Suppose that Joe Random Citizen follows a link on his Web browser to a site that contains illegal pictures which are automatically cached in Joe's browser.
Joe, horrified, deletes the cache.
Sometime later, when Joe's computer is in the tech workshop, a technician discovers the deleted files while trying to recover data froma crashed hard disk
The FBI or some such get called in, retrieve the deleted files and charge Joe with the possession of illegal material
Question: How is this different to the manufacture of fingerprint evidence cited in the article>?
Answer: No matter what evidence exists or has been manufactured or planted, the prosecution must still establish guilty intent (mens rea). Unfortunately, this little detail appears to have been lost in US courts
In case the Slashdot editor's inboxes get too clogged up, I'd just like to note that 2003 is the 100th anniversary of flight. Maybe someone can post the story now so that it makes it to the front page in time.
Of course, here in New Zealand, we celebrate the anniversary somewhat earlier than you do in the US:-)
Oh that's just great. Now where are we going to hide out when the machines take over the planet?? The get-out has always been that mankind would take refuge in the abandoned tunnels and sewers. Now that Google has the archive of all the locations, that plan isn't going to work too well.
Please, be more responsible in the stories that you post on here. Thank You, STF
Operation Plumbbob ran from May to October 1957. It released 58,300 kilocuries of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. It is projected that this will lead to 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer, estimated 1900 civilian deaths.
Which civilians will contract thyroid cancer? Who knows? The US? Anyone within the fallout shadow of the atmospheric testing...?
This is also how UK residents who operate their TV sets without the proper government license are ferreted out. A van cruises around the neighborhood listening for radiated TV local-oscillator signals from unlicensed households.
Interesting. That's what we were always TOLD the detector vans were doing. But then recently I read Robert Littles _The Company_, a semi-fictional acount of the CIA in 1950-1990s and he sorta described a technique of snooping radio frequencies to find if any (Soviet) covert listening devices were operating in a given area. One of the characters suggested mounting this mobile listening post on a laundry truck and driving through a neighborhood. Which is exactly what the old detector vans looked like and did.
So this isn't old technology. In fact, with the European RDS (Radio Data System) which I happened to work on back in the early 90s, you could actually instruct the radio receiver to jump to a different tuning setting or hijack the "traffic signal" and pipe advertising into the receiver if the user happened to have traffic alerts switched on.
Maybe you could sue the guy driving behind you tuned to a different frequency under the DMCA for interrupting the advertising while you were reading it...?
Incremental upgrading is part of the drive that keeps the marketing-PR-coup of Moore's Law running.
I just finished a book chapter entitled "The Leapfrog Effect" that details some of the ways in which developing nations HAVE to run their technology into the ground before upgrading. They can't afford to make the incremental steps. In fact, as it turns out, neither can the so-called "developed world" - they just hide many of the true costs.
Upgrade when you have to, not just because you are bored and there's a new game out that needs incrementally better hardware.
STF
"The Leapfrog Effect" is a chapter in: Managing Globally with Information Technology (Sherif Kamel, ed). IDEA Group Publishing (in press)
You can't go up on the Shuttle if you've had a radial keratomy
STF
Re:There was an Ask Slashdot a while back. . .
on
Engineer in a Box?
·
· Score: 1
Actually, that's what *will* happen. After all, it's McDonald's fault that their coffee burned you if you tried to drink it while driving and spilled it on your lap.
I'm proposing an alteration to the old Usenet "Hitler rule" (that when any thread mentions Adolf Hitler and/or the decline of civilization, then that thread should be considered closed.)
The alteration is that any Slashdot thread that mentions the McDonald's coffee lawsuit should be considered closed.
Question: Where do Hollywood movie producers go to the movies? Well, apart from premiere night I mean.
Answer: Private screenings.
How much would you be willing to pay for private screening at location of your choice _at the same time as general movie release_ ? Think home cinema with digital projector, good sound, your own choice of seating, companions, food etc.
Now think pay-per-view digital capability of live events. Whatever takes your fancy - any major sporting event, concert, expedition. Direct digital-feed by satellite straight from the distributor.
Now think movie-industry supplied and controlled projector with encrypted digital feed from the distributor so that you can't bootleg the feed.
I think with digital capability and micro-outlets like this, the role of the film distributor could be about to change significantly.
There are 3 teachers for 800 or so students each semester, and the lectures are horrible; recycled power point slides from past semesters.
Pretty ironic isn't it?
You can't refer to material from previous semesters to gain credit for assessment work.
But the teachers and professors can gain credit (i.e. they get paid) for regurgitating teaching materials from previous semesters.
As a professional academic, I'm appalled. The culture Georgia Tech CS will encourage by these rules is one where engineers become over-confident in their own ability and lose the ability and confidence to accept criticism from others.
The conventional wisdom suggests that, even at introductory CS level, you don't assume that students hand in their own work for homework assignments. Therefore, to be sure that they do have the ability to produce such work, you run formal tests in controlled situations and cross-check their performance.
STF
Err,, yes.
In data communication, it's base-10.
In data storage, it's base-2.
Therefore 1Gbps = 1, 000, 000, 000 bits per second.
1Gbyte on your hard disk or any other storage medium is 2^30 or 1073741824 bits.
Why? Different standards. 1024 is just close enough to 1000 that computer scientists adopted K as their measure for 2^10 or 1 kilobyte. Scientists and engineers work in base-10, hence the reason why data communications standards use that.
This is the same reason that some of us call hard drive manufacturers unethical for quoting storage capacity on hard drives using data communications standards.
STF
It looks like KPMG has decided that its online presence represents part of its trademark image and therefore must be defended.
In the US, I believe that the Lanham Act protects registered marks from uses that are likely to confuse consumers. In addition, a trademark MUST be defended (unlike a copyright). In other words, when you become aware that any of your trademarks is being used without your permission, you must defend it, or risk losing that trademark (as it then becomes "common usage").
However, it is a moot point whether or not a domain name can represent a trademark. Here's a long, but useful article that explores some of the issues. The Lanham Act specifically referes to instances where the trademark of one company is used by another in a commercial context. If there is no commerce, trade or transaction context, then the mark can hardly be said to be confused. However, if you claimed on your Web site that "KPMG's financial success was based on the illegal trade of African monkey organs" and linked "KPMG" to their Web site, you might be on shaky ground.
Looking at the policy in more detail, it does attempt to distinguish situations where the use of a hyperlink could be used to confuse the reader (linking out of context, linking to deep URLs).
A policy cannot dictate a binding contract in the real world. The company can "request" that links be removed; I guess this is one step in the defence. I'm guessing that a suitable stage 2 would be to deny access from referring sites that have not complied with such a request. While they could disallow deep-linking quite easily, this would make it a PITA for sites with which they do have policy agreements.
There's been a bit of comment about key escrow and government-regulated backdoors to encryption systems. Those don't make any sense to me.
What does concern me though is the following scenario, which I got more worried about when I saw this proposed bill regarding government-regulation of digital devices.
Here's the scenario:
1. The government says: "Fine, we recognise that encryption is important."
2. The government then mandates the ue of an encryption system and says in effect "If you want to do business with us, then get a public key from our Certifying Authority."
3. Encrypted communication becomes the standard rather than the exception; you have to provide authentication when you browse or send emails.
4. The mandated standard is set so that an agency with sufficient computing power can crack it easily; thus the citizens are protected from each other, but not from their government.
So I'd be very concerned about this legisltion and anything similar where the government starts to mandate the use of encryption and security devices that they have certified.
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose that Joe Random Citizen follows a link on his Web browser to a site that contains illegal pictures which are automatically cached in Joe's browser.
Joe, horrified, deletes the cache.
Sometime later, when Joe's computer is in the tech workshop, a technician discovers the deleted files while trying to recover data froma crashed hard disk
The FBI or some such get called in, retrieve the deleted files and charge Joe with the possession of illegal material
Question: How is this different to the manufacture of fingerprint evidence cited in the article>?
Answer: No matter what evidence exists or has been manufactured or planted, the prosecution must still establish guilty intent (mens rea). Unfortunately, this little detail appears to have been lost in US courts
STF
Pretty good summary of what the American entrepreneur/inventor used to be about:
1. Develop theoretical principles of flight. 2. Fly. 3. PROFIT!!
Now of course we know that step 2 is often omitted...
STF
This is old news. But good to see that the editors are paying attention since they stuffed up the Quantum Physics anniversary
STF
In case the Slashdot editor's inboxes get too clogged up, I'd just like to note that 2003 is the 100th anniversary of flight. Maybe someone can post the story now so that it makes it to the front page in time.
Of course, here in New Zealand, we celebrate the anniversary somewhat earlier than you do in the US :-)
STF
In Glasgow: Who the **** spilled my beer??
Hey, could you get free cable service by flushing a fibre router down the toilet?
STF
Oh that's just great. Now where are we going to hide out when the machines take over the planet?? The get-out has always been that mankind would take refuge in the abandoned tunnels and sewers. Now that Google has the archive of all the locations, that plan isn't going to work too well.
Please, be more responsible in the stories that you post on here. Thank You, STF
Operation Plumbbob ran from May to October 1957. It released 58,300 kilocuries of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. It is projected that this will lead to 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer, estimated 1900 civilian deaths.
Which civilians will contract thyroid cancer? Who knows? The US? Anyone within the fallout shadow of the atmospheric testing...?
See also (Adobe Acrobat)
STF
Interesting. That's what we were always TOLD the detector vans were doing. But then recently I read Robert Littles _The Company_, a semi-fictional acount of the CIA in 1950-1990s and he sorta described a technique of snooping radio frequencies to find if any (Soviet) covert listening devices were operating in a given area. One of the characters suggested mounting this mobile listening post on a laundry truck and driving through a neighborhood. Which is exactly what the old detector vans looked like and did.
So this isn't old technology. In fact, with the European RDS (Radio Data System) which I happened to work on back in the early 90s, you could actually instruct the radio receiver to jump to a different tuning setting or hijack the "traffic signal" and pipe advertising into the receiver if the user happened to have traffic alerts switched on.
Maybe you could sue the guy driving behind you tuned to a different frequency under the DMCA for interrupting the advertising while you were reading it...?
STF
Here's another part of the problem:
Incremental upgrading is part of the drive that keeps the marketing-PR-coup of Moore's Law running.
I just finished a book chapter entitled "The Leapfrog Effect" that details some of the ways in which developing nations HAVE to run their technology into the ground before upgrading. They can't afford to make the incremental steps. In fact, as it turns out, neither can the so-called "developed world" - they just hide many of the true costs.
Upgrade when you have to, not just because you are bored and there's a new game out that needs incrementally better hardware.
STF
"The Leapfrog Effect" is a chapter in: Managing Globally with Information Technology (Sherif Kamel, ed). IDEA Group Publishing (in press)
This is the sign of a weak economy, not a strong one. Too much competition is as bad as not enough. STF
How on earth (or just slightly off it) do you get a "once in a lifetime" event for something that happens annually?
well, I suppose if you get hit by a lump of rock that didn't burn up completely it might be...
STF
You can't go up on the Shuttle if you've had a radial keratomy
STF
The alteration is that any Slashdot thread that mentions the McDonald's coffee lawsuit should be considered closed.
STF
"A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit."
So why does NASA need so many billions just for a simple space probe to Mars?
STF
Sign up for one of these licensing agreements. Then sue when they don't deliver the "Windows Upgrade" for each Macintosh. STF
Question: Where do Hollywood movie producers go to the movies? Well, apart from premiere night I mean.
Answer: Private screenings.
How much would you be willing to pay for private screening at location of your choice _at the same time as general movie release_ ? Think home cinema with digital projector, good sound, your own choice of seating, companions, food etc.
Now think pay-per-view digital capability of live events. Whatever takes your fancy - any major sporting event, concert, expedition. Direct digital-feed by satellite straight from the distributor.
Now think movie-industry supplied and controlled projector with encrypted digital feed from the distributor so that you can't bootleg the feed.
I think with digital capability and micro-outlets like this, the role of the film distributor could be about to change significantly.
STF
Pretty ironic isn't it? You can't refer to material from previous semesters to gain credit for assessment work. But the teachers and professors can gain credit (i.e. they get paid) for regurgitating teaching materials from previous semesters.
As a professional academic, I'm appalled. The culture Georgia Tech CS will encourage by these rules is one where engineers become over-confident in their own ability and lose the ability and confidence to accept criticism from others.
The conventional wisdom suggests that, even at introductory CS level, you don't assume that students hand in their own work for homework assignments. Therefore, to be sure that they do have the ability to produce such work, you run formal tests in controlled situations and cross-check their performance. STF
Err,, yes. In data communication, it's base-10. In data storage, it's base-2. Therefore 1Gbps = 1, 000, 000, 000 bits per second. 1Gbyte on your hard disk or any other storage medium is 2^30 or 1073741824 bits. Why? Different standards. 1024 is just close enough to 1000 that computer scientists adopted K as their measure for 2^10 or 1 kilobyte. Scientists and engineers work in base-10, hence the reason why data communications standards use that. This is the same reason that some of us call hard drive manufacturers unethical for quoting storage capacity on hard drives using data communications standards. STF
Dr Evil: *raises finger* We will sue them for *pause* ONE MEELION DOLLARS! *silence*
It looks like KPMG has decided that its online presence represents part of its trademark image and therefore must be defended.
In the US, I believe that the Lanham Act protects registered marks from uses that are likely to confuse consumers. In addition, a trademark MUST be defended (unlike a copyright). In other words, when you become aware that any of your trademarks is being used without your permission, you must defend it, or risk losing that trademark (as it then becomes "common usage").
However, it is a moot point whether or not a domain name can represent a trademark. Here's a long, but useful article that explores some of the issues. The Lanham Act specifically referes to instances where the trademark of one company is used by another in a commercial context. If there is no commerce, trade or transaction context, then the mark can hardly be said to be confused. However, if you claimed on your Web site that "KPMG's financial success was based on the illegal trade of African monkey organs" and linked "KPMG" to their Web site, you might be on shaky ground.
Looking at the policy in more detail, it does attempt to distinguish situations where the use of a hyperlink could be used to confuse the reader (linking out of context, linking to deep URLs).
A policy cannot dictate a binding contract in the real world. The company can "request" that links be removed; I guess this is one step in the defence. I'm guessing that a suitable stage 2 would be to deny access from referring sites that have not complied with such a request. While they could disallow deep-linking quite easily, this would make it a PITA for sites with which they do have policy agreements.
DRM
There's been a bit of comment about key escrow and government-regulated backdoors to encryption systems. Those don't make any sense to me. What does concern me though is the following scenario, which I got more worried about when I saw this proposed bill regarding government-regulation of digital devices. Here's the scenario: 1. The government says: "Fine, we recognise that encryption is important." 2. The government then mandates the ue of an encryption system and says in effect "If you want to do business with us, then get a public key from our Certifying Authority." 3. Encrypted communication becomes the standard rather than the exception; you have to provide authentication when you browse or send emails. 4. The mandated standard is set so that an agency with sufficient computing power can crack it easily; thus the citizens are protected from each other, but not from their government. So I'd be very concerned about this legisltion and anything similar where the government starts to mandate the use of encryption and security devices that they have certified.