The guy set out to methodically groom what he thought was a 13 year old girl for sex. If you think a 30 year computer ban is too harsh, then fine, let's just throw him back in jail instead. Happy now?
The key word here is thought. Since when did we start prosecuting people for thought crimes? And precisely who is the victim here (other than the defendant, and possibly the taxpayer)?
And if you get a birthday card with money in it? Who is to say you didn't get two 20's in that letter. The postal service was only able to locate one of those!
RTFA. It says the system is voluntary. If you send money in your birthday card (and it is never a good idea to send cash in the mail), then don't volunteer to have that piece of mail scanned!
What you're saying is like saying we shouldn't run railroads across the Wild West because it's Wild. We needed both complete railroad networks, and a governable West. And we got both. And then we got everything else that could follow on a governable, railroad accessible West.
I'm afraid your analogy breaks down because no one is suggesting we don't provide electrical service to homes that have Internet service, which is what your train analogy would imply. They are just suggesting that grid control systems not be run by computers connected to the Internet, which is quite a reasonable proposition.
Even if you don't RTFA, the summary contains this little gem which most seem to have missed:
In a small study, such 'supertaskers' were just as good at driving when carrying on a conversation over a hands-free phone as they were when fully focused.
The keyword is hands-free. In fact, in most states with cell phone driving restrictions, the restrictions don't apply to hands-free phones. So I don't know what this proves. The next article quoted in the summary goes on to talk about texting which does require hands. So the summary is really comparing apples and oranges. In fact, I'm not sure what we're supposed to conclude from all this.
Nothing is being "switched" all the OpenSolaris stuff is still there, Oracle just won't be adding new features it develops to it. All the code that was there is still open even without the magical GPL and can be developed further. From TFA:
Quite true, and even more to the point, precisely the same thing could happen even if OpenSolaris were GPL. As the copyright holder, Oracle could still fork OpenSolaris and relicense it however they want. GPL doesn't take any rights away from the copyright holder to license their own further developments as they see fit.
Presumably general relativity could be quantised, but I don't see why a force mediating quantum particle should necessarily be the method (presumably some kind of quantisation of spacetime itself at the plank scale would be more appropriate?). The entire logic seems grounded in the Newtonian assumption that Gravity is a force and not a manifestation of spacetime curvature.
Can anyone enlighten me?
Actually, a spin-2 field could reproduce the observable results of general relativity. Whether you choose to call it a "force" or a manifestation of spacetime curvature is really a matter of semantics. The problem, of course, is a spin-2 field is not renormalizable, which is why physicists have gone beyond point particles to strings, etc. to try to explain it.
Or else I will kill myself and get you guys into big trouble!
This is modded flamebait? Either people aren't getting an obvious joke, or perhaps they are playing along and "bullying" him through negative moderation. (I have been similarly victimized myself, but I have gone to therapy!)
In addition...maybe they didn't know she was under age. Can *you* tell the difference between a 15 year old and a 16 year old?
In almost all states, statutory rape is a strict liability offense, meaning that it doesn't matter if you thought she was older. I've heard of cases where the "victim" was in a bar with a very good fake ID, and looked about 20, but was actually underage and the partner was convicted of statutory rape on the strict liability doctrine even though nobody contested the fact that the accused couldn't possibly have been aware she was underage.
Except that you can like... block people online and never have to hear anything from them through email or twitter or facebook.
Filter: Assholes@yahoo.com -> Trash
Mod parent up! I've always told this to my students in media literacy class where there is a component on cyber bullying. Unlike other kinds of bullying you CAN turn it off. Unless the bullies have hacked into your computer and taken control of it (which is illegal), you can simply close your IM chat program. I also remind them it is possible to have multiple e-mail addresses and screen names at no charge. If one of them falls into the wrong hands, simply delete it. Use one e-mail address/screen name for family, another for close trusted friends, and another one that you might share more widely. If you start to receive abuse on one particular account, just delete it, and don't share details of your new account with the same people.
Thing is, when Windows gets a corrupted OS... it BSODs and we move on. Single-bit errors shouldn't send the car out of control... there should be some checksum that shouldn't add up. When a fault is detected, it should go to a backup program about safely shutting down the car.
Not good enough. The part of the program that does the checksum could be corrupted. The only acceptable solution should be some sort of hardware interlock that the driver can control. For instance, if there is a pushbutton gear shifter in which you press a button to tell a computer that you wish to shift into neutral, there should also be a safety lever that you can pull that physically disconnects the drive train from the engine with no electronic or electrical parts. The problem is some cars are all electronic. Shifting into neutral, applying brakes, even turning off the engine are all basically like pushing keys on a computer keyboard. Well, when a computer bluescreens, you can push all the keys you want, sometimes even ctrl-alt-delete and nothing happens. That is not acceptable in a car. There needs to be one mechanical failsafe control in the hands of the driver that no sunspots or police EMP guns can disable.
Q: I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this?
A: Because OpenOffice is an open-source, collaborative project that no-one has to pay for.
Sigh. I know this is Slashdot, but is it too much to ask that people read TFA? From the article: "You can download the release candidate (final beta) of SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux free of charge here."
Holy cow, how did this not get binspammed off of the submissions? Someone actually managed to get an advertisement as a story into Slashdot. Actually, it's sort of an impressive accomplishment. Off to the submissions I go to try and make some money!
I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this?
Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.
But the disk drives on the PETs were much, much faster. I remember the first time I used a C-64, and I was shocked at how slow the disk drive was. The only floppy disk drive I'd had previous experience with was on a PET I'd borrowed from school. (Yes, they let people borrow computers in those days, and they didn't even spy on us through the webcams!)
A sad day on Slashdot when someone saying "programming correctly is the right response" and he's ridiculed by at least 4 replies and modded +3 Funny. What the hell happened to this place?
This idea that you let a culprit go because a search was performed without a warrant, or the warrant was issued when it shouldn't have been (essentially the same thing) is a ridiculous bit of mental masturbation. If you find evidence like a literal smoking gun in the person's possession, the person should be convicted.
The problem is there's nothing to stop the police from engaging in fishing expeditions, where they search everyone's house hoping to turn up evidence of one crime or another. So every time a crime is committed in your neighborhood, you could expect a visit from the police to do a quick search of your house. Most people don't want to live that way, which is why we need warrants and probable cause.
exactly, 10mb at 9600bps will take only 2-3 hours.
Yep, and since your computer is a 586, there's a good chance the serial port will do 192kbps which even faster still. If you want to transfer binary files, I'd suggest using the zmodem protocol. Since your Xenix system was running a BBS, it almost certainly has software installed that will do zmodem file transfers.
The judge said that the existence of CP in the cache doesn't in itself make him guilty; that the prosecution must also show "mens rea" (which translates essentially to "guilty intent", as I understand it).
If this guy is guilty, then show it, and you can chuck him in jail and take his computer. If he's innocent, give him his computer back.
Actually, the judge went further and actually quashed the search warrant. Without being able to use the images on the computer of evidence, it will be pretty hard to build any case at all.
So if she still fails to pay the HOA fees, will the association next block her from entering her own neighborhood?
If you don't pay your rent, you get booted out. That's the way it's supposed to work. I don't know why they start by blocking guests though. It would make more sense to lock the tenant out.
You sure as hell *better* interfere with your 16-17 year old's sex life. Teenagers are stupid fuckers, and can get HIV or become pregnant as easily as 30-somethings.
There's a difference between providing guidance and interfering. In fact, many states have laws against sexual interference of a minor.
Because often times these dealers are selling to people with poor credit or a history of repossession, defaults, etc, and the kill switch is made a condition for a sale that otherwise would not have gone through, finance-wise...
Still entirely tacky...
So these cars are sold only to the high risk customers, and they are fully informed of the system before they choose to make their purchase? And what happens after the last payment is made? Does the dealer still retain the technical ability to remotely disable the car? This sounds a lot like the Amazon Kindle to me.
Actually, your idea sounds like the only potentially workable solution to the problem. (Some others have suggested that the driver doesn't own the battery and instead "the company" does, but they fail to mention which company.) The only potential problem with your plan is that given the huge value of these batteries (I've heard figures as high as I've spent on used cars!) there would be a huge value differential between a new battery and a very old one, so the temptation to tamper with the electronics would be great. It sounds like a good scheme, but you'd need some pretty impressive DRM on your batteries' electronics for this to work! Do you think they can create something truly uncrackable?
So, who does own the battery? The company that runs the refueling stations? The problem is, in America at least, we like a certain amount of competition. Just as there are multiple companies from which you can buy gas, Texaco, Exxon, Shell, etc., there would probably be multiple charge suppliers. Would you be limited to using just one? That could be a problem on the highway, where there is little choice.
And when you recharge you pay a little extra fee instead of having to buy a battery later. That fee covers the production of new batteries and the recycling of old ones.
The problem is the fee would have to depend on the relative value of the new battery vs. the old one, and that could vary greatly, with no easy way to tell at swap time. That's the point I was trying to make. What's to stop someone from buying up near dead batteries and swapping them for new ones (paying the small fee) and making a huge profit? And what's to stop recharging stations from giving everyone near worthless batteries that are at the end of their life. I think this is an inherent problem with a battery swapping scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy set out to methodically groom what he thought was a 13 year old girl for sex. If you think a 30 year computer ban is too harsh, then fine, let's just throw him back in jail instead. Happy now?
The key word here is thought. Since when did we start prosecuting people for thought crimes? And precisely who is the victim here (other than the defendant, and possibly the taxpayer)?
RTFA yourself. The system is currently voluntary for the recipient, for whom all of their mail will be scanned.
Well, it's the recipient who would be out the twenty bucks, so I think my point still stands.
And if you get a birthday card with money in it? Who is to say you didn't get two 20's in that letter. The postal service was only able to locate one of those!
RTFA. It says the system is voluntary. If you send money in your birthday card (and it is never a good idea to send cash in the mail), then don't volunteer to have that piece of mail scanned!
What you're saying is like saying we shouldn't run railroads across the Wild West because it's Wild. We needed both complete railroad networks, and a governable West. And we got both. And then we got everything else that could follow on a governable, railroad accessible West.
I'm afraid your analogy breaks down because no one is suggesting we don't provide electrical service to homes that have Internet service, which is what your train analogy would imply. They are just suggesting that grid control systems not be run by computers connected to the Internet, which is quite a reasonable proposition.
Even if you don't RTFA, the summary contains this little gem which most seem to have missed:
In a small study, such 'supertaskers' were just as good at driving when carrying on a conversation over a hands-free phone as they were when fully focused.
The keyword is hands-free. In fact, in most states with cell phone driving restrictions, the restrictions don't apply to hands-free phones. So I don't know what this proves. The next article quoted in the summary goes on to talk about texting which does require hands. So the summary is really comparing apples and oranges. In fact, I'm not sure what we're supposed to conclude from all this.
Nothing is being "switched" all the OpenSolaris stuff is still there, Oracle just won't be adding new features it develops to it. All the code that was there is still open even without the magical GPL and can be developed further. From TFA :
Quite true, and even more to the point, precisely the same thing could happen even if OpenSolaris were GPL. As the copyright holder, Oracle could still fork OpenSolaris and relicense it however they want. GPL doesn't take any rights away from the copyright holder to license their own further developments as they see fit.
Presumably general relativity could be quantised, but I don't see why a force mediating quantum particle should necessarily be the method (presumably some kind of quantisation of spacetime itself at the plank scale would be more appropriate?). The entire logic seems grounded in the Newtonian assumption that Gravity is a force and not a manifestation of spacetime curvature.
Can anyone enlighten me?
Actually, a spin-2 field could reproduce the observable results of general relativity. Whether you choose to call it a "force" or a manifestation of spacetime curvature is really a matter of semantics. The problem, of course, is a spin-2 field is not renormalizable, which is why physicists have gone beyond point particles to strings, etc. to try to explain it.
Or else I will kill myself and get you guys into big trouble!
This is modded flamebait? Either people aren't getting an obvious joke, or perhaps they are playing along and "bullying" him through negative moderation. (I have been similarly victimized myself, but I have gone to therapy!)
In addition...maybe they didn't know she was under age. Can *you* tell the difference between a 15 year old and a 16 year old?
In almost all states, statutory rape is a strict liability offense, meaning that it doesn't matter if you thought she was older. I've heard of cases where the "victim" was in a bar with a very good fake ID, and looked about 20, but was actually underage and the partner was convicted of statutory rape on the strict liability doctrine even though nobody contested the fact that the accused couldn't possibly have been aware she was underage.
Except that you can like... block people online and never have to hear anything from them through email or twitter or facebook.
Filter: Assholes@yahoo.com -> Trash
Mod parent up! I've always told this to my students in media literacy class where there is a component on cyber bullying. Unlike other kinds of bullying you CAN turn it off. Unless the bullies have hacked into your computer and taken control of it (which is illegal), you can simply close your IM chat program. I also remind them it is possible to have multiple e-mail addresses and screen names at no charge. If one of them falls into the wrong hands, simply delete it. Use one e-mail address/screen name for family, another for close trusted friends, and another one that you might share more widely. If you start to receive abuse on one particular account, just delete it, and don't share details of your new account with the same people.
Thing is, when Windows gets a corrupted OS... it BSODs and we move on. Single-bit errors shouldn't send the car out of control... there should be some checksum that shouldn't add up. When a fault is detected, it should go to a backup program about safely shutting down the car.
Not good enough. The part of the program that does the checksum could be corrupted. The only acceptable solution should be some sort of hardware interlock that the driver can control. For instance, if there is a pushbutton gear shifter in which you press a button to tell a computer that you wish to shift into neutral, there should also be a safety lever that you can pull that physically disconnects the drive train from the engine with no electronic or electrical parts. The problem is some cars are all electronic. Shifting into neutral, applying brakes, even turning off the engine are all basically like pushing keys on a computer keyboard. Well, when a computer bluescreens, you can push all the keys you want, sometimes even ctrl-alt-delete and nothing happens. That is not acceptable in a car. There needs to be one mechanical failsafe control in the hands of the driver that no sunspots or police EMP guns can disable.
It cost them $4m dollars to set up the paywall.
It cost them $4 million dollars to set up a paywall? I think their problems run deeper than a lack of subscribers.
Q: I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this? A: Because OpenOffice is an open-source, collaborative project that no-one has to pay for.
Sigh. I know this is Slashdot, but is it too much to ask that people read TFA? From the article: "You can download the release candidate (final beta) of SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux free of charge here."
Holy cow, how did this not get binspammed off of the submissions? Someone actually managed to get an advertisement as a story into Slashdot. Actually, it's sort of an impressive accomplishment. Off to the submissions I go to try and make some money!
I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this?
Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.
But the disk drives on the PETs were much, much faster. I remember the first time I used a C-64, and I was shocked at how slow the disk drive was. The only floppy disk drive I'd had previous experience with was on a PET I'd borrowed from school. (Yes, they let people borrow computers in those days, and they didn't even spy on us through the webcams!)
A sad day on Slashdot when someone saying "programming correctly is the right response" and he's ridiculed by at least 4 replies and modded +3 Funny. What the hell happened to this place?
Life experience.
This idea that you let a culprit go because a search was performed without a warrant, or the warrant was issued when it shouldn't have been (essentially the same thing) is a ridiculous bit of mental masturbation. If you find evidence like a literal smoking gun in the person's possession, the person should be convicted.
The problem is there's nothing to stop the police from engaging in fishing expeditions, where they search everyone's house hoping to turn up evidence of one crime or another. So every time a crime is committed in your neighborhood, you could expect a visit from the police to do a quick search of your house. Most people don't want to live that way, which is why we need warrants and probable cause.
exactly, 10mb at 9600bps will take only 2-3 hours.
Yep, and since your computer is a 586, there's a good chance the serial port will do 192kbps which even faster still. If you want to transfer binary files, I'd suggest using the zmodem protocol. Since your Xenix system was running a BBS, it almost certainly has software installed that will do zmodem file transfers.
The court essentially ruled that the technician's observations did not legally justify a search. And I find this patently ridiculous.
Why?
The judge didn't say that he was innocent.
The judge said that the existence of CP in the cache doesn't in itself make him guilty; that the prosecution must also show "mens rea" (which translates essentially to "guilty intent", as I understand it).
If this guy is guilty, then show it, and you can chuck him in jail and take his computer. If he's innocent, give him his computer back.
Actually, the judge went further and actually quashed the search warrant. Without being able to use the images on the computer of evidence, it will be pretty hard to build any case at all.
So if she still fails to pay the HOA fees, will the association next block her from entering her own neighborhood?
If you don't pay your rent, you get booted out. That's the way it's supposed to work. I don't know why they start by blocking guests though. It would make more sense to lock the tenant out.
You sure as hell *better* interfere with your 16-17 year old's sex life. Teenagers are stupid fuckers, and can get HIV or become pregnant as easily as 30-somethings.
There's a difference between providing guidance and interfering. In fact, many states have laws against sexual interference of a minor.
Because often times these dealers are selling to people with poor credit or a history of repossession, defaults, etc, and the kill switch is made a condition for a sale that otherwise would not have gone through, finance-wise...
Still entirely tacky...
So these cars are sold only to the high risk customers, and they are fully informed of the system before they choose to make their purchase? And what happens after the last payment is made? Does the dealer still retain the technical ability to remotely disable the car? This sounds a lot like the Amazon Kindle to me.
Actually, your idea sounds like the only potentially workable solution to the problem. (Some others have suggested that the driver doesn't own the battery and instead "the company" does, but they fail to mention which company.) The only potential problem with your plan is that given the huge value of these batteries (I've heard figures as high as I've spent on used cars!) there would be a huge value differential between a new battery and a very old one, so the temptation to tamper with the electronics would be great. It sounds like a good scheme, but you'd need some pretty impressive DRM on your batteries' electronics for this to work! Do you think they can create something truly uncrackable?
Simple, the people don't own the batteries.
So, who does own the battery? The company that runs the refueling stations? The problem is, in America at least, we like a certain amount of competition. Just as there are multiple companies from which you can buy gas, Texaco, Exxon, Shell, etc., there would probably be multiple charge suppliers. Would you be limited to using just one? That could be a problem on the highway, where there is little choice.
And when you recharge you pay a little extra fee instead of having to buy a battery later. That fee covers the production of new batteries and the recycling of old ones.
The problem is the fee would have to depend on the relative value of the new battery vs. the old one, and that could vary greatly, with no easy way to tell at swap time. That's the point I was trying to make. What's to stop someone from buying up near dead batteries and swapping them for new ones (paying the small fee) and making a huge profit? And what's to stop recharging stations from giving everyone near worthless batteries that are at the end of their life. I think this is an inherent problem with a battery swapping scheme.