No DRM or Copy Protection has ever in the history of computer games survived uncracked for more than a few days! - Those days of 'exclusivity' does not do anything for sales vs. piracy so continuing to waste money on DRM and the like is stupid, plain and simple. Mind-boggling stupid.
Just make a great game, offer it inexpensively and make it really easy to install and play, and I'm sure people who like it will pay for it. But appear as a greedy MAFIAA-wannabe, make the game really hard to install, requiring hoops, leaps and bounces, semi-impossible to play (requiring online servers, validation and other crap) and sell it for a fortune, and you can be guaranteed that piracy will be rampant and nobody will pay out of their conscience.
And as many have mentioned already - money wasted on DRM is money not spent on making the game itself legendary, and that's a huge mistake!
Amazing! - The most suicidal people in the world. Nobody, and I mean nobody, seems to look where they're going. They enter intersections like they own the road and when two such people meet at an intersection, it has go bad.
A simple "yield to traffic from the right" would have prevented most of the accidents shown in the video.
But these guys just go, stopping for nothing. It's not like they go very fast - most of these happen at fairly low speed, evident from the victims (on bikes or on foot) being able to get up right away, so the brake distance would be fairly short, which makes it obvious that these drivers simply don't look or if they do either fail to recognize the danger or simply fail to hit the brake.
It's kind of funny - in a tragic way - that the old repeated-enough-to-become-true meme still works.
There wouldn't be all these arguments if we could *prove* that global warming exists and that it's man made. Note that there are two separate statements here that needs to be proven for the full monty.
Now, the first is all about historical data combined with modern data and interpretation of these. You can use them to plot graphs that show everything from "ice age approaching", over "no change" to "global warming". You can even mess with the data to make "a more obvious warming" as we've seen it done. As there's still a lot of arguments in this department it is obvious that there's no standard way, nor some carved-in-stone way, to work with these data.
The second statement assumes that the first exists, and seeks to explain why. It tends to focus on CO2 for some reason, despite the two obvious problems: The exact role of CO2 in the atmospheric greenhouse balance is unknown but it is assumed that it acts as a reflected energy blocker in the mix just as it does alone. Nobody knows for sure. The second problem is that much worse greenhouse gasses are also released in increasing amounts, methane in particular. So, working on reducing CO2 might not do anything except waste time and money.
Finally - Occams Razor. There was no human activity during past massive climate changes so what caused them and might that factor still be a work today? - The obvious culprit is the Sun. A change in output will affect the climate. I've even heard some respected climate scientists say "the Sun has no significant influence on Earth's climate" which is utter lunacy of course. Without the Sun the Earth would be a ball of ice, barely warmer than the surrounding space (warmer only due to radioactive materials and tidal forces), so of course the Sun has a huge influence. But minor changes, both in radiated heat and in high energy particles that interact with the Earths atmosphere in various ways, what does that do to the climate? - We don't know, but we know that something, most likely the Sun, caused the ice ages and the warming in between. It is by far the simplest explanation of any climate change we may or may not be observing today.
Actually I think he was a spoofer, playing on the age-old Trek vs. Wars feud. After all, true Trekkies hate Star Wars and all things from that universe, the Jedi in particular. Also bear in mind that the Church of Jedi have been officially recognized as a church now, which makes the "God Hates Jedi" a pretty obvious slogan...;)
The flipside to that is that in one swift move you destroy all the major american sports... because all the jocks will be killed in a few days.
The lesson from Columbine is that if you want to encourage excellence by giving special privileges and bullying rights to jocks and similar, and you repeatedly humiliate the misfits (here meant everybody not like the ideal student) in public, you're bound to run into psychopaths and sociopaths among the misfits with a clear and easy target - and a huge grudge. The result is most likely pretty bloody.
Trouble is... most schools still haven't learned this lesson and every day nerds, geeks and misfits are still being bullied by jocks in particular, and the schools allows this most of the time. Usually because they might lose a star-something if they try to stop it. If the victims are allowed to strike back, the result will be a massacre. Could be fun though... if you're one of the nerds...;)
Hehe... Reminds me of a story told to me by a friend... He's like 300 pounds (on a 6' frame) and looks like a fat slob, but make no mistake, he's strong as an ox. He plays american football and does weightlifting and so on, and he's a major role playing geek. Some moron tried to make a name with his friend by calling him fat on the street. My friend stopped, turned and asked "What did you say?!". The moron repeated it and stepped up to my friend. "You don't want to fight me, trust me" he said, looking down on the moron almost a head shorter. The moron now took a swing at my friends massive gut and hit nothing that hurt. My friend now swung his hammer-like fist hitting the moron directly in the face, and down he went. My friend followed in a fluid motion landing with his knee directly on the morons chest with all his weight. Needless to say, the fight was very much over now. A broken nose and some badly bruised ribs was the price the moron paid for trying to score some cheap points with his friends - who ran as soon as my friend hit back. It's only fun to bully people who can't defend themselves.
For some reason fat people get called names a lot, but if you pick a fight with them remember this: They're heavily padded and they weigh a lot so if they get to land or sit on you, it's game over. You cannot move a 300 pound guy sitting on you. Even if you're strong the leverage is all wrong. Squirm too much and the fat guy might end up sitting on your neck and then you're one wrong move away from spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair having people changing your diapers.
Even if you are armed with a knife it's no good being on the ground with the fat guy on top of you. There's a lot of blubber to cut through before hitting anything that hurts, and your angles are all wrong. Oh, and if you try it, chances are that the fat guy - like my friend - just grabs your head and bangs it against the pavement again and again while saying "Knives are dangerous! Don't play with knives!" each time the scull hits the ground. Trust me, even knife-wielding morons needs what's inside their thick sculls and your brain does not appreciate that treatment. It is in fact as lethal as the knife, but usually the moron passes out long time before there's permanent damage. But rest assured the headache will be massive and last a long time, usually way beyond the scope of the general concussion that's the main damage inflicted.
Here in Denmark, private property isn't private if there's public access (even if it requires paying a fee), at least not when it comes to photography. This means that malls, amusement parts and privately run railway stations are under the public area laws despite being privately owned. This means that you can photograph and film for your own amusement and other non-commercial purposes to your hearts content. Publicizing the footage requires written permission from both the 'recognizable' people in the pics and (in case of private property), the owner. Pretty simple.
Now, sometimes the rent-a-cops patrolling these places don't quite get it, but rarely put up much of a fight.
In the case of Tivoli (an amusement park in Copenhagen) I was snapping pics of the crowds as I was approached by a guard telling me I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the park. Now I came prepared as I had obtained a written permission from the CEO of the park by mail which I had brought with me. The guard still insisted that it wasn't allowed. I then pointed to the 15 people around me all engaged in snapping tourist pics of their family or the sights and asked why he didn't stop them and he obviously couldn't answer. I then asked for a name or number stating that I wanted to contact the CEO again and know why this particular guard didn't know the policy or didn't acknowledge the permission letter. He then turned around and left. Not a word.
I later contacted the CEO anyway describing the guard and the events, and was told that the event had been investigated and the story was that some celeb had been 'harassed' by some paps elsewhere in the park and they therefore has been on the lookout for 'men with expensive cameras obviously not with family or friends'. I fit that description to some degree although the DSLR I had at the time (Canon EOS 500D) was both fairly cheap-looking and a far cry from the professional cameras of the paparazzi. Today would have been a different story as I now primarily use a Canon EOS 7D, one of the preferred cameras of... the paparazzi.
Since then I've taken thousands of pics in there, including of the guards, with no trouble. I guess the guards got the message.
Everything that's even remotely interesting on the Internet is either blocked in China or English language. Native Chinese sites is nothing but censored propaganda anyway.
Pass a law REQUIRING all members of any and all police forces in the EU to wear clearly readable ID numbers on their uniforms (including undercover and plainclothes officers) when in action, and to have their basic stats and picture along with the number available on a website with full public access (undercover officers obviously excepted here). On that page should also be directions as to how to file complaints against one or more officers.
This will not in any way hamper police work or endanger individual officers, but it will make it much easier to prevent bad officers from tarnishing/trashing the reputation of the police while hiding their identity, as all the examples here clearly show to happen in many places of the so-called 'civilized' world. It should actually be a severe disciplinary offense for officers to violate rules, law and regulations in such ways as to destroy the reputation of the force, intentionally or accidentally.
As for TSA - they're the poster child for exceptionally bad authority figures. They are always rude/offensive, they are always insensitive, they are always extremely inflexible, they are always completely without humor and they obviously thrive on their power and their ability to hassle and harass everybody. It should be required by law to record (both audio and video) each and every search they do, both the normal security check and every special check (extended search or interview), and this recording must be available to anyone who wishes to file a complaint. Any TSA officers found to be rude or exceeding their mandate should be warned the first time and fired the second, no exceptions.
It is trivial to place DNA of someone you hate at the scene of a crime. Sure, DNA left in liquids are hard to fake but if you have a rape where a condom is used and the perpetrator doesn't leave blood, the crime scene guys will look for hairs and similar. And it's those that can be placed intentionally on the scene, framing somebody.
There's also the accuracy of the tests. Here in little Denmark (5m people) we've already had a case where someone on file matched a preliminary test of traces left on a dead body. This person was arrested and questioned for days - until a more complete profile finally cleared the person completely. With a DNA database the chances of getting hauled into questioning and jail because of a preliminary DNA match increases significantly. That is a huge problem for the innocently accused on many levels.
Actually it was less than a few weeks ago here in Denmark that a KOL patient on oxygen decided to have a smoke... Cigarette in mouth and flick the lighter... Whoosh!! - Instant fireball and a fried patient.
Exactly why is it okay to invade people's privacy and demand the right to snoop on searches and censor the results just because the people in question happen to be students or pupils?
Now that is the real question!
If you are afraid of students finding nasty stuff (or looking for it) - educate them! - Don't censor them! - Teach them to handle real life and the stupid people it it. Yes, there's nazis, pedophiles, hate speech and p0rn out there, and it's impossible not to encounter it somewhere somehow. Teach them to be critical and not trust anyone out there.
That's the better way, the way it is handled in more civilized countries...;)
If Ford thought he'd benefit from a 40-hour limit, why wouldn't he just impose a 40-hour limit on his own employees? Why lobby for legislation that would grant the same benefits to his less-enlightened competitors?
To get everybody on equal terms. One thing is that less enlightened competitors may be hurt by lessened productivity, another is that they might save money anyway. Making equal terms ensures maximal productivity for everybody and that actually benefits everybody.
It is exactly the same as The Pirate Bay! - No offending material hosted on any servers owned by the plaintiff but a machine generated index is, and that is the problem - if it is. The question is whether you are responsible for machine generated content or not. If The Pirate Bay is, so is Google and everybody else.
I welcome this trial... when Google wins (and they will), The Pirate Bay is also in the clear and that is a good thing.
Back in 'Computer Science 101' we spent a lot of time doing 'internal testing' and 'external testing' of our programs. When done correctly you are 100% guaranteed that the program does exactly what it is supposed to do, nothing more, nothing less. Every bounds is checked, every possible input is tested, every loop, every condition. No overflow, no malformed input, no nothing can make the program do anything not handled in the code. You can actually learn to code in order to make these perfect programs.
But this requires basic CS knowledge as well as a lot of time... I guess Microsoft either don't have the knowledge or just don't care enough to allocate the time. The tools are there. The choice is theirs. Now, when they don't care, it's only fair that we don't care either. They write buggy software by choice and thus they have to fix the problems when they are discovered. A thorough testing using the source code would have revealed all problems, but they chose to let the customers do trial and error testing through daily use instead. Highly inefficient and an open invitation to all malware creators to do their evil deeds in an eternal arms race, leaving the regular users as the big time losers, risking all sorts of bad things whenever they use Microsofts product.
The only way to pressure Microsoft to do better is to give them very little time to fix errors once they're found. The morale being that they should have written the solid code from the beginning. They chose to postpone the fixing to a later date when problems were revealed so they better do that. Five days to fix a fairly simple problem like that is more than reasonable, now that they gave us the defective code to begin with.
I just don't see the problem in quick fixes. If the fix breaks a few rare systems here and there, just have these people remove it again, awaiting an updated fix. Microsoft will probably know what's wrong by the time the problems are reported anyway and then they just fix the fix. In the meantime everybody else have been secured for several days. That's the better way.
The wealth should be for the Afghanis, not the western powers who will now try to put in ''development teams'' -- who, in reality, will try to get as much of the profits into western coffers.
So you think we should butt out and let the afghanis figure out the mining for themselves?
Now there's a way to destroy that country efficiently and without it costing us money! - You are aware that we (the taxpayers of the countries participating in the peace keeping efforts in Afghanistan) pay a lot of money in order to keep the Taleban from power, helping the female half of the population to become a part of the people.
Just imagine a lithium rush like the old gold rushes... Millions of people with severely inadequate skills digging holes everywhere, refining the highly toxic mineral using more or less primitive means... That will cause widespread pollution, kill thousands of people and cause even more tribal strife, perhaps a civil war...
No. The only sane way to handle this is for experienced mining corporations to set things up properly, educate the locals and of course to reap a part of the profits. Know-how costs, and the Afghani cannot afford not to buy it here.
If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
Sure... but that reason rarely has anything to do with safety, actual local conditions or similar. It is usually based either on technocratic grounds (proximity to certain types of housing, schools etc.) or political reasons (someone VIP complained). Places where a certain limit is set that doesn't reflect the actual driving conditions you'll usually see traffic flowing consistently at a higher average speed. Most obvious are freeways with 55 mph limit where traffic flows at 70 mph outside of rush hours. This means that countless thousands of cars have no problems going 70 mph here and the limit therefore are too low. If there's a single logistical reason for the low limit - simply remove it!
Another thing is that you'll rarely find these speed cameras where it's particulary dangerous to go fast (many accidents or similar) but rather where as many as possible get caught, usually due to an obscene illogical low speed limit, sometimes even posted on signs that's easily missed due to vegetation, decay or vandalism. It is about making money and using the count as a scare tactic to get more speed cameras (look how bad it is! We need more cameras!) and thus make even more money. The effect a known camera has on the local speed is secondary at best. If it's about school zones or child-rich residential areas, use speed bumps instead of cameras! They are guaranteed to reduce speed and that's what's important there. But of course they make no money so let go for the camera instead...
Anyone who is that good at reading people, has a better job than TSA screener.
Sounds like a movie plot... Wait, that is exactly what happened to Ria Torres, one of the lead characters in "Lie To Me". She was a TSA screener who got a better job in the private sector doing the same thing - reading people.
Well, the stronger cockpit door was an improvement... But for everything else, it's all about "appearing" to be more secure.
That's called Security Theater and everything about airport security is just that. It can only be a band-aid to try to catch terrorists at the airport. Remember that EVERY SINGLE AIRPLANE TERRORIST caught or successful was flagged by intelligence services a long time prior to their attack and yet we still allowed them to board their planes. It applies to all the 9/11 terrorists, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and so on.
The only sane thing is to ban the people flagged from even getting near an airport and to slap a 24/7 tail on them so they can't blow their nose without it ending up in reports in triplicate... and the non-citizens on this list should be kicked home ASAP. You cannot be a guest of a country and at the same time participate in activities amounting to war against this same country.
The bees in the 'mobile hive' were busy calling other hives (who didn't respond because didn't have a phone) or simply sex-hotlines and thus didn't have time for procreation or food processing...:)
The ruling covers the customer behind the IP addresses 188.126.64.2 and 188.126.64.3 and/or any other IP addresses in Portlane's entire range (188.126.64.0 – 188.126.95.255) which have been allocated to tracker.openbittorrent.com since August 28, 2009
Huh? - Don't they know anything about Internet address allocation and assignments?
To cut a long story short, a pool of addresses (usually a/19,/20 or/21) are allocated to a LIR (Local Internet Registry) by the relevant RIR (Regional Internet Registry), in this case RIPE. This is just a pool from which to make assignments. No customer controls the entire range by default, at least not in RIPE territory. Now from this range assignments can be made, based on well-documented requests from the customers. The IPs in question belong to the ISPs customer network "PORTLANE-CUST-NET", a/24 netblock. The next netblock in the allocation is "SERVER4SALE-NET" and the next "PLAYNATION-NET" (skipping an unassigned/24). Obviously various customers.
In other words, the netblock 188.126.64/19 is an allocation, not an assignment. It contains several netblocks belonging to various customers, not Portlane itself. Portlane AB is a LIR and thus has the ability to assign netblocks from their allocation to customers, including themselves. The only relevant range to discuss is the assigned/24 from which the IPs come, not the entire allocation given to the LIR. The fact that both the customer and the LIR is Portlane AB doesn't matter.
It's not surprising that a Hollywood lawyer doesn't know the difference between a LIR, a netblock owner and the end customer (openbittorrent.com I guess), but it makes all the difference in our world. After all, you don't get search warrants valid for every house in a town when you just want a specific house.
Now, what do they want with that tracker? - It has been discussed countless times but it appears that Hollywood lawyers still don't get it. Okay, one more time for the totally brain dead morons in Hollywood:
A BITTORRENT TRACKER DOES NOT CONTAIN A SINGLE BIT OF COPYRIGHTED DATA! - NOR DOES IT POINT TO PLACES WHERE A COPYRIGHTED FILE CAN BE FOUND.
IT POINTS TO PLACES WHERE DATA WITH A CERTAIN HASH CAN BE FOUND. IT KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE HASHED FILE, NOR CAN THE HASHED FILE IN ANY WAY BE RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE INFORMATION ON THE TRACKER.
Get it this time? - chasing tracker owners is noting but a witch hunt! - They are not illegally sharing copyrighted material! - The pointing they do are every bit as anonymous as other forms of pointers in the Internet, like DNS or search engine results.
If images of Mohammad could lead to worship of Mohammad, it would be obvious to carpet bomb infidels with images of Allah in the hope that it might lead to worship of Allah, i.e. conversion to Islam.
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No DRM or Copy Protection has ever in the history of computer games survived uncracked for more than a few days! - Those days of 'exclusivity' does not do anything for sales vs. piracy so continuing to waste money on DRM and the like is stupid, plain and simple. Mind-boggling stupid.
Just make a great game, offer it inexpensively and make it really easy to install and play, and I'm sure people who like it will pay for it. But appear as a greedy MAFIAA-wannabe, make the game really hard to install, requiring hoops, leaps and bounces, semi-impossible to play (requiring online servers, validation and other crap) and sell it for a fortune, and you can be guaranteed that piracy will be rampant and nobody will pay out of their conscience.
And as many have mentioned already - money wasted on DRM is money not spent on making the game itself legendary, and that's a huge mistake!
In my own galleries I used "wrjpgcom -replace -comment ''" to strip all EXIF/IPTC from the files. Works like a charm and it's fast and efficient.
Amazing! - The most suicidal people in the world. Nobody, and I mean nobody, seems to look where they're going. They enter intersections like they own the road and when two such people meet at an intersection, it has go bad.
A simple "yield to traffic from the right" would have prevented most of the accidents shown in the video.
But these guys just go, stopping for nothing. It's not like they go very fast - most of these happen at fairly low speed, evident from the victims (on bikes or on foot) being able to get up right away, so the brake distance would be fairly short, which makes it obvious that these drivers simply don't look or if they do either fail to recognize the danger or simply fail to hit the brake.
It's kind of funny - in a tragic way - that the old repeated-enough-to-become-true meme still works.
There wouldn't be all these arguments if we could *prove* that global warming exists and that it's man made. Note that there are two separate statements here that needs to be proven for the full monty.
Now, the first is all about historical data combined with modern data and interpretation of these. You can use them to plot graphs that show everything from "ice age approaching", over "no change" to "global warming". You can even mess with the data to make "a more obvious warming" as we've seen it done. As there's still a lot of arguments in this department it is obvious that there's no standard way, nor some carved-in-stone way, to work with these data.
The second statement assumes that the first exists, and seeks to explain why. It tends to focus on CO2 for some reason, despite the two obvious problems: The exact role of CO2 in the atmospheric greenhouse balance is unknown but it is assumed that it acts as a reflected energy blocker in the mix just as it does alone. Nobody knows for sure. The second problem is that much worse greenhouse gasses are also released in increasing amounts, methane in particular. So, working on reducing CO2 might not do anything except waste time and money.
Finally - Occams Razor. There was no human activity during past massive climate changes so what caused them and might that factor still be a work today? - The obvious culprit is the Sun. A change in output will affect the climate. I've even heard some respected climate scientists say "the Sun has no significant influence on Earth's climate" which is utter lunacy of course. Without the Sun the Earth would be a ball of ice, barely warmer than the surrounding space (warmer only due to radioactive materials and tidal forces), so of course the Sun has a huge influence. But minor changes, both in radiated heat and in high energy particles that interact with the Earths atmosphere in various ways, what does that do to the climate? - We don't know, but we know that something, most likely the Sun, caused the ice ages and the warming in between. It is by far the simplest explanation of any climate change we may or may not be observing today.
Actually I think he was a spoofer, playing on the age-old Trek vs. Wars feud. After all, true Trekkies hate Star Wars and all things from that universe, the Jedi in particular. Also bear in mind that the Church of Jedi have been officially recognized as a church now, which makes the "God Hates Jedi" a pretty obvious slogan... ;)
The flipside to that is that in one swift move you destroy all the major american sports... because all the jocks will be killed in a few days.
The lesson from Columbine is that if you want to encourage excellence by giving special privileges and bullying rights to jocks and similar, and you repeatedly humiliate the misfits (here meant everybody not like the ideal student) in public, you're bound to run into psychopaths and sociopaths among the misfits with a clear and easy target - and a huge grudge. The result is most likely pretty bloody.
Trouble is... most schools still haven't learned this lesson and every day nerds, geeks and misfits are still being bullied by jocks in particular, and the schools allows this most of the time. Usually because they might lose a star-something if they try to stop it. If the victims are allowed to strike back, the result will be a massacre. Could be fun though... if you're one of the nerds... ;)
Hehe... Reminds me of a story told to me by a friend... He's like 300 pounds (on a 6' frame) and looks like a fat slob, but make no mistake, he's strong as an ox. He plays american football and does weightlifting and so on, and he's a major role playing geek. Some moron tried to make a name with his friend by calling him fat on the street. My friend stopped, turned and asked "What did you say?!". The moron repeated it and stepped up to my friend. "You don't want to fight me, trust me" he said, looking down on the moron almost a head shorter. The moron now took a swing at my friends massive gut and hit nothing that hurt. My friend now swung his hammer-like fist hitting the moron directly in the face, and down he went. My friend followed in a fluid motion landing with his knee directly on the morons chest with all his weight. Needless to say, the fight was very much over now. A broken nose and some badly bruised ribs was the price the moron paid for trying to score some cheap points with his friends - who ran as soon as my friend hit back. It's only fun to bully people who can't defend themselves.
For some reason fat people get called names a lot, but if you pick a fight with them remember this: They're heavily padded and they weigh a lot so if they get to land or sit on you, it's game over. You cannot move a 300 pound guy sitting on you. Even if you're strong the leverage is all wrong. Squirm too much and the fat guy might end up sitting on your neck and then you're one wrong move away from spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair having people changing your diapers.
Even if you are armed with a knife it's no good being on the ground with the fat guy on top of you. There's a lot of blubber to cut through before hitting anything that hurts, and your angles are all wrong. Oh, and if you try it, chances are that the fat guy - like my friend - just grabs your head and bangs it against the pavement again and again while saying "Knives are dangerous! Don't play with knives!" each time the scull hits the ground. Trust me, even knife-wielding morons needs what's inside their thick sculls and your brain does not appreciate that treatment. It is in fact as lethal as the knife, but usually the moron passes out long time before there's permanent damage. But rest assured the headache will be massive and last a long time, usually way beyond the scope of the general concussion that's the main damage inflicted.
Here in Denmark, private property isn't private if there's public access (even if it requires paying a fee), at least not when it comes to photography. This means that malls, amusement parts and privately run railway stations are under the public area laws despite being privately owned. This means that you can photograph and film for your own amusement and other non-commercial purposes to your hearts content. Publicizing the footage requires written permission from both the 'recognizable' people in the pics and (in case of private property), the owner. Pretty simple.
Now, sometimes the rent-a-cops patrolling these places don't quite get it, but rarely put up much of a fight.
In the case of Tivoli (an amusement park in Copenhagen) I was snapping pics of the crowds as I was approached by a guard telling me I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the park. Now I came prepared as I had obtained a written permission from the CEO of the park by mail which I had brought with me. The guard still insisted that it wasn't allowed. I then pointed to the 15 people around me all engaged in snapping tourist pics of their family or the sights and asked why he didn't stop them and he obviously couldn't answer. I then asked for a name or number stating that I wanted to contact the CEO again and know why this particular guard didn't know the policy or didn't acknowledge the permission letter. He then turned around and left. Not a word.
I later contacted the CEO anyway describing the guard and the events, and was told that the event had been investigated and the story was that some celeb had been 'harassed' by some paps elsewhere in the park and they therefore has been on the lookout for 'men with expensive cameras obviously not with family or friends'. I fit that description to some degree although the DSLR I had at the time (Canon EOS 500D) was both fairly cheap-looking and a far cry from the professional cameras of the paparazzi. Today would have been a different story as I now primarily use a Canon EOS 7D, one of the preferred cameras of... the paparazzi.
Since then I've taken thousands of pics in there, including of the guards, with no trouble. I guess the guards got the message.
Everything that's even remotely interesting on the Internet is either blocked in China or English language. Native Chinese sites is nothing but censored propaganda anyway.
Pass a law REQUIRING all members of any and all police forces in the EU to wear clearly readable ID numbers on their uniforms (including undercover and plainclothes officers) when in action, and to have their basic stats and picture along with the number available on a website with full public access (undercover officers obviously excepted here). On that page should also be directions as to how to file complaints against one or more officers.
This will not in any way hamper police work or endanger individual officers, but it will make it much easier to prevent bad officers from tarnishing/trashing the reputation of the police while hiding their identity, as all the examples here clearly show to happen in many places of the so-called 'civilized' world. It should actually be a severe disciplinary offense for officers to violate rules, law and regulations in such ways as to destroy the reputation of the force, intentionally or accidentally.
As for TSA - they're the poster child for exceptionally bad authority figures. They are always rude/offensive, they are always insensitive, they are always extremely inflexible, they are always completely without humor and they obviously thrive on their power and their ability to hassle and harass everybody. It should be required by law to record (both audio and video) each and every search they do, both the normal security check and every special check (extended search or interview), and this recording must be available to anyone who wishes to file a complaint. Any TSA officers found to be rude or exceeding their mandate should be warned the first time and fired the second, no exceptions.
but it may also be used to frame the innocent.
It is trivial to place DNA of someone you hate at the scene of a crime. Sure, DNA left in liquids are hard to fake but if you have a rape where a condom is used and the perpetrator doesn't leave blood, the crime scene guys will look for hairs and similar. And it's those that can be placed intentionally on the scene, framing somebody.
There's also the accuracy of the tests. Here in little Denmark (5m people) we've already had a case where someone on file matched a preliminary test of traces left on a dead body. This person was arrested and questioned for days - until a more complete profile finally cleared the person completely. With a DNA database the chances of getting hauled into questioning and jail because of a preliminary DNA match increases significantly. That is a huge problem for the innocently accused on many levels.
Actually it was less than a few weeks ago here in Denmark that a KOL patient on oxygen decided to have a smoke... Cigarette in mouth and flick the lighter... Whoosh!! - Instant fireball and a fried patient.
Exactly why is it okay to invade people's privacy and demand the right to snoop on searches and censor the results just because the people in question happen to be students or pupils?
Now that is the real question!
If you are afraid of students finding nasty stuff (or looking for it) - educate them! - Don't censor them! - Teach them to handle real life and the stupid people it it. Yes, there's nazis, pedophiles, hate speech and p0rn out there, and it's impossible not to encounter it somewhere somehow. Teach them to be critical and not trust anyone out there.
That's the better way, the way it is handled in more civilized countries... ;)
To get everybody on equal terms. One thing is that less enlightened competitors may be hurt by lessened productivity, another is that they might save money anyway. Making equal terms ensures maximal productivity for everybody and that actually benefits everybody.
It is exactly the same as The Pirate Bay! - No offending material hosted on any servers owned by the plaintiff but a machine generated index is, and that is the problem - if it is. The question is whether you are responsible for machine generated content or not. If The Pirate Bay is, so is Google and everybody else.
I welcome this trial... when Google wins (and they will), The Pirate Bay is also in the clear and that is a good thing.
I want that retarded bozo force-fed with pork until he's too fat to move, and then thrown into a pit filled with starved dogs... Fitting I think.
Pakistan should be ashamed that they allow people be that stupid, tarnishing their country's reputation.
PS: Extending 'Draw Muhammad Day'... This is Muhammad after hearing about the stupid Pakistani lawyer: :(
I agree 100%!
Back in 'Computer Science 101' we spent a lot of time doing 'internal testing' and 'external testing' of our programs. When done correctly you are 100% guaranteed that the program does exactly what it is supposed to do, nothing more, nothing less. Every bounds is checked, every possible input is tested, every loop, every condition. No overflow, no malformed input, no nothing can make the program do anything not handled in the code. You can actually learn to code in order to make these perfect programs.
But this requires basic CS knowledge as well as a lot of time... I guess Microsoft either don't have the knowledge or just don't care enough to allocate the time. The tools are there. The choice is theirs. Now, when they don't care, it's only fair that we don't care either. They write buggy software by choice and thus they have to fix the problems when they are discovered. A thorough testing using the source code would have revealed all problems, but they chose to let the customers do trial and error testing through daily use instead. Highly inefficient and an open invitation to all malware creators to do their evil deeds in an eternal arms race, leaving the regular users as the big time losers, risking all sorts of bad things whenever they use Microsofts product.
The only way to pressure Microsoft to do better is to give them very little time to fix errors once they're found. The morale being that they should have written the solid code from the beginning. They chose to postpone the fixing to a later date when problems were revealed so they better do that. Five days to fix a fairly simple problem like that is more than reasonable, now that they gave us the defective code to begin with.
I just don't see the problem in quick fixes. If the fix breaks a few rare systems here and there, just have these people remove it again, awaiting an updated fix. Microsoft will probably know what's wrong by the time the problems are reported anyway and then they just fix the fix. In the meantime everybody else have been secured for several days. That's the better way.
The wealth should be for the Afghanis, not the western powers who will now try to put in ''development teams'' -- who, in reality, will try to get as much of the profits into western coffers.
So you think we should butt out and let the afghanis figure out the mining for themselves?
Now there's a way to destroy that country efficiently and without it costing us money! - You are aware that we (the taxpayers of the countries participating in the peace keeping efforts in Afghanistan) pay a lot of money in order to keep the Taleban from power, helping the female half of the population to become a part of the people.
Just imagine a lithium rush like the old gold rushes... Millions of people with severely inadequate skills digging holes everywhere, refining the highly toxic mineral using more or less primitive means... That will cause widespread pollution, kill thousands of people and cause even more tribal strife, perhaps a civil war...
No. The only sane way to handle this is for experienced mining corporations to set things up properly, educate the locals and of course to reap a part of the profits. Know-how costs, and the Afghani cannot afford not to buy it here.
Sure... but that reason rarely has anything to do with safety, actual local conditions or similar. It is usually based either on technocratic grounds (proximity to certain types of housing, schools etc.) or political reasons (someone VIP complained). Places where a certain limit is set that doesn't reflect the actual driving conditions you'll usually see traffic flowing consistently at a higher average speed. Most obvious are freeways with 55 mph limit where traffic flows at 70 mph outside of rush hours. This means that countless thousands of cars have no problems going 70 mph here and the limit therefore are too low. If there's a single logistical reason for the low limit - simply remove it!
Another thing is that you'll rarely find these speed cameras where it's particulary dangerous to go fast (many accidents or similar) but rather where as many as possible get caught, usually due to an obscene illogical low speed limit, sometimes even posted on signs that's easily missed due to vegetation, decay or vandalism. It is about making money and using the count as a scare tactic to get more speed cameras (look how bad it is! We need more cameras!) and thus make even more money. The effect a known camera has on the local speed is secondary at best. If it's about school zones or child-rich residential areas, use speed bumps instead of cameras! They are guaranteed to reduce speed and that's what's important there. But of course they make no money so let go for the camera instead...
Anyone who is that good at reading people,
has a better job than TSA screener.
Sounds like a movie plot... Wait, that is exactly what happened to Ria Torres, one of the lead characters in "Lie To Me". She was a TSA screener who got a better job in the private sector doing the same thing - reading people.
Well, the stronger cockpit door was an improvement... But for everything else, it's all about "appearing" to be more secure.
That's called Security Theater and everything about airport security is just that. It can only be a band-aid to try to catch terrorists at the airport. Remember that EVERY SINGLE AIRPLANE TERRORIST caught or successful was flagged by intelligence services a long time prior to their attack and yet we still allowed them to board their planes. It applies to all the 9/11 terrorists, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and so on.
The only sane thing is to ban the people flagged from even getting near an airport and to slap a 24/7 tail on them so they can't blow their nose without it ending up in reports in triplicate... and the non-citizens on this list should be kicked home ASAP. You cannot be a guest of a country and at the same time participate in activities amounting to war against this same country.
The bees in the 'mobile hive' were busy calling other hives (who didn't respond because didn't have a phone) or simply sex-hotlines and thus didn't have time for procreation or food processing... :)
Who says they're stolen?
Could be the owner suffered from schizophrenia with multiple personalities and had 44 million separate personalities, all avid gamers... ;)
Huh? - Don't they know anything about Internet address allocation and assignments?
To cut a long story short, a pool of addresses (usually a /19, /20 or /21) are allocated to a LIR (Local Internet Registry) by the relevant RIR (Regional Internet Registry), in this case RIPE. This is just a pool from which to make assignments. No customer controls the entire range by default, at least not in RIPE territory. Now from this range assignments can be made, based on well-documented requests from the customers. The IPs in question belong to the ISPs customer network "PORTLANE-CUST-NET", a /24 netblock. The next netblock in the allocation is "SERVER4SALE-NET" and the next "PLAYNATION-NET" (skipping an unassigned /24). Obviously various customers.
In other words, the netblock 188.126.64/19 is an allocation, not an assignment. It contains several netblocks belonging to various customers, not Portlane itself. Portlane AB is a LIR and thus has the ability to assign netblocks from their allocation to customers, including themselves. The only relevant range to discuss is the assigned /24 from which the IPs come, not the entire allocation given to the LIR. The fact that both the customer and the LIR is Portlane AB doesn't matter.
It's not surprising that a Hollywood lawyer doesn't know the difference between a LIR, a netblock owner and the end customer (openbittorrent.com I guess), but it makes all the difference in our world. After all, you don't get search warrants valid for every house in a town when you just want a specific house.
Now, what do they want with that tracker? - It has been discussed countless times but it appears that Hollywood lawyers still don't get it. Okay, one more time for the totally brain dead morons in Hollywood:
A BITTORRENT TRACKER DOES NOT CONTAIN A SINGLE BIT OF COPYRIGHTED DATA! - NOR DOES IT POINT TO PLACES WHERE A COPYRIGHTED FILE CAN BE FOUND.
IT POINTS TO PLACES WHERE DATA WITH A CERTAIN HASH CAN BE FOUND. IT KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE HASHED FILE, NOR CAN THE HASHED FILE IN ANY WAY BE RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE INFORMATION ON THE TRACKER.
Get it this time? - chasing tracker owners is noting but a witch hunt! - They are not illegally sharing copyrighted material! - The pointing they do are every bit as anonymous as other forms of pointers in the Internet, like DNS or search engine results.
So... why do they also ban images of Allah?
If images of Mohammad could lead to worship of Mohammad, it would be obvious to carpet bomb infidels with images of Allah in the hope that it might lead to worship of Allah, i.e. conversion to Islam.