask for help before doing something collosally stupid. But, if this is the type of admins the Army has running around in it, I'm glad most of their stuff runs windows. Ya, as a real OS its pretty bad, but its easy to install, and fix. (Reboot or Reload, that's about it.)
Agreed, don't stop yelling and screaming, but I think that all that Mimi Devlin did in her comment to the press:
We haven't received one e-mail in support of the Hollings bill," said Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Mimi Devlin.
was cater to the people who are going to vote for her in the next election, people like to feel important, even the one's who aren't. All I was saying was that without getting some big corp involved, on our side, we'd have been sunk from the word go. Its something to keep in mind for the next fight, we have to learn to play the corps against one another, and not just bash them all day long, as seems so common on/.
Excuse me, but last time I checked, my rights were inalienable and included everything that I didn't willingly give up for the good of society. It has nothing to do with what lawyers have deemed acceptable for me to have.
Perhaps its true that you are supposed to have those rights, but with the laws countermanding those rights, you are kinda in a bad position to enforce that ideal. Sure you can break the law, and as long as you don't get caught, you're ok. But if you get caught, you're likely to be punished to the point of willingly giving up those rights, just to be left alone. This is the way any government takes away the rights of the people. Technically, no one can take your rights away, but they can make it really harsh on you, if you don't give them up. Its all just a matter of your willingness and ability to fight for them.
"Until you have a positive assertion of what consumers' rights are, that debate is left in the hands of media companies' lawyers," said Mr. Krauss
It is for this reason that what Mr. Krauss said is very correct. We need some sort of nice definte laws stating that certain rights may not be restricted. This was the idea behind the Bill of Rights; define certain rights that must not be restricted, and that gives the Judical system a way to keep the congress in check, basically, the judges say, "Nope, that's unconstitutional" and suddenly a new law is absolutly dead. It would be nice to have some sort of law that could define what rights a person has to digital/media content, which cannot be restricted. That way, the judges have a real easy yard stick to measure new laws by. The judges would be able to say, "nope, that violates the digital bill of rights" And no matter how much money had gone into congress to pass the law it would be taken out and shot.
I hate to be the cynic to rain on your parade, ok, I don't realy hate it, but it sounds more polite to start off that way.
This was not a victory of the little guy over the huge corp. With heavy hitters like Intel lined up against this bill, its more like a Battle of the Titans than David vs. Goliath. I doubt the yelling and screaming of the masses had anything near the influence of the dollars of the tech sector. While I agree that this is still a great result, I just don't think we should be deluding ourselves about the reasons behind this victory.
What is so terrible about directed marketing (NOT SPAM), but advertising targeted at a particular group of people?
Perhaps I have missed your point here, but the problem is that, in many cases, people don't want it. I don't need some marketers lies dumped in my mail box each day. Worse yet, those same lies shouldn't be dumped in the mail boxes of people who don't understand what they are reading, enough to help them see the lies in it. Sure, there are truth in advertizing laws, but these are really just for show, companies are able to get around them by performing studies that are completly slanted. Or with the practice of puffing, "Best in the World!!" (not likely, but they are allowed to say it.).
The idea of stopping directed marketing, is just a protective reaction. I wouldn't want my mother being subjected to Compaq ads the next time she is looking for a new computer. She's a smart lady, but not real computer savvy, and might not realize that buying a Compaq is asking for me to disown her. I realize that its too much to hope that people will work to make informed choices all of the time. But at least, having them in the dark enough to ask those around them, that know better, is better than having them make choices based on marketing lies.
Why does this bill not go after third party programs/spyware such as Gator?
Granted, that would be nice, but you have to start somewhere. I think it was some eastern philosopher that said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step."
Think about it, this is that first step. Don't disparage it because it doesn't do everything for everyone. Come on, lets hear a huzzah for at least getting this much, assuming it passes, and survives the courts.
I was being a bit sarcastic about the good for them bit. I was trying to point out the futility of it. Sorry, I guess I could have worded that better.
Think about it this way. When you buy a BMW, you deprive someone of food.
And how exactly is that, might I ask? I don't recall studing the law of conservation of wealth. I guess, if one assumes that I would have given that money to charity, it would have fed someone. Though that's not very likely, I already give to charity, once a year, whether I like it our not (Taxes). So, insted, that money sits in my bank account, instead of circulating in the economy. Further, the more money that is sitting in bank accounts, doing nothing, the lower the demand for services and goods, the less man-hours that are needed to produces those goods, the fewer jobs there are. So we end up with more people out of work and hungry, because I'm not spending my money.
Its this sort of thing that has the US market depressed at the moment. No one is spending money, so companies are not making money, so they are cutting wages and laying people off. The result, less disposable income, so people are spending less, driving demand further down. Its a pretty nasty cycle, and it will continue until the demand for products levels off. Then, as people buy stuff, more money gets into the economy, there is a greater demand for goods, so companies have to expand to meet that need. This creates jobs and drives up the wage for a skilled worker. (Unskilled will continue to be paid nothing, unless, by some miracle, we have more jobs than people.) So, I must disagree, my not buying a BMW will not feed someone. If anything, stopping spending will help depress the economy.
but pouring money down the bottomless hole that has become the "3rd" world is simply a no-win situation.
Damn, some one beat me to this point, but I'd like to expand it a bit.
Let us consider this "starving kids in Africa" problem for a moment. First thing that must be determined is, why are they starving?
Couple of reasons come to mind, lack of locally grown food; hoarding by a local corrupt government; ineffective aid; over-population.
So how do we avert these problems?
Ok, the lack of food problem is easy, send food. The US produces a pretty good surplus each year, there are even subsidies given out to farmers to not grow more, in order to bolster the price.(Good, bad, I don't care, just stating what happens.) And, I have to belive that other countries do as well. So we bundle that off to the starving kids.
Next problem, corrupt government hoarding.
This one is a bit trickier. This is probably a good place for the UN to step up, but it hasn't really. There is currently no mechanism to keep this in check, if the UN would get off its collective arses and set up secure supply routes, and actually blast the hell out of those that try to interrupt them, we might see some progress here, sadly, they would rather talk about it than do something.
Next we have the problem of ineffective aid.
Let us consider for a moment all of those, send a dollar and save this child's life commercials. Ok, I send the buck to help the kid. After admin costs, and logistics costs, say $0.50 makes it to that kid. Alright, better than nothing. Now, that money keeps that kid alive long enough to reach maturity and reproduce. So, he has 3 kids that he can't support, Now, I need to send $3 to support those kids. The point here, is that, unless the infrastructure is upgraded to allow the current population to support itself, we are just exacerbating the problem. Which brings me to the last noted problem
Over-population
This is really the root of the problem. There are too many people for the land to support, and all of those dollars we are sending to "help the children" are preventing the usual mechanisms that corrects this problem, famine, and disease. I know, its not a nice thing to say, and its even eaiser, me not being where the problem is. But, all the aid is doing, at the moment, is setting the stage for a larger human tragedy. Ok, we saved a million lives today, tomorrow we have three million to save, then nine million. What happens when the aid stops comming, what happens when the aid providing countries have a problem larger than a hiccup and the aid stops? Nine million people fighting for resources that couldn't support one million.
I'm not saying that we should stop the aid from comming, but its time to accept losses on the individual level, and use that aid to fix the problems in the system that is failing.
Its time to get the UN troops in there and dismantle the corrupt govenments, get the nations, like the US, to stop subsidsing non-growth, and send the surpluses to countries like this. We need to target the aid dollars at the real problem, not the symptoms, and sadly, a lot of people are going to have to die. (Flame away, its heartless, but its the solution. And no, my making due with less isn't going to magically make them richer, there is no law of conservation of wealth, economics is not thermodynamics.)
Hell the problem is the rich dip shits who pay those workers crap for wages so as to maximize a companie's profits.
This reminds me of the argument used every few years to raise the minimum wage. It sounds great on the surface, but its really just a broken idea.
Consider the minimum wage hike we had back around '96 (I think, forget the exact timing, and don't care.) Ok, so the minimum wage earner started earning $0.50 more an hour. Good for them, more money in thier pockets. But, was I the only one that happened to notice a corrosponding jump in the price of a hamburger? Its Econ 101 here, the cost of production went up, so a company is left with 2 options, 1)Eat the cost, and have a lower profit. 2)Charge more for the provided service. Guess which one they choose. Yup, number 2. So, the wages go up, the price of goods goes up, and hence the cost of living, congratulations you have now seen a textbook example of inflation in action. Everyone is making more dollars, but those dollars are worth less. This is why you see numbers like a million yen, but its really not worth a whole lot, its an inflated currency.
And this is an endless cycle, no matter what you do, there will always be a need for cheap labor. As such, by forcing the companies to pay out more to the workers, all you do is increse the cost of living.
Now, I will grant that this will be displaced in the case of globalization of the market, but that still isn't a solution. Its just a way to drain money out of one area of the world and inject it into another. But even this small good will eventually collapse, because eventually, those cheap workers become consumers, and the business will move its operation to a new source of cheap labor, and unless the previous locations's economy has become self-sustaining, it will collapse. So, come on, let's keep forcing the minimum wage up further and further, I can't wait to be paid $1,000,000 a week!
My condolences. Having been one of the "lucky" few to get a pre-release copy of XP Pro, I had high hopes. I like 2k, it beats the snot out of NT, so I thought that, just maybe, MS would get it close to right this time and XP might be a decent OS. Boy, was I ever wrong. Now, I will admit, I love some of my old DOS based games, so some of the problems I encountered were my fault. I should have ditched my old software for the new snazzy, high res, 3d, games. But some of the old ones were much better games (I haven't seen anything to compare to the Quest for Glory series). In the end, and after some network problems with Diablo 2, not to mention all of the security holes in XP, or, let me re-phrase that, the fact that XP IS a security hole, I ripped XP off my system and put Win2k back on. The only thing I miss about XP was the boot time, it was fast, then again, so was the crash time. If I can offer my opinion, and this is a message board, so I'll do it anyway, tell the lab instructors that, if they insist, you will install XP, but due to lack of training, lack of tools, lack of sanity, lack of any plausable thing, that you won't support XP. If they have troubles, you'll re-image it but won't even try to fix it. Might create some waves, but, if you're going to be the one doing all of the recovery work, and the one getting yelled at for the network not being secure, you should have some say as to what goes on your network. Best of luck with XP, you'll need it, but it won't help
I'm assuming that you are running some sort of Windows incarnation. So my question is, why don't you set it up on one of the NT itterations, force them to log on under an account that lets them do nothing more than they absolutly need? With Win2k you can get them pretty tightly locked in, have them log on with student specific accounts, and audit their activities. Sure they'll still crack the systems from time to time, but, it will stop a large part of them, and the ones that get past, and don't get the audit logs, you can nail to a cross in the back of the room as an example.
Sure, you'll also get lots of complaints from the users on your system, that can't install their favorite toolbar/bandwidth eater. Just tell them, too fu<king bad! Its not thier computer, they don't have any right to install software.
Harsh, yes, not very user friendly, yes. But, why the hell do they need that sort of stuff to do thier school work?
hah! We're Canadian! Such frivolous lawsuits would never occur in our great nation!
<sarcasm>hah! I live in the US, all I need to do is convince my government that you are a terrorist by launching an attack on my good name, and my government will beat your government into submission until they hand your over.</sarcasm>
Yes, even some of us here feel that the US government is overstepping in a lot of cases. Though, I do feel some pity for their situation, they get lambasted if they do nothing, they get lambasted if they do something. What are they to do?
"Dan Resler agreed to pay $4,150. [...] 'We believed strongly that we could win,' says Resler, 'but I was not prepared to spend $50,000 to do it. So, I settled.'".
That is horrible. It's like saying "I didn't do anything wrong but if I try to defend myself I'll ruin my life". It's redicilous to think that you only have a right to a fair trial if you have the money to do so. So I guess it's liberty and justice for those who can afford it. Hah
This begs the question, where the hell was the ACLU, EFF, or other "free speech" advocate organizations in all of this? If ever there was a lawsuit, or set of lawsuits, screaming for support of this kind, this one is it. I guess, not only is justice limited to the rich, but "free speech" supporters only help people out when it would get them in the healines. Sad really.
I just love those porn sites that hijack IE to helpfuly change your homepage, add some helpful bookmarks, slap some icons on your desktop and install a 900 dialer in your startup menu.
I have seen this done, it's a serious pain in the ass to fix. I would call it infecting the user with a troajn that has the purpose of being a pain to remove and making the site owners money in very probably illeagle ways.
They probably could be nailed for this sort of thing, problem is, who's gonna take them to court for it? Porn tends to be that dirty little secret everyone has, but no one is willing to admit, lest they become a social pariha. So these sites can just slink along under radar, and continue hijacking browsers. Would be an interesting civil case to see get tried though.
If I buy a bushel of pot from somewhere where it is legal to sell (is there such a place?) over the web, and stupidly have it delivered to my home, then I'm the one who should be held exclusively liable for breaking US law. If the person who sold it to me subsequently visits the US, they should be free from prosecution, having not violated the law here.
From the article: "The conduct which underlies the indictment includes ElcomSoft's offering its AEBPR program for sale over the Internet, from a computer server physically located in the United States," the judge wrote. "Purchasers obtained copies of the program in the United States... Payments were directed to, and received by, an entity in the United States."
The difference here would be, in your analogy, the dope dealer would have come to the US, set up a distribution point, and a store front to sell it to you. So while, yes, you should be liable for the transaction too, the dope dealer is just as liable, because he set up shop inside the country that had the laws restricting such activity.
While I agree that the US going after Dimitri as it did was wrong (what he did was legal where he did it, and he wasn't the one to bundle it off to the US) it still does not mitigate the fact that Elcomsoft set up shop in the US, in violation of the US laws. Maybe those laws are wrong, and/or suck, but they are the current laws, and if you flaunt them, you should be prepared to pay the penalty. Though, I do hope that this case gets the DMCA killed.
(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.
I guess the only place that one might readily attack this agreement of use, is the definition of "unused computing power". Now, IANAL, but, from my limited perspective, this seems to be a rather vague term. Is a CPU cycle unused if it is sitting in the "System Idle Process"? Probably. Is a CPU cycle unsed if the machine is not turned on? Are you then violating the EULA by having your machine turned off, or the program not running? Of course, I didn't agree to give them the power necessary to run those CPU cycles.
As for storage space, what constitues "unused storage space"? Would any empty space on my hard drive then be considered availiable for thier use? What if that empty space was allocated for future expansion of a program or database, this is not really unused, just unutilitzed for its intended purpose. Moreover, we all know how well Windows runs when you start running out of disk space, so, some of the free space on your drive must invariably be allocated for this use. So we are left with another vauge, and inadaquite term. I don't think that this part of this EULA is going to hold water if it ever gets challenged.
And in response to the grandparent of this post, good luck hitting any LEO satellite with a missle. That's like trying to shoot a fly at 5000 yards with a.44. Talk about a feat!
Actually, hitting a satellite in orbit was done back in the '80's. Sure, it was by the US Air Force, but I don't think that they have a monopoly on cool weapons tech. ASAT missle
Got an email address for them? Would be nice to have it get dumped in a few spam lists. Turn the spammers back on the spammers and all. But then, that would be immoral, and none of us here would do that, would we?
That wouldn't really make any sense, MS dosen't want people sending you spam, it just increases their bandwidth usage.
If they really wanted to stop thier users from getting spammed, they would not have all of their users listed in the member directory by default.
Isn't it nice to have your email instantly published to a list for a spam bot to pick up?
So there should be blanket immunity for anyone who vends software in source form under the theory that anyone who has access to the source must exercise due dilligence to ensure that the software is appropriate for the situation in which it is deployed.
So no matter how obfuscated and buggy your code is, I become responsible for it now because choose to use it? Further, despite the fact that I am not a programmer, I am expected to know enough about programming to be able to decipher your code, and impliment fixes. If this is the stance adopted by this type of law, a lot of users are gonna run right back to Microsoft. Why, because they will feel a little safer knowing that the company that released it can be held accountable for it.
I guess this is good, it will keep the non-programming types from polluting the purity of the open source movement. Afterall, no one want to have open source software actually become a serious main stream competitor for Microsoft, et al. This lack of accountability will keep it all nice and safe on the fringes.
I think the Open Source Software mede YOU responsable of the soft since you can modify the code, if you want.
You are making one very invalid assumption with this. For the average programmer it would be simple enough to fix a security hole in an open source piece of software. But, what about the rest of us? There are a lot of people that use computers, and some who have started using open source software, but have no knowledge of programming. And further have no need to learn it. I have started using Linux, and it is nice enough, but if it came down to it, I wouldn't be able to modify the kernel in any useful way. So, I am stuck relying on the word of the people who maintain the release version (in my case Red Hat). So, am I responsible for the problems of the software beacuse I'm not a programmer? This would, of course, further relegate most Open Source software to the fringes. Businesses aren't going to want to keep programmers on staff, just to fix an open source projects's security lapses. They will go right back to closed source software, where they will feel secure, becasue when the $#!^ hits the fan, they can blame someone else, and recover some of thier losses. Whether or not that sense of security is false.
Slashdot Mirror
I would imagine that, in the end, you would just have to end up using this stuff as a better form of the current camoflogue. You would have it pre-programmed with the patternes for different environments, and it would switch depending upon what type of area you are in. i.e. as you crawl from under a bush to dirt, the suit would change color and pattern from a green, bushy color, to a brown dirt color. This would eliminate the problem of not having the right type of camoflogue on. Not to mention, that color matching could be done on the fly, to allow for better blending.
As an avid paintballer, I see this as a wonderful replacement to my current set of BDU's. They are great when I am in a foresty environment, but if I play a game where there is more dirt/desert, I stick out pretty badly.
As for the predator type camoflogue that keeps getting mentioned, I doubt that this stuff would work, for reasons already mentioned (angle, movement, etc.) We're gonna net to learn to bend light around an object before we get that sort of thing going.
One thing that seems to keep getting missed in all of this, is that Google has offices in Germany, conducts business in Germany, and should therefore make sure that they don't violate the laws in Germany. Seriously, if you are going to have a presence in a country, you shouldn't go flaunting their laws, just because its legal in your home country.
By way of disclosure, I am an American, and the thought of this sort of limitation on what Google can link to is distasteful to me; however Google has offices in Germany, and Germany has laws preventing this sort of thing. So, if a German court decides that Google was wrong in what they did, Google should suffer the consequences. End of Story. If you don't like the laws of a country, don't set up operations there, its that simple. I would expect US based companies to follow German laws, if they have a presence there, and I would expect German companies to follow US laws if they have a presence here(Russian companies too!). The only time I would expect a company to be exempt from a law, is if they don't have a physical presence. As such, I could post a copy of the offending article, and be relativly safe, as long as I stay out of Germany. And a German national could crack the CD protections of the RIAA, and be realtively safe, as long as they stay out of the US. Its either that, or a lot of people need to start preparing a hell of a legal defence for violating Shira law by viewing porn.
Good, now that we have finally dispelled this horrible myth that school was about learning, we can finally get down to the true importance of schooling, which is, of course, indoctrinating childeren and young adults so that they don't think for themselves. After all, it would be dangerous if we actually encouraged cooperation, thinking and bettering one's self. Everyone should just sit down, shut-up and eat the crap that is feed to you everyday, without question. Moreover, you need to be properly prepared for a life of mindless repetative tasks doled out to you by the corporate heads.
Don't think, don't learn, and don't even try to do anything we haven't told you to do. It is this doctrine that you are going to school for. the sooner everyone accepts this, the better.
Oh, and by the way, while we are on the subject of not learning, please remit all of your books to the central bonfire for burning, we don't want you looking in those. Seig Heil!
I've also had one of those teachers that was better than the rest of the, feed you facts and assign mindless work, types. In my case it was a physics teacher that challenged us to think, and went out of his way to show us the better aspects of the discpline. Sadly, when I hit college, I ran into one of the worst physics teachers I have ever met. End result, I gave up on the subject and went into computers. But I digress. I went back to visit the good teacher, wanted to see how he was, and happened to be on the campus anyhow. Sadly, the system had finally broken him. He had become the same as the rest of the teachers, dull, and only feeding the students the basics of the subject that they needed to pass the class. It seems to be one of the more horrible parts of this screwed up education system. If a teacher tries to excel, and get his/her students to think, they just end up getting brow beat into submission by the rest of the system.
have a friend in the Army who is a CIo for a military hospital [he has a basic understanding of technology]. He has been told that he will be working for Microsoft next year!
That's ok, I've got a friend in the Army that is doing most of the admin work for the buildings he is stuck in right now. (Not sure the exact Army term for the unit size.)
He's a smart enough guy, but the fact that he had never even added RAM to his own machine before he got shipped out there kinda indicates his level of computer knowledge, a.k.a. not even enough to really be dangerous. Now, to his credit, he is picking it up fast, and knows to ask for help before doing something collosally stupid. But, if this is the type of admins the Army has running around in it, I'm glad most of their stuff runs windows. Ya, as a real OS its pretty bad, but its easy to install, and fix. (Reboot or Reload, that's about it.)
Keep up the yelling and screaming!
/.
Agreed, don't stop yelling and screaming, but I think that all that Mimi Devlin did in her comment to the press:
We haven't received one e-mail in support of the Hollings bill," said Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Mimi Devlin.
was cater to the people who are going to vote for her in the next election, people like to feel important, even the one's who aren't. All I was saying was that without getting some big corp involved, on our side, we'd have been sunk from the word go. Its something to keep in mind for the next fight, we have to learn to play the corps against one another, and not just bash them all day long, as seems so common on
Excuse me, but last time I checked, my rights were inalienable and included everything that I didn't willingly give up for the good of society. It has nothing to do with what lawyers have deemed acceptable for me to have.
Perhaps its true that you are supposed to have those rights, but with the laws countermanding those rights, you are kinda in a bad position to enforce that ideal. Sure you can break the law, and as long as you don't get caught, you're ok. But if you get caught, you're likely to be punished to the point of willingly giving up those rights, just to be left alone. This is the way any government takes away the rights of the people. Technically, no one can take your rights away, but they can make it really harsh on you, if you don't give them up. Its all just a matter of your willingness and ability to fight for them.
"Until you have a positive assertion of what consumers' rights are, that debate is left in the hands of media companies' lawyers," said Mr. Krauss
It is for this reason that what Mr. Krauss said is very correct. We need some sort of nice definte laws stating that certain rights may not be restricted. This was the idea behind the Bill of Rights; define certain rights that must not be restricted, and that gives the Judical system a way to keep the congress in check, basically, the judges say, "Nope, that's unconstitutional" and suddenly a new law is absolutly dead. It would be nice to have some sort of law that could define what rights a person has to digital/media content, which cannot be restricted. That way, the judges have a real easy yard stick to measure new laws by. The judges would be able to say, "nope, that violates the digital bill of rights" And no matter how much money had gone into congress to pass the law it would be taken out and shot.
I hate to be the cynic to rain on your parade, ok, I don't realy hate it, but it sounds more polite to start off that way.
This was not a victory of the little guy over the huge corp. With heavy hitters like Intel lined up against this bill, its more like a Battle of the Titans than David vs. Goliath. I doubt the yelling and screaming of the masses had anything near the influence of the dollars of the tech sector. While I agree that this is still a great result, I just don't think we should be deluding ourselves about the reasons behind this victory.
What is so terrible about directed marketing (NOT SPAM), but advertising targeted at a particular group of people?
Perhaps I have missed your point here, but the problem is that, in many cases, people don't want it. I don't need some marketers lies dumped in my mail box each day. Worse yet, those same lies shouldn't be dumped in the mail boxes of people who don't understand what they are reading, enough to help them see the lies in it. Sure, there are truth in advertizing laws, but these are really just for show, companies are able to get around them by performing studies that are completly slanted. Or with the practice of puffing, "Best in the World!!" (not likely, but they are allowed to say it.).
The idea of stopping directed marketing, is just a protective reaction. I wouldn't want my mother being subjected to Compaq ads the next time she is looking for a new computer. She's a smart lady, but not real computer savvy, and might not realize that buying a Compaq is asking for me to disown her. I realize that its too much to hope that people will work to make informed choices all of the time. But at least, having them in the dark enough to ask those around them, that know better, is better than having them make choices based on marketing lies.
Why does this bill not go after third party programs/spyware such as Gator?
Granted, that would be nice, but you have to start somewhere. I think it was some eastern philosopher that said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step."
Think about it, this is that first step. Don't disparage it because it doesn't do everything for everyone. Come on, lets hear a huzzah for at least getting this much, assuming it passes, and survives the courts.
I was being a bit sarcastic about the good for them bit. I was trying to point out the futility of it. Sorry, I guess I could have worded that better.
Think about it this way. When you buy a BMW, you deprive someone of food.
And how exactly is that, might I ask? I don't recall studing the law of conservation of wealth. I guess, if one assumes that I would have given that money to charity, it would have fed someone. Though that's not very likely, I already give to charity, once a year, whether I like it our not (Taxes). So, insted, that money sits in my bank account, instead of circulating in the economy. Further, the more money that is sitting in bank accounts, doing nothing, the lower the demand for services and goods, the less man-hours that are needed to produces those goods, the fewer jobs there are. So we end up with more people out of work and hungry, because I'm not spending my money.
Its this sort of thing that has the US market depressed at the moment. No one is spending money, so companies are not making money, so they are cutting wages and laying people off. The result, less disposable income, so people are spending less, driving demand further down. Its a pretty nasty cycle, and it will continue until the demand for products levels off. Then, as people buy stuff, more money gets into the economy, there is a greater demand for goods, so companies have to expand to meet that need. This creates jobs and drives up the wage for a skilled worker. (Unskilled will continue to be paid nothing, unless, by some miracle, we have more jobs than people.) So, I must disagree, my not buying a BMW will not feed someone. If anything, stopping spending will help depress the economy.
but pouring money down the bottomless hole that has become the "3rd" world is simply a no-win situation.
Damn, some one beat me to this point, but I'd like to expand it a bit.
Let us consider this "starving kids in Africa" problem for a moment. First thing that must be determined is, why are they starving?
Couple of reasons come to mind, lack of locally grown food; hoarding by a local corrupt government; ineffective aid; over-population.
So how do we avert these problems?
Ok, the lack of food problem is easy, send food. The US produces a pretty good surplus each year, there are even subsidies given out to farmers to not grow more, in order to bolster the price.(Good, bad, I don't care, just stating what happens.) And, I have to belive that other countries do as well. So we bundle that off to the starving kids.
Next problem, corrupt government hoarding.
This one is a bit trickier. This is probably a good place for the UN to step up, but it hasn't really. There is currently no mechanism to keep this in check, if the UN would get off its collective arses and set up secure supply routes, and actually blast the hell out of those that try to interrupt them, we might see some progress here, sadly, they would rather talk about it than do something.
Next we have the problem of ineffective aid.
Let us consider for a moment all of those, send a dollar and save this child's life commercials. Ok, I send the buck to help the kid. After admin costs, and logistics costs, say $0.50 makes it to that kid. Alright, better than nothing. Now, that money keeps that kid alive long enough to reach maturity and reproduce. So, he has 3 kids that he can't support, Now, I need to send $3 to support those kids. The point here, is that, unless the infrastructure is upgraded to allow the current population to support itself, we are just exacerbating the problem. Which brings me to the last noted problem
Over-population
This is really the root of the problem. There are too many people for the land to support, and all of those dollars we are sending to "help the children" are preventing the usual mechanisms that corrects this problem, famine, and disease. I know, its not a nice thing to say, and its even eaiser, me not being where the problem is. But, all the aid is doing, at the moment, is setting the stage for a larger human tragedy. Ok, we saved a million lives today, tomorrow we have three million to save, then nine million. What happens when the aid stops comming, what happens when the aid providing countries have a problem larger than a hiccup and the aid stops? Nine million people fighting for resources that couldn't support one million.
I'm not saying that we should stop the aid from comming, but its time to accept losses on the individual level, and use that aid to fix the problems in the system that is failing.
Its time to get the UN troops in there and dismantle the corrupt govenments, get the nations, like the US, to stop subsidsing non-growth, and send the surpluses to countries like this. We need to target the aid dollars at the real problem, not the symptoms, and sadly, a lot of people are going to have to die. (Flame away, its heartless, but its the solution. And no, my making due with less isn't going to magically make them richer, there is no law of conservation of wealth, economics is not thermodynamics.)
Hell the problem is the rich dip shits who pay those workers crap for wages so as to maximize a companie's profits.
This reminds me of the argument used every few years to raise the minimum wage. It sounds great on the surface, but its really just a broken idea.
Consider the minimum wage hike we had back around '96 (I think, forget the exact timing, and don't care.) Ok, so the minimum wage earner started earning $0.50 more an hour. Good for them, more money in thier pockets. But, was I the only one that happened to notice a corrosponding jump in the price of a hamburger? Its Econ 101 here, the cost of production went up, so a company is left with 2 options, 1)Eat the cost, and have a lower profit. 2)Charge more for the provided service. Guess which one they choose. Yup, number 2. So, the wages go up, the price of goods goes up, and hence the cost of living, congratulations you have now seen a textbook example of inflation in action. Everyone is making more dollars, but those dollars are worth less. This is why you see numbers like a million yen, but its really not worth a whole lot, its an inflated currency.
And this is an endless cycle, no matter what you do, there will always be a need for cheap labor. As such, by forcing the companies to pay out more to the workers, all you do is increse the cost of living.
Now, I will grant that this will be displaced in the case of globalization of the market, but that still isn't a solution. Its just a way to drain money out of one area of the world and inject it into another. But even this small good will eventually collapse, because eventually, those cheap workers become consumers, and the business will move its operation to a new source of cheap labor, and unless the previous locations's economy has become self-sustaining, it will collapse. So, come on, let's keep forcing the minimum wage up further and further, I can't wait to be paid $1,000,000 a week!
My condolences. Having been one of the "lucky" few to get a pre-release copy of XP Pro, I had high hopes. I like 2k, it beats the snot out of NT, so I thought that, just maybe, MS would get it close to right this time and XP might be a decent OS. Boy, was I ever wrong. Now, I will admit, I love some of my old DOS based games, so some of the problems I encountered were my fault. I should have ditched my old software for the new snazzy, high res, 3d, games. But some of the old ones were much better games (I haven't seen anything to compare to the Quest for Glory series). In the end, and after some network problems with Diablo 2, not to mention all of the security holes in XP, or, let me re-phrase that, the fact that XP IS a security hole, I ripped XP off my system and put Win2k back on. The only thing I miss about XP was the boot time, it was fast, then again, so was the crash time. If I can offer my opinion, and this is a message board, so I'll do it anyway, tell the lab instructors that, if they insist, you will install XP, but due to lack of training, lack of tools, lack of sanity, lack of any plausable thing, that you won't support XP. If they have troubles, you'll re-image it but won't even try to fix it. Might create some waves, but, if you're going to be the one doing all of the recovery work, and the one getting yelled at for the network not being secure, you should have some say as to what goes on your network. Best of luck with XP, you'll need it, but it won't help
I'm assuming that you are running some sort of Windows incarnation. So my question is, why don't you set it up on one of the NT itterations, force them to log on under an account that lets them do nothing more than they absolutly need? With Win2k you can get them pretty tightly locked in, have them log on with student specific accounts, and audit their activities. Sure they'll still crack the systems from time to time, but, it will stop a large part of them, and the ones that get past, and don't get the audit logs, you can nail to a cross in the back of the room as an example.
Sure, you'll also get lots of complaints from the users on your system, that can't install their favorite toolbar/bandwidth eater. Just tell them, too fu<king bad! Its not thier computer, they don't have any right to install software.
Harsh, yes, not very user friendly, yes. But, why the hell do they need that sort of stuff to do thier school work?
"I know where you live!"
hah! We're Canadian! Such frivolous lawsuits would never occur in our great nation!
<sarcasm>hah! I live in the US, all I need to do is convince my government that you are a terrorist by launching an attack on my good name, and my government will beat your government into submission until they hand your over.</sarcasm>
Yes, even some of us here feel that the US government is overstepping in a lot of cases. Though, I do feel some pity for their situation, they get lambasted if they do nothing, they get lambasted if they do something. What are they to do?
"Dan Resler agreed to pay $4,150. [...] 'We believed strongly that we could win,' says Resler, 'but I was not prepared to spend $50,000 to do it. So, I settled.'".
That is horrible. It's like saying "I didn't do anything wrong but if I try to defend myself I'll ruin my life". It's redicilous to think that you only have a right to a fair trial if you have the money to do so. So I guess it's liberty and justice for those who can afford it. Hah
This begs the question, where the hell was the ACLU, EFF, or other "free speech" advocate organizations in all of this? If ever there was a lawsuit, or set of lawsuits, screaming for support of this kind, this one is it. I guess, not only is justice limited to the rich, but "free speech" supporters only help people out when it would get them in the healines. Sad really.
I just love those porn sites that hijack IE to helpfuly change your homepage, add some helpful bookmarks, slap some icons on your desktop and install a 900 dialer in your startup menu.
I have seen this done, it's a serious pain in the ass to fix. I would call it infecting the user with a troajn that has the purpose of being a pain to remove and making the site owners money in very probably illeagle ways.
They probably could be nailed for this sort of thing, problem is, who's gonna take them to court for it? Porn tends to be that dirty little secret everyone has, but no one is willing to admit, lest they become a social pariha. So these sites can just slink along under radar, and continue hijacking browsers. Would be an interesting civil case to see get tried though.
If I buy a bushel of pot from somewhere where it is legal to sell (is there such a place?) over the web, and stupidly have it delivered to my home, then I'm the one who should be held exclusively liable for breaking US law. If the person who sold it to me subsequently visits the US, they should be free from prosecution, having not violated the law here.
... Payments were directed to, and received by, an entity in the United States."
From the article:
"The conduct which underlies the indictment includes ElcomSoft's offering its AEBPR program for sale over the Internet, from a computer server physically located in the United States," the judge wrote. "Purchasers obtained copies of the program in the United States
The difference here would be, in your analogy, the dope dealer would have come to the US, set up a distribution point, and a store front to sell it to you. So while, yes, you should be liable for the transaction too, the dope dealer is just as liable, because he set up shop inside the country that had the laws restricting such activity.
While I agree that the US going after Dimitri as it did was wrong (what he did was legal where he did it, and he wasn't the one to bundle it off to the US) it still does not mitigate the fact that Elcomsoft set up shop in the US, in violation of the US laws. Maybe those laws are wrong, and/or suck, but they are the current laws, and if you flaunt them, you should be prepared to pay the penalty. Though, I do hope that this case gets the DMCA killed.
(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.
I guess the only place that one might readily attack this agreement of use, is the definition of "unused computing power". Now, IANAL, but, from my limited perspective, this seems to be a rather vague term. Is a CPU cycle unused if it is sitting in the "System Idle Process"? Probably. Is a CPU cycle unsed if the machine is not turned on? Are you then violating the EULA by having your machine turned off, or the program not running? Of course, I didn't agree to give them the power necessary to run those CPU cycles.
As for storage space, what constitues "unused storage space"? Would any empty space on my hard drive then be considered availiable for thier use? What if that empty space was allocated for future expansion of a program or database, this is not really unused, just unutilitzed for its intended purpose. Moreover, we all know how well Windows runs when you start running out of disk space, so, some of the free space on your drive must invariably be allocated for this use. So we are left with another vauge, and inadaquite term. I don't think that this part of this EULA is going to hold water if it ever gets challenged.
And in response to the grandparent of this post, good luck hitting any LEO satellite with a missle. That's like trying to shoot a fly at 5000 yards with a .44. Talk about a feat!
Actually, hitting a satellite in orbit was done back in the '80's. Sure, it was by the US Air Force, but I don't think that they have a monopoly on cool weapons tech. ASAT missle
Got an email address for them? Would be nice to have it get dumped in a few spam lists. Turn the spammers back on the spammers and all. But then, that would be immoral, and none of us here would do that, would we?
That wouldn't really make any sense, MS dosen't want people sending you spam, it just increases their bandwidth usage.
If they really wanted to stop thier users from getting spammed, they would not have all of their users listed in the member directory by default.
Isn't it nice to have your email instantly published to a list for a spam bot to pick up?
So there should be blanket immunity for anyone who vends software in source form under the theory that anyone who has access to the source must exercise due dilligence to ensure that the software is appropriate for the situation in which it is deployed.
So no matter how obfuscated and buggy your code is, I become responsible for it now because choose to use it? Further, despite the fact that I am not a programmer, I am expected to know enough about programming to be able to decipher your code, and impliment fixes. If this is the stance adopted by this type of law, a lot of users are gonna run right back to Microsoft. Why, because they will feel a little safer knowing that the company that released it can be held accountable for it.
I guess this is good, it will keep the non-programming types from polluting the purity of the open source movement. Afterall, no one want to have open source software actually become a serious main stream competitor for Microsoft, et al. This lack of accountability will keep it all nice and safe on the fringes.
I think the Open Source Software mede YOU responsable of the soft since you can modify the code, if you want.
You are making one very invalid assumption with this. For the average programmer it would be simple enough to fix a security hole in an open source piece of software. But, what about the rest of us? There are a lot of people that use computers, and some who have started using open source software, but have no knowledge of programming. And further have no need to learn it. I have started using Linux, and it is nice enough, but if it came down to it, I wouldn't be able to modify the kernel in any useful way. So, I am stuck relying on the word of the people who maintain the release version (in my case Red Hat). So, am I responsible for the problems of the software beacuse I'm not a programmer? This would, of course, further relegate most Open Source software to the fringes. Businesses aren't going to want to keep programmers on staff, just to fix an open source projects's security lapses. They will go right back to closed source software, where they will feel secure, becasue when the $#!^ hits the fan, they can blame someone else, and recover some of thier losses. Whether or not that sense of security is false.