Problem is, they might not have any "real" client. This "Abmahnungen" stuff is a very lucrative business, and certain lawyers (Gravenreuth) can survive solely on that...
> Question is, are there analogues to this strange legal quirk in other countries (like the US?)
In the US, it's much easyer. There Adobe simply
sicks the goons to haul off any dissidents ass to jail, and that's it. But hey, they'll probably claim it wasn't done on their initiative either... I only wonder why the Russian ambassy didn't protest louder against this obvious violation of the Human Rights of one of their citizens.
> Your statement is analogous to saying 'if you delete a file from your file system, no data is actually lost - it's just not showing up where it should be'.
Errhm, not quite, and in the following lines yourself are actually saying why...:
> If you go and inspect the inode, you'll find the data is still there - at least until it gets overwritten by something else.
Whereas, with this database bug, the data won't get overwritten (unless you DELETE it first...)
> But it's not good to you because, without doing esoteric things in the bottom of the file system, you can't get at it.
... whereas with this DB bug, nothing more esoteric than dropping the ORDER BY is needed. Or just re-execute the same command ten minutes later, after all, the bug is "only" 1 in 1000.
The real problem is that you won't expect a simple SELECT... ORDER BY statement to fail, and fubar happens if your application program acts on the result it gets from the statement (for updating other tables, displaying reports to the users, sounding (or not sounding...) an alarm about missing nukes, etc.).
> If Linux is trademarked, it's a waste of money since it's already dilluted.
Actually, Linus has trademarked Linux for purely defensive reasons. Indeed, before he did so, every couple of month or so, a "clever" businessman would register the Linux trademark in some backwater country, and attempt to extort money from various distribution makers. AFAIK, none of those extortion attempts succeeded (it would have been very easy to invalidate those bogus claims, if ever it went to court), but nonetheless this was a nuisance. In order to put a stop on those shenanigans, Linus eventually trademarked the Linux name himself.
> Would YOU want an iliterrate to vote for the president?
Well, today; no need to be litterate to vote: you just need to know where to punch the hole...
> Not that i'm saying China is full of uneducated people,
Not that I'm saying Florida is full of myopic geezers...
> but overall the people in USA are relatively more educated and have more experience with these "rights" and so they are more ready to use these "rights" without causing problems.
Campaign financing *cough* lobbying *cough* two-party system *cough* all-powerful corporations *cough*. If people really were more prepared to use their rights, they'd vote Libertarian or Green. But maybe that's what you'd call "causing problems"...
Although their Web page is.asp, they specifically allow the customer to use Unix. Kudos!
To receive the Service, you must also utilize a personal computer meeting the following System Requirements:
various versions of Windows... Mac... UNIX
Workstation running any UNIX operating system
TCP/IP connectivity
Ethernet port
Ethernet software with DHCP capability
MS Internet Explorer 4.x/ Netscape Navigator 4.X or later
> At the moment, all color photocopiers produce, in the dithering pattern in the copy, a steganographic pattern that uniquely identifies the copier that produced the copy.
That's what Kinko's is for...
> Anyway, as I understand it, the same technology is used in at least some printers.
That's what cybercafe's are for...
> Then they can trace back to you
That's what paying your printer with cash is for... And I hope your didn't send in that stoopid warranty registration card, did you?
> Impersonating a lawyer is a pretty big offense because prosecuters and judges are both lawyers.
Don't impersonate any existing lawyer. Make up a name. If the lawyer doesn't exist, he can't sue you. And the ISP will be too embarrassed to press any charges... And I also doubt that Big Brother will display his tracking capabilities just for investigating petty pranks. He prefers bigger fish to fry.
... is to randomly send "lawyer's" letters to ISP about random sites, complaining they infringe on this copyright or that trademark. Use any old color printer to print authentic looking letters. Sit back, and watch the fun... If enough people do this, ISP's will learn to just ignore lawyer's letters, unless they are backed with very strong and verifiable arguments. And it only costs you a stamp, and is almost riskless.
Or can other businesses do this as well? Say, I run a computer security consultancy. May I audit their system, point out flaws, and then send them a bill, pointing out that if their lawyer-client communications were exposed to the world due to a break-in, they'd loose millions of Marks in suits from former clients, and might even need to close shop?
If other types of business can't do it, then why? Doesn't this violate the constitutional principle of "same law for everybody"? Why can't other businesses offer unsolicited "services' and then send bills? Unfortunately, in this case, chances are that Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner exclusively makes money with Abmahnungen, so their might not be any privileged client-lawyer correspondence which could be accidentally disclosed...
It is a very common ploy: independant "lawyer's firms" scouts small businesses, non-profit organisations, etc., and try to find petty violations, then send threatening letters to said businesses, requesting payment of fines. Usually, the violations they look for are accidentally mislabeled prices on product, or other inane stuff like that.
The catch is, those firms do have no authority to do this, and the "fines" are entirely for their own pockets. Moreover, often if it is not even sure whether the "violation" took place at all: those threatening letters are often sent months after the alleged facts, when the shopkeeper has already re-arranged his display window since long, and can no longer determine/remember whether this or that article was correctly labeled or not.
Scams like this are regularly featured on police information TV programs such as "Vorsicht Falle, Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger". If I were kIllustrator's author, I'd contact Adobe, and ask them whether this "laywer's firm" is actually operating in Adobe's authority. Chances are good they aren't.
> A driver travelling at a fast enough speed is unlikely to be able to determine that the "person" by the road is in fact a scarecrow with a plastic radar gun!
> Of course that won't help with locals
Here in Luxembourg, they do this near road contruction places: A cardboard "roadworker" motioning drivers to slow down. Works for people who pass there the first time. Doesn't (obviously) work for those who commute there daily (i.e. most of the traffic...).
Or maybe they simply couldn't sleep because of their neighbour's overly loud stereo. So they spent their time doing something "useful". And if successful, they would have been able to rest in silence, undisturbed by the party below!
> damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
Looks like the word "protected" will let Tivo an easy way out. They could argue that if the user really was concerned about the integrity of his Tivo, he could easily have "protected" it by not plugging in the phone jack. He wasn't using their service after all, so then why would he need to be connected to the phone at all?
>...which left you with rather high latency (~1 second round trip ping times for instance)
Technically, they should be able to do much better than that. While for geostationary satellites (with bidirectional comms), it's hard to get down latency to less than half a second, due to 4 times distance divided by speed of light, Iridiums low-orbiting LEO satellites should be able to give you much better ping times, considering they are so much closer. It's a pity that they're squandering thisnatural advantage of low-orbit by using cheap ground-equipment.
And 2400 kbps is nothing to phone home about either. Many geostationary systems can give you up to 40 Mbps bandwidth.
And it's probably much more expensive than most geostationary solutions either. Case in point: Italy's Netsystem is even free of charge, for Chrissakes!
So which advantage stays? Availability from anywhere in the world? Hey, just walk into a damn cybercafé if you want check your mail during a holiday. Btw, cybercafes are much easyer to find in Third World countires that in Europe or the US, because few locals have a computer at home, and thus cybercafes do have a market other than tourists.
If that was case, shouldn't it be called "hamster tape" instead?
When the neighbours are partying all night long...
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 3
>... describing a neighborhood arms race....
Hey, gimme an EMP device! That's ll nuke those pesky boom boxes going on all night at maximum volume, robbing you of an honest man's sleep. EMP's are far more practical than old fashioned methods such as water buckets, or manually going down to the basement to switch off their power supply!
> Sounds silly, but how many of us carry our wallet in our back pockets? Move the wallet to a front pocket. It doesn't matter how nice of a chair you have if you are sitting on it crooked because of your wallet.
> This was recommended to me by my chiropractor (yes, they actually do work) who unfortunately now hasn't seen me for about a year.
Yeah, but even without moving your wallet, your back would've been better. Indeed, after going to the chiro, it was empty, and thus much less of a bulge...
> I do think it's OK for RedHat and the likes to as for donations though, since they are providing a salary to many of the hackers that have made Linux what it is today.
Actually, Red Hat already did ask for donations two years ago, on August 11th 1999. Many people gave them $800, and people were so enthusiastic that Red Hat had to turn away donations... Some of the refused donators got really upset about this.
> Actually, I would expect that the courts would not hold non-voting stock responcible for the ations of the corperations.
For many companies, all shares carry voting rights, even those sold to retail investors. I regular get voting bulletins from E*Trade for the various shares I hold with them. If you held paper certificates, you'd probably need to explicitly request the bulletins at some place (because they wouldn't know where to send them), but I'm sure it would be possible to vote those too.
> Anyway, my point is that the courts could just access these sorts of things by requiring companies to keep records of voting and have a persons have attached to each vote.
Ok, so you mean those people that actually made use of their voting rights.
> A car company starts cutting corners on safety to undercut their compeditors on price, but they lie about the safety issues.
One problem: usually the issues put up for vote are not directly related to any dodgy business practices, but are rather mundane: confirm the directors, share-holder rights plans, large mergers, etc. The decision of releasing the Pinto to market, although it was known to be explosion-prone was taken in a smoke-filled room behind closed doors, and not put up for shareholder vote. Voting shareholders would be responsible rather indirectly at best, by voting in place those executives that took the decision. Should shareholders be punished just because they happened to vote once for some completely unrelated item, such as secondary offerings, shareholder right plans, mergers, etc.? Loosing all invested capital is ok (that's part of the risk that investors take), but anything that goes beyond that is questionable, and difficult to enforce.
Re:Richard Feynman is cool...
on
Flywheel UPS
·
· Score: 1
> No, he dont have to go in a strait line, he can move any direction, but he must keep the briefcases in the same direction.
Thus, if he takes a right angle corner, he'll have to walk in such a way to keep one suitcase before him, and the other one behind (rather than the usual position of one to the left, and one to the right). Not only will this be very uncomfortable (especially if heavy), but it will also look suspicious as hell...
> Specifically, deny corperations limited liability protections for their stock holders (and fine the shit out of people for doing nasty stuff).
> Example: First, Phillip Morris would get sued into bankrupsy and beyond. Second, the debt would get passed onto the people who have held stock in Phillip Morris at the time of the abuses.
Slight problem: stock holders are essentially anonymous (in French, the word for "publically traded company" is even "société anonyme"). True, under normal conditions stock holders are easy to find out, but what if:
For various reasons (tax, etc.), some stock holders actually chose to have paper certificates, rather than having their shares in a deposit. How will you find out those?
Someone might get an E*Trade account using a throwaway hotmail address, and fund it via money-order. If all goes well, he'll get his money + earnings wired back to him via Western Union. And if his shares get sentenced to death, he just forgets about that pesky account.
Or, more plausibly, the super rich guys usually set up pyramids of umbrella companies, "holdings", trusts, Liechtenstein letterbox companies etc that manage their portfolio. It can be non-trivial to trace this mesh back to the real owner, especially if some of the chain links are in countries with strong banking secrecy laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is, they might not have any "real" client. This "Abmahnungen" stuff is a very lucrative business, and certain lawyers (Gravenreuth) can survive solely on that...
In the US, it's much easyer. There Adobe simply sicks the goons to haul off any dissidents ass to jail, and that's it. But hey, they'll probably claim it wasn't done on their initiative either... I only wonder why the Russian ambassy didn't protest louder against this obvious violation of the Human Rights of one of their citizens.
Errhm, not quite, and in the following lines yourself are actually saying why...:
> If you go and inspect the inode, you'll find the data is still there - at least until it gets overwritten by something else.
Whereas, with this database bug, the data won't get overwritten (unless you DELETE it first...)
> But it's not good to you because, without doing esoteric things in the bottom of the file system, you can't get at it.
The real problem is that you won't expect a simple SELECT ... ORDER BY statement to fail, and fubar happens if your application program acts on the result it gets from the statement (for updating other tables, displaying reports to the users, sounding (or not sounding...) an alarm about missing nukes, etc.).
Actually, Linus has trademarked Linux for purely defensive reasons. Indeed, before he did so, every couple of month or so, a "clever" businessman would register the Linux trademark in some backwater country, and attempt to extort money from various distribution makers. AFAIK, none of those extortion attempts succeeded (it would have been very easy to invalidate those bogus claims, if ever it went to court), but nonetheless this was a nuisance. In order to put a stop on those shenanigans, Linus eventually trademarked the Linux name himself.
Well, today; no need to be litterate to vote: you just need to know where to punch the hole...
> Not that i'm saying China is full of uneducated people,
Not that I'm saying Florida is full of myopic geezers...
> but overall the people in USA are relatively more educated and have more experience with these "rights" and so they are more ready to use these "rights" without causing problems.
Campaign financing *cough* lobbying *cough* two-party system *cough* all-powerful corporations *cough*. If people really were more prepared to use their rights, they'd vote Libertarian or Green. But maybe that's what you'd call "causing problems"...
Even better: also create a file named -rf to go along with it. Ironically, the -rf file will be the only one that won't be wiped...
That's what Kinko's is for...
> Anyway, as I understand it, the same technology is used in at least some printers.
That's what cybercafe's are for...
> Then they can trace back to you
That's what paying your printer with cash is for... And I hope your didn't send in that stoopid warranty registration card, did you?
> Impersonating a lawyer is a pretty big offense because prosecuters and judges are both lawyers.
Don't impersonate any existing lawyer. Make up a name. If the lawyer doesn't exist, he can't sue you. And the ISP will be too embarrassed to press any charges... And I also doubt that Big Brother will display his tracking capabilities just for investigating petty pranks. He prefers bigger fish to fry.
... is to randomly send "lawyer's" letters to ISP about random sites, complaining they infringe on this copyright or that trademark. Use any old color printer to print authentic looking letters. Sit back, and watch the fun... If enough people do this, ISP's will learn to just ignore lawyer's letters, unless they are backed with very strong and verifiable arguments. And it only costs you a stamp, and is almost riskless.
If other types of business can't do it, then why? Doesn't this violate the constitutional principle of "same law for everybody"? Why can't other businesses offer unsolicited "services' and then send bills? Unfortunately, in this case, chances are that Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner exclusively makes money with Abmahnungen, so their might not be any privileged client-lawyer correspondence which could be accidentally disclosed...
The catch is, those firms do have no authority to do this, and the "fines" are entirely for their own pockets. Moreover, often if it is not even sure whether the "violation" took place at all: those threatening letters are often sent months after the alleged facts, when the shopkeeper has already re-arranged his display window since long, and can no longer determine/remember whether this or that article was correctly labeled or not.
Scams like this are regularly featured on police information TV programs such as "Vorsicht Falle, Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger". If I were kIllustrator's author, I'd contact Adobe, and ask them whether this "laywer's firm" is actually operating in Adobe's authority. Chances are good they aren't.
> Of course that won't help with locals
Here in Luxembourg, they do this near road contruction places: A cardboard "roadworker" motioning drivers to slow down. Works for people who pass there the first time. Doesn't (obviously) work for those who commute there daily (i.e. most of the traffic...).
Yeah, I'm sure more people think about Pulp Fiction rather than about the acronym. And the Pulp Fiction inspired meaning is cooler too...
Yeah, that's right. The story has been posted less than 30 hours ago...
Or maybe they simply couldn't sleep because of their neighbour's overly loud stereo. So they spent their time doing something "useful". And if successful, they would have been able to rest in silence, undisturbed by the party below!
Looks like the word "protected" will let Tivo an easy way out. They could argue that if the user really was concerned about the integrity of his Tivo, he could easily have "protected" it by not plugging in the phone jack. He wasn't using their service after all, so then why would he need to be connected to the phone at all?
Technically, they should be able to do much better than that. While for geostationary satellites (with bidirectional comms), it's hard to get down latency to less than half a second, due to 4 times distance divided by speed of light, Iridiums low-orbiting LEO satellites should be able to give you much better ping times, considering they are so much closer. It's a pity that they're squandering thisnatural advantage of low-orbit by using cheap ground-equipment.
And 2400 kbps is nothing to phone home about either. Many geostationary systems can give you up to 40 Mbps bandwidth.
And it's probably much more expensive than most geostationary solutions either. Case in point: Italy's Netsystem is even free of charge, for Chrissakes!
So which advantage stays? Availability from anywhere in the world? Hey, just walk into a damn cybercafé if you want check your mail during a holiday. Btw, cybercafes are much easyer to find in Third World countires that in Europe or the US, because few locals have a computer at home, and thus cybercafes do have a market other than tourists.
If that was case, shouldn't it be called "hamster tape" instead?
Hey, gimme an EMP device! That's ll nuke those pesky boom boxes going on all night at maximum volume, robbing you of an honest man's sleep. EMP's are far more practical than old fashioned methods such as water buckets, or manually going down to the basement to switch off their power supply!
> This was recommended to me by my chiropractor (yes, they actually do work) who unfortunately now hasn't seen me for about a year.
Yeah, but even without moving your wallet, your back would've been better. Indeed, after going to the chiro, it was empty, and thus much less of a bulge...
Actually, Red Hat already did ask for donations two years ago, on August 11th 1999. Many people gave them $800, and people were so enthusiastic that Red Hat had to turn away donations... Some of the refused donators got really upset about this.
For many companies, all shares carry voting rights, even those sold to retail investors. I regular get voting bulletins from E*Trade for the various shares I hold with them. If you held paper certificates, you'd probably need to explicitly request the bulletins at some place (because they wouldn't know where to send them), but I'm sure it would be possible to vote those too.
> Anyway, my point is that the courts could just access these sorts of things by requiring companies to keep records of voting and have a persons have attached to each vote.
Ok, so you mean those people that actually made use of their voting rights.
> A car company starts cutting corners on safety to undercut their compeditors on price, but they lie about the safety issues.
One problem: usually the issues put up for vote are not directly related to any dodgy business practices, but are rather mundane: confirm the directors, share-holder rights plans, large mergers, etc. The decision of releasing the Pinto to market, although it was known to be explosion-prone was taken in a smoke-filled room behind closed doors, and not put up for shareholder vote. Voting shareholders would be responsible rather indirectly at best, by voting in place those executives that took the decision. Should shareholders be punished just because they happened to vote once for some completely unrelated item, such as secondary offerings, shareholder right plans, mergers, etc.? Loosing all invested capital is ok (that's part of the risk that investors take), but anything that goes beyond that is questionable, and difficult to enforce.
Thus, if he takes a right angle corner, he'll have to walk in such a way to keep one suitcase before him, and the other one behind (rather than the usual position of one to the left, and one to the right). Not only will this be very uncomfortable (especially if heavy), but it will also look suspicious as hell...
> Example: First, Phillip Morris would get sued into bankrupsy and beyond. Second, the debt would get passed onto the people who have held stock in Phillip Morris at the time of the abuses.
Slight problem: stock holders are essentially anonymous (in French, the word for "publically traded company" is even "société anonyme"). True, under normal conditions stock holders are easy to find out, but what if: