Ah. Seeing your other posts on this subject, I think I see the problem.
You feel that it is not reasonable to leave one's children at a supervised playground because it is not reasonable to assume that the supervisor - hitherto unknown by the parents but stated as safe by an apparently responsible third party - is not a child molester.
So can we infer that you feel that it is only reasonable for parents to leave their children with either a) a person or persons known to the family and belived through experience to be safe, b) a person or persons unknown to the family but believed to be safe because such people have passed state screening for known child molesters.
In case a) above, many child molestations occur between a child and a person known to, and trusted by, both the child and the parent. In many cases that person is one of the parents. Ergo: It is not acceptable for a parent to leave a child in the company of one of the parents, or a trusted relative or friend, without the supervision of the other parent as one or other of the parents may be pedophiles.
In case b) above we have had a high-profile case recently in the UK where a pedophile had been given police clearence to work with children who then went on to rape and murder two young girls.
If you genuinely believe that the only safe supervision that can be given to a child is the parents, then I strongly suggest that you look at the child molestation statistics of parents molesting their own children. Or if, perhaps, you're suggesting that parents should only trust people they know, then you should look at the fact that most molestations are carried out by people known and trusted by both the family and by the child.
So given that - having seen your other posts on this subject - you hold that trusting either the police, the state, churches, and now playgrounds and day-care centers to be reprehensible acts that the parents should be held responsible for, who do you suggest they use?
The Uncles/Aunts? Uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings; they've all been known to molest children. So they're out of the equation. Can't 100% trust'em, can't use'em.
Mother/Father? Parents have also been known to abuse their children. So the mother can't leave the child alone with the father, and the father can't leave the child alone with the mother. Because who knows what's happening whilst the other is not present.
Maybe the school system? Except, of course, that school teachers have had their perpetrators too.
So who do you trust. Given your responses, children - it would appear - should be handed over to the state. Parents can't be trusted, relatives can't be trusted, close friends can't be trusted. Playground supervisors can't be trusted, child-minders can't be trusted, baby-sitters can't be trusted. Unfortunately, neither can those employed by the state be trusted.
"Safe" and "Supervised" are not the same thing and your analogy is stretching a bit:)
If I leave a child at a day-care centre, I have every reason to believe that my child will not come to physical harm because day-care centres are not normally staffed by child-molestors or chainsaw juggling instructors. A better analogy, perhaps, is a playground.
If a parent takes a child to a playground, and then leave them unsupervised at the playground, then the parent is being negligent and has no good reason to sue the local council. If, on the other hand, the parent takes the child to a playground and pays someone to babysit - ie. supervise - their child, and that supervisor - either through negligence or through willful misconduct - allows the child to come to harm then it is the supervisor who is at fault and not the parent, as the parent has had a guarantee from the supervisor that they as a responsible adult will not allow the child to come to harm.
This extends further: if, instead of employing a supervisor directly, the parent takes their child to a supervised playground where the playground owner specifies that by paying an entrance fee the playground will ensure that the children are properly supervised, the parent has acted properly and has ensured that their child will not be tempted to go to the back of the car of some pervert offering the kids sweets.
And this is the point: AOL are not offering chainsaw juggling lessons: they're offering a supervised playground. An unsupervised internet chat room is no more directly dangerous to a child's health than an unsupervised playground. It's only when the pervert in the car is allowed to approach the kids that the playground becomes a dangerous place; and it's only when the chat room is improperly supervised - EITHER by the parent OR by the delegated supervisor - that they become dangerous.
In this instance, allegedly, it went further than the trusted playground supervisor failing to prevent a child approaching the car offering sweets, it was the supervisor himself who offered the sweets from the back of a car.
And the same applies with baby-sitters.
A parent does not always have to be present for them to reasonably believe that their children are being properly supervised.
In this instance AOL have said to parents "Unmoderated internet chat rooms are a dangerous place where pedophiles and other nasty people frequent", so they've - correctly - identified an issue with unmoderated chat rooms. They then go further and state "However: moderated AOL internet chat rooms are safe. If you pay us money, we will provide safe moderated chat rooms."
And this is the issue: AOL internet chat rooms are only available to AOL subscribers, and AOL subscribers pay money to AOL precisely because they've been told the potential danger of non-AOL chat rooms and have been assured that this danger can be eliminated by paying AOL money.
Similarly with you chainsaw juggling class for under-5s. If your chainsaw instructor identified the common concern with most chainsaw juggling lesson providers ("live chainsaws will chop off various body parts") but provided a solution to this problem ("we're only actually juggling inflatable chainsaws that couldn't cut paper if it tried"), but then provided live chainsaws instead of inflatable chainsaws - then you'd have a case when your kiddie comes home less two arms and a foot: because you'd been assured that your kid would only be using safe inflatable chainsaws.
Normally I would completely agree with you, however in this instance, AOL were advertising the service as being safe for kids. Much like a day-care centre where you drop your kids off with adults you believe are there to ensure your children won't come to any harm; AOL advertised this service as being a place where your kids could safely chat on the internet.
If a day care centre did not perform adequate checks on their employees, and then employed a known pedophile who then attempted to molest children at the centre, the centre would rightly be sued for negligence - precisely because they've advertised the service as safe for children. AOL's case is no different; they've advertised the service as safe for kids.
Of course, whether AOL have or have not failed in this duty is for the courts to decide.
In my primary field of work, 'shit happens' is just not an acceptable excuse, I'm a pilot. We use checklists precisely for that reason, to make sure that shit doesn't happen.
And yet, despite all that, shit still happens, and "shit happens" seems to be a good reason for that shit happening.
Software uses checklists too. Software is designed, the designs are reviewed, it's coded, the code is reviewed, the software is then tested, and yet - despite all these checklists - shit happens.
I started learning to fly a glider recently, and can you guess what the first thing I learnt was? How to put on and operate a parachute. Why? Because despite the checklists, despite there being two sets of eyes looking out, despite the checks that gliders undergo, despite every possible safety measure taken on the ground and in the air - shit happens.
I used to write embedded applications using OS-9 (NOT MacOS 9) on 68000-based systems as a sub-contractor for Nuclear Electric (nuclear power stations company in the UK before it became BNFL). Our development system - complete with OS/Kernel and compilers - had only about a meg of memory; the final embeded systems often only had 512K if we were lucky
Okay, so this was some 14 years ago - but it was doing a lot of work. 2 megabytes is a lot of memory! There's a phenomenal amount of code and data that can be stored in 2 meg. Maybe it's good by current standards, but - personally - I would suggest that current standards is a bad place to start from.
Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune
Not to worry then, you're still immune. It's not a virus. It's not much of a vulnerability either; and no-one has ever suggested that OS/X - or any operating system for that matter - is immune to trojan horses. And this is what this is (if it's true) - a good old fashioned trojan horse.
User error? But the voters are the users - if the voter cannot use the system, then the system should not be used! It's not enough to just sit smugly and say "well, it was a user error", if you've already anticipated that as a problem.
If the users - the voters - will not be able to use the system, then ditch the system for something they can use. Surely that was the whole point behind ditching the punch card system? What's the point in ditching one system for another that the voters still can't use?!
Another posting pointed to this discussion where "dag33k" is practically wetting himself over three screenshots.
A quick nose at the screenshots reveals that the (now dead) screenshots are hosted at: http://www.cotse.net/users/secnet/.
So that's secnet. Not that you can see too much: "their" bandwidth's been exceeded. Doesn't sound like a particularly particularly good choice for a testimonial.
According to the Yahoo article, he's not actually being sued under the anti-spyware law. It looks like he's being sued under computer misuse legislation:
The FTC alleges the defendants have unfairly: changed consumers' Web browsers, installed advertising and other software programs, and compelled purchase of anti-spyware software.
It looks like its the compulsion he's placed on his customers to buy his products because of his own tampering with their machines that's getting him landed in trouble. (IANAL, etc etc).
Even if they'd said sharing files of music to which copyright applies, how about establishing such in law before trying this?
If the Guardian had said:
Record labels believe it is essential to establish sharing music files as illegal
The guardian and the record labels would have been absolutely correct. It is illegal in the UK. Copyright law is very stringent here. It is - as I've mentioned before - even technically illegal to copy a your own CD on to your own PC, iPod, or even to tape. Further distributing after having done so simply compounds the problem.
No. The key phrase there is "temporary copy which is transient or incidental". Transferring the music from a CD to another format for storage is not considered temporary, transient or incidental, and is prohibitted by UK law.
More information is available here. (see the section "But if I've bought something, can't I use it however I like?").
It will also be interesting to see if this highlights to the british public just how little rights we have when it comes to copyrighted material.
Who knows, once they've finished with P2P users; they may just start suing iPod owners for illegally copying CD's onto their iPods - which is illegal in the UK.
(E) delivering advertisements that a user of the computer cannot close without turning off the computer or closing all sessions of the Internet browser for the computer.
Unless I'm greatly mistaken; doesn't that cover the advertising used in the un-registered version of Opera? It doesn't stipulate whether the user agrees to the advertising or not (or spyware could use the "it's in the EULA" get-out).
We as consumers and the government wouldn't put up with "acme doors" that failed to swing open and closed, failed to lock adequately, and anyone could open with a gentle shove when it was allegedly latched,
But you do! You buy them all the time. The difference is that you as an individual may not know how secure your front door or you car really is. Look how successful cheap steering wheel locks are. They're completely useless as an anti-theft device, but people who don't know better buy them in droves.
It's just that with computer security you are aware of the issues. But if you were a locksmith, you may well have a lot to say about people's front doors.
Exactly. That individual isn't the only person alive. Take me for example, I don't donate to charities, and I probably never will. "Why" you ask? because I'm a greedy, self serving bastard and I know it.
Erm... I'm not quite sure how you can say "exactly" when you appear to have disagreed with everything in my post.
Plus, if I donate to helping people, what have I done? possibly given to whichever criminal (sure you could use the term "terrorist" but why bother when a much more simple and accurate term exists?) group happens to intercept my money/food/medicines/etc. or -maybe- helped a small percentage of those who actually need assistance.
I didn't say that...
Now, I don't fit exactly into the category you mentioned, as I don't think research money could be better spent aiding humanity. Rather, I feel that research money can be better spent on research that improves or may improve my life. and if, as a side effect, it improves the lives of others I can live with that.
And I most certainly did not say that.
How have did you reach the conclusion that you agreed with me, when you appear to completely disagree with me?
How the hell are can you link to UNICEF and Oxfam, and not recognise that literacy is absolutely central to the problem. If you have an illiterate population you cannot teach them to fix a pump, or rely upon them to teach their children to fix a pump. Without literacy you cannot teach a farmer to sow a field, and teach others to sow a field. With an illiterate population you will never make progress!
UNICEF and Oxfam are both deeply concerned about the literacy rate in the third word for a simple reason: The problem cannot be solved without raising literacy rates!
Whether you act on it or not is up to you - perhaps you value that new Star Wars DVD boxed set, for instance, or a $400 graphics card more than a clear conscience that you're not standing by while people starve slowly to death
You arrogant troll. How much did your computer cost you? How much is the electricity bill to run your computer, and the lights in your house, and the heating? How much did you spend on your car? How much do you spend on fuel? How much do you spend on clothes in a year? Do you own a DVD? A graphics card? A Hi-Fi? How much do you give your ISP each year?
I said in my first post that you should encourage people to support charities. I would like to retract that - I would like to ask that you never mention the name of a charity in your posts ever again. You ignorance does more harm than good.
The more than one billion people who are currently starving to death, or dying from easily treatable illnesses don't require a satellite to inform them as to the weather in other parts of the world.
I can assure you that I am most certainly familiar with the issue of starving people. I am not a supporter of Save the Children for my own health. But you have missed the point. Around the world every year people are surviving incidents that they would otherwise have died in because of the advance in technology.
I say no - lets stick with the existing ones, which appear to work pretty well whenever I use subtitles when watching live tv programes
Yes, they are good enough. But to paraphrase a recent Honda advert in the UK: They're OK. They're not bad. They're adequate. But why invent the transistor if the valve is OK. Why invent the jet engine if propellers are OK. Why invent the car if the horse and trap is OK.
The west gives a pretty pitiful amount of money in aid, and I'm puzzled as to why. I get the feeling people think it's some sort of physical problem in literally getting the supplies over there.
I don't disagree. But the reason is not because some of the money in western countries is spent on computer research projects.
Part of the problem, actually is because there's a physical problem with getting supplies there. Food supplies to many severely deprived areas need to go through war zones. The food gets hijacked, and aid workers get killed. This is assuming you're able to land supplies in the country in the first place.
Part of the problem is because of social and political issues in the countries worst affected. During the Ethiopian crisis, for example, the government in power at the time was a brutal dictatorship that didn't want anyone hearing about the problem, then didn't want people sending aid.
Part of the problem is religious. Many deprived areas are over-populated because various religions proscribe contraception. All these problems need to be tackled. Simply throwing more money at the problem will not suddenly solve it.
Now, you may argue that the money could be given to charities. But think about it for a moment. How much money do you really want a charity to receive from a government? How independent should a charity be? What if a charity received $x million from a government on the proviso that they didn't provide aid to a hostile country? Charities should be able to remain as independent as possible.
What do you think I'm doing here? Now who's the idiot? Oh, and the other implication in your first paragraph is wrong - I give plenty of money to charity.
Then I retract the comment in your instance, but I stand by my statement. By and large people stating that research money could be better spent on aid do not donate to charities - at least in my experience.
Every time a dollar value is placed on a piece of research, some idiot comes along and say "Hey! This could be spent providing clean drinking water, and food and shelter", as if only research that directly provides clean drinking water or food or shelter is worth funding. Quite frequently the idiot making this statement is in a perfect position to provide money to ensure that more people have access to these facilities, and just as frequently that idiot isn't doing so.
I'm sure that when America and Russia were engaged in the space race there were people saying "Hey! This money could be better spent on disaster relief!". And where are we now? Only a few short decades later we have sattelites that tell us where hurricanes are going so that we can evacuate areas and people who would otherwise die surviveWe have a global reliable telecommunications satellites so that disaster relief agencies in third world countries can inform people of what supplies are required, and people who would otherwse die survive.
Without the massive investment in jet airline technology that could otherwise have been spent "saving the starving", we would not be able to travel to disaster areas within hours of an incident. And so the list goes on.
If you personally want to see more money invested in agencies that provide disaster relief, or reliable shelter or clean water then you only have to donate to the right charities, and encourage others to do the same. It doesn't take many people to donate out of their pockets to provide $1 million. You can start here.
Or, for that matter: the DMCA or the INDUCE act. These are acts passed through the process of politics but have the potential to affect all computer users - American or otherwise. Any overhaul of software patents in the US too will be reached by political, not technical, consensus. Achieving the consensus one wants requires a broader understanding of politics than just the technical problems it presents.
In the UK we have the RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) act, the EUCD (European Copyright Directive - Europe's DMCA) and now software patents are being proposed by the EC. Australia had the trade agreement that may require a DMCA-esque regulation as part of the agreement. These have all been proposed and approved through the political process.
Fighting these changes is hard work, and requires effort; but most importantly it requires political nous. If you want to convince your representative, you have to know how to convince your representative. What will make your objections appealing to him? How can your representative convince his colleagues that you're right?
An understanding of politics is absolutely essential to getting these concepts through to an individual who must first be elected to stand for a position by his party before he's elected "by the people". If you're unable to convince your representative - through politics - that at the very least his standing with his party won't be harmed, you have a snowballs chance in hell of convincing him to listen to you.
I would, however, disagree that politics is boring. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's usually hypocritical and amoral, but it's rarely boring:)
And, unless I've misread this, approved August 31st 2004.
Which makes one wonder: how on earth can a patent that was filed in 1997 be granted seven years later in 2004 and still be valid? Especially when the basic techonology had been around since at least the early 80's (Text-based menus any one?).
I'd actually forgotten about the sexual offences changes too. I'd certainly agree that this government is so concerned about increasing conviction rates for rape that they've completely forgotten the many cases of malicious prosectution.
I was actually thinking of the changes proposed for dealing with organised crime (here).
The problem is that they've proposed this "FBI-style" crime unit, but apparently are going to so woefully underfund it that serious criminal charges will be tried on the balance of probabilities. Which makes one wonder: why bother setting it up at all.
At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable situation, look at the impact the congestion charges [wikipedia.org] (and enforcement cameras) have had on London traffic for example.
With respect, this is the same government that introduced the RIP act. When they later attempted to expand the act, they were forced to back down due to popular protest. They later expanded it anyway.
This is the same government that last year suggested the idea of "Voluntary entitlement cards" and stated categorically that they were not going to be compulsory identity cards. The consultation headed by "Millenium Dome" Falconer discarded all responses that were sent via the faxyoump service, despite clear assurances that they would be recognised and claimed that the voluntary card was accepted by the public. This year we learnt that the government was bare-faced lying and intended to introduce the cards as compulsory identity cards all along (it's laid out in bold font in the legislation proposal). Blair defended this position by stating that the Falconer consultation supported compulsory id cards. Even though the consultation was for a voluntary system, and even though it demonstrated the lack of support for it.
This is the government that attempted to stop a group of train crash survivors from getting a public investigation into the crash by hiring private investigators to determine what the political affiliations of the survivors were.
This is first government since the 1970's to introduce internment, which worked so wonderfully badly last time. This is also the government that sought to limit the right to trial by dury, and has seriously considered reducing the burden of proof for serious offences to "balance of probabilities".
I'm glad you trust this government, but their record is not an honest one that merits trust.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. Seeing your other posts on this subject, I think I see the problem.
You feel that it is not reasonable to leave one's children at a supervised playground because it is not reasonable to assume that the supervisor - hitherto unknown by the parents but stated as safe by an apparently responsible third party - is not a child molester.
So can we infer that you feel that it is only reasonable for parents to leave their children with either a) a person or persons known to the family and belived through experience to be safe, b) a person or persons unknown to the family but believed to be safe because such people have passed state screening for known child molesters.
In case a) above, many child molestations occur between a child and a person known to, and trusted by, both the child and the parent. In many cases that person is one of the parents. Ergo: It is not acceptable for a parent to leave a child in the company of one of the parents, or a trusted relative or friend, without the supervision of the other parent as one or other of the parents may be pedophiles.
In case b) above we have had a high-profile case recently in the UK where a pedophile had been given police clearence to work with children who then went on to rape and murder two young girls.
If you genuinely believe that the only safe supervision that can be given to a child is the parents, then I strongly suggest that you look at the child molestation statistics of parents molesting their own children. Or if, perhaps, you're suggesting that parents should only trust people they know, then you should look at the fact that most molestations are carried out by people known and trusted by both the family and by the child.
So given that - having seen your other posts on this subject - you hold that trusting either the police, the state, churches, and now playgrounds and day-care centers to be reprehensible acts that the parents should be held responsible for, who do you suggest they use?
The Uncles/Aunts? Uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings; they've all been known to molest children. So they're out of the equation. Can't 100% trust'em, can't use'em.
Mother/Father? Parents have also been known to abuse their children. So the mother can't leave the child alone with the father, and the father can't leave the child alone with the mother. Because who knows what's happening whilst the other is not present.
Maybe the school system? Except, of course, that school teachers have had their perpetrators too.
So who do you trust. Given your responses, children - it would appear - should be handed over to the state. Parents can't be trusted, relatives can't be trusted, close friends can't be trusted. Playground supervisors can't be trusted, child-minders can't be trusted, baby-sitters can't be trusted. Unfortunately, neither can those employed by the state be trusted.
Reducto Ad Absurdium.
"Safe" and "Supervised" are not the same thing and your analogy is stretching a bit :)
If I leave a child at a day-care centre, I have every reason to believe that my child will not come to physical harm because day-care centres are not normally staffed by child-molestors or chainsaw juggling instructors. A better analogy, perhaps, is a playground.
If a parent takes a child to a playground, and then leave them unsupervised at the playground, then the parent is being negligent and has no good reason to sue the local council. If, on the other hand, the parent takes the child to a playground and pays someone to babysit - ie. supervise - their child, and that supervisor - either through negligence or through willful misconduct - allows the child to come to harm then it is the supervisor who is at fault and not the parent, as the parent has had a guarantee from the supervisor that they as a responsible adult will not allow the child to come to harm.
This extends further: if, instead of employing a supervisor directly, the parent takes their child to a supervised playground where the playground owner specifies that by paying an entrance fee the playground will ensure that the children are properly supervised, the parent has acted properly and has ensured that their child will not be tempted to go to the back of the car of some pervert offering the kids sweets.
And this is the point: AOL are not offering chainsaw juggling lessons: they're offering a supervised playground. An unsupervised internet chat room is no more directly dangerous to a child's health than an unsupervised playground. It's only when the pervert in the car is allowed to approach the kids that the playground becomes a dangerous place; and it's only when the chat room is improperly supervised - EITHER by the parent OR by the delegated supervisor - that they become dangerous.
In this instance, allegedly, it went further than the trusted playground supervisor failing to prevent a child approaching the car offering sweets, it was the supervisor himself who offered the sweets from the back of a car.
And the same applies with baby-sitters.
A parent does not always have to be present for them to reasonably believe that their children are being properly supervised.
In this instance AOL have said to parents "Unmoderated internet chat rooms are a dangerous place where pedophiles and other nasty people frequent", so they've - correctly - identified an issue with unmoderated chat rooms. They then go further and state "However: moderated AOL internet chat rooms are safe. If you pay us money, we will provide safe moderated chat rooms."
And this is the issue: AOL internet chat rooms are only available to AOL subscribers, and AOL subscribers pay money to AOL precisely because they've been told the potential danger of non-AOL chat rooms and have been assured that this danger can be eliminated by paying AOL money.
Similarly with you chainsaw juggling class for under-5s. If your chainsaw instructor identified the common concern with most chainsaw juggling lesson providers ("live chainsaws will chop off various body parts") but provided a solution to this problem ("we're only actually juggling inflatable chainsaws that couldn't cut paper if it tried"), but then provided live chainsaws instead of inflatable chainsaws - then you'd have a case when your kiddie comes home less two arms and a foot: because you'd been assured that your kid would only be using safe inflatable chainsaws.
Normally I would completely agree with you, however in this instance, AOL were advertising the service as being safe for kids. Much like a day-care centre where you drop your kids off with adults you believe are there to ensure your children won't come to any harm; AOL advertised this service as being a place where your kids could safely chat on the internet.
If a day care centre did not perform adequate checks on their employees, and then employed a known pedophile who then attempted to molest children at the centre, the centre would rightly be sued for negligence - precisely because they've advertised the service as safe for children. AOL's case is no different; they've advertised the service as safe for kids.
Of course, whether AOL have or have not failed in this duty is for the courts to decide.
Canada perhaps - not in Britain, and certainly not at Lasham Gliding club. At Lasham parachutes are compulsory.
Check your facts before calling "bullshit".
And yet, despite all that, shit still happens, and "shit happens" seems to be a good reason for that shit happening.
Software uses checklists too. Software is designed, the designs are reviewed, it's coded, the code is reviewed, the software is then tested, and yet - despite all these checklists - shit happens.
I started learning to fly a glider recently, and can you guess what the first thing I learnt was? How to put on and operate a parachute. Why? Because despite the checklists, despite there being two sets of eyes looking out, despite the checks that gliders undergo, despite every possible safety measure taken on the ground and in the air - shit happens.
I used to write embedded applications using OS-9 (NOT MacOS 9) on 68000-based systems as a sub-contractor for Nuclear Electric (nuclear power stations company in the UK before it became BNFL). Our development system - complete with OS/Kernel and compilers - had only about a meg of memory; the final embeded systems often only had 512K if we were lucky
Okay, so this was some 14 years ago - but it was doing a lot of work. 2 megabytes is a lot of memory! There's a phenomenal amount of code and data that can be stored in 2 meg. Maybe it's good by current standards, but - personally - I would suggest that current standards is a bad place to start from.
Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune
Not to worry then, you're still immune. It's not a virus. It's not much of a vulnerability either; and no-one has ever suggested that OS/X - or any operating system for that matter - is immune to trojan horses. And this is what this is (if it's true) - a good old fashioned trojan horse.
User error? But the voters are the users - if the voter cannot use the system, then the system should not be used! It's not enough to just sit smugly and say "well, it was a user error", if you've already anticipated that as a problem.
If the users - the voters - will not be able to use the system, then ditch the system for something they can use. Surely that was the whole point behind ditching the punch card system? What's the point in ditching one system for another that the voters still can't use?!
Okay: I told you so ;-)
Another posting pointed to this discussion where "dag33k" is practically wetting himself over three screenshots.
A quick nose at the screenshots reveals that the (now dead) screenshots are hosted at: http://www.cotse.net/users/secnet/.
So that's secnet. Not that you can see too much: "their" bandwidth's been exceeded. Doesn't sound like a particularly particularly good choice for a testimonial.
I agree with you. I smell a rat.
According to the Yahoo article, he's not actually being sued under the anti-spyware law. It looks like he's being sued under computer misuse legislation:
The FTC alleges the defendants have unfairly: changed consumers' Web browsers, installed advertising and other software programs, and compelled purchase of anti-spyware software.
It looks like its the compulsion he's placed on his customers to buy his products because of his own tampering with their machines that's getting him landed in trouble. (IANAL, etc etc).
Even if they'd said sharing files of music to which copyright applies, how about establishing such in law before trying this?
If the Guardian had said:
Record labels believe it is essential to establish sharing music files as illegal
The guardian and the record labels would have been absolutely correct. It is illegal in the UK. Copyright law is very stringent here. It is - as I've mentioned before - even technically illegal to copy a your own CD on to your own PC, iPod, or even to tape. Further distributing after having done so simply compounds the problem.
No. The key phrase there is "temporary copy which is transient or incidental". Transferring the music from a CD to another format for storage is not considered temporary, transient or incidental, and is prohibitted by UK law.
More information is available here. (see the section "But if I've bought something, can't I use it however I like?").
It will also be interesting to see if this highlights to the british public just how little rights we have when it comes to copyrighted material.
Who knows, once they've finished with P2P users; they may just start suing iPod owners for illegally copying CD's onto their iPods - which is illegal in the UK.
(E) delivering advertisements that a user of the computer cannot close without turning off the computer or closing all sessions of the Internet browser for the computer.
Unless I'm greatly mistaken; doesn't that cover the advertising used in the un-registered version of Opera? It doesn't stipulate whether the user agrees to the advertising or not (or spyware could use the "it's in the EULA" get-out).
It sounds terribly over-broad to me!
We as consumers and the government wouldn't put up with "acme doors" that failed to swing open and closed, failed to lock adequately, and anyone could open with a gentle shove when it was allegedly latched,
But you do! You buy them all the time. The difference is that you as an individual may not know how secure your front door or you car really is. Look how successful cheap steering wheel locks are. They're completely useless as an anti-theft device, but people who don't know better buy them in droves.
It's just that with computer security you are aware of the issues. But if you were a locksmith, you may well have a lot to say about people's front doors.
Exactly. That individual isn't the only person alive. Take me for example, I don't donate to charities, and I probably never will. "Why" you ask? because I'm a greedy, self serving bastard and I know it.
Erm... I'm not quite sure how you can say "exactly" when you appear to have disagreed with everything in my post.
Plus, if I donate to helping people, what have I done? possibly given to whichever criminal (sure you could use the term "terrorist" but why bother when a much more simple and accurate term exists?) group happens to intercept my money/food/medicines/etc. or -maybe- helped a small percentage of those who actually need assistance.
I didn't say that...
Now, I don't fit exactly into the category you mentioned, as I don't think research money could be better spent aiding humanity. Rather, I feel that research money can be better spent on research that improves or may improve my life. and if, as a side effect, it improves the lives of others I can live with that.
And I most certainly did not say that.
How have did you reach the conclusion that you agreed with me, when you appear to completely disagree with me?
Literacy does not help with these problems
How the hell are can you link to UNICEF and Oxfam, and not recognise that literacy is absolutely central to the problem . If you have an illiterate population you cannot teach them to fix a pump, or rely upon them to teach their children to fix a pump. Without literacy you cannot teach a farmer to sow a field, and teach others to sow a field. With an illiterate population you will never make progress!
UNICEF and Oxfam are both deeply concerned about the literacy rate in the third word for a simple reason: The problem cannot be solved without raising literacy rates!
Whether you act on it or not is up to you - perhaps you value that new Star Wars DVD boxed set, for instance, or a $400 graphics card more than a clear conscience that you're not standing by while people starve slowly to death
You arrogant troll. How much did your computer cost you? How much is the electricity bill to run your computer, and the lights in your house, and the heating? How much did you spend on your car? How much do you spend on fuel? How much do you spend on clothes in a year? Do you own a DVD? A graphics card? A Hi-Fi? How much do you give your ISP each year?
I said in my first post that you should encourage people to support charities. I would like to retract that - I would like to ask that you never mention the name of a charity in your posts ever again. You ignorance does more harm than good.
Perhaps you aren't paying attention.
I think I was. I usually try.
The more than one billion people who are currently starving to death, or dying from easily treatable illnesses don't require a satellite to inform them as to the weather in other parts of the world.
I can assure you that I am most certainly familiar with the issue of starving people. I am not a supporter of Save the Children for my own health. But you have missed the point. Around the world every year people are surviving incidents that they would otherwise have died in because of the advance in technology.
I say no - lets stick with the existing ones, which appear to work pretty well whenever I use subtitles when watching live tv programes
Yes, they are good enough. But to paraphrase a recent Honda advert in the UK: They're OK. They're not bad. They're adequate. But why invent the transistor if the valve is OK. Why invent the jet engine if propellers are OK. Why invent the car if the horse and trap is OK.
The west gives a pretty pitiful amount of money in aid, and I'm puzzled as to why. I get the feeling people think it's some sort of physical problem in literally getting the supplies over there.
I don't disagree. But the reason is not because some of the money in western countries is spent on computer research projects.
Part of the problem, actually is because there's a physical problem with getting supplies there. Food supplies to many severely deprived areas need to go through war zones. The food gets hijacked, and aid workers get killed. This is assuming you're able to land supplies in the country in the first place.
Part of the problem is because of social and political issues in the countries worst affected. During the Ethiopian crisis, for example, the government in power at the time was a brutal dictatorship that didn't want anyone hearing about the problem, then didn't want people sending aid.
Part of the problem is religious. Many deprived areas are over-populated because various religions proscribe contraception. All these problems need to be tackled. Simply throwing more money at the problem will not suddenly solve it.
Now, you may argue that the money could be given to charities. But think about it for a moment. How much money do you really want a charity to receive from a government? How independent should a charity be? What if a charity received $x million from a government on the proviso that they didn't provide aid to a hostile country? Charities should be able to remain as independent as possible.
What do you think I'm doing here? Now who's the idiot? Oh, and the other implication in your first paragraph is wrong - I give plenty of money to charity.
Then I retract the comment in your instance, but I stand by my statement. By and large people stating that research money could be better spent on aid do not donate to charities - at least in my experience.
Every time a dollar value is placed on a piece of research, some idiot comes along and say "Hey! This could be spent providing clean drinking water, and food and shelter", as if only research that directly provides clean drinking water or food or shelter is worth funding. Quite frequently the idiot making this statement is in a perfect position to provide money to ensure that more people have access to these facilities, and just as frequently that idiot isn't doing so.
I'm sure that when America and Russia were engaged in the space race there were people saying "Hey! This money could be better spent on disaster relief!". And where are we now? Only a few short decades later we have sattelites that tell us where hurricanes are going so that we can evacuate areas and people who would otherwise die surviveWe have a global reliable telecommunications satellites so that disaster relief agencies in third world countries can inform people of what supplies are required, and people who would otherwse die survive.
Without the massive investment in jet airline technology that could otherwise have been spent "saving the starving", we would not be able to travel to disaster areas within hours of an incident. And so the list goes on.
If you personally want to see more money invested in agencies that provide disaster relief, or reliable shelter or clean water then you only have to donate to the right charities, and encourage others to do the same. It doesn't take many people to donate out of their pockets to provide $1 million. You can start here.
Or, for that matter: the DMCA or the INDUCE act. These are acts passed through the process of politics but have the potential to affect all computer users - American or otherwise. Any overhaul of software patents in the US too will be reached by political, not technical, consensus. Achieving the consensus one wants requires a broader understanding of politics than just the technical problems it presents.
:)
In the UK we have the RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) act, the EUCD (European Copyright Directive - Europe's DMCA) and now software patents are being proposed by the EC. Australia had the trade agreement that may require a DMCA-esque regulation as part of the agreement. These have all been proposed and approved through the political process.
Fighting these changes is hard work, and requires effort; but most importantly it requires political nous. If you want to convince your representative, you have to know how to convince your representative. What will make your objections appealing to him? How can your representative convince his colleagues that you're right?
An understanding of politics is absolutely essential to getting these concepts through to an individual who must first be elected to stand for a position by his party before he's elected "by the people". If you're unable to convince your representative - through politics - that at the very least his standing with his party won't be harmed, you have a snowballs chance in hell of convincing him to listen to you.
I would, however, disagree that politics is boring. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's usually hypocritical and amoral, but it's rarely boring
And, unless I've misread this, approved August 31st 2004.
Which makes one wonder: how on earth can a patent that was filed in 1997 be granted seven years later in 2004 and still be valid? Especially when the basic techonology had been around since at least the early 80's (Text-based menus any one?).
I'd actually forgotten about the sexual offences changes too. I'd certainly agree that this government is so concerned about increasing conviction rates for rape that they've completely forgotten the many cases of malicious prosectution.
I was actually thinking of the changes proposed for dealing with organised crime (here).
The problem is that they've proposed this "FBI-style" crime unit, but apparently are going to so woefully underfund it that serious criminal charges will be tried on the balance of probabilities. Which makes one wonder: why bother setting it up at all.
At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable situation, look at the impact the congestion charges [wikipedia.org] (and enforcement cameras) have had on London traffic for example.
With respect, this is the same government that introduced the RIP act. When they later attempted to expand the act, they were forced to back down due to popular protest. They later expanded it anyway.
This is the same government that last year suggested the idea of "Voluntary entitlement cards" and stated categorically that they were not going to be compulsory identity cards. The consultation headed by "Millenium Dome" Falconer discarded all responses that were sent via the faxyoump service, despite clear assurances that they would be recognised and claimed that the voluntary card was accepted by the public. This year we learnt that the government was bare-faced lying and intended to introduce the cards as compulsory identity cards all along (it's laid out in bold font in the legislation proposal). Blair defended this position by stating that the Falconer consultation supported compulsory id cards. Even though the consultation was for a voluntary system, and even though it demonstrated the lack of support for it.
This is the government that attempted to stop a group of train crash survivors from getting a public investigation into the crash by hiring private investigators to determine what the political affiliations of the survivors were.
This is first government since the 1970's to introduce internment, which worked so wonderfully badly last time. This is also the government that sought to limit the right to trial by dury, and has seriously considered reducing the burden of proof for serious offences to "balance of probabilities".
I'm glad you trust this government, but their record is not an honest one that merits trust.