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User: MisterManiac

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  1. Intrusion/Invasion of Privacy on What are My Rights Against Video Surveillance? · · Score: 2, Informative

    IANAL, but I am a law student (admittedly a lowly first-year).

    Your options here will definitely vary by what state you're in. There may be a state law against unauthorized recording (for instance, the one Linda Tripp violated in Maryland, although I don't know the particular law and I'm not sure if it would apply here).

    More likely, though, you could have a civil claim (not criminal), although this would again depend on what state you're in. This might represent an "intrusion upon seclusion" or "invasion of privacy" tort - you should research the law on this in your state, or get a lawyer to do it for you (probably the better idea). If you happen to be in California (or even if you're not), I know some cases that might be relevant just because I just had an assignment on this sort of thing - Shulman v. Group W Productions, Sanders v. American Broadcasting Corporation, Walker v. Darby, and Sanchez-Scott v. Alza Pharmaceuticals. (California Supreme Court, California Supreme Court, 11th Circuit, and California Appellate Court, respectively)

    Of course, this does not constitute legal advice - just some ideas on where you might want to research. You should absolutely call a lawyer.

  2. Re:Openbios might be tha ticket on Finding BIOS Upgrades? · · Score: 2

    On a similar note, LinuxBIOS is some sort of ubercompressed, stripped-down linux kernel with some hardware-specific instructions that replaces a conventional BIOS, and then can activate a second-level boot loader like LILO. I don't know motherboard models, so I'm not sure if the project is geared more toward servers. The list of supported motherboards is here.

  3. Re:This is dangerous on The Open Source Cookbook? · · Score: 1

    Well, I don't know about you, but Red Bull seems to have a good deal of caffeine to me (otherwise I doubt it would work so well). I do, however, concur it doesn't go well with vodka. It's probably better than No-Doz and vodka, which I've seen someone do.

  4. Net Traffic Cops on Alternatives to the CBDTPA? · · Score: 1

    I think the analogy to traffic police is good in a sense-- people don't like traffic cops any more than they'd like a government Internet filter or some such legislative arrangement. The average driver, IMHO, speeds and would much rather get away with it than be called on it by a state trooper. Speeding causes a driving hazard to some degree; however, as the Autobahn and the Montana "reasonable and prudent" limit policy demonstrate, leaving it up to the discretion of drivers who know what they're doing works well enough. (It's true, there are stupid drivers, but they'll be a hazard at any speed.)

    Now, copyright protection as proposed by Hollings et al. is somewhat analogous to speeding enforcement. It protects the "safety" of entertainment companies' profit margins while precluding activity that, to varying degrees, is-- or should be-- perfectly legal and acceptable. Internet users do not want to be policed. It would limit them to avoid doing anything that might be construed as "speeding"-- including trading uncopyrighted MP3s such as bootlegs, obtaining somewhat legal copies of software that one had purchased but lost or that became damaged, etc., because you could never know when a "traffic cop" might be watching you, unless the Internet community invented "radar detectors." When I e-mail my friend some song lyrics, or post them on my web site, or download them because I can't make out what my favorite band is saying, I don't want to have to worry about getting a call the next day from an RIAA lawyer informing me that I am at their mercy because I am a criminal.

    This discussion is apart from any privacy issues, which I'm sure others will bring up. Any such policing legislation would chill legitimate Internet activity and retard the Net as a whole. And the bitching of the xxAAs is unconvincing because the movie industry is raking in profits faster than ever, and the RIAA would be if they didn't fix CD prices quite so high. Someone versed in introductory economics should explain to them that unreasonably high prices lead to unreasonably low demand, and that if they stopped shooting themselves in the foot they might be able to go for a stroll in the park now and then instead of bitching about the pain.

    Okay, that's enough ranting for one afternoon.

  5. What is this guy on? on AMD Takes Microsoft's Side in Antitrust Case · · Score: 1

    "Microsoft's development of reliable and scalable server operating systems has enabled AMD to enter and compete more effectively in the server businesses...because most non-Microsoft server operating systems only run on specialized microprocessors," [Sanders] testified.

    This is misleading at best. Granted that *maybe* (I'm not personally familiar with all of these so I'm not sure) *nices like AIX, HP-UX, Slowaris, and IRIX run on "specialized" hardware, for each one of those I can name a free or almost free server OS or platform that runs on Intel/AMD. Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, SuSE, Lycoris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, GNU/HURD, I could continue for a while. I mean, how many commonly used server OSes are there other than Windows and *nices?

    And do I even need to comment on Microsoft's "reliable and scalable" OS and software, given the 10 new vulnerabilities found in IIS last week? Windows 2000/XP may be rather stable, but with vulnerabilities like that, what good does stability do you?

  6. Thomas J. Watson? on Fruit Flies Making Inroads on Autonomous Computing · · Score: 1

    According to the last sentence of this article, they interviewed T. J. Watson on the subject of autonomous computing. This would interest me greatly, since he's been dead since 1993.

    Ahhh, conscientious reporting at its finest.

  7. Still downloading... on KaZaa Suspends Downloads · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find it odd that, even though KaZaA has suspended downloads, their download counter (at the top of the page at http://www.kazaa.com/en/defend.htm, for example) is still going up. This might be automatic (it's going up very smoothly and uniformly), but even so it's amusing. In addition to Morpheus, there's also Grokster, which likewise licenses the FastTrack technology. Is file sharing really dead? I don't think so. I mean, the way courts generally work, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA would have to sue every file sharing program making company separately. In addition to the legal fees, the industries are lagging behind by a year or at least several months... Programs are around for a while before any suit gets filed, and then the suits take time. True, it's hardly optimal that file sharing programs rise and fall every so often, but a bit of a shakeup is good now and then. Besides, they're growing faster than people can try to get them shut down. Direct Connect is quite good for some things. Gnutella, although it sucks, cannot be eradicated. And if something like Freenet ever gets somewhat usable and efficient, they won't really have anyone left to sue. Maybe then they'll concentrate on making movies and music and software good enough that we want to buy it, instead of producing crap on a stick, trying to limit what we can do with it, and suing everyone in sight. Marketing can only do so much to sell a bad product (although M$ has done an entirely too good job of it...).