Given the number of PC games that are riddled with bugs (I'm looking at you, Medieval Total War), try-before-you-buy would still be nice...
Actually one thing that annoys me about shareware on Windows is that applications are often so deceitful about what they are released as. Releasing a free demo that you pay to upgrade is fine, but more often, applications will claim to be "free" when it turns out to be crippleware, or it'll be trialware that silently expires after 30 days. It was much better on the Amiga, where such software was clearly labelled as shareware. These days I find myself searching for open source software - not because I particular care about getting the source code, but because if I see a licence such as GPL, I know what I'm getting, and that it won't be crippleware in disguise.
At least these days, any drawing that the game does itself should always be hardware accelerated, even if it's 2D (DirectX has encouraged this, since D3D8 IIRC).
I think it's particularly misleading the way that "search" warrants have now turned into "seizure" warrants. People still have this impression of the police just looking around, so they still have public support - the reality is that you can kiss goodbye to all your electronic equipment for a period of months, if not forever.
Even if it's not necessary for business, the Internet is becoming an essential part of people's lives for communication. Not to mention personal items such as photos that are lost.
Perhaps we should call them as what they really are: seizure warrants.
Surely the main bottleneck in raytracing is still processing power, as opposed to how well developed the algorithms are - it seems unlikely that Intel thought "Well there's no point making our CPUs go faster, as everyone can do graphics on the GPU"...
and 3D objects had spent years being much less blocky than they are in computer games.
Not sure how you mean? Graphics cards allowed resolutions to be much higher.
I was with you on the first paragraph, but for heaven's sake:
Then there's libs. MS is in some ways more free than GPL software; you can't call a GPL media player without GPLing your own software on a FOSS desktop, end of story. With Microsoft there are tons of libs and apps you can call freely as a developer, from entire databases to the tiniest hidden hooks in the OS
Rubbish - there are plenty of LGPL libraries, not to mention BSD and other licences, you can freely call. Yes, we know that GPL isn't a great choice for libraries - most people would agree, and that's why most libraries use something ese like LGPL!
Similarly, there are vast numbers of closed source libraries that are most certainly not free to call. (Also note that you are incorrect about calling - the limitation is on redistribution.)
If you are claiming that the proportion or number of closed sourced libraries that can be redistributed freely is greater than that of open source libraries, and that the number of GPL libraries is greater than that of closed source free distributable libraries, then please post your citations.
I use GPL software on Windows btw, so comparing open source to closed source applications is not the same as comparing Windows to Linux. That only applies to the operating systems themselves, not the applications (which can be either open or closed, on either OS).
Last time I looked, you most certainly weren't free to distribute Windows for free.
Ah yes, that's right - anyone running Windows must be behaving irrationally, including the large proportion (probably even a majority) of readers of this site.
Indeed, I can just see that happening, but if so I hope they'll get sued for libel, since the restriction is not on notebooks.
(If you meant to say netbook - well, first they'll have to actually release a Mac netbook that doesn't cost ten times the price.)
Although yes, I don't doubt that Apple would try such a thing, as they love to mislead ("First 64-bit 'PC', if we define 'PC' in a way that includes Macs but no 64 bit computers that came before us! Oh, and nevermind that now that we want to slag of PCs, we'll change the definition so that it doesn't include Macs after all!")
If I manage to refrain from committing criminal acts such as burglary, I'm not human?
TFS is misleading to compare this to activities like getting drunk - we're talking about reporting of criminal matters, and this college paper is no more guilty than any mainstream paper that publishes such information.
I hope no one here is naive enough to use the "if you have nothing to hide..." line.
I have something to hide from people I don't trust or people I don't want knowing about my private life. I fail to see how someone I was supposedly in a relationship with could come under this - if your gf has a problem with you browsing porn, and you feel the need to hide it from her, you both have bigger problems in your relationship than a web browser.
If there's really something you need to keep secret from someone who has access to your computer, that's what encryption is for.
If we're going to pick about how likely future developments are, I think "How do they manage the not-insignificant feat of time travel?" would count as a bigger peeve...
There's also another point to add to my last reply - it's unfair to compare the individual police officer to the company as a whole, and as well as comparing the Government to Verizon, the other obvious comparison is the police officer to the employee.
It was the employee who was following the rules - whilst Verizon made the policy, I doubt it said "Even if someone's dying and the police ask for help, don't refuse them service unless they pay up!", rather it was a more general policy.
But the employee is caught in the problem that he has to follow rules no matter what. Contrary to what some people seem to think here, not helping a police officer's request, when it is not backed by the appropriate legal authorisation, is not breaking the law (and a good thing too). So he'd be breaking company rules where the rules are entirely legal. He risks losing a lot more than $20, since his livelihood is at stake. So again, why does everyone here expect the employee to do the "right thing" even if he risks losing his job, but worry that the police would be out of pocket by $20?
It's easy to be angry at the big nasty company, but the reality is it's individuals involved on both sides. Blaming Verizon for intentionally doing this is like blaming the Government as a whole for being too stingy to pay the $20. And excusing the police officer is no different to excusing the individual.
The problem is here one of communication, in that they weren't able to get an official authorisation from higher up in the company, but the authorities may be just as much to blame (e.g., why not go through the proper channels? If they didn't have time, well... neither did Verizon) I guess it would also help if Verizon put in some exceptions in their official rules so that employees aren't breaking the rules if they do something for ethical reasons, but again, given the rarity of this case, I can't blame them for not having it in advance.
If I don't want to be found, as was evidently the case here, fine by me.
(Don't get me wrong - it's natural that other people want to help even if the person doesn't want that, and often the person will later say they are glad they were saved. But your comment suggests that the OP will be upset at the lack of help from you or Verizon - yet if he's ever in that situation where he doesn't want to be found, this clearly won't be the case.)
An interesting idea - but what about family members who don't want to be found? A man leaving his family, or a domestic abuse victim, perhaps?
Also, how many people would this affect in practice? I can't imagine that the set of people who need to be found in an emergency, who just happen to have not paid their bills, and despite their lost network access they still have their phone with them and turned on, would be that significant anyway. Should laws be based on one-off rare cases? We don't even know if it would've worked in this case - did the guy have his non-working phone with him, when he fled in his craze of insanity? It's also unclear if they would've been able to find and contact any family members in time, too.
I suspect that the Government still outdoes Verizon in terms of the amount of money they have.
(I'm not sure what 911 services has to do with this. RTFA, it wasn't that they refused a 911 call, it was that they didn't allow him to be tracked by the police.)
I think there's a difference between "you cause someone's death by accident" and "someone dies where you could have helped, but didn't". In the latter case, the person has no obligation to help, it was only an extra means that could have helped, and there's no way of knowing if it would've saved such a person anyway.
I would be worried if simply "not helping" constitutes manslaughter, unless perhaps the person was entrusted with looking after the person (e.g., a doctor - but even there, manslaughter would only be used for actively killing someone by mistake, and not for simply being unable to keep them alive).
Have there been any court cases that suggest otherwise?
Yes indeed, the damning thing here is I guess that they didn't do it out of respect for privacy or refusing unauthorised access, but because of the lack of payment. Had he have paid his bill, they'd have complied, presumably.
I guess if you want to avoid a wiretap, you just have to not pay your bills...
Yes, I agree, it would be interesting to know how they tried to obtain the information and whether they had the required authorisation for it. Considering that access to private information and tracking people is generally looked down upon here, especially without proper authorisation, I'm surprised at all the "Charge them with murder!" style responses. I know the circumstances are different, but the precedent set would not be.
Wait - so $20 is too much for the police, but you expect Verizon to offer a service for free?
Verizon weren't the cause of the problem. If they were an arse for failing to offer their help because of $20, then the police were an arse for not helping out with $20 too.
It's also possible by ignoring the officers request the employee committed a crime. Obstruction of justice comes to mind, depraved indifference perhaps, though I am sure there are others.
Not obeying an officer's request, when they don't have a warrant or otherwise legal right to that information, should be a crime? I hope not.
We can debate whether it was a good thing or not in this particular case all we like, but I would be very worried of the precedent of making it illegal to not do as a policemen says. Suddenly everyone who tries to refuse access to the police would be breaking the law, even if the police had no authority to get that information!
It's unclear from TFA whether the police made a legal request, or simply asked - I suspect the latter.
Sure, I know that in this particular case it seems an arse not to help, and I realise that their motives were money rather than protecting his privacy, but think of more general cases. Not assisting a police officer is not a crime, and I would be very worried of the precedent set by making them liable: "Hey, we'd like to track down this person to see if he's up to no good. No we don't have a warrant. What's that, you've refused? Right, everyone involved in your company will be arrested - and you'll be held criminally liable if this person we're after commits a crime that we could have stopped."
The other point to note is that they didn't refuse, they simply asked for the money. Why not pay it, if it's only $20? I concede it's perhaps making a bit of an arse to demand money up front when time was of utmost important, but again think more generally: isn't it reasonable for the police to compensate when they make demands of phone companies and ISPs?
It's also not like we're talking about someone who say was in an accident. Don't get me wrong, I realise that it's probably best to help people even if they say at the time they don't want it, but one of the consequences of a free society is the freedom not to be found, if the person doesn't want that.
The problem here is stretching the definition of "cancelled" to "any series that is no longer on the air". Sure, technically even long running popular shows that are no longer being made are "cancelled", but I think it's a bit meaningless to then talk about a character appearing in shows that have all been cancelled. If we took actors from 30 years ago, that would be true for almost all of them...
Slashdot Mirror
...though someone should tell his dad that we don't use floppies anymore.
Fixed that for you.
Given the number of PC games that are riddled with bugs (I'm looking at you, Medieval Total War), try-before-you-buy would still be nice...
Actually one thing that annoys me about shareware on Windows is that applications are often so deceitful about what they are released as. Releasing a free demo that you pay to upgrade is fine, but more often, applications will claim to be "free" when it turns out to be crippleware, or it'll be trialware that silently expires after 30 days. It was much better on the Amiga, where such software was clearly labelled as shareware. These days I find myself searching for open source software - not because I particular care about getting the source code, but because if I see a licence such as GPL, I know what I'm getting, and that it won't be crippleware in disguise.
At least these days, any drawing that the game does itself should always be hardware accelerated, even if it's 2D (DirectX has encouraged this, since D3D8 IIRC).
They can add to a game, but they don't make one.
That's what he said - a key element, not a sufficiency.
I think it's particularly misleading the way that "search" warrants have now turned into "seizure" warrants. People still have this impression of the police just looking around, so they still have public support - the reality is that you can kiss goodbye to all your electronic equipment for a period of months, if not forever.
Even if it's not necessary for business, the Internet is becoming an essential part of people's lives for communication. Not to mention personal items such as photos that are lost.
Perhaps we should call them as what they really are: seizure warrants.
Surely the main bottleneck in raytracing is still processing power, as opposed to how well developed the algorithms are - it seems unlikely that Intel thought "Well there's no point making our CPUs go faster, as everyone can do graphics on the GPU"...
and 3D objects had spent years being much less blocky than they are in computer games.
Not sure how you mean? Graphics cards allowed resolutions to be much higher.
You want to penalize people for being human, sure
Straw man. My point was the issue of penalising people for burglary.
but forgive me if I'll not accept your viewpoint as much more than, well, stupid.
Ah, you have no argument, so you resort to an ad hominem. That's surely a sign of intelligent debate.
I was with you on the first paragraph, but for heaven's sake:
Then there's libs. MS is in some ways more free than GPL software; you can't call a GPL media player without GPLing your own software on a FOSS desktop, end of story. With Microsoft there are tons of libs and apps you can call freely as a developer, from entire databases to the tiniest hidden hooks in the OS
Rubbish - there are plenty of LGPL libraries, not to mention BSD and other licences, you can freely call. Yes, we know that GPL isn't a great choice for libraries - most people would agree, and that's why most libraries use something ese like LGPL!
Similarly, there are vast numbers of closed source libraries that are most certainly not free to call. (Also note that you are incorrect about calling - the limitation is on redistribution.)
If you are claiming that the proportion or number of closed sourced libraries that can be redistributed freely is greater than that of open source libraries, and that the number of GPL libraries is greater than that of closed source free distributable libraries, then please post your citations.
I use GPL software on Windows btw, so comparing open source to closed source applications is not the same as comparing Windows to Linux. That only applies to the operating systems themselves, not the applications (which can be either open or closed, on either OS).
Last time I looked, you most certainly weren't free to distribute Windows for free.
Ah yes, that's right - anyone running Windows must be behaving irrationally, including the large proportion (probably even a majority) of readers of this site.
Indeed, I can just see that happening, but if so I hope they'll get sued for libel, since the restriction is not on notebooks.
(If you meant to say netbook - well, first they'll have to actually release a Mac netbook that doesn't cost ten times the price.)
Although yes, I don't doubt that Apple would try such a thing, as they love to mislead ("First 64-bit 'PC', if we define 'PC' in a way that includes Macs but no 64 bit computers that came before us! Oh, and nevermind that now that we want to slag of PCs, we'll change the definition so that it doesn't include Macs after all!")
If I manage to refrain from committing criminal acts such as burglary, I'm not human?
TFS is misleading to compare this to activities like getting drunk - we're talking about reporting of criminal matters, and this college paper is no more guilty than any mainstream paper that publishes such information.
I hope no one here is naive enough to use the "if you have nothing to hide..." line.
I have something to hide from people I don't trust or people I don't want knowing about my private life. I fail to see how someone I was supposedly in a relationship with could come under this - if your gf has a problem with you browsing porn, and you feel the need to hide it from her, you both have bigger problems in your relationship than a web browser.
If there's really something you need to keep secret from someone who has access to your computer, that's what encryption is for.
If we're going to pick about how likely future developments are, I think "How do they manage the not-insignificant feat of time travel?" would count as a bigger peeve...
There's also another point to add to my last reply - it's unfair to compare the individual police officer to the company as a whole, and as well as comparing the Government to Verizon, the other obvious comparison is the police officer to the employee.
It was the employee who was following the rules - whilst Verizon made the policy, I doubt it said "Even if someone's dying and the police ask for help, don't refuse them service unless they pay up!", rather it was a more general policy.
But the employee is caught in the problem that he has to follow rules no matter what. Contrary to what some people seem to think here, not helping a police officer's request, when it is not backed by the appropriate legal authorisation, is not breaking the law (and a good thing too). So he'd be breaking company rules where the rules are entirely legal. He risks losing a lot more than $20, since his livelihood is at stake. So again, why does everyone here expect the employee to do the "right thing" even if he risks losing his job, but worry that the police would be out of pocket by $20?
It's easy to be angry at the big nasty company, but the reality is it's individuals involved on both sides. Blaming Verizon for intentionally doing this is like blaming the Government as a whole for being too stingy to pay the $20. And excusing the police officer is no different to excusing the individual.
The problem is here one of communication, in that they weren't able to get an official authorisation from higher up in the company, but the authorities may be just as much to blame (e.g., why not go through the proper channels? If they didn't have time, well ... neither did Verizon) I guess it would also help if Verizon put in some exceptions in their official rules so that employees aren't breaking the rules if they do something for ethical reasons, but again, given the rarity of this case, I can't blame them for not having it in advance.
If I don't want to be found, as was evidently the case here, fine by me.
(Don't get me wrong - it's natural that other people want to help even if the person doesn't want that, and often the person will later say they are glad they were saved. But your comment suggests that the OP will be upset at the lack of help from you or Verizon - yet if he's ever in that situation where he doesn't want to be found, this clearly won't be the case.)
An interesting idea - but what about family members who don't want to be found? A man leaving his family, or a domestic abuse victim, perhaps?
Also, how many people would this affect in practice? I can't imagine that the set of people who need to be found in an emergency, who just happen to have not paid their bills, and despite their lost network access they still have their phone with them and turned on, would be that significant anyway. Should laws be based on one-off rare cases? We don't even know if it would've worked in this case - did the guy have his non-working phone with him, when he fled in his craze of insanity? It's also unclear if they would've been able to find and contact any family members in time, too.
I suspect that the Government still outdoes Verizon in terms of the amount of money they have.
(I'm not sure what 911 services has to do with this. RTFA, it wasn't that they refused a 911 call, it was that they didn't allow him to be tracked by the police.)
I think there's a difference between "you cause someone's death by accident" and "someone dies where you could have helped, but didn't". In the latter case, the person has no obligation to help, it was only an extra means that could have helped, and there's no way of knowing if it would've saved such a person anyway.
I would be worried if simply "not helping" constitutes manslaughter, unless perhaps the person was entrusted with looking after the person (e.g., a doctor - but even there, manslaughter would only be used for actively killing someone by mistake, and not for simply being unable to keep them alive).
Have there been any court cases that suggest otherwise?
Yes indeed, the damning thing here is I guess that they didn't do it out of respect for privacy or refusing unauthorised access, but because of the lack of payment. Had he have paid his bill, they'd have complied, presumably.
I guess if you want to avoid a wiretap, you just have to not pay your bills...
Yes, I agree, it would be interesting to know how they tried to obtain the information and whether they had the required authorisation for it. Considering that access to private information and tracking people is generally looked down upon here, especially without proper authorisation, I'm surprised at all the "Charge them with murder!" style responses. I know the circumstances are different, but the precedent set would not be.
Wait - so $20 is too much for the police, but you expect Verizon to offer a service for free?
Verizon weren't the cause of the problem. If they were an arse for failing to offer their help because of $20, then the police were an arse for not helping out with $20 too.
You have a legal duty to refuse an illegal request.
Wait - without a warrant, which is the illegal request?
(Whether it might have ethically been a good thing to comply or not is beside the point, if we're talking about the legality of requests.)
It's also possible by ignoring the officers request the employee committed a crime. Obstruction of justice comes to mind, depraved indifference perhaps, though I am sure there are others.
Not obeying an officer's request, when they don't have a warrant or otherwise legal right to that information, should be a crime? I hope not.
We can debate whether it was a good thing or not in this particular case all we like, but I would be very worried of the precedent of making it illegal to not do as a policemen says. Suddenly everyone who tries to refuse access to the police would be breaking the law, even if the police had no authority to get that information!
It's unclear from TFA whether the police made a legal request, or simply asked - I suspect the latter.
Sure, I know that in this particular case it seems an arse not to help, and I realise that their motives were money rather than protecting his privacy, but think of more general cases. Not assisting a police officer is not a crime, and I would be very worried of the precedent set by making them liable: "Hey, we'd like to track down this person to see if he's up to no good. No we don't have a warrant. What's that, you've refused? Right, everyone involved in your company will be arrested - and you'll be held criminally liable if this person we're after commits a crime that we could have stopped."
The other point to note is that they didn't refuse, they simply asked for the money. Why not pay it, if it's only $20? I concede it's perhaps making a bit of an arse to demand money up front when time was of utmost important, but again think more generally: isn't it reasonable for the police to compensate when they make demands of phone companies and ISPs?
It's also not like we're talking about someone who say was in an accident. Don't get me wrong, I realise that it's probably best to help people even if they say at the time they don't want it, but one of the consequences of a free society is the freedom not to be found, if the person doesn't want that.
The problem here is stretching the definition of "cancelled" to "any series that is no longer on the air". Sure, technically even long running popular shows that are no longer being made are "cancelled", but I think it's a bit meaningless to then talk about a character appearing in shows that have all been cancelled. If we took actors from 30 years ago, that would be true for almost all of them...