This attitude stems from the fact, I think, that music HAS been free for God knows how long on the radio.
Music, and TV, while you don't pay a cent for when you watch or listen still has a cost. For these systems the reason why they seem so happy to give it away for nothing is because of advertising.
Music isn't free on the radio, even if thats the public perception, and its not unreasonable that these companies would like make money from not free music on the internet. The problem is part of the effectiveness of advertising is not realizing that it actually has any impact on you, the ad companies don't want people to realize that they are paying for radio by listening as many will typically "pay" less.
Media companies and the advertising industry are inexorably linked currently. Without moving to a pay-per-consumption like many computer games (even though they are moving closer to the dollars of ads) or iTunes et al I doubt this problem will go away soon.
IANAL, but IMHO, the blogger was probably protected under British law.
This may be true if the trial went to court. For many, the costs of representation upfront, combined with an unfamilar legal system, make simply "giving in" the easier and safer choice. Few people are willing to take a stand on an issue like this when its just a hobby of yours.
The fact that legal aid failed...
A Cease and Desist letter is basically a warning, somebody saying I will sue you if you don't stop, but if you do I most likey wont sue you. To the best of my knowledge legal aid is normally only provided to criminal trials, not civil trials that such a lawsuit would involve.
I like your idea, but only if there is some way to make me NOT PAY for the content.
Currently, the bundles that cable/satellite offer smack similar to how CD's work, there is a couple good channels in each price increase, along with lots of stuff I don't want (one hit wonder songs and filler).
TV is still trying to hold onto the fact that unless you buy a outrageously priced DVD of LAST SEASON, you are forced to pay for content you don't want. The BBC is going to start moving to a simultaneous release model (online and on air, but people think the online will either have DRM, have commercials, or just be some fancy streaming) for some of its bigger downloaded shows like Dr Who.
This happens simply because math teachers like to make us have to learn how do things the hard way. Something about learning the theory and stuff like that.
I can still remember Calc I in high school where we had about 10 limits on our final exam. After taking Calc II/III last year and learning L'Hopital's rule. Nothing like turning a half page or more of ugly algebra and trig into 1 or 2 "relatively" simple differentiations.
My calculus teacher last year was nice enough to let us in on many tricks (engineers are more concerned with the answer then the method was his reasoning). Hopefully Differential Equations this year has a couple hidden techniques I can steal from some seniors.
I pulled out my inorganic chemistry book "General Chemistry: Seventh Edition" and here is all information that can be gleamed from the "normal periodic table" [From Chapter 6:Chemical Periodicity]. Most of these examples assume you are starting at Hydrogen in the top left corner.
1) Going down on the table increases atomic radii, going right decreases atomic radii.
2) Going down decreases first ionization energies (to from a cation), going right increases the first ionization energy.
3) Going down increases [less negative] electron affinity (to from a anion) while going right decreases [more negative] electron affinity.
4) Going down increases ionic radii, going right decreases ionic radii.
5) Going down decreases electro negativity, going right increases electro negativity.
While not as simple as "go right, go down" the distinctive shape of the periodic table explains the reason for the different SPDF orbitals better then any chemistry teacher can [it just "fits" the pattern"].
I think what the parent suggested, but perhaps didn't get to is the careers mentioned, nursing, doctors, engineers, are for the most part recession proof. Even in a recession, people still need health care (nurses and doctors) and still need engineers (the "design link" between science and planning, and real objects). Compsci/IT is a classic example of a career that suffers the most under a recession, like retail typically does. The difference in the USA is that the average consumer is being told that they need to SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND or else the artificial economy will collapse under the weight of the punishing trade deficit and faltering federal budget. Bush is even going to FORCE people who want to invest in retirement to put money in the stock market to inject more liquid cash into the unsustainable system. (not to diss stock markets in general, but they require a level of training to interact with, one that I am sure that over 98% of the population doesn't have).
At the end of the day its best to be the boss, and business is the easiest way to get there. If you don't have/like leadership, pick a job that cannot be easily outsourced or replaced by robots (ie recession proof).
(As a note, a TLD, AKA a top level domain, consists of the last part of a URL, namely the.com/.net/.org. DNS relies on the TLD root servers for each TLD, and therefore the owner of a TLD root server has basically absolute power over every site in that TLD. Also TLD's fall under different categories, but generally countries control there personal TLD [such as.co.uk or.ca].)
What I think your hinting at here, but perhaps not touching is that while the most common TLD's are run by the department of commerce, and overall that the Americans involved in the "control" of the internet act more as just maintainers, despite what they could theoretically do. The US government has put little (perhaps even none) real influence into running TLD's, after all they could always just ban any IP address's associated with Cuba from being associated with.com, but they haven't
ICANN has had a reasonably sketchy history in the past and seems to be VERY political and at times discriminatory. Not to say that the UN does not have its place, but if you look at UN Security Council, overall you find that politics get in the way of its job most of the time. I cannot honestly believe that ICANN will be much better. One could even draw that the Internet would be affected MORE by current American politics if power were transferred to ICANN then the current system.
Your off of what position of control that the US department of commerce holds over the internet, they cannot remove sites, only ISP's can, but what they do is change any DNS entry that falls under there TLD set (through there TLD root server). The fact that we still have thepirtatebay.com makes me believe that the current US control is both fair and functional, as the site clearly breaks AMERICAN laws (the legality of the site doesn't really matter in this case, more that the American law considers it illegal.) This site has identified it as a target of many American crackdowns on this or that, but it still exists today, despite the fact that they could theoretically have their.com address arbitrarily revoked.
I suspect that if that the department of commerce abused the power it wielded to further American politics that either the TLD system would be redesigned to sap power from the US government, or that many new TLD's would be created that aren't in the US's control (such as.fun, why not, or.warez, who knows) and that depending on the amount of American influence put in the internet would migrate away (slowly or quickly) from.com and.net into the new TLD set.
To this date, ICANN wants total control because what they currently control is only because of the graciousness of the department of commerce. Even if the current system works perfectly, they do not like that spectre hanging over their heads of the American control (which I can justify). ICANN has been creating lots of new TLD's that the Americans don't control, and they actually do, but at the end of the day most internet sites still live on either.com.org or.net (all under the department of commerce TLD root server).
I am personally of the opinion of, if the system works well, tweak it, but do not do major changes until it breaks. TLD's might have been claimed by the USA that they perhaps were not totally entitled to, and if this was the department of commerce trying to seize the TLD control, I would be outraged. Overall, the department of commerce has peacefully maintained the TLD root server and allowing ICANN (and who ICANN appoints to control the DNS set for each TLD) what it needs to do ICANN's original goal (to standardize the internet).
Your faith in the NDP and Bloc are misplaced, one of the big reasons that the Quebec wants to separate is so that they can STRENGTHEN their connection to the USA without having to deal with the separation of powers and current federal international trade laws (most of which favour Ontario). I would suspect that if there was hints that the Bloc would oppose the bill (even for the sake of just screwing with federalism, they like that) whatever the Canadian RIAA equivalent is would throw them some money and remind them of their USA business links.
As for the NDP, they wouldn't vote against as despite the fact that the budget is now passed, the liberals still control much of the civil service and ultimately can decide where the money goes, irregardless of what the budget bill said. Paul might have a minority government, but he is not going to have the NDP derail legislation without consequences.
I do stand behind your statement that the Grits and Tories are corporate sell-outs, the Tories almost do not even try to claim otherwise, and the you have to be stupid not to see the corporate puppet strings connected to the Grits.
A side point here, but many Palm units cant Support microdrives due to lack of CF card support. The reason why the lifedrive model is important is because it finally opens up that size that was previously only accessable to CF equipped PocketPC's
and I agree with you that getting a new PDA seems pointless, almost downright stupid, for you.
For me personally I have a PocketPC device that I carry around with me and a cell phone at all times. This replaces the GBC, MP3 player, Cell, Organizer, USB key (still occasionly used, but PDA supports a Mass storage client mode + SD/CF cards). The PocketPC for me is a convergance device, and like almost all convergance devices you give up a little bit of each area for the advantage of singular device that is smaller, more integrated, and hopefully more productive.
What I think this article and TFA is getting at is that you should GET THE DEVICE THAT SUITS YOUR NEED (AKA best tool for the job). If you own a PSP and a iPod it makes alot more sense to buy a Palm as you have gaming/ music/ media covered. If you want one device that you can rip DVD's onto, have your mp3 collection, play games with, and keep PIM information on, PocketPC is the way to go.
Alberta is a strange place to live. We arguably have one of the most conservative (both C and c) provincial governments in the entire province, but the rulings on parts of social policy always seem to swing in every which direction.
The "as young as 12" thing doesn't surprise me, for years kids that age having been working through a loophole in the system where the "parent" is hired to do a job like being a paperboy or fast food but the kid does all the work and gets the money. What happened was the parents name and age would go down on the application, but the kids SIN (Canadian Social Security #) would be put down, so the kid even got the tax forms.
What I want to know personally is how this ruling applies to students (currently a university student in Alberta). I know that my High school had some hacked up version of tightVNC installed on each computer that at times would saturate the network, and made compiling when drawing on libraries on the network drive slow as death. While I would love to see the CBE get sued or similar over some keystroke logging issue, I doubt the privacy commission is going to listen to a bunch of whiney 17ish geeks. Eventually I just used a SSH tunnel to a Terminal Server at home for all the stuff I did at school, no screwing around with disks or network drives.
The SoundBlaster Audigy 2/2ZS has not, was not, and never will be targeted to audiophiles and people who want control over what they do with their music.
It is fundamentally a GAMERS card because it offers excellent sound acceleration; "pretty good" sound quality (Don't compare it with pro cards, its not one, even if it has a similar price point), as well as EAX 4 and a bunch of other things that gamers salivate about.
That said, I would never do recording or long periods of listening on my SB 2, but if I want to play games the SB 2 is where it is.
I dont know, when you have to work with polynomials knowing how to do long division is really handy (synthetic division doesnt work any better and it has cases it doesnt work for). Also, I know that in my senior year we could use any calculator made, but most of us just used the TI-83's we had for grades 10-12. A couple kids went out and bought 89's and while they did great in calculus (the 89 can handle most high school level calc without any difficulty) I dont know one of those students that did well in university.
That said, in my first year of engineering we didnt get a calculator for any of our final exams, only typically a log and trig chart. While 90% of the time the answers worked out to nice integers (a good way to check) not having the crutch of the calculator (that highschool arguably trains you to rely on) can be very intresting to deal with (more specifically WHO can deal with loosing it, and who cant).
actually all the info that his company gave the police, as near as he can tell, is legit. The issue is that all the info simply shows him doing his job (ssh and cvs logs of him accessing his normal files).
Somehow a judge was convinced that his normal work patterns constituted enough information for a police search warrent, and thats where the breakdown in the system is.
My other point was that that the State of Utah has no extradition treaty with the (federal) Government Canada or any Canadian Provinces.
Also, as a long parented post mentioned, extradition is typically reserved for serious crimes (typically Felony's, or the Canadian rough mirror the Indictable Offence).
There have been cases where Canadian's have not been extradited in cases like Animal Cruelty, which is typically a Canadian Summary Offence (USA Misdemeanour). This is because the Federal/State Laws of the region making the extradition request contain both Felony and Misdemeanour sections and the Felony charge is entered, and the Misdemeanour is reserved for plea-bargaining.
This is because most extradition treaties roughly dictate that someone can only receive punishment for the crime equal to what they would receive if they had committed the crime locally (such as that all murder suspected extradited from Canada cannot be punished by the death penalty). This also leads to that if a crime exists in only one country, it is not generally considered to be something that someone can be extradited for.
From the above its reasonable to assume that because there is NO Canadian law against this activity, that it is unlikely the extradition treaty would cover this law.
Under the EXTRADITION heading a few pages in and the subheading "Dual Criminality" "Dual criminality is required...The dual criminality requirement is deemed fulfilled if the conduct underlying the offence for which extradition is sought is a criminal offence under Canadian law, regardless of whether the offence is categorized in the same manner or denominated by the same terminology and the offence is punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment exceeding the minimum prescribed by the Extradition Act or by the relevant agreement.".
In short, unless I break a Canadian Law (such as send hate material) in the email that I sent to the child in Utah I am immune to this law. I would suspect this would be similar to virtually everybody else outside of the USA as "Dual criminality" requirements are often considered fundamental parts of international extradition treaties. As for within the USA, most states have extradition treaties with other states for offences punishable on the state level, but I am unfamiliar with agreements.
Medevo
PS. If someone did manage to break Canadian Law in a e-mail sent to a Utah Child that was blacklisted, it would be interesting to see the response at least, as likely both governments would like to punish the offender.
ontop of this, this is a state law, and most extradition treaties are signed by the federal government, not regional ones. I can just see the flavoured filling spilling out of the nose of the RCMP officer that would read the fax of "EXTRADITION REQUEST FOR EMAIL SENT TO CHILD".
I heard from a "friend" in the industry that PSP production costs at the very start were around $500 USD + ship. They have managed to pull them down to around $400 but there is still a pretty big loss leader on those $250 units.
I though the whole point of the value pack was to make the loss less to Sony. Also PSP games/movies the margins are pretty good for Sony and I think there PSP division isn't loosing too much money overall.
As for the "Hack-Able" unit idea, the unit would either include different firmware that would have the differences be reverse-engineered and integrated into the regular units. They could change the hardware (perhaps use a different BIOS) but different hardware almost always means compatibility issues, which "Console Style" game have to avoid to survive. For Sony those hack-able units are loose-loose, and go figure we don't see them.
Sony has avoided units hacks in almost all there products (Aibo no) because that's not who they are selling to. They want people to buy PSP's for the train ride or car trip, when somebody wants to charge the unit, turn it on and go. Sure $25 movies and $50 games are expensive, but they will work irregardless of when you bought the PSP, and the convenience/quality factor is what Sony is selling
Actually, with DRM it will always be breakable because of the "If I can see or listen to it, I can copy it" issue.
Even if Sony makes me use some exotic player that using 10,000 digit long keys and a 1minute file is the size of a CD, the sound eventually goes to API drivers, then midlevel drivers, then miniport drivers, then the sound card and speakers.
What is important there is there IS access to the 100% quality digital sound, no cable pass-through required. Driver and DLL hijacking is quite easy to do with windows and short of a fundamental change (Trusted computing) nothing can prevent me from getting my bits. From the bits, it is only a matter of time and number (similar to breaking WEP keys) before you can figure the system out. CD's are like DVD's in which they are not a moving target under the current standards, and that makes the DRM system virtually useless when it's broken.
Things like user keys can make it a lot harder, but if the goal is to simply extract the content and make it available, then the specific DRM used is a lot less important.
I cant honestly believe that anybody at Microsoft can make a ship that is 100% watertight, not because they are incompetent, but its just unfeasible, and while trusted computing may allow for the holes to be plugged without the users consent, vulnerability's will be found, and the data will become available.
1. If the police cant find a judge to get a warrant, bribed or threatened it doesn't matter, that undermines a layer of the current criminal system. When there is a judges signature on a warrant it means that the judge, as well as the police, are both responsible for the legality of the search, and neither can say "its the other guys fault". Under the current system, with the loss of the check and balance, even FBI officers that launched a search on your house, seized property, and damaged your car would not be liable, or responsible if the closest you were to a terrorist was watching 9/11 on TV.
2. While I do like freedom of speech (although its not written the same in the Canadian Constitution) Laws similar to this (restricting freedom of speech) have existed like this in history for various purposes and time spans. It is simply a prerequisite factor to lead to a police state, not really huge contributing factor. Why doesn't it contribute? The government could always say that, "these people were terrorists" or "30KG of C4 was found hidden in box 2 feed under their foundation". The government will always find ways to cover up when it screws up, this specific restriction simply makes it illegal to talk about them.
3 I will say that The USA does look somewhat like Germany did in 1933 pre-Hitler era (http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-19 33.htm/ but I don't support most of it, just some alarmist). There is no easy way to avoid the comparison between Bush being elected for the second time, versus Hitler's electron (aside from Hitler having more electoral support). Both promised a strong economy, stability, and protection from external threats (communism vs terrorism), as well to support the current companies.
I would sincerely hope this is not where the USA is going, as the USA today has a lot more muscle to flex then Nazi Germany ever did, and it seems somewhat stupid to repeat the same mistakes just 70 years later.
Canada still has more choice overall, having 3 [Liberals, Conservatives, NDP] (or 4 in Québec [Bloc]) major political parties. All of these parties hold significant political clout in the current minority government.
What the grandparent was likely saying is that as the in some districts Democrats and Republicans differ only a campaign symbol and who is paying. Voting for any party in the USA other then these, while is good for democracy, is unlikely to get anybody elected. While from election to election districts may sway from Republican to Democrat and vice versa, what real change occurs?
The problem is that this guy actually hasn't been convicted of any crime, Sony simply said
"Stop now, give us all your info, the website, and anything else related or else we will sue you and every living relative"
While, technically according to British law, he likely broke the law on paper, it's really more of a side matter then anything. Sony has decided that he is on their shitlist, and that's a bad thing for "The Little Guy" (tm).
If I put up a massive sign on my house that said "I LOVE HD-DVD", Sony could (but likely wont) do the same thing and threaten to bury me, despite the fact that its 100% legal for me to do this. Sony figures that the worst case of the threat is that they get a few posts on Slashdot and have to keep paying their legal staff+costs. For Sony and similar companies, this is a just another quasi-legal tactic to use that generally works reasonably well.
I will agree that the laws need to be adjusted to allow for more Fair Use in the USA and Britain (my country currently is currently drafting up similar legislation as the courts are upholding the Fair Use statues in law, and making many up loaders and programmers immune [and specifically untraceable] to the media giants). What really needs to happen is that somebody writes a program that finds all the information required to carry out functions like DeCSS from a file, and set up the program specifically to allow DeCSS functions from a file like explorer.exe or winhelp.exe. I would love to see the hand delivery of the C&D to Microsoft Headquarters.
"What we need is more DRM, something like MS Trusted Computing to protect us from this other....! Oh wait...."
The biggest irony of trusted computing is that there will be so many people involved, and so many devices, drivers and components, that not only will it be A. Breakable B. Recovering from an abused break could take months and billions of dollars.
Imagine if I found a small hole in the transmission system that allowed for a buffer overflow in a trusted component. A virus introduced this way would be naturally TRUSTED by the computer and the operating system would be UNABLE to remove it. Plus then, any communications between this computer and any others around the world will be considered trusted, causing spread unlike any other. You could easily take significant portions of the connected trusted computers in little time whatsoever, imagine a botnet that size, or if you set a filter to XOR to LSB of every 1000'th 32 bit number. I think people should be afraid of trusted computing not because of who owns the computer, but because of then who is responsible for the computer (M$ and pals). Microsoft products aren't bad by themselves, but have a quite insecure track record, making all of the above more of a reality.
I wonder how many times that a 10,000+ person company will want to have there computers wiped and re-installed from scratch before they will demand a better system.
Slashdot Mirror
This attitude stems from the fact, I think, that music HAS been free for God knows how long on the radio.
Music, and TV, while you don't pay a cent for when you watch or listen still has a cost. For these systems the reason why they seem so happy to give it away for nothing is because of advertising.
Music isn't free on the radio, even if thats the public perception, and its not unreasonable that these companies would like make money from not free music on the internet. The problem is part of the effectiveness of advertising is not realizing that it actually has any impact on you, the ad companies don't want people to realize that they are paying for radio by listening as many will typically "pay" less.
Media companies and the advertising industry are inexorably linked currently. Without moving to a pay-per-consumption like many computer games (even though they are moving closer to the dollars of ads) or iTunes et al I doubt this problem will go away soon.
IANAL, but IMHO, the blogger was probably protected under British law.
This may be true if the trial went to court. For many, the costs of representation upfront, combined with an unfamilar legal system, make simply "giving in" the easier and safer choice. Few people are willing to take a stand on an issue like this when its just a hobby of yours.
The fact that legal aid failed...
A Cease and Desist letter is basically a warning, somebody saying I will sue you if you don't stop, but if you do I most likey wont sue you. To the best of my knowledge legal aid is normally only provided to criminal trials, not civil trials that such a lawsuit would involve.
By "More Realistic" you mean "Everything is Brown"?
I like your idea, but only if there is some way to make me NOT PAY for the content.
Currently, the bundles that cable/satellite offer smack similar to how CD's work, there is a couple good channels in each price increase, along with lots of stuff I don't want (one hit wonder songs and filler).
TV is still trying to hold onto the fact that unless you buy a outrageously priced DVD of LAST SEASON, you are forced to pay for content you don't want. The BBC is going to start moving to a simultaneous release model (online and on air, but people think the online will either have DRM, have commercials, or just be some fancy streaming) for some of its bigger downloaded shows like Dr Who.
Medevo
This happens simply because math teachers like to make us have to learn how do things the hard way. Something about learning the theory and stuff like that.
I can still remember Calc I in high school where we had about 10 limits on our final exam. After taking Calc II/III last year and learning L'Hopital's rule. Nothing like turning a half page or more of ugly algebra and trig into 1 or 2 "relatively" simple differentiations.
My calculus teacher last year was nice enough to let us in on many tricks (engineers are more concerned with the answer then the method was his reasoning). Hopefully Differential Equations this year has a couple hidden techniques I can steal from some seniors.
Medevo
I pulled out my inorganic chemistry book "General Chemistry: Seventh Edition" and here is all information that can be gleamed from the "normal periodic table" [From Chapter 6:Chemical Periodicity]. Most of these examples assume you are starting at Hydrogen in the top left corner.
1) Going down on the table increases atomic radii, going right decreases atomic radii.
2) Going down decreases first ionization energies (to from a cation), going right increases the first ionization energy.
3) Going down increases [less negative] electron affinity (to from a anion) while going right decreases [more negative] electron affinity.
4) Going down increases ionic radii, going right decreases ionic radii.
5) Going down decreases electro negativity, going right increases electro negativity.
While not as simple as "go right, go down" the distinctive shape of the periodic table explains the reason for the different SPDF orbitals better then any chemistry teacher can [it just "fits" the pattern"].
Medevo
I think what the parent suggested, but perhaps didn't get to is the careers mentioned, nursing, doctors, engineers, are for the most part recession proof. Even in a recession, people still need health care (nurses and doctors) and still need engineers (the "design link" between science and planning, and real objects). Compsci/IT is a classic example of a career that suffers the most under a recession, like retail typically does. The difference in the USA is that the average consumer is being told that they need to SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND or else the artificial economy will collapse under the weight of the punishing trade deficit and faltering federal budget. Bush is even going to FORCE people who want to invest in retirement to put money in the stock market to inject more liquid cash into the unsustainable system. (not to diss stock markets in general, but they require a level of training to interact with, one that I am sure that over 98% of the population doesn't have).
At the end of the day its best to be the boss, and business is the easiest way to get there. If you don't have/like leadership, pick a job that cannot be easily outsourced or replaced by robots (ie recession proof).
Medevo
(As a note, a TLD, AKA a top level domain, consists of the last part of a URL, namely the .com/.net/.org. DNS relies on the TLD root servers for each TLD, and therefore the owner of a TLD root server has basically absolute power over every site in that TLD. Also TLD's fall under different categories, but generally countries control there personal TLD [such as .co.uk or .ca].)
.com, but they haven't
.com address arbitrarily revoked.
.fun, why not, or .warez, who knows) and that depending on the amount of American influence put in the internet would migrate away (slowly or quickly) from .com and .net into the new TLD set.
.com .org or .net (all under the department of commerce TLD root server).
What I think your hinting at here, but perhaps not touching is that while the most common TLD's are run by the department of commerce, and overall that the Americans involved in the "control" of the internet act more as just maintainers, despite what they could theoretically do. The US government has put little (perhaps even none) real influence into running TLD's, after all they could always just ban any IP address's associated with Cuba from being associated with
ICANN has had a reasonably sketchy history in the past and seems to be VERY political and at times discriminatory. Not to say that the UN does not have its place, but if you look at UN Security Council, overall you find that politics get in the way of its job most of the time. I cannot honestly believe that ICANN will be much better. One could even draw that the Internet would be affected MORE by current American politics if power were transferred to ICANN then the current system.
Your off of what position of control that the US department of commerce holds over the internet, they cannot remove sites, only ISP's can, but what they do is change any DNS entry that falls under there TLD set (through there TLD root server). The fact that we still have thepirtatebay.com makes me believe that the current US control is both fair and functional, as the site clearly breaks AMERICAN laws (the legality of the site doesn't really matter in this case, more that the American law considers it illegal.) This site has identified it as a target of many American crackdowns on this or that, but it still exists today, despite the fact that they could theoretically have their
I suspect that if that the department of commerce abused the power it wielded to further American politics that either the TLD system would be redesigned to sap power from the US government, or that many new TLD's would be created that aren't in the US's control (such as
To this date, ICANN wants total control because what they currently control is only because of the graciousness of the department of commerce. Even if the current system works perfectly, they do not like that spectre hanging over their heads of the American control (which I can justify). ICANN has been creating lots of new TLD's that the Americans don't control, and they actually do, but at the end of the day most internet sites still live on either
I am personally of the opinion of, if the system works well, tweak it, but do not do major changes until it breaks. TLD's might have been claimed by the USA that they perhaps were not totally entitled to, and if this was the department of commerce trying to seize the TLD control, I would be outraged. Overall, the department of commerce has peacefully maintained the TLD root server and allowing ICANN (and who ICANN appoints to control the DNS set for each TLD) what it needs to do ICANN's original goal (to standardize the internet).
Medevo
Your faith in the NDP and Bloc are misplaced, one of the big reasons that the Quebec wants to separate is so that they can STRENGTHEN their connection to the USA without having to deal with the separation of powers and current federal international trade laws (most of which favour Ontario). I would suspect that if there was hints that the Bloc would oppose the bill (even for the sake of just screwing with federalism, they like that) whatever the Canadian RIAA equivalent is would throw them some money and remind them of their USA business links.
As for the NDP, they wouldn't vote against as despite the fact that the budget is now passed, the liberals still control much of the civil service and ultimately can decide where the money goes, irregardless of what the budget bill said. Paul might have a minority government, but he is not going to have the NDP derail legislation without consequences.
I do stand behind your statement that the Grits and Tories are corporate sell-outs, the Tories almost do not even try to claim otherwise, and the you have to be stupid not to see the corporate puppet strings connected to the Grits.
Medevo
PS (Grits=Liberal Party, Tories=Conservative Party)
14. 4 GB of storage for the Lifedrive model.
A side point here, but many Palm units cant Support microdrives due to lack of CF card support. The reason why the lifedrive model is important is because it finally opens up that size that was previously only accessable to CF equipped PocketPC's
and I agree with you that getting a new PDA seems pointless, almost downright stupid, for you.
For me personally I have a PocketPC device that I carry around with me and a cell phone at all times. This replaces the GBC, MP3 player, Cell, Organizer, USB key (still occasionly used, but PDA supports a Mass storage client mode + SD/CF cards). The PocketPC for me is a convergance device, and like almost all convergance devices you give up a little bit of each area for the advantage of singular device that is smaller, more integrated, and hopefully more productive.
What I think this article and TFA is getting at is that you should GET THE DEVICE THAT SUITS YOUR NEED (AKA best tool for the job). If you own a PSP and a iPod it makes alot more sense to buy a Palm as you have gaming/ music/ media covered. If you want one device that you can rip DVD's onto, have your mp3 collection, play games with, and keep PIM information on, PocketPC is the way to go.
Medevo
Alberta is a strange place to live. We arguably have one of the most conservative (both C and c) provincial governments in the entire province, but the rulings on parts of social policy always seem to swing in every which direction.
The "as young as 12" thing doesn't surprise me, for years kids that age having been working through a loophole in the system where the "parent" is hired to do a job like being a paperboy or fast food but the kid does all the work and gets the money. What happened was the parents name and age would go down on the application, but the kids SIN (Canadian Social Security #) would be put down, so the kid even got the tax forms.
What I want to know personally is how this ruling applies to students (currently a university student in Alberta). I know that my High school had some hacked up version of tightVNC installed on each computer that at times would saturate the network, and made compiling when drawing on libraries on the network drive slow as death. While I would love to see the CBE get sued or similar over some keystroke logging issue, I doubt the privacy commission is going to listen to a bunch of whiney 17ish geeks. Eventually I just used a SSH tunnel to a Terminal Server at home for all the stuff I did at school, no screwing around with disks or network drives.
Medevo
The SoundBlaster Audigy 2/2ZS has not, was not, and never will be targeted to audiophiles and people who want control over what they do with their music.
It is fundamentally a GAMERS card because it offers excellent sound acceleration; "pretty good" sound quality (Don't compare it with pro cards, its not one, even if it has a similar price point), as well as EAX 4 and a bunch of other things that gamers salivate about.
That said, I would never do recording or long periods of listening on my SB 2, but if I want to play games the SB 2 is where it is.
Medevo
I dont know, when you have to work with polynomials knowing how to do long division is really handy (synthetic division doesnt work any better and it has cases it doesnt work for). Also, I know that in my senior year we could use any calculator made, but most of us just used the TI-83's we had for grades 10-12. A couple kids went out and bought 89's and while they did great in calculus (the 89 can handle most high school level calc without any difficulty) I dont know one of those students that did well in university.
That said, in my first year of engineering we didnt get a calculator for any of our final exams, only typically a log and trig chart. While 90% of the time the answers worked out to nice integers (a good way to check) not having the crutch of the calculator (that highschool arguably trains you to rely on) can be very intresting to deal with (more specifically WHO can deal with loosing it, and who cant).
Medevo
Geeze, you are getting killed on power. We get ours for something like 6 or 7 cents CANADIAN per KWh.
Assuming its 7 cents, that works out to roughly $50 USD, a good 57% cheaper.
Nevertheless, I know that we do generate most of that, power with coal-fired generators, so overall not particularly great for the environment
Medevo
actually all the info that his company gave the police, as near as he can tell, is legit. The issue is that all the info simply shows him doing his job (ssh and cvs logs of him accessing his normal files).
Somehow a judge was convinced that his normal work patterns constituted enough information for a police search warrent, and thats where the breakdown in the system is.
Medevo
Exactly.
- gen-g8iag.html/
My other point was that that the State of Utah has no extradition treaty with the (federal) Government Canada or any Canadian Provinces.
Also, as a long parented post mentioned, extradition is typically reserved for serious crimes (typically Felony's, or the Canadian rough mirror the Indictable Offence).
There have been cases where Canadian's have not been extradited in cases like Animal Cruelty, which is typically a Canadian Summary Offence (USA Misdemeanour). This is because the Federal/State Laws of the region making the extradition request contain both Felony and Misdemeanour sections and the Felony charge is entered, and the Misdemeanour is reserved for plea-bargaining.
This is because most extradition treaties roughly dictate that someone can only receive punishment for the crime equal to what they would receive if they had committed the crime locally (such as that all murder suspected extradited from Canada cannot be punished by the death penalty). This also leads to that if a crime exists in only one country, it is not generally considered to be something that someone can be extradited for.
From the above its reasonable to assume that because there is NO Canadian law against this activity, that it is unlikely the extradition treaty would cover this law.
A quick search yields
http://www.oas.org/juridico/MLA/en/can/en_can-ext
Under the EXTRADITION heading a few pages in and the subheading "Dual Criminality"
"Dual criminality is required...The dual criminality requirement is deemed fulfilled if the conduct underlying the offence for which extradition is sought is a criminal offence under Canadian law, regardless of whether the offence is categorized in the same manner or denominated by the same terminology and the offence is punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment exceeding the minimum prescribed by the Extradition Act or by the relevant agreement.".
In short, unless I break a Canadian Law (such as send hate material) in the email that I sent to the child in Utah I am immune to this law. I would suspect this would be similar to virtually everybody else outside of the USA as "Dual criminality" requirements are often considered fundamental parts of international extradition treaties. As for within the USA, most states have extradition treaties with other states for offences punishable on the state level, but I am unfamiliar with agreements.
Medevo
PS. If someone did manage to break Canadian Law in a e-mail sent to a Utah Child that was blacklisted, it would be interesting to see the response at least, as likely both governments would like to punish the offender.
ontop of this, this is a state law, and most extradition treaties are signed by the federal government, not regional ones. I can just see the flavoured filling spilling out of the nose of the RCMP officer that would read the fax of "EXTRADITION REQUEST FOR EMAIL SENT TO CHILD".
Medevo
I heard from a "friend" in the industry that PSP production costs at the very start were around $500 USD + ship. They have managed to pull them down to around $400 but there is still a pretty big loss leader on those $250 units.
I though the whole point of the value pack was to make the loss less to Sony. Also PSP games/movies the margins are pretty good for Sony and I think there PSP division isn't loosing too much money overall.
As for the "Hack-Able" unit idea, the unit would either include different firmware that would have the differences be reverse-engineered and integrated into the regular units. They could change the hardware (perhaps use a different BIOS) but different hardware almost always means compatibility issues, which "Console Style" game have to avoid to survive. For Sony those hack-able units are loose-loose, and go figure we don't see them.
Sony has avoided units hacks in almost all there products (Aibo no) because that's not who they are selling to. They want people to buy PSP's for the train ride or car trip, when somebody wants to charge the unit, turn it on and go. Sure $25 movies and $50 games are expensive, but they will work irregardless of when you bought the PSP, and the convenience/quality factor is what Sony is selling
Medevo
Actually, with DRM it will always be breakable because of the "If I can see or listen to it, I can copy it" issue.
Even if Sony makes me use some exotic player that using 10,000 digit long keys and a 1minute file is the size of a CD, the sound eventually goes to API drivers, then midlevel drivers, then miniport drivers, then the sound card and speakers.
What is important there is there IS access to the 100% quality digital sound, no cable pass-through required. Driver and DLL hijacking is quite easy to do with windows and short of a fundamental change (Trusted computing) nothing can prevent me from getting my bits. From the bits, it is only a matter of time and number (similar to breaking WEP keys) before you can figure the system out. CD's are like DVD's in which they are not a moving target under the current standards, and that makes the DRM system virtually useless when it's broken.
Things like user keys can make it a lot harder, but if the goal is to simply extract the content and make it available, then the specific DRM used is a lot less important.
I cant honestly believe that anybody at Microsoft can make a ship that is 100% watertight, not because they are incompetent, but its just unfeasible, and while trusted computing may allow for the holes to be plugged without the users consent, vulnerability's will be found, and the data will become available.
Medevo
I think you have some good points there.
9 33.htm/ but I don't support most of it, just some alarmist). There is no easy way to avoid the comparison between Bush being elected for the second time, versus Hitler's electron (aside from Hitler having more electoral support). Both promised a strong economy, stability, and protection from external threats (communism vs terrorism), as well to support the current companies.
1. If the police cant find a judge to get a warrant, bribed or threatened it doesn't matter, that undermines a layer of the current criminal system. When there is a judges signature on a warrant it means that the judge, as well as the police, are both responsible for the legality of the search, and neither can say "its the other guys fault". Under the current system, with the loss of the check and balance, even FBI officers that launched a search on your house, seized property, and damaged your car would not be liable, or responsible if the closest you were to a terrorist was watching 9/11 on TV.
2. While I do like freedom of speech (although its not written the same in the Canadian Constitution) Laws similar to this (restricting freedom of speech) have existed like this in history for various purposes and time spans. It is simply a prerequisite factor to lead to a police state, not really huge contributing factor. Why doesn't it contribute? The government could always say that, "these people were terrorists" or "30KG of C4 was found hidden in box 2 feed under their foundation". The government will always find ways to cover up when it screws up, this specific restriction simply makes it illegal to talk about them.
3 I will say that The USA does look somewhat like Germany did in 1933 pre-Hitler era (http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1
I would sincerely hope this is not where the USA is going, as the USA today has a lot more muscle to flex then Nazi Germany ever did, and it seems somewhat stupid to repeat the same mistakes just 70 years later.
Medevo
To the best of my Knowledge, the titles "Honourable" and "Right Honourable" are reserved for members of parliament.
"Honourable" simply means you have served as a MP before (so the people listed have been simply re-elected).
"Right Honourable" is reserved for the current and former Prime Ministers.
People who serve on Cabinet positions or who chair committee's have more say and power, but these things do not show up as a title.
Medevo
We also have Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, Communists, as well as other parties like the Marijuana party. All of these parties were offical and registered in the last federal election.
Canada still has more choice overall, having 3 [Liberals, Conservatives, NDP] (or 4 in Québec [Bloc]) major political parties. All of these parties hold significant political clout in the current minority government.
What the grandparent was likely saying is that as the in some districts Democrats and Republicans differ only a campaign symbol and who is paying. Voting for any party in the USA other then these, while is good for democracy, is unlikely to get anybody elected. While from election to election districts may sway from Republican to Democrat and vice versa, what real change occurs?
Medevo
The problem is that this guy actually hasn't been convicted of any crime, Sony simply said
"Stop now, give us all your info, the website, and anything else related or else we will sue you and every living relative"
While, technically according to British law, he likely broke the law on paper, it's really more of a side matter then anything. Sony has decided that he is on their shitlist, and that's a bad thing for "The Little Guy" (tm).
If I put up a massive sign on my house that said "I LOVE HD-DVD", Sony could (but likely wont) do the same thing and threaten to bury me, despite the fact that its 100% legal for me to do this. Sony figures that the worst case of the threat is that they get a few posts on Slashdot and have to keep paying their legal staff+costs. For Sony and similar companies, this is a just another quasi-legal tactic to use that generally works reasonably well.
I will agree that the laws need to be adjusted to allow for more Fair Use in the USA and Britain (my country currently is currently drafting up similar legislation as the courts are upholding the Fair Use statues in law, and making many up loaders and programmers immune [and specifically untraceable] to the media giants). What really needs to happen is that somebody writes a program that finds all the information required to carry out functions like DeCSS from a file, and set up the program specifically to allow DeCSS functions from a file like explorer.exe or winhelp.exe. I would love to see the hand delivery of the C&D to Microsoft Headquarters.
Medevo
"What we need is more DRM, something like MS Trusted Computing to protect us from this other....! Oh wait...."
The biggest irony of trusted computing is that there will be so many people involved, and so many devices, drivers and components, that not only will it be
A. Breakable
B. Recovering from an abused break could take months and billions of dollars.
Imagine if I found a small hole in the transmission system that allowed for a buffer overflow in a trusted component. A virus introduced this way would be naturally TRUSTED by the computer and the operating system would be UNABLE to remove it. Plus then, any communications between this computer and any others around the world will be considered trusted, causing spread unlike any other. You could easily take significant portions of the connected trusted computers in little time whatsoever, imagine a botnet that size, or if you set a filter to XOR to LSB of every 1000'th 32 bit number. I think people should be afraid of trusted computing not because of who owns the computer, but because of then who is responsible for the computer (M$ and pals). Microsoft products aren't bad by themselves, but have a quite insecure track record, making all of the above more of a reality.
I wonder how many times that a 10,000+ person company will want to have there computers wiped and re-installed from scratch before they will demand a better system.
Medevo