I realize they didn't say exactly what you said there, but the really annoying part is they could have avoided all of this trouble and sidestepped this entire debate, which frankly doesn't seem to be making them look very good, by simply removing that second sentence.
If they had simply said, "this is how it happened, this is how you fix it, this is what we're doing to make sure it does not happen again in the future, and we apologize to anybody who got infected," the situation would have been over and done with.
Instead, they took a swipe at Microsoft which makes it seem, whether it was their intent or not, to pass the buck on to a company that is wholly uninvolved with making the iPods. It was a contractor, yes, but it was THEIR contractor and it makes it their problem. As we have seen so clearly now, it is Apple's reputation that is on the line. Nobody else's.
"We fucked up" would have been the appropriate response. "We fucked up, but if Microsoft didn't suck so bad it wouldn't have mattered!!!" was immature and unprofessional.
I would have second thoughts about hiring any lawyer that can't distinguish between two entirely different sets of laws
Right. Because the most likely explanation here is that no RIAA or music industry lawyer knows what they're talking about and you are smarter than all of them.
Or, no, wait--could it be that their statements are made deliberately? That perhaps they are pushing people to believe something that makes their case look better?
Nah. You know those lawyers--completely off the cuff morons, no preparation involved at all.
My god am I sick of this "slashdot knows the law best!" mentality around here. It's beyond sickening. Easy +5 insightful though, isn't it?
Make that little girl that he targets your daughter and we'll see how your "perspective" changes.
You're absolutely right, that sort of thing is enough to change anybody's perspective and turn just about anybody into somebody who would suddenly support torture and summary execution.
That is, perhaps, the best reason of them all that it should be impartial parties who administer justice and decide the punishments for these sorts of things. Child sexual abuse is just one prime example. Replace it with "terrorism" and you have another one playing out each day before our very eyes.
Often times it is best to leave the emotion at the doorstep and debate things logically and dispassionately. Pretty much any issue with as much emotion behind it as this one is going to be one of those cases.
Another thing to consider with these "lock them up forever!" attitudes toward some crimes: You run the risk of making things worse. Somebody sexually abusing a child is bad. Somebody sexually abusing a child and then killing him/her because, in terms of their sentence, it is essentially free--that is worse. I'd rather get my child back and the offender get out of jail than have him/her killed and see the offender locked away forever. No contest.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with announcing potential biases in articles. Understanding potential biases is important to being able to judge the credibility of presented information.
As far as/. itself goes, I don't think anybody who comes here assumes that it is an unbiased medium. So in that same spirit, you can use that knowledge to evaluate things as they are posted here. If you don't like the way the majority of slashdotters lean, I'm sure there are sites out there that are either less biased or more biased in whatever direction you would prefer. Nothing is stopping you from using them.
Frankly I would much rather have these issues right out in the open where everybody knows them and can evaluate them accordingly than, say, Fox News who has a definite conservative bias but claims to be "fair and balanced."
1.5 The public desides to give up certain rights to the created cartoon and grant a time limited copyright to the creator!
Slashdot is really big on throwing the word "right" around, but it seems to me it is almost always sorely misused.
In all seriousness: would you please tell me from where you think you derive a right to take something I have created from me and, say, sell it for your own profit--even if it is by copying the work rather than stealing it? Maybe this is a "right" in a "survival of the fittest" sense, but I'd like to think we are at least a few steps above this. Hell, the entire purpose of society is to rise a few steps above that, is it not?
If I write a book for my friends and family to read, and one of my friends decides to copy it down and sell it out from under me (the bastard!), you're telling me this is his right? And that I need the law to tell me that he should not be permitted to do this?
If that is your position, tt seems like we're really stretching the term to the point of it being meaningless.
we should outfit them with a camera, GPS device and listening post.
We're not as far off from that as you think. Have you seen the "Disney Mobile" commercials? One of the points they use to sell it is that it has GPS and parents can track where their kids are.
Lawsuit exposing? Assuming your computer doesn't catch on fire from the problem, what is your cause of action? They're offering to replace the defective part for you at no charge.
If your computer DID catch on fire from it, you may have a suit--but NOT recalling the batteries if you knew about the problem would open you to a far greater lawsuit than recalling them. If the fire occurred after the recall, you may even escape liability--at least in part.
All that said, I can't agree with your conclusion that it "falls short in the benefits vs. risks calculator." If that were true, they would not initiate ANY recall regardless of how long it has been since the first company did so. While it's true that they're ugly, expensive and usually bad PR, the calculator must be telling them that it IS still worth the recall or they simply wouldn't do it unless forced to by government.
More likely, the delay was caused by companies either reviewing the evidence or perhaps conducting their own experiments before they spend the money to do the recall.
Just recently, after many years of putting it off (I'm 22 now), I ended up switching the custodial savings account I had over to my name. During that process, one of the things they mentioned very specifically is that if you transfer money from savings to checking more than six (I think) times in a month, the account get closed. This warning is repeated, although somewhat differently, on the online banking funds transfer page: "Federal Regulation D limits the number of preauthorized, automatic, telephone, electronic (including ACH), online and other transfers and withdrawals not made in person or at an ATM to six (6) per month for all savings accounts. Excessive activity will result in a Reg D violation fee for each applicable transfer/withdrawal over the monthly limit; please refer to your current pricing schedule for personal accounts." The said it was part of the package of legislation passed after 9/11.
So while your idea seems okay in general, you'll want to be wary of that.
That said, there are credit card companies who let you generate one-time CC#s linked to your account that automatically expire on first use. My brother's Discover card was one of them, I believe. Meaning, even if the number was intercepted it would be be rendered useless as soon as the merchant processed the number. It seems like virtually the same thing as you describe, though a bit simpler and, perhaps, less likely to irk the feds. I personally do not understand why all credit card companies do not do this. It seems like an exceptionally simple thing to create and maintain, and protects their customers at the same time. Since most CC companies do not make customers liable for fraud, it protects them as well.
The freedom preserved has always been that of the user.
No, the freedom preserved has always been that of the code. That is how it is different than BSD licenses or similar. Were the freedom truly the user's, there would be no obligations on whether or not they might have to give any change they make back or how they have to license something they create that may link to a GPL product.
I'm not interested in an ideological flame war. I'm not interested in debating the merits of BSD versus GPL licenses. But that's how it goes. The most free licenses are the ones that impose the fewest, least onerous restrictions. The difference is from what perspective you are measuring that freedom. My view on the issue is simple: People will choose whatever license they like best, and that's exactly how it should go.
One thing that I can say with certainty: I've released some (complete shitty, I admit) software under the GPL previously, but all the wanking on/. has really turned me off to the whole thing. I hate that people have turned it into some sort of moral debate where you're somehow a lesser human being if you don't agree with them. Were I to release anything in the future, it would almost certainly not be under any version of the GPL for exactly that reason. I'm sure I'll be flamed for that, but that is exactly the effect this sort of behavior has.
I mean how do you get the right to brag "Oh, I'm a Kernel developer, see my code-fu muscles" when you can't invest the money to actually develop seriously?
It's very easy: You look at the whole picture.
Your workstation is the result of 800 Gentoo ports being installed. 200M lines of source code. Your own words. Well. that sounds pretty fucking awesome to me. And you got all of that for free.
You're having a problem? Sorry. But even one problem, or five, or twenty--out of 800 installed packages--is still a damn good mark. And those developers you bitch and moan about being immature for not fixing your specific problem (without you even taking the time to report that problem) are clearly providing you a service that you like. If they weren't, the system wouldn't be acceptable for your use andyou would switch to something else.
Don't like the way that your problems aren't getting fixed in the OSS world? Well, you're free to go install Windows or OS X or some other, non-free-world operating system. There are NO problems with any of those OSs, I'm sure. And if there were, I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to release a patch just for you when you... well, don't report it. But I'm sure they'll get your report telepathically.
Seriously, you have one of the absolute worst attitudes I have ever seen. It's not just your posts here. I'm sad to say that I recognize your name because your attitude is constantly shitty. Maybe if you weren't such a high and mighty ass all the time, people would be more inclined to care what your problems are. Hell, if those "occasional" bug reports you file read anything like the drivel you spew here, no wonder your problems don't get fixed.
They think they can just throw around the "protect the children" meme and we'll all just line up like good Christian Soldiers.
Because thus far, every time they throw around the "protect the children" meme we have all just lined up like good Christian Soldiers.
They pick child pornography specifically because it is so hard to disagree with measures like this without somebody going "you're defending child pornographers!!!!" That would be bad enough for you or me; for a politician, that ad running in the next election cycle is political suicide. Nobody is likely to even stop to hear your explanation once you've been leveled with that accusation.
And really, there's nobody to blame for that but ourselves. If we continue to let tactics like that sway us, they will continue to be employed.
Am I sick of it? Hell yeah, and I'll talk politics with whomever will listen to try to stamp out these sorts of idiocies--but it's not enough.
the reasoning behind going after the consumers as well as the producers, is that demand creates supply, and cutting off the demand for child pornography will lower the incentives to produce it
I disagree that it will have any substantial impact on production.
If I am a "normal" person, with no interest in child pornography, I find it extremely unlikely that I would be producing it regardless of whether or not there was good money in it. What I mean is that the people producing this are probably also consumers of it. Being able to sell it is a nice bonus for them, but I doubt it is the driving motiviation. (There will likely be some exceptions to this, but I doubt it would approach a majority.)
So that said, if I WERE a producer of child pornography, I would not care less if every one of my consumers was arrested because I would still produce it to satiate my own desires. At the most, it would get me to step up measures to protect myself--but not to stop.
But do people really have a right to consume something that is illegal to produce?
It's a tricky question, and one that a blanket statement will do no justice. The basic answer is... maybe. What if it is not illegal to produce where it is produced? What if RandomExampleCountryA does not outlaw production of child pornography and that is where RandomChildPornographyConsumerB gets it from. Does that change the issue at all? Is it harder to decide whether that should be illegal than it is if everything took place in the country where it was illegal?
And if so, it seems that the answer to your question may be "yes." If it is the same thing (child porn), just from different places, then we have to question whether or not it is the possession we truly have a problem with. And if it's not, should we really be making it illegal?
Truth told, child porn is probably too touchy an issue to debate the question with. How about this: The US clearly thinks allofmp3 is violating copyright, thought it appears that they are adhering to the laws in Russia (despite the fact that Russia may end up caving and changing the laws). Assuming all of that to be true, hypothetically, if the US passed a law saying that buying a song from allofmp3 was the same as downloading it illegally from a P2P service or a friend, would you agree with such a law?
An ATM costs at least $10,000, not counting the cash you stock it with. But I doubt anyone is willing to pay more than $1,000 for a voting machine. So it's natural that the voting machine will have cut-rate security.
Even assuming your first supposition is true, why does that mean worse security?
If the two machines were equally complex, I would agree with you, but I don't think they are. An ATM has some sort of moving parts, or at least some way to move the money around in the machine. It has a magnetic stripe reader. It has some sort of connection to the outside world so it can talk to your bank and check/update the balance, and all the hardware and software logic that entails. It has a printer in it to offer you receipts.
A voting machine? It MAY have a printer--I don't know if the Diebold ones do; lack of a paper trail is something complained about on/. rather constantly--but other than that all it should really do is take a series of inputs and count when the operator presses a button, then store the new tally someplace. It doesn't--it damn well shouldn't!--be talking to the outside world. There are really no moving parts.
You're telling me that the voting machine gets shitty security because it's cheaper to buy? Well it's cheaper to make, too. That's not an excuse. And we're not talking about something complex or expensive here, either. They have a lock so simple a minibar key can open it. Hell, for $15, they could go out and buy a lock from the store retail and that would at least be a half step up in the physical security department. Are you telling me that counties are really going to balk at paying $1100 per machine instead of $1000 to make sure somebody can't walk up and steal the election?
I'm not interested in getting into the conspiracy theory debates, but the way I see it, there are only three possible reasons they could do something this bone-headedly stupid: Either they are incompetent, they do not care about the possibility of people tampering with an election, or they are doing it deliberately.
Why should the tobacco companies be held to a different standard?
Well, first of all, I think charging heroin dealers with homicide if a druggie dies from it (unless, for example, they laced it with something else--then it does sound like a case of negligent homicide) is pretty stupid to begin with it.
That said, it is not a different standard. One is selling a legal product and one is not, regardless of whether the law should have any such distinction. The latter should, according to law, be arrested REGARDLESS of whether their "clients" die from the use or just get really high.
In this context, the definition of the word doesn't really matter. It can be as arbitrary as one wishes and while "bad" definitions won't make people happy, and are less likely to pass, that isn't the problem.
The problem is when you say "we're authorizing a wiretapping program to listen to calls placed to terrorists!" and then don't define "terrorist" somehow. It's akin to a legislative blank check to the executive. Anybody they want to call a terrorist, by whatever definition they want at the time, can be legally wiretapped.
It's kind of like the debate over Pluto and the definition of a planet. The definition doesn't really matter. What matters is that there IS a definition that is used the same way wherever it is used.
That said, I'm not overly worried about this passing committee because I think Bush is going to have a rough time getting it through the full Senate. He's disliked enough that Republicans are starting to break ranks with him, and you can be pretty sure the majority of Dems (probably damn near all) will be voting against the bill, if for no other reason than to keep the issue alive as a election topic; the wiretapping is fairly unpopular in general, and definitely unpopular with the Democratic base.
So, as long as you're in a company bathroom, we can video tape everything you do? After all, it's company property.
Well, bad example (I'll mention why in a minute), but the answer to the spirit of the question is: Yeah, probably.
You may or may not have any right to privacy at work. Most Americans see a definite right to privacy in the Constitution, but they fail to understand that the Constitution is meant as a limit on the power of the government. Specifically, it was meant as a limit on the power of the federal government; not until the Fourteenth Amendment did the US Constitution come to apply to the states as well. If it was a police officer who set up the cameras in the bathroom with no cause, it would almost certainly be illegal.
That said, I believe most case law thus far has come down on the side of "while you're on company property, they can do whatever they want to you." Including, in some cases, opening up your drawers and rifling through your papers; reading your emails; etc. No, they can't watch you in the bathroom--but not as a privacy issue; they couldn't do that because it may very well violate other laws, such as voyeurism. Telephone calls may also be safe, but again, not because of your right to privacy: Depending on the state, it may simply violate wiretap laws.
Some decisions have begun to come down saying that employees do have some expectation of privacy at their places of employment, and I expect that to be the general trend. That said, I believe it's still in the minority. Your employer still has a tremendous latitude in determine how much privacy to give their employees and when it might be time to violate that.
More to the point of the case, however, it appears that they did not actually tap anybody's phone. Rather, they looked at phone records. You can bet that it is perfectly within a company's rights, at least at present, to pull the phone records of any employee for any service the company pays for. If they truly did trick the employees' phone companies into releasing their own personal phone records, then that sounds to be entirely illegal.
So, like I said, the spirit of your initial question seems to be yes: Employers can watch an awful lot of what you do so long as they are not violating any specific laws while they do it. It's the difference between violating a law and violating a right: It does not seem to be the rule (yet) that companies have any obligations to extend you any rights not backed up by law.
Fuck you, you arrogant little asshole. If you said that to my face, one of us would be going to the hospital.
You, I hope. Absolutely nothing you have "contributed" anywhere in this discussion has lead me to believe that anybody like you should be permitted to reproduce.
If you have nothing to contribute but emotional knee-jerks and vitrolic BS, then do everybody a favor: Shut the fuck up already.
Luckily for this kid, and this company, it appears that this took place in the UK and not the US. Had it happened here, understandable or no, he would have opened the company up to a tremendous lawsuit. Not only would she have ended up with her phone and Internet access, it would have been free for the rest of her life along with a million bucks for her trouble.
There probably should be, yes. I know a lot of people simply do not support government regulation, in particular anything that may increase their taxes, and I sympathize; but if anybody does not understand the vast and increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, hoo boy.
The US is an "ideas economy" now. We've basically let our manufacturing jobs go overseas so we can buy things cheaper from Walmart. If we're now going to let one of the biggest enablers and tools of that "ideas economy" be dangled above our heads by the telecos, we are in big trouble. Their ability to grab the entire US economy by the nuts should absolutely be broken. If it takes government regulation and subsidy for that to happen, so be it.
Should all physical wiring, whether it's twisted pair, coax, or fiber, into everyone's homes be opened up for any provider to use?
Absolutely.
Here's a question I just don't get: Where do they really get off? As you say, their leverage comes from the local loop. Since they CONTROL (subject to the FCC--not own!) the wire into your home, all traffic eventually must pass through that wire.
But do you know who paid for that wire? Not the telecos. You did. I did. We paid with tremendous government subsidy. We continue to pay with surcharges like the Universal Access charge on our telephones. There is a very real argument to be made that nobody should be paying at all for Internet service.
I know, that's a bit naive--and that's why I'm not supporting that position. I understand we have to pay to keep people employed to fix those lines, and troubleshoot the network, and buy the new equipment. But the idea that they should be able to charge people for twice for access to the wire they've charged us to allow access to, which we already paid for in terms of government subsidies, is absurd. I can not fathom how to rationalize adding a third point of payment in there. (Charging providers to serve content that the providers are charged for sending to the wires that we were charged to permit access to that we were charged to build... fun!)
If it takes government intervention and subsidy for that, then that is what should be done. The government should be protecting the interests of the people before those of the corporations.
Let's start with Net Neutrality, and we can study what's happening. If the fears of the telecos turn out to be well-founded, then we can examine solutions to that problem. Maybe a small (say $5-10/month) increase on the consumers' end will be enough. And if not... yeah. The government should probably step in.
But Apple can do no wrong here on/., so the point is moot.
There. I fixed it for you.
Look, this is either an idiotic thing that should be an option controllable by the user or it's not, and whichever it is, it is regardless of how many times somebody might reboot their computer.
It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people here can come up with for why their double standards aren't double standards. I expect no less than 5-6 more in reply to this post.
Re:So wait. You expect people to surpass the best?
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
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· Score: 1
Well to beat WoW you need to approach it the same way.
Why? I've never actually played the game, so take what I say in the proper context, but:
It seems to me that games existed before WoW. It seems to me that MMORPGs existed before WoW. The fact that we're talking about WoW at all indicates that they did something better than the other guys, and that's why they are as popular as they are.
So why is it that to "beat" WoW, you need a game that works exactly like WoW? I find it hard to believe that somebody can't come up with an innovative game that takes the good features of WoW (whatever those may be) and blends in new concepts that haven't been tried yet in MMO context. Why is it a requirement that it be a game everybody has heard of already? It's an easy foot in the door, but it doesn't mean that the game is any good. Why do there have to be races? Why can't, for example, you simply customize the crap out of your on appearance but still be the same race as everybody else?
Personally I think essentially copying WoW is a recipe for NEVER beating it. There's a feeling right now that if you've played one MMO, you've played them all. It's the same tedium across games even if one plays better than another. It's the feeling that you need to play constantly or you get left behind. It's the feeling that you have to do things that simply are not fun (or else why do things like gold farmers exist?). If somebody figures out a way to break those chains, that's when we'll see a good challenge to WoW's popularity.
I know that DMCA-bashing and, lately, US-bashing are popular ways to get modded up, but this post is rather pathetic.
If "they like to tell people what they can and cannot do" is your definition of a fascist state, I can not think of any state that is not fascist. Developing rules by which the residents of a country all agree to live is one of the fundamental purposes of government.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize they didn't say exactly what you said there, but the really annoying part is they could have avoided all of this trouble and sidestepped this entire debate, which frankly doesn't seem to be making them look very good, by simply removing that second sentence.
If they had simply said, "this is how it happened, this is how you fix it, this is what we're doing to make sure it does not happen again in the future, and we apologize to anybody who got infected," the situation would have been over and done with.
Instead, they took a swipe at Microsoft which makes it seem, whether it was their intent or not, to pass the buck on to a company that is wholly uninvolved with making the iPods. It was a contractor, yes, but it was THEIR contractor and it makes it their problem. As we have seen so clearly now, it is Apple's reputation that is on the line. Nobody else's.
"We fucked up" would have been the appropriate response. "We fucked up, but if Microsoft didn't suck so bad it wouldn't have mattered!!!" was immature and unprofessional.
Yes. Rest assured their lawyers are working diligently on who to sue so such a good decision never happens again.
Right. Because the most likely explanation here is that no RIAA or music industry lawyer knows what they're talking about and you are smarter than all of them.
Or, no, wait--could it be that their statements are made deliberately? That perhaps they are pushing people to believe something that makes their case look better?
Nah. You know those lawyers--completely off the cuff morons, no preparation involved at all.
My god am I sick of this "slashdot knows the law best!" mentality around here. It's beyond sickening. Easy +5 insightful though, isn't it?
Make that little girl that he targets your daughter and we'll see how your "perspective" changes.
You're absolutely right, that sort of thing is enough to change anybody's perspective and turn just about anybody into somebody who would suddenly support torture and summary execution.
That is, perhaps, the best reason of them all that it should be impartial parties who administer justice and decide the punishments for these sorts of things. Child sexual abuse is just one prime example. Replace it with "terrorism" and you have another one playing out each day before our very eyes.
Often times it is best to leave the emotion at the doorstep and debate things logically and dispassionately. Pretty much any issue with as much emotion behind it as this one is going to be one of those cases.
Another thing to consider with these "lock them up forever!" attitudes toward some crimes: You run the risk of making things worse. Somebody sexually abusing a child is bad. Somebody sexually abusing a child and then killing him/her because, in terms of their sentence, it is essentially free--that is worse. I'd rather get my child back and the offender get out of jail than have him/her killed and see the offender locked away forever. No contest.
So what?
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with announcing potential biases in articles. Understanding potential biases is important to being able to judge the credibility of presented information.
As far as /. itself goes, I don't think anybody who comes here assumes that it is an unbiased medium. So in that same spirit, you can use that knowledge to evaluate things as they are posted here. If you don't like the way the majority of slashdotters lean, I'm sure there are sites out there that are either less biased or more biased in whatever direction you would prefer. Nothing is stopping you from using them.
Frankly I would much rather have these issues right out in the open where everybody knows them and can evaluate them accordingly than, say, Fox News who has a definite conservative bias but claims to be "fair and balanced."
What is the problem?
1.5 The public desides to give up certain rights to the created cartoon and grant a time limited copyright to the creator!
Slashdot is really big on throwing the word "right" around, but it seems to me it is almost always sorely misused.
In all seriousness: would you please tell me from where you think you derive a right to take something I have created from me and, say, sell it for your own profit--even if it is by copying the work rather than stealing it? Maybe this is a "right" in a "survival of the fittest" sense, but I'd like to think we are at least a few steps above this. Hell, the entire purpose of society is to rise a few steps above that, is it not?
If I write a book for my friends and family to read, and one of my friends decides to copy it down and sell it out from under me (the bastard!), you're telling me this is his right? And that I need the law to tell me that he should not be permitted to do this?
If that is your position, tt seems like we're really stretching the term to the point of it being meaningless.
We're not as far off from that as you think. Have you seen the "Disney Mobile" commercials? One of the points they use to sell it is that it has GPS and parents can track where their kids are.
Lawsuit exposing? Assuming your computer doesn't catch on fire from the problem, what is your cause of action? They're offering to replace the defective part for you at no charge.
If your computer DID catch on fire from it, you may have a suit--but NOT recalling the batteries if you knew about the problem would open you to a far greater lawsuit than recalling them. If the fire occurred after the recall, you may even escape liability--at least in part.
All that said, I can't agree with your conclusion that it "falls short in the benefits vs. risks calculator." If that were true, they would not initiate ANY recall regardless of how long it has been since the first company did so. While it's true that they're ugly, expensive and usually bad PR, the calculator must be telling them that it IS still worth the recall or they simply wouldn't do it unless forced to by government.
More likely, the delay was caused by companies either reviewing the evidence or perhaps conducting their own experiments before they spend the money to do the recall.
How often do you do this? And, are you in the US?
Just recently, after many years of putting it off (I'm 22 now), I ended up switching the custodial savings account I had over to my name. During that process, one of the things they mentioned very specifically is that if you transfer money from savings to checking more than six (I think) times in a month, the account get closed. This warning is repeated, although somewhat differently, on the online banking funds transfer page: "Federal Regulation D limits the number of preauthorized, automatic, telephone, electronic (including ACH), online and other transfers and withdrawals not made in person or at an ATM to six (6) per month for all savings accounts. Excessive activity will result in a Reg D violation fee for each applicable transfer/withdrawal over the monthly limit; please refer to your current pricing schedule for personal accounts." The said it was part of the package of legislation passed after 9/11.
So while your idea seems okay in general, you'll want to be wary of that.
That said, there are credit card companies who let you generate one-time CC#s linked to your account that automatically expire on first use. My brother's Discover card was one of them, I believe. Meaning, even if the number was intercepted it would be be rendered useless as soon as the merchant processed the number. It seems like virtually the same thing as you describe, though a bit simpler and, perhaps, less likely to irk the feds. I personally do not understand why all credit card companies do not do this. It seems like an exceptionally simple thing to create and maintain, and protects their customers at the same time. Since most CC companies do not make customers liable for fraud, it protects them as well.
The freedom preserved has always been that of the user.
No, the freedom preserved has always been that of the code. That is how it is different than BSD licenses or similar. Were the freedom truly the user's, there would be no obligations on whether or not they might have to give any change they make back or how they have to license something they create that may link to a GPL product.
I'm not interested in an ideological flame war. I'm not interested in debating the merits of BSD versus GPL licenses. But that's how it goes. The most free licenses are the ones that impose the fewest, least onerous restrictions. The difference is from what perspective you are measuring that freedom. My view on the issue is simple: People will choose whatever license they like best, and that's exactly how it should go.
One thing that I can say with certainty: I've released some (complete shitty, I admit) software under the GPL previously, but all the wanking on /. has really turned me off to the whole thing. I hate that people have turned it into some sort of moral debate where you're somehow a lesser human being if you don't agree with them. Were I to release anything in the future, it would almost certainly not be under any version of the GPL for exactly that reason. I'm sure I'll be flamed for that, but that is exactly the effect this sort of behavior has.
I mean how do you get the right to brag "Oh, I'm a Kernel developer, see my code-fu muscles" when you can't invest the money to actually develop seriously?
It's very easy: You look at the whole picture.
Your workstation is the result of 800 Gentoo ports being installed. 200M lines of source code. Your own words. Well. that sounds pretty fucking awesome to me. And you got all of that for free.
You're having a problem? Sorry. But even one problem, or five, or twenty--out of 800 installed packages--is still a damn good mark. And those developers you bitch and moan about being immature for not fixing your specific problem (without you even taking the time to report that problem) are clearly providing you a service that you like. If they weren't, the system wouldn't be acceptable for your use andyou would switch to something else.
Don't like the way that your problems aren't getting fixed in the OSS world? Well, you're free to go install Windows or OS X or some other, non-free-world operating system. There are NO problems with any of those OSs, I'm sure. And if there were, I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to release a patch just for you when you... well, don't report it. But I'm sure they'll get your report telepathically.
Seriously, you have one of the absolute worst attitudes I have ever seen. It's not just your posts here. I'm sad to say that I recognize your name because your attitude is constantly shitty. Maybe if you weren't such a high and mighty ass all the time, people would be more inclined to care what your problems are. Hell, if those "occasional" bug reports you file read anything like the drivel you spew here, no wonder your problems don't get fixed.
They think they can just throw around the "protect the children" meme and we'll all just line up like good Christian Soldiers.
Because thus far, every time they throw around the "protect the children" meme we have all just lined up like good Christian Soldiers.
They pick child pornography specifically because it is so hard to disagree with measures like this without somebody going "you're defending child pornographers!!!!" That would be bad enough for you or me; for a politician, that ad running in the next election cycle is political suicide. Nobody is likely to even stop to hear your explanation once you've been leveled with that accusation.
And really, there's nobody to blame for that but ourselves. If we continue to let tactics like that sway us, they will continue to be employed.
Am I sick of it? Hell yeah, and I'll talk politics with whomever will listen to try to stamp out these sorts of idiocies--but it's not enough.
the reasoning behind going after the consumers as well as the producers, is that demand creates supply, and cutting off the demand for child pornography will lower the incentives to produce it
I disagree that it will have any substantial impact on production.
If I am a "normal" person, with no interest in child pornography, I find it extremely unlikely that I would be producing it regardless of whether or not there was good money in it. What I mean is that the people producing this are probably also consumers of it. Being able to sell it is a nice bonus for them, but I doubt it is the driving motiviation. (There will likely be some exceptions to this, but I doubt it would approach a majority.)
So that said, if I WERE a producer of child pornography, I would not care less if every one of my consumers was arrested because I would still produce it to satiate my own desires. At the most, it would get me to step up measures to protect myself--but not to stop.
But do people really have a right to consume something that is illegal to produce?
It's a tricky question, and one that a blanket statement will do no justice. The basic answer is... maybe. What if it is not illegal to produce where it is produced? What if RandomExampleCountryA does not outlaw production of child pornography and that is where RandomChildPornographyConsumerB gets it from. Does that change the issue at all? Is it harder to decide whether that should be illegal than it is if everything took place in the country where it was illegal?
And if so, it seems that the answer to your question may be "yes." If it is the same thing (child porn), just from different places, then we have to question whether or not it is the possession we truly have a problem with. And if it's not, should we really be making it illegal?
Truth told, child porn is probably too touchy an issue to debate the question with. How about this: The US clearly thinks allofmp3 is violating copyright, thought it appears that they are adhering to the laws in Russia (despite the fact that Russia may end up caving and changing the laws). Assuming all of that to be true, hypothetically, if the US passed a law saying that buying a song from allofmp3 was the same as downloading it illegally from a P2P service or a friend, would you agree with such a law?
An ATM costs at least $10,000, not counting the cash you stock it with. But I doubt anyone is willing to pay more than $1,000 for a voting machine. So it's natural that the voting machine will have cut-rate security.
Even assuming your first supposition is true, why does that mean worse security?
If the two machines were equally complex, I would agree with you, but I don't think they are. An ATM has some sort of moving parts, or at least some way to move the money around in the machine. It has a magnetic stripe reader. It has some sort of connection to the outside world so it can talk to your bank and check/update the balance, and all the hardware and software logic that entails. It has a printer in it to offer you receipts.
A voting machine? It MAY have a printer--I don't know if the Diebold ones do; lack of a paper trail is something complained about on /. rather constantly--but other than that all it should really do is take a series of inputs and count when the operator presses a button, then store the new tally someplace. It doesn't--it damn well shouldn't!--be talking to the outside world. There are really no moving parts.
You're telling me that the voting machine gets shitty security because it's cheaper to buy? Well it's cheaper to make, too. That's not an excuse. And we're not talking about something complex or expensive here, either. They have a lock so simple a minibar key can open it. Hell, for $15, they could go out and buy a lock from the store retail and that would at least be a half step up in the physical security department. Are you telling me that counties are really going to balk at paying $1100 per machine instead of $1000 to make sure somebody can't walk up and steal the election?
I'm not interested in getting into the conspiracy theory debates, but the way I see it, there are only three possible reasons they could do something this bone-headedly stupid: Either they are incompetent, they do not care about the possibility of people tampering with an election, or they are doing it deliberately.
Why should the tobacco companies be held to a different standard?
Well, first of all, I think charging heroin dealers with homicide if a druggie dies from it (unless, for example, they laced it with something else--then it does sound like a case of negligent homicide) is pretty stupid to begin with it.
That said, it is not a different standard. One is selling a legal product and one is not, regardless of whether the law should have any such distinction. The latter should, according to law, be arrested REGARDLESS of whether their "clients" die from the use or just get really high.
No. Those rotten criminal scum need to be made an example of. They're going to serve their ENTIRE 22 minutes!!
In this context, the definition of the word doesn't really matter. It can be as arbitrary as one wishes and while "bad" definitions won't make people happy, and are less likely to pass, that isn't the problem.
The problem is when you say "we're authorizing a wiretapping program to listen to calls placed to terrorists!" and then don't define "terrorist" somehow. It's akin to a legislative blank check to the executive. Anybody they want to call a terrorist, by whatever definition they want at the time, can be legally wiretapped.
It's kind of like the debate over Pluto and the definition of a planet. The definition doesn't really matter. What matters is that there IS a definition that is used the same way wherever it is used.
That said, I'm not overly worried about this passing committee because I think Bush is going to have a rough time getting it through the full Senate. He's disliked enough that Republicans are starting to break ranks with him, and you can be pretty sure the majority of Dems (probably damn near all) will be voting against the bill, if for no other reason than to keep the issue alive as a election topic; the wiretapping is fairly unpopular in general, and definitely unpopular with the Democratic base.
(Standard IANAL disclaimer here.)
So, as long as you're in a company bathroom, we can video tape everything you do? After all, it's company property.
Well, bad example (I'll mention why in a minute), but the answer to the spirit of the question is: Yeah, probably.
You may or may not have any right to privacy at work. Most Americans see a definite right to privacy in the Constitution, but they fail to understand that the Constitution is meant as a limit on the power of the government. Specifically, it was meant as a limit on the power of the federal government; not until the Fourteenth Amendment did the US Constitution come to apply to the states as well. If it was a police officer who set up the cameras in the bathroom with no cause, it would almost certainly be illegal.
That said, I believe most case law thus far has come down on the side of "while you're on company property, they can do whatever they want to you." Including, in some cases, opening up your drawers and rifling through your papers; reading your emails; etc. No, they can't watch you in the bathroom--but not as a privacy issue; they couldn't do that because it may very well violate other laws, such as voyeurism. Telephone calls may also be safe, but again, not because of your right to privacy: Depending on the state, it may simply violate wiretap laws.
Some decisions have begun to come down saying that employees do have some expectation of privacy at their places of employment, and I expect that to be the general trend. That said, I believe it's still in the minority. Your employer still has a tremendous latitude in determine how much privacy to give their employees and when it might be time to violate that.
More to the point of the case, however, it appears that they did not actually tap anybody's phone. Rather, they looked at phone records. You can bet that it is perfectly within a company's rights, at least at present, to pull the phone records of any employee for any service the company pays for. If they truly did trick the employees' phone companies into releasing their own personal phone records, then that sounds to be entirely illegal.
So, like I said, the spirit of your initial question seems to be yes: Employers can watch an awful lot of what you do so long as they are not violating any specific laws while they do it. It's the difference between violating a law and violating a right: It does not seem to be the rule (yet) that companies have any obligations to extend you any rights not backed up by law.
Fuck you, you arrogant little asshole. If you said that to my face, one of us would be going to the hospital.
You, I hope. Absolutely nothing you have "contributed" anywhere in this discussion has lead me to believe that anybody like you should be permitted to reproduce.
If you have nothing to contribute but emotional knee-jerks and vitrolic BS, then do everybody a favor: Shut the fuck up already.
Luckily for this kid, and this company, it appears that this took place in the UK and not the US. Had it happened here, understandable or no, he would have opened the company up to a tremendous lawsuit. Not only would she have ended up with her phone and Internet access, it would have been free for the rest of her life along with a million bucks for her trouble.
Should there be government subsidies?
There probably should be, yes. I know a lot of people simply do not support government regulation, in particular anything that may increase their taxes, and I sympathize; but if anybody does not understand the vast and increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, hoo boy.
The US is an "ideas economy" now. We've basically let our manufacturing jobs go overseas so we can buy things cheaper from Walmart. If we're now going to let one of the biggest enablers and tools of that "ideas economy" be dangled above our heads by the telecos, we are in big trouble. Their ability to grab the entire US economy by the nuts should absolutely be broken. If it takes government regulation and subsidy for that to happen, so be it.
Should all physical wiring, whether it's twisted pair, coax, or fiber, into everyone's homes be opened up for any provider to use?
Absolutely.
Here's a question I just don't get: Where do they really get off? As you say, their leverage comes from the local loop. Since they CONTROL (subject to the FCC--not own!) the wire into your home, all traffic eventually must pass through that wire.
But do you know who paid for that wire? Not the telecos. You did. I did. We paid with tremendous government subsidy. We continue to pay with surcharges like the Universal Access charge on our telephones. There is a very real argument to be made that nobody should be paying at all for Internet service.
I know, that's a bit naive--and that's why I'm not supporting that position. I understand we have to pay to keep people employed to fix those lines, and troubleshoot the network, and buy the new equipment. But the idea that they should be able to charge people for twice for access to the wire they've charged us to allow access to, which we already paid for in terms of government subsidies, is absurd. I can not fathom how to rationalize adding a third point of payment in there. (Charging providers to serve content that the providers are charged for sending to the wires that we were charged to permit access to that we were charged to build... fun!)
If it takes government intervention and subsidy for that, then that is what should be done. The government should be protecting the interests of the people before those of the corporations.
Let's start with Net Neutrality, and we can study what's happening. If the fears of the telecos turn out to be well-founded, then we can examine solutions to that problem. Maybe a small (say $5-10/month) increase on the consumers' end will be enough. And if not... yeah. The government should probably step in.
But Apple can do no wrong here on /., so the point is moot.
There. I fixed it for you.
Look, this is either an idiotic thing that should be an option controllable by the user or it's not, and whichever it is, it is regardless of how many times somebody might reboot their computer.
It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people here can come up with for why their double standards aren't double standards. I expect no less than 5-6 more in reply to this post.
Well to beat WoW you need to approach it the same way.
Why? I've never actually played the game, so take what I say in the proper context, but:
It seems to me that games existed before WoW. It seems to me that MMORPGs existed before WoW. The fact that we're talking about WoW at all indicates that they did something better than the other guys, and that's why they are as popular as they are.
So why is it that to "beat" WoW, you need a game that works exactly like WoW? I find it hard to believe that somebody can't come up with an innovative game that takes the good features of WoW (whatever those may be) and blends in new concepts that haven't been tried yet in MMO context. Why is it a requirement that it be a game everybody has heard of already? It's an easy foot in the door, but it doesn't mean that the game is any good. Why do there have to be races? Why can't, for example, you simply customize the crap out of your on appearance but still be the same race as everybody else?
Personally I think essentially copying WoW is a recipe for NEVER beating it. There's a feeling right now that if you've played one MMO, you've played them all. It's the same tedium across games even if one plays better than another. It's the feeling that you need to play constantly or you get left behind. It's the feeling that you have to do things that simply are not fun (or else why do things like gold farmers exist?). If somebody figures out a way to break those chains, that's when we'll see a good challenge to WoW's popularity.
*claps*
I was trying to find a way to say just that. Kudos.
I know that DMCA-bashing and, lately, US-bashing are popular ways to get modded up, but this post is rather pathetic.
If "they like to tell people what they can and cannot do" is your definition of a fascist state, I can not think of any state that is not fascist. Developing rules by which the residents of a country all agree to live is one of the fundamental purposes of government.