Such a trick may only work for so long. Eventually bugs and pests will evolve a tolerance to it. Being that bugs reproduce pretty quickly, it may only take a few years before it is ineffective I would guess.
Yeah, maybe, but not necessarily. Look at India's "Neem" tree. It's been around millions of years (or whatever) and bugs still can't stand the chemical cocktail it emits.
If the sound repellant, acts on a part of the mosquito that is low level enough, ie. intrinsic to it's existence, then it probably won't evolve to counteract it.
The more there is of this sort of thing, the more widely it will be seen that the US® lawmakers completely sold out to big business's selfish interests.
The US Government has created a lot of bad karma for itself with the DMCA et al. Sooner or later it'll bite it in the arse.
You could argue that the hackers used methods synonymous with the American Government®'s approach to other countries who threaten it, or have citizens who threaten it.
How "mature" is the American Government®'s behaviour in these matters?
To put it another way, the legislation could be considered an intent to declare war. A little DoSsing of this website, could be seen as nothing more than a warning shot, reminding the Music Empires, that any acts of aggression would bring about a severe case of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction.)
Well, first, to go back to the original post I replied to: "The NRA has advanced this argument for years. It's summed up in their bumper stickers "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." As much as I hate to say it, they're right. DVRs don't commit piracy, people commit piracy."
What I really wanted to say was that the NRA, are certainly NOT right. Their slogan should be "Guns don't kill people, they just make killing people more efficient and effective."
If you carry that argument over, then the issue becomes one of the nature of the act that the tool is capable of, and so on. DVR's just don't compare.
And if you apply the new slogan, you probably know my views on archery (it does not compare in terms of scale or damage, to the destruction that a single revolver can do. Or ease of use.
That all said, your question made me re-read the posts in this thread and re-consider the issues that the NRA puts forward (what little I know of them.) In the UK, the idea that we need to carry or stock-pile guns to prevent the government from visiting totalitarianism upon us, is pretty laughable. But I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't possibly necessary in the US. All it took Ghandi to overthrow the British Empire in India, was the burning of some id papers, and a lot of people willing to die for freedom (but not kill.) I wonder if that's true for the American people, and the American Government/Army? Another question that you've thrown up, is whether the civil war could have been won by the US Citizens-to-be, adopting the Ghandian method?:)
"But it's definately not "illegitimate" in any legal sense"
Sure it is. I live in a country where guns are considered illegitimate legally.
We'd better not get started on the whole moral dimension, or this will go on forever.
"You'll change your mind after some guy breaks into your house and ties you to a chair, while you watch in tears as he violently rapes then murders your wife. You'll probably go a buy a gun the next day so you can shoot yourself in the head."
Wrong on (at least) three counts, I'm afraid. Firstly I'm not married, secondly I'd phone the police and get the perpetrator thrown in jail, rather than do something futile like kill myself, and thirdly, I live in the UK, where buying a gun is almost entirely illegal.
Your hostile attitude ("You're on my foe list") is interesting. I wonder if there's a correlation between it and your love of guns?
You on the other hand, are on my love list. May you find some of the happiness in your life , that you've evidently lost.
No, the gun is a tool designed to propel a projectile at high velocity. People commonly use these tools for sport (target shooting).
The gun wasn't designed to propel a projectile for no reason, or for doing so to participate in marksmanship, it was designed to kill an opponent in warfare.
Sure people have found less murderous uses for the gun, but that doesn't change the difference between the entirely murderous genesis of the gun (the basis of it's existence) and the entirely non-harmful genesis of the DVR.
There was a tv programme about this some time ago on UK tv. An "average" family gave up their tv for a week (or two) and the drama was filmed.
The most interesting thing that came up, I thought, was the woman of the house saying that she felt like she had suddenly woken up; and that it had been like she'd spent years and years of her life in suspended animation, from which she had only just emerged.
It wasn't us who had Walt Disney's head cryogenically preserved all this time; it was he who had our heads frozen.:oO
The NRA has advanced this argument for years. It's summed up in their bumper stickers "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." As much as I hate to say it, they're right.
DVRs don't commit piracy, people commit piracy.
The only flaw in your argument being that DVR's have a legitimate use; but can be used for illegal purposes.
Capitalism...provides (if not requires) the ultimate remedy to this problem: competition.
I have to say I don't agree. The structure of Capitalism allows the acquisition or destruction of the "competition." Capitalism is warfare in the retail realm (though it's effects spill out into other areas of life;) it is a pseudo-feudal system, where warlords seek to conquer their oposition, and smash them into the ground. Any divergence from this scenario requires legislation to protect citizens from the mighty power that capitalist organisations wield: namely, a truce (where everyone agrees to a price for goods that benefits all major competitors) or victory over all opposition (where more legislation is needed to prevent the monopoly.)
It is every corporate entity's wish to either have a balance of power (which means an abatement of competition) or to eliminate their opposition (which, also means an abatement of competition.)
Capitalism is warfare. The bigger and smarter and more powerful, the more likely they will win. The only thing that stops a state of hegemonic dominance by Corporate Capitalist entities, is the law.
How the key escrow law, once implemented in the UK, will stand up to the right to a fair trial, I would suggest, is uncertain.
The EU Charter of Human Rights (as well as the UN Charter of Human Rights) states that the right to silence and the right not to encriminate oneself, are both fundamental to the right to a fair trial.
I would argue that being coerced into handing over my encryption keys, with the penalty of imprisonment for non-compliance, is a fundemental attack on both the right to silence and the right not to encriminate oneself.
It's strange but the poster describes my experience of Kazaa to a "t." I have WinME, and a 56k modem. I can usually squeeze a couple of searches off, but after that, nada, until I re-start Kazaa.
When cds were introduced, they carried a levvy, in the UK, anyway, of £5 on top of the cost of audio cassette tapes; for the same content.
Cds are cheaper to produce than cassette tapes (no moving parts etc.) so where does the 50% price increase come from?
Well the argument put forward by some record company guy who apeared on tv several years ago, to answer charges of grossly inflated prices, said that it was because they had to cover themselves, because cds wouldn't wear out, unlike cassette tapes, so they would lose money on them in the long run, because consumers wouldn't be replacing their content media.
They were making us pay them for content that they assumed we were going to buy at some point in the future!
They thought this was a legitimate excuse!
There is your proof of price fixing.:)
'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'
Does this mean that action will be taken against sites which load unwanted pop-up windows, which I don't request, that sucks up my already limited dial-up bandwidth?
And when my computer resources are low, and a site launches a couple of pop-ups, and freezes my comp, will that be included in the definition, also?
I do hope so.
Re:It's a new world, folks, adjust your arguments
on
Surveillance Update
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's strange, but, here in the UK, over in Sri Lanka, and in a variety of other places around the world, we've been subjected to terrorism for decades without these authoritarian, mass surveillance measures being brought in.
If the issue is one of the sheer scale of destruction caised on Sept.11, by the use of aircraft, then the answer is a proportionate response: make it impossible to hijack 747's; don't subject every houswife, child and law abiding, working father to surveillance.
A major problem with such measures, is that once they have them, without adequate checks and balances (which this law does not seem to have) governments use their new powers for reasons of personal benefit, rather than societal benefit.
The tracking and quashing of protest against the government becomes easier for them. All ready in the UK, Tony Blair has made moves to outlaw public dissent to the building of large developments. We nolonger have the right to appeal, but the developers do.
He's made it clear that he wants to do the same thing with protest against GM foods, and vivisection.
Things may be just fine and dandy as they are, and you may not wish to protest against anything right now, but when things change, as they inevitably do, your ability to protest effectively, may be stomped upon by the boot of government, because of mass surveillance measures like this law.
Fear is not a sound basis for law. Reason is.
Slashdot Mirror
Capitalism and Democracy are a symbiotic pair. You cannot have one without the other.
:o\
Maybe someone ought to let the Chinese Government in on this little pearl of wisdom, then.
(pronounced mid-gee) and it had no effect at all, it sat looking at my screen as I fiddled with the frequency control, and didn't move a millimetre.
Perhaps British midges are made of sterner stuff than Indian mozzies?
Such a trick may only work for so long. Eventually bugs and pests will evolve a tolerance to it. Being that bugs reproduce pretty quickly, it may only take a few years before it is ineffective I would guess.
Yeah, maybe, but not necessarily. Look at India's "Neem" tree. It's been around millions of years (or whatever) and bugs still can't stand the chemical cocktail it emits.
If the sound repellant, acts on a part of the mosquito that is low level enough, ie. intrinsic to it's existence, then it probably won't evolve to counteract it.
We'll just have to wait and see.
The more there is of this sort of thing, the more widely it will be seen that the US® lawmakers completely sold out to big business's selfish interests.
The US Government has created a lot of bad karma for itself with the DMCA et al. Sooner or later it'll bite it in the arse.
You could argue that the hackers used methods synonymous with the American Government®'s approach to other countries who threaten it, or have citizens who threaten it.
How "mature" is the American Government®'s behaviour in these matters?
To put it another way, the legislation could be considered an intent to declare war. A little DoSsing of this website, could be seen as nothing more than a warning shot, reminding the Music Empires, that any acts of aggression would bring about a severe case of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction.)
Nothing wrong with a warning shot.
The simple way around this is to create a uniformly sized block of colour for each instance of a given type of term.
Well, first, to go back to the original post I replied to:
:)
"The NRA has advanced this argument for years. It's summed up in their bumper stickers "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." As much as I hate to say it, they're right. DVRs don't commit piracy, people commit piracy."
What I really wanted to say was that the NRA, are certainly NOT right. Their slogan should be "Guns don't kill people, they just make killing people more efficient and effective."
If you carry that argument over, then the issue becomes one of the nature of the act that the tool is capable of, and so on. DVR's just don't compare.
And if you apply the new slogan, you probably know my views on archery (it does not compare in terms of scale or damage, to the destruction that a single revolver can do. Or ease of use.
That all said, your question made me re-read the posts in this thread and re-consider the issues that the NRA puts forward (what little I know of them.)
In the UK, the idea that we need to carry or stock-pile guns to prevent the government from visiting totalitarianism upon us, is pretty laughable. But I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't possibly necessary in the US.
All it took Ghandi to overthrow the British Empire in India, was the burning of some id papers, and a lot of people willing to die for freedom (but not kill.)
I wonder if that's true for the American people, and the American Government/Army?
Another question that you've thrown up, is whether the civil war could have been won by the US Citizens-to-be, adopting the Ghandian method?
One thing I don't understand, is how these legalised attacks will go down in contries other than the US, where such operations are deemed illegal.
The US wasn't the only country to legislate that dos-ing etc. was synonymous with terrorism.
"But it's definately not "illegitimate" in any legal sense"
Sure it is. I live in a country where guns are considered illegitimate legally. We'd better not get started on the whole moral dimension, or this will go on forever.
"You'll change your mind after some guy breaks into your house and ties you to a chair, while you watch in tears as he violently rapes then murders your wife. You'll probably go a buy a gun the next day so you can shoot yourself in the head."
Wrong on (at least) three counts, I'm afraid. Firstly I'm not married, secondly I'd phone the police and get the perpetrator thrown in jail, rather than do something futile like kill myself, and thirdly, I live in the UK, where buying a gun is almost entirely illegal.
Your hostile attitude ("You're on my foe list") is interesting. I wonder if there's a correlation between it and your love of guns?
You on the other hand, are on my love list. May you find some of the happiness in your life , that you've evidently lost.
They'll monitor where we are, every bleeding hour of the day or night, if they get their way.
You Americans are amateurs at this stuff!
It's no small coincidence that George Orwell was British.
"Guns are tools, invented to kill. That, by itself, isn't a bad thing"
Ah... well you see, that's where we disagree.
No, the gun is a tool designed to propel a projectile at high velocity. People commonly use these tools for sport (target shooting).
The gun wasn't designed to propel a projectile for no reason, or for doing so to participate in marksmanship, it was designed to kill an opponent in warfare.
Sure people have found less murderous uses for the gun, but that doesn't change the difference between the entirely murderous genesis of the gun (the basis of it's existence) and the entirely non-harmful genesis of the DVR.
The two are not synonymous.
There was a tv programme about this some time ago on UK tv. An "average" family gave up their tv for a week (or two) and the drama was filmed.
:oO
The most interesting thing that came up, I thought, was the woman of the house saying that she felt like she had suddenly woken up; and that it had been like she'd spent years and years of her life in suspended animation, from which she had only just emerged.
It wasn't us who had Walt Disney's head cryogenically preserved all this time; it was he who had our heads frozen.
The NRA has advanced this argument for years. It's summed up in their bumper stickers "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." As much as I hate to say it, they're right. DVRs don't commit piracy, people commit piracy.
The only flaw in your argument being that DVR's have a legitimate use; but can be used for illegal purposes.
The gun is a tool designed solely to kill.
Capitalism...provides (if not requires) the ultimate remedy to this problem: competition.
I have to say I don't agree. The structure of Capitalism allows the acquisition or destruction of the "competition."
Capitalism is warfare in the retail realm (though it's effects spill out into other areas of life;) it is a pseudo-feudal system, where warlords seek to conquer their oposition, and smash them into the ground.
Any divergence from this scenario requires legislation to protect citizens from the mighty power that capitalist organisations wield: namely, a truce (where everyone agrees to a price for goods that benefits all major competitors) or victory over all opposition (where more legislation is needed to prevent the monopoly.)
It is every corporate entity's wish to either have a balance of power (which means an abatement of competition) or to eliminate their opposition (which, also means an abatement of competition.)
Capitalism is warfare. The bigger and smarter and more powerful, the more likely they will win. The only thing that stops a state of hegemonic dominance by Corporate Capitalist entities, is the law.
All they have to do is stop asking for my name and e-mail address, and I could be truthful about pretty much anything else they'd care to ask.
How the key escrow law, once implemented in the UK, will stand up to the right to a fair trial, I would suggest, is uncertain.
The EU Charter of Human Rights (as well as the UN Charter of Human Rights) states that the right to silence and the right not to encriminate oneself, are both fundamental to the right to a fair trial.
I would argue that being coerced into handing over my encryption keys, with the penalty of imprisonment for non-compliance, is a fundemental attack on both the right to silence and the right not to encriminate oneself.
It's strange but the poster describes my experience of Kazaa to a "t." I have WinME, and a 56k modem. I can usually squeeze a couple of searches off, but after that, nada, until I re-start Kazaa.
Of course, they could just make their sites useing Flash. Then nobody could link to anything other than the front page.
You're making a mistake, I would humbly suggest.
:)
When cds were introduced, they carried a levvy, in the UK, anyway, of £5 on top of the cost of audio cassette tapes; for the same content. Cds are cheaper to produce than cassette tapes (no moving parts etc.) so where does the 50% price increase come from?
Well the argument put forward by some record company guy who apeared on tv several years ago, to answer charges of grossly inflated prices, said that it was because they had to cover themselves, because cds wouldn't wear out, unlike cassette tapes, so they would lose money on them in the long run, because consumers wouldn't be replacing their content media.
They were making us pay them for content that they assumed we were going to buy at some point in the future!
They thought this was a legitimate excuse!
There is your proof of price fixing.
'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'
Does this mean that action will be taken against sites which load unwanted pop-up windows, which I don't request, that sucks up my already limited dial-up bandwidth?
And when my computer resources are low, and a site launches a couple of pop-ups, and freezes my comp, will that be included in the definition, also?
I do hope so.
It's strange, but, here in the UK, over in Sri Lanka, and in a variety of other places around the world, we've been subjected to terrorism for decades without these authoritarian, mass surveillance measures being brought in. If the issue is one of the sheer scale of destruction caised on Sept.11, by the use of aircraft, then the answer is a proportionate response: make it impossible to hijack 747's; don't subject every houswife, child and law abiding, working father to surveillance. A major problem with such measures, is that once they have them, without adequate checks and balances (which this law does not seem to have) governments use their new powers for reasons of personal benefit, rather than societal benefit. The tracking and quashing of protest against the government becomes easier for them. All ready in the UK, Tony Blair has made moves to outlaw public dissent to the building of large developments. We nolonger have the right to appeal, but the developers do. He's made it clear that he wants to do the same thing with protest against GM foods, and vivisection. Things may be just fine and dandy as they are, and you may not wish to protest against anything right now, but when things change, as they inevitably do, your ability to protest effectively, may be stomped upon by the boot of government, because of mass surveillance measures like this law. Fear is not a sound basis for law. Reason is.