I've heard a lot of people talk about swappable batteries as a solution to the charging time problem, but I really don't see how it can work. The problem is, batteries are VERY expensive, and they have a finite lifetime. A new battery would then be much more costly than an old one. The result is that after the swap, you could be left with a battery that is either (a) much more valuable, or (b) much less valuable than the one you started with. Neither of these scenarios would be appealing to all parties concerned. I can see people making a business of constantly trading in old, worthless batteries for new ones and selling them for a huge profit. Refueling stations could do something similar, replacing all batteries with ones which are nearing the end of their lifetime. Someone gets stuck with the bill. Has anyone proposed a solution to this problem?
Spending millions of dollars and loaning out hardware doesn't give school officials the right to remotely activate and control the laptop webcam and spy on children in their own bedrooms--potentially while undressing.
But children love strangers to watch them undress in their bedrooms. Haven't you ever used ChatRoulette?
And TFA doesn't provide much enlightenment. They claim it's a violation of their privacy, but it isn't unusual for government jobs to require background checks. There's no constitutional right to work at JPL. Even if the employees concerned do not handle classified data, they do work at a lab where classified information is kept and highly secret defense projects take place. If they think their background checks are intrusive, they should see what White House employees had to go through in the Obama administration.
If they're that concerned about their privacy, maybe they should work elsewhere.
The bill is hopelessly vague about what "salt" is. If it just applies to "table salt" (sodium chloride), restaurants would simply switch to salt substitutes like potassium chloride.
Two problems with this idea. First, it's the sodium in sodium chloride that gives it the salty taste. Potassium chloride has a bitter taste. Secondly, in sufficient quantities, potassium is poisonous. In fact, potassium chloride is used in lethal injections to cause cardiac arrest, and is a preferred method of suicide among doctors.
Warning! Before you read the linked article or its followup too deeply, be aware they are not by Donald Knuth. Instead, the author has a brief quote from Donald Knuth in his first blog, and the other link is a followup story. So, "the author" referenced in the Slashdot summary is NOT Donald Knuth. I made the mistake of reading the followup article first, and then when I read the original, I found a brief quote from Donald Knuth which tipped me off to the fact that the author was not Donald Knuth, and as far as I can tell, Donald Knuth doesn't even know this author.
I know everyone will think the parent is crazy, but it isn't as crazy an idea as it sounds. In ancient Greece, it was normal for men to take on a boy or young man as a student, and sex would be part of the relationship. It wasn't an abusive sort of relationship, but one of mutual consent and trust. They were one of the most educated and enlightened cultures of ancient times, and I think we could learn a thing or two from them. Read more about it here.
Try malicious prosecution. The bail is out of all proportion to his alleged offense, and they paraded him in the media as a dangerous threat - might make it hard to maintain his life or get another job. I know I don't have $500k to throw away on bail. If he can show that the prosecution did this primarily for political reasons, he might manage a hefty award.
Malicious prosecution requires a showing that the prosecuters had something personal against the defendant and abused their position to bring a prosecution where otherwise they wouldn't. Bail is set by a judge, not prosecution, and as I said above, one can appeal a bail, but not sue the judge.
When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Nastier than speeding through a red light and killing the occupants of your car and someone else's, and possibly a few pedestrians to boot?
But he won't blink. And if he is found innocent, he has a hell of a lawsuit.
Lawsuit for what? I don't think you can sue for being found not guilty in a criminal trial. And if judges set bail too high, you can appeal to have the bail lowered, but I don't think you can sue the judge for monetary damages. Now, if the prosecution presented false evidence, that would be a different story. It's not clear that they did.
Thank you for that very insightful reply. I'm surprised you haven't been modded up to +5 yet. Anyhow, what I was trying to ask, and perhaps I didn't phrase the question clearly enough, was does Firefox use the help system in the same way as IE? It wouldn't be the first time vulnerabilities affected more than one piece of software.
The security advisory says the problem has to do with the way Internet Explorer interacts with the help system. Does anyone know if Firefox users are vulnerable?
Discuss... what kind of punishment should this yield?
And that's precisely what this program is supposed to accomplish. As the article says, they are hoping it will help solve some cold cases. That would be great, but that doesn't mean there aren't privacy issues involved. Should this DNA be used in civil suits, for instance? And what if it is sold to insurance companies? Simply putting more people in jail doesn't necessarily justify the means.
A) TFS states that the they are looking at protein folding, which can hardly be viewed probabilistically for a macro-scale (ie "in the aggregate").
Why not? I'm sure they are looking at many protein molecules, not just one. In fact any chemical reaction happens at the molecular level, but they are generally studied by looking at macroscopic properties of reactants and products. Protein folding is no different.
B) Quantum mechanics deals extensively with uncertainty through models of superposition, which include probability functions.
That's not quite correct. Probabilities don't come into the superposition part of it. Probabilities enter during measurement. In fact, one of the great unsolved mysteries of quantum mechanics is what exactly is a measurement?
Actually, by my reading of the Audio Home Recording Act is that, while uploading is illegal, downloading is completely legal as long as you burn it to an audio CD (a CD with royalties paid as part of its sale price). So an affirmative defense would be simply to produce such a piece of plastic and tell the RIAA lawyers to get bent.
But if you read the ruling, you'll see she was indeed caught uploading. Quoting from page 2 of the ruling: "MediaSentry fully downloaded six of the audio
files from Harper’s 'shared folder'.”
Bankruptcy isn't the most wonderful solution if the debtor has anything of value. The Chapter 7 trustee gets to sell all the debtor's non-exempt assets.
But as a teenager, it's very easy to not have anything of value. Just claim that anything they find in the house belongs to your parents. It would be pretty much impossible to prove otherwise.
Even as a college student living in a dorm, I didn't bring anything very valuable with me. I kept all my important, valuable stuff at home, and as a student, my bank account was near zip, so I really would have been judgment proof. (Even when I bought a car in my junior year, it had a book value under $1000!)
The other [wikipedia.org] is rather obscure, but is related to the fact that "ordinary" matter seems to be so much more abundant in our universe than anti-matter.
Sorry but you are confusing CP (matter/antimatter) symmetry and T (time reversal) symmetry. These are not the same.
Practically speaking they are the same if CPT is conserved. If you have CP violation, then you must also have T violation (and vice versa) otherwise you violate CPT.
Perhaps those who do commit crimes such as theft, murder, rape in games should do time for their crimes. But as these are virtual crimes, it should be the avatar, not the real person who does the time, and they should do so in a virtual prison. If the game designer doesn't have a justice system built into their game, and it bothers you that crimes go unpunished, then you are free not to play their game and to design your own.
Madam Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon ruled that the women ski jumpers were indeed discriminated against by the International Olympic Committee's decision to keep them off the 2010 Olympic calendar, but added that the Switzerland-based IOC was beyond the reach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The problem is the want to use the law, specifically copyright law, to force the blogger to take down the video. That means the IOC would have to take the case to court, so this wouldn't be a case about the application of the law to the IOC, but rather to the blogger.
Well, your idea of proven seems to be the word of anonymous 10th graders playground rumours vs. the parents who are filing a lawsuit. I know which I find more credible.
All I said in my original post was "According to the replies of some of the students..." And frankly, I find their account to be far more plausible than any others I've heard, including the parents. The idea that a school would spy on kids in their rooms is hard to swallow, but to then expose the fact that they're doing so by disciplining students with information so obtained just feels like it scores a bit too high on the BS meter to me. I can believe parents would misunderstand the situation, though, and jump to the wrong conclusions.
"According to the replies of some of his fellow students, he had taken the pictures with the webcam himself and left them on the hard drive when he returned the laptop to the school, and someone else accidently stumbled on them.."
citation needed
All right. Citation provided. From reply #148 in the above link, I quote:
- The improper behavior report was based on a picture that the kid took using the webcam and left on the hard drive of his school issued laptop. Which the school can search if it wants to. They probably contacted the parents as a courtesy.
"As for what he was actually doing, there are conflicting reports. Some say he was smoking weed; others say he was eating Mike and Ike candies which the school official mistook for drugs."
Actually the reports are not conflicting, it's been well established: "A Pennsylvania student who accuses his high school of spying on him with a webcam says the controversy started when an official mistook a piece of candy for a pill."
We seem to have a semantic disagreement here. We have very different definitions of the phrase "well established.". Anyhow, I quote from reply #147 of the same source I cited above:
I attend Lower Merion High School (in 10th grade) and I am worried that the full picture has not come into view... This article also didn't mention what Blake was doing. Blake was smoking weed and, according to some of his friends, visiting pornographic websites.
As you point out, some other sources say he was eating candy that was mistook for drugs. So, as I say, conflicting reports.
"They also report he was not disciplined by the school, but the school official did contact the parents out of concern for the student's safety."
Again, your sources are wrong: "Parents Michael and Holly Robbins claim an assistant principal disciplined their son... "
Yes, I'm aware that is what Mr. and Mrs. Robbins claim. That is in the legal brief. No one disputes that is their claim. The sources above claim otherwise. As I said, the truth will probably come out at trial.
I find it interesting you (and no one else) read replies from fellow students stating he took the picture himself and left it on the drive,
Well, this is Slashdot. Why are you so surprised that almost no one RTFA?
but did not do a simple google search to see that it was candy mistaken as drugs or to see that the student was disciplined. Out of the three allegations made, two have been proven false.
Another semantic quibble here. You and I have very different definitions of the word "proven".
So then why was a student reprimanded for their in home behaviour with a picture from the webcam used as evidence?
According to the replies of some of his fellow students, he had taken the pictures with the webcam himself and left them on the hard drive when he returned the laptop to the school, and someone else accidently stumbled on them.
As for what he was actually doing, there are conflicting reports. Some say he was smoking weed; others say he was eating Mike and Ike candies which the school official mistook for drugs. They also report he was not disciplined by the school, but the school official did contact the parents out of concern for the student's safety.
Unfortunately, the school official did not make clear to the parents how the photograph was obtained, and the parents jumped to unwarranted conclusions. I'm sure this will all come out as the lawsuit progresses.
One of the most disturbing things in this story is that the school deemed "inappropriate behavior" of the student. I have read the legal briefs and a number of other sources and have not been able to determine what this is.
What on earth could a school say about MY child that would be considered inappropriate behaviour? Drinking? No, sorry, covered by privacy rights. The only thing I can think of would be inappropriate use of school equipment. The inappropriateness of anything in the home would be determined by the parent.
I read the comments attached to the original article, some submitted by students of the school. The "inappropriate behavior" was smoking weed. And they didn't remotely access the camera. The student took a picture and returned the laptop with the picture on the hard drive. No evidence has been presented that the school even had the ability to remotely activate the camera let alone that the ever did so. Once school official (not an expert) apparently incorrectly stated that they did have that ability, but it has been denied by everyone else.
No mention of what the picture was, but if it was something involving nudity then... wouldn't a better course of action be to sue the school district for being in possession of child pornography?
Only if the school officials were complicit in the students' "activities". Otherwise, any store or institution that has surveillance cameras that record would be liable for criminal prosecution if someone underage does something "inappropriate" in front of a camera. The University where I work has surveillance cameras all over campus, including many outdoor areas such as parking lots. If a couple of high school students decide to "do it" in the bushes one night and it is picked up by a camera, are the campus police guilty of production and possession of child pornography? (They would be if they made copies to take home and give to their friends, but there's no evidence the school district here did that.)
I'm not saying the school district isn't guilty of anything here, I'm just sick of child pornography being used as a catch-all law.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard a lot of people talk about swappable batteries as a solution to the charging time problem, but I really don't see how it can work. The problem is, batteries are VERY expensive, and they have a finite lifetime. A new battery would then be much more costly than an old one. The result is that after the swap, you could be left with a battery that is either (a) much more valuable, or (b) much less valuable than the one you started with. Neither of these scenarios would be appealing to all parties concerned. I can see people making a business of constantly trading in old, worthless batteries for new ones and selling them for a huge profit. Refueling stations could do something similar, replacing all batteries with ones which are nearing the end of their lifetime. Someone gets stuck with the bill. Has anyone proposed a solution to this problem?
Spending millions of dollars and loaning out hardware doesn't give school officials the right to remotely activate and control the laptop webcam and spy on children in their own bedrooms--potentially while undressing.
But children love strangers to watch them undress in their bedrooms. Haven't you ever used ChatRoulette?
And TFA doesn't provide much enlightenment. They claim it's a violation of their privacy, but it isn't unusual for government jobs to require background checks. There's no constitutional right to work at JPL. Even if the employees concerned do not handle classified data, they do work at a lab where classified information is kept and highly secret defense projects take place. If they think their background checks are intrusive, they should see what White House employees had to go through in the Obama administration.
If they're that concerned about their privacy, maybe they should work elsewhere.
The bill is hopelessly vague about what "salt" is. If it just applies to "table salt" (sodium chloride), restaurants would simply switch to salt substitutes like potassium chloride.
Two problems with this idea. First, it's the sodium in sodium chloride that gives it the salty taste. Potassium chloride has a bitter taste. Secondly, in sufficient quantities, potassium is poisonous. In fact, potassium chloride is used in lethal injections to cause cardiac arrest, and is a preferred method of suicide among doctors.
Warning! Before you read the linked article or its followup too deeply, be aware they are not by Donald Knuth. Instead, the author has a brief quote from Donald Knuth in his first blog, and the other link is a followup story. So, "the author" referenced in the Slashdot summary is NOT Donald Knuth. I made the mistake of reading the followup article first, and then when I read the original, I found a brief quote from Donald Knuth which tipped me off to the fact that the author was not Donald Knuth, and as far as I can tell, Donald Knuth doesn't even know this author.
I know everyone will think the parent is crazy, but it isn't as crazy an idea as it sounds. In ancient Greece, it was normal for men to take on a boy or young man as a student, and sex would be part of the relationship. It wasn't an abusive sort of relationship, but one of mutual consent and trust. They were one of the most educated and enlightened cultures of ancient times, and I think we could learn a thing or two from them. Read more about it here.
Try malicious prosecution. The bail is out of all proportion to his alleged offense, and they paraded him in the media as a dangerous threat - might make it hard to maintain his life or get another job. I know I don't have $500k to throw away on bail. If he can show that the prosecution did this primarily for political reasons, he might manage a hefty award.
Malicious prosecution requires a showing that the prosecuters had something personal against the defendant and abused their position to bring a prosecution where otherwise they wouldn't. Bail is set by a judge, not prosecution, and as I said above, one can appeal a bail, but not sue the judge.
When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Nastier than speeding through a red light and killing the occupants of your car and someone else's, and possibly a few pedestrians to boot?
But he won't blink. And if he is found innocent, he has a hell of a lawsuit.
Lawsuit for what? I don't think you can sue for being found not guilty in a criminal trial. And if judges set bail too high, you can appeal to have the bail lowered, but I don't think you can sue the judge for monetary damages. Now, if the prosecution presented false evidence, that would be a different story. It's not clear that they did.
Thank you for that very insightful reply. I'm surprised you haven't been modded up to +5 yet. Anyhow, what I was trying to ask, and perhaps I didn't phrase the question clearly enough, was does Firefox use the help system in the same way as IE? It wouldn't be the first time vulnerabilities affected more than one piece of software.
The security advisory says the problem has to do with the way Internet Explorer interacts with the help system. Does anyone know if Firefox users are vulnerable?
Anyone else agree or disagree?
Discuss... what kind of punishment should this yield?
And that's precisely what this program is supposed to accomplish. As the article says, they are hoping it will help solve some cold cases. That would be great, but that doesn't mean there aren't privacy issues involved. Should this DNA be used in civil suits, for instance? And what if it is sold to insurance companies? Simply putting more people in jail doesn't necessarily justify the means.
You pretend to know things. You should not.
A) TFS states that the they are looking at protein folding, which can hardly be viewed probabilistically for a macro-scale (ie "in the aggregate").
Why not? I'm sure they are looking at many protein molecules, not just one. In fact any chemical reaction happens at the molecular level, but they are generally studied by looking at macroscopic properties of reactants and products. Protein folding is no different.
B) Quantum mechanics deals extensively with uncertainty through models of superposition, which include probability functions.
That's not quite correct. Probabilities don't come into the superposition part of it. Probabilities enter during measurement. In fact, one of the great unsolved mysteries of quantum mechanics is what exactly is a measurement?
I'd really be pissed if that happened to me.
Actually, I don't think your kidneys would stay intact very long if you died.
Actually, by my reading of the Audio Home Recording Act is that, while uploading is illegal, downloading is completely legal as long as you burn it to an audio CD (a CD with royalties paid as part of its sale price). So an affirmative defense would be simply to produce such a piece of plastic and tell the RIAA lawyers to get bent.
But if you read the ruling, you'll see she was indeed caught uploading. Quoting from page 2 of the ruling: "MediaSentry fully downloaded six of the audio files from Harper’s 'shared folder'.”
Bankruptcy isn't the most wonderful solution if the debtor has anything of value. The Chapter 7 trustee gets to sell all the debtor's non-exempt assets.
But as a teenager, it's very easy to not have anything of value. Just claim that anything they find in the house belongs to your parents. It would be pretty much impossible to prove otherwise.
Even as a college student living in a dorm, I didn't bring anything very valuable with me. I kept all my important, valuable stuff at home, and as a student, my bank account was near zip, so I really would have been judgment proof. (Even when I bought a car in my junior year, it had a book value under $1000!)
The other [wikipedia.org] is rather obscure, but is related to the fact that "ordinary" matter seems to be so much more abundant in our universe than anti-matter.
Sorry but you are confusing CP (matter/antimatter) symmetry and T (time reversal) symmetry. These are not the same.
Practically speaking they are the same if CPT is conserved. If you have CP violation, then you must also have T violation (and vice versa) otherwise you violate CPT.
Perhaps those who do commit crimes such as theft, murder, rape in games should do time for their crimes. But as these are virtual crimes, it should be the avatar, not the real person who does the time, and they should do so in a virtual prison. If the game designer doesn't have a justice system built into their game, and it bothers you that crimes go unpunished, then you are free not to play their game and to design your own.
I really don't understand why anyone would bank with a big corporate bank instead of a credit union.
FDIC
Madam Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon ruled that the women ski jumpers were indeed discriminated against by the International Olympic Committee's decision to keep them off the 2010 Olympic calendar, but added that the Switzerland-based IOC was beyond the reach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
from CTV.
That's one reason I'm not watching them.
The problem is the want to use the law, specifically copyright law, to force the blogger to take down the video. That means the IOC would have to take the case to court, so this wouldn't be a case about the application of the law to the IOC, but rather to the blogger.
Well, your idea of proven seems to be the word of anonymous 10th graders playground rumours vs. the parents who are filing a lawsuit. I know which I find more credible.
All I said in my original post was "According to the replies of some of the students..." And frankly, I find their account to be far more plausible than any others I've heard, including the parents. The idea that a school would spy on kids in their rooms is hard to swallow, but to then expose the fact that they're doing so by disciplining students with information so obtained just feels like it scores a bit too high on the BS meter to me. I can believe parents would misunderstand the situation, though, and jump to the wrong conclusions.
"According to the replies of some of his fellow students, he had taken the pictures with the webcam himself and left them on the hard drive when he returned the laptop to the school, and someone else accidently stumbled on them.." citation needed
All right. Citation provided. From reply #148 in the above link, I quote: - The improper behavior report was based on a picture that the kid took using the webcam and left on the hard drive of his school issued laptop. Which the school can search if it wants to. They probably contacted the parents as a courtesy.
"As for what he was actually doing, there are conflicting reports. Some say he was smoking weed; others say he was eating Mike and Ike candies which the school official mistook for drugs." Actually the reports are not conflicting, it's been well established: "A Pennsylvania student who accuses his high school of spying on him with a webcam says the controversy started when an official mistook a piece of candy for a pill."
We seem to have a semantic disagreement here. We have very different definitions of the phrase "well established.". Anyhow, I quote from reply #147 of the same source I cited above: I attend Lower Merion High School (in 10th grade) and I am worried that the full picture has not come into view ... This article also didn't mention what Blake was doing. Blake was smoking weed and, according to some of his friends, visiting pornographic websites.
As you point out, some other sources say he was eating candy that was mistook for drugs. So, as I say, conflicting reports.
"They also report he was not disciplined by the school, but the school official did contact the parents out of concern for the student's safety." Again, your sources are wrong: "Parents Michael and Holly Robbins claim an assistant principal disciplined their son... "
Yes, I'm aware that is what Mr. and Mrs. Robbins claim. That is in the legal brief. No one disputes that is their claim. The sources above claim otherwise. As I said, the truth will probably come out at trial.
I find it interesting you (and no one else) read replies from fellow students stating he took the picture himself and left it on the drive,
Well, this is Slashdot. Why are you so surprised that almost no one RTFA?
but did not do a simple google search to see that it was candy mistaken as drugs or to see that the student was disciplined. Out of the three allegations made, two have been proven false.
Another semantic quibble here. You and I have very different definitions of the word "proven".
So then why was a student reprimanded for their in home behaviour with a picture from the webcam used as evidence?
According to the replies of some of his fellow students, he had taken the pictures with the webcam himself and left them on the hard drive when he returned the laptop to the school, and someone else accidently stumbled on them.
As for what he was actually doing, there are conflicting reports. Some say he was smoking weed; others say he was eating Mike and Ike candies which the school official mistook for drugs. They also report he was not disciplined by the school, but the school official did contact the parents out of concern for the student's safety.
Unfortunately, the school official did not make clear to the parents how the photograph was obtained, and the parents jumped to unwarranted conclusions. I'm sure this will all come out as the lawsuit progresses.
One of the most disturbing things in this story is that the school deemed "inappropriate behavior" of the student. I have read the legal briefs and a number of other sources and have not been able to determine what this is. What on earth could a school say about MY child that would be considered inappropriate behaviour? Drinking? No, sorry, covered by privacy rights. The only thing I can think of would be inappropriate use of school equipment. The inappropriateness of anything in the home would be determined by the parent.
I read the comments attached to the original article, some submitted by students of the school. The "inappropriate behavior" was smoking weed. And they didn't remotely access the camera. The student took a picture and returned the laptop with the picture on the hard drive. No evidence has been presented that the school even had the ability to remotely activate the camera let alone that the ever did so. Once school official (not an expert) apparently incorrectly stated that they did have that ability, but it has been denied by everyone else.
No mention of what the picture was, but if it was something involving nudity then... wouldn't a better course of action be to sue the school district for being in possession of child pornography?
Only if the school officials were complicit in the students' "activities". Otherwise, any store or institution that has surveillance cameras that record would be liable for criminal prosecution if someone underage does something "inappropriate" in front of a camera. The University where I work has surveillance cameras all over campus, including many outdoor areas such as parking lots. If a couple of high school students decide to "do it" in the bushes one night and it is picked up by a camera, are the campus police guilty of production and possession of child pornography? (They would be if they made copies to take home and give to their friends, but there's no evidence the school district here did that.)
I'm not saying the school district isn't guilty of anything here, I'm just sick of child pornography being used as a catch-all law.