Perhaps even lower, since more evidence can appear in discovery.
What would that evidence be if I drop my FileVault image into trash and do a secure erase? It seems that one should show a probability of producing compelling evidence before dragging someone to court. If you have never identified yourself except by IP address and there is no immutable trail of your actions, this seems like a stretch.
For years, we have been struggling with performance of SSL, difficulty of choosing good passwords, vulnerabilities in encryption algorithms. No more! As evidenced by RIAA lawsuits, a new 100% reliable way to identify yourself online has been discovered - an IP address! After all, it's found to be a proof of identity in legal proceedings! Starting immediately, banking websites no longer have to ask for those pesky usernames and password. They can just use an IP address provided by ISP to give you an unrestricted access to your bank account. After all, US courts did much the same thing for RIAA.
So long as they, like anyone else, are able to understand that they need to tell the truth, they can testify
They can say anything they feel like though, since children can not take a legally binding oath to tell truth, all truth and nothing but the truth.
Also, minors can be found liable for copyright infringement
Music and software companies keep telling us that they don't sell songs and programs - they just sell us a contractual license to use them under restricted conditions. A minor is allowed to void any contract at will. If the same companies start to claim they are actually selling or renting property, they will a) lose all rights to enforce EULA and b) face the same responsibilities as makers or renters of physical goods, including liability if defects in the product cause harm to the owner.
Really. I can accept making a 10 year old testify as a witness in a murder case, to prevent the killer from striking again. But in a civil copyright case, in which she, as a minor, is not even accountable? Give me a break! The lawyers and executives involved should be charged with attempted harm to a minor.
Censorship is prior restraint. It's worse than taking legal action after the fact, because we don't get to judge the material for ourselves and support the author or its continued distribution if needed.
Nobody really needs a V8 on their workstation. Maybe you can connect to a shared computing grid to do the actual CPU-intensive task. But while you are playing Solitaire, entering parameters for the CPU-intensive task and so on, well you are wasting electricity for no good reason. Hopefully they at least reuse the heat for cooking or something.
If you tried to actually implement an HTTP client from scratch, you would be horrified of how inconsistent the data received from servers really is. There is that weird chunked encoding that mixes text and binary. There are SOAP requests that are returned with no headers. There is a big mystery on when persistent connections actually persist.
This keeps close cases out of courts, which is exactly contrary to a primary purpose of the court system (namely, to decide close cases).
I, for one, don't want a court system that ever awards "close" cases to plaintiff. Maybe standards of proof can be a bit lower than in case of a serious crime, but there should be pretty clear that defendant broke the law or displayed horrible disregard for others and actions can really be traced to that particular person or organization. MP3s downloaded over an open access point shouldn't count and neither should McDonald selling hot coffee, well, hot. The current system ends up harassing far more innocent people than it punishes guilty. Doctors are quitting their practice because they can not afford malpractice insurance. People refuse to babysit a friend child for a fear of paying millions because of an unavoidable accident. Everything comes with 20 pages of disclaimers to the point that we fail to understand the real dangers.
Moreover, why should I have to pay YOU to defend yourself? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim that YOU'RE the one in the wrong - and until the court decides, who can say otherwise?
Why should I spend money to defend myself from YOU? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim you are just harassing me for the heck of it. I say you should reimburse me for the same expenses that you are undertaking until I am proven guilty. Then we can talk about you getting compensated for both your damages and such expenses as a reasonable person would spend in this case. If it's really a cut and dry case, you don't have to spend too much on lawyers, right?
How many projects do you really know that require more than a 100 people working on an indivisible task? In every other, you can have many small companies cooperating on a bigger whole. If one of them breaks the law or becomes inefficient, it can be replaced by a competitor. Current scheme is only supported by artificial laws, such as overboard patent and copyright protection, passed by corporate lobbyists.
What do you expect from a guy who parks in handicapped stalls? The only thing is, if he removed from the company, I hope Steve Balmer, Larry Ellison and most other CEOs are required to resign at the same time. In Microsoft's case, its clear that all top executives allowed the company to break antitrust laws in a way that was repeatedly pointed out to them by US government. It's high time to make upper management responsible for any lawbreaking by their firm. In my opinion, this would make running a huge company impossible and this is a good thing. You should personally know the people working for you and take responsibility for who they are and what they do.
We are talking about two different things. If I am involved in the accident with Bill Gates, he sues me and he gets legal help which is out of my budget, he should be required to reimburse my lawyers for the same amount. Only then can justice be served to determine who is really responsible for the accident. This is irrelevant to the question on how much I should have to pay if I lose. I would suggest though, that if Bill Gates chooses to drive his $10M car on a public road, his insurance company should cover any damages in an accident instead of me. I have no control over the value of what other people drive on the road and can only be required to pay for or insure vehicles comparable to mine.
We need a reform whereby when litigants have dramatically unequal net worth, the plaintiff is required to reimburse defendant's lawyers up to the amount that they themselves spend on legal services. The plaintiff can then argue for whatever damages they can convince jury the defendant can pay based on their income level. The same should hold true in criminal cases. When prosecutor feels the crime is grave enough to justify calling dozens of expensive expert witnesses, surely the suspect should be given a chance to prove themselves innocent. Justice shouldn't depend on your bank account, especially since we all know how many rich guys are crooks.
Sure. China government blocks content that the majority of people there find offensive. US businesses block content that the minority of people find offensive. Sure, Imus is not jailed. We have perfected a more sophisticated scheme for making people irrelevant and their voices unheard without restraining them physically. I guess in China people still talk to each other rather than just watching TV or surfing the web, so more radical measures are 'required'.
I personally have no interest in listening to an ugly old guy swearing on radio. But, I would like for a D.J. to be able to "insult american soldiers" (speak out against Iraq war) or discuss health benefits of wine and pot without getting fired. I don't see how you can have one without the other.
US announced sweeping controls of radiowaves whereby an oligarchy of a dozen media companies will promptly fire anyone who contradicts the official culture by quoting a best selling rap singer.
That's why they are called advisories. In fact, it may be useful to give truck drivers transmitters to warn people that their truck fscked the freeway. FM radio itself is not authenticated and anyone can transmit some urban legends on radiowaves. We just need to remember that not everything is secured and treat outrageous news with a grain of salt.
The chances of anyone obtaining credible evidence that you erased the files AFTER getting subpoena are miniscule though. If you make regular full backups, you can just restore a month old image after a few secure erase patterns and make it look like the computer hasn't been turned off for a while. If you keep "confidential" files on a separate disposable drive, you could always have misplaced it a day before getting subpoena. In murder cases, there may be multi-million dollar techniques to analyze dust layers on computer fans to see when they are turned on. But would anyone have access to such resources, which are only owned by the government, on a suspicion of a few mp3s?
Considering parts of the world - Russia, China, Africa - where they do business, I would be very surprised if someone at Microsoft (probably without knowledge of anyone in US though) never utilized help of an agency that does bodily harm. One example of such agency is a government with unsafe prison conditions. Hmm, like a PMITA federal penitentiary in US.
The problem is that if you are accused of a sex crime, you would be fired and shunned by friends even before a trial and still treated with suspicion after you acquitted. People think you must have done something or have something wrong with you for police to even think you are pedophile. If you are detained on murder or burglary charges and later cleared, you are generally Ok.
Ever had your arm broken by a big burly guy? I can tell you from experience with similar occurances that it's not exactly fun, especially if the persons in question repeatedly goes unpunished and free to attack you again. Ah, schools in Soviet Russia. But in any case, I am not comparing how much being subjected to each crime sucks. It's just that a crime alone can not fuck up your life as long as you are not physically injured beyond recovery. It's up to you, your friends and society at large to decide how long you should be a victim.
Rape is just one form of violent assault. There is no reason it should fuck up a woman's life any more than if someone, say, broke her arm. Both are serious crimes and should be punished, but the society shouldn't stigmatize the victims and encourage them to feel victimized for the whole life in either case.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps even lower, since more evidence can appear in discovery.
What would that evidence be if I drop my FileVault image into trash and do a secure erase? It seems that one should show a probability of producing compelling evidence before dragging someone to court. If you have never identified yourself except by IP address and there is no immutable trail of your actions, this seems like a stretch.
Once again, it took many months of work to optimize an idle loop.
For years, we have been struggling with performance of SSL, difficulty of choosing good passwords, vulnerabilities in encryption algorithms. No more! As evidenced by RIAA lawsuits, a new 100% reliable way to identify yourself online has been discovered - an IP address! After all, it's found to be a proof of identity in legal proceedings! Starting immediately, banking websites no longer have to ask for those pesky usernames and password. They can just use an IP address provided by ISP to give you an unrestricted access to your bank account. After all, US courts did much the same thing for RIAA.
So long as they, like anyone else, are able to understand that they need to tell the truth, they can testify
They can say anything they feel like though, since children can not take a legally binding oath to tell truth, all truth and nothing but the truth.
Also, minors can be found liable for copyright infringement
Music and software companies keep telling us that they don't sell songs and programs - they just sell us a contractual license to use them under restricted conditions. A minor is allowed to void any contract at will. If the same companies start to claim they are actually selling or renting property, they will a) lose all rights to enforce EULA and b) face the same responsibilities as makers or renters of physical goods, including liability if defects in the product cause harm to the owner.
Really. I can accept making a 10 year old testify as a witness in a murder case, to prevent the killer from striking again. But in a civil copyright case, in which she, as a minor, is not even accountable? Give me a break! The lawyers and executives involved should be charged with attempted harm to a minor.
Censorship is prior restraint. It's worse than taking legal action after the fact, because we don't get to judge the material for ourselves and support the author or its continued distribution if needed.
Nobody really needs a V8 on their workstation. Maybe you can connect to a shared computing grid to do the actual CPU-intensive task. But while you are playing Solitaire, entering parameters for the CPU-intensive task and so on, well you are wasting electricity for no good reason. Hopefully they at least reuse the heat for cooking or something.
If you tried to actually implement an HTTP client from scratch, you would be horrified of how inconsistent the data received from servers really is. There is that weird chunked encoding that mixes text and binary. There are SOAP requests that are returned with no headers. There is a big mystery on when persistent connections actually persist.
This keeps close cases out of courts, which is exactly contrary to a primary purpose of the court system (namely, to decide close cases).
I, for one, don't want a court system that ever awards "close" cases to plaintiff. Maybe standards of proof can be a bit lower than in case of a serious crime, but there should be pretty clear that defendant broke the law or displayed horrible disregard for others and actions can really be traced to that particular person or organization. MP3s downloaded over an open access point shouldn't count and neither should McDonald selling hot coffee, well, hot. The current system ends up harassing far more innocent people than it punishes guilty. Doctors are quitting their practice because they can not afford malpractice insurance. People refuse to babysit a friend child for a fear of paying millions because of an unavoidable accident. Everything comes with 20 pages of disclaimers to the point that we fail to understand the real dangers.
Moreover, why should I have to pay YOU to defend yourself? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim that YOU'RE the one in the wrong - and until the court decides, who can say otherwise?
Why should I spend money to defend myself from YOU? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim you are just harassing me for the heck of it. I say you should reimburse me for the same expenses that you are undertaking until I am proven guilty. Then we can talk about you getting compensated for both your damages and such expenses as a reasonable person would spend in this case. If it's really a cut and dry case, you don't have to spend too much on lawyers, right?
How many projects do you really know that require more than a 100 people working on an indivisible task? In every other, you can have many small companies cooperating on a bigger whole. If one of them breaks the law or becomes inefficient, it can be replaced by a competitor. Current scheme is only supported by artificial laws, such as overboard patent and copyright protection, passed by corporate lobbyists.
What do you expect from a guy who parks in handicapped stalls? The only thing is, if he removed from the company, I hope Steve Balmer, Larry Ellison and most other CEOs are required to resign at the same time. In Microsoft's case, its clear that all top executives allowed the company to break antitrust laws in a way that was repeatedly pointed out to them by US government. It's high time to make upper management responsible for any lawbreaking by their firm. In my opinion, this would make running a huge company impossible and this is a good thing. You should personally know the people working for you and take responsibility for who they are and what they do.
We are talking about two different things. If I am involved in the accident with Bill Gates, he sues me and he gets legal help which is out of my budget, he should be required to reimburse my lawyers for the same amount. Only then can justice be served to determine who is really responsible for the accident. This is irrelevant to the question on how much I should have to pay if I lose. I would suggest though, that if Bill Gates chooses to drive his $10M car on a public road, his insurance company should cover any damages in an accident instead of me. I have no control over the value of what other people drive on the road and can only be required to pay for or insure vehicles comparable to mine.
We need a reform whereby when litigants have dramatically unequal net worth, the plaintiff is required to reimburse defendant's lawyers up to the amount that they themselves spend on legal services. The plaintiff can then argue for whatever damages they can convince jury the defendant can pay based on their income level. The same should hold true in criminal cases. When prosecutor feels the crime is grave enough to justify calling dozens of expensive expert witnesses, surely the suspect should be given a chance to prove themselves innocent. Justice shouldn't depend on your bank account, especially since we all know how many rich guys are crooks.
Sure. China government blocks content that the majority of people there find offensive. US businesses block content that the minority of people find offensive. Sure, Imus is not jailed. We have perfected a more sophisticated scheme for making people irrelevant and their voices unheard without restraining them physically. I guess in China people still talk to each other rather than just watching TV or surfing the web, so more radical measures are 'required'.
I personally have no interest in listening to an ugly old guy swearing on radio. But, I would like for a D.J. to be able to "insult american soldiers" (speak out against Iraq war) or discuss health benefits of wine and pot without getting fired. I don't see how you can have one without the other.
US announced sweeping controls of radiowaves whereby an oligarchy of a dozen media companies will promptly fire anyone who contradicts the official culture by quoting a best selling rap singer.
That's why they are called advisories. In fact, it may be useful to give truck drivers transmitters to warn people that their truck fscked the freeway. FM radio itself is not authenticated and anyone can transmit some urban legends on radiowaves. We just need to remember that not everything is secured and treat outrageous news with a grain of salt.
The chances of anyone obtaining credible evidence that you erased the files AFTER getting subpoena are miniscule though. If you make regular full backups, you can just restore a month old image after a few secure erase patterns and make it look like the computer hasn't been turned off for a while. If you keep "confidential" files on a separate disposable drive, you could always have misplaced it a day before getting subpoena. In murder cases, there may be multi-million dollar techniques to analyze dust layers on computer fans to see when they are turned on. But would anyone have access to such resources, which are only owned by the government, on a suspicion of a few mp3s?
Considering parts of the world - Russia, China, Africa - where they do business, I would be very surprised if someone at Microsoft (probably without knowledge of anyone in US though) never utilized help of an agency that does bodily harm. One example of such agency is a government with unsafe prison conditions. Hmm, like a PMITA federal penitentiary in US.
You can not effectively develop and debug programs on XP starter edition, with its limit on number of launched apps, missing libraries and so on.
The problem is that if you are accused of a sex crime, you would be fired and shunned by friends even before a trial and still treated with suspicion after you acquitted. People think you must have done something or have something wrong with you for police to even think you are pedophile. If you are detained on murder or burglary charges and later cleared, you are generally Ok.
Ever had your arm broken by a big burly guy? I can tell you from experience with similar occurances that it's not exactly fun, especially if the persons in question repeatedly goes unpunished and free to attack you again. Ah, schools in Soviet Russia. But in any case, I am not comparing how much being subjected to each crime sucks. It's just that a crime alone can not fuck up your life as long as you are not physically injured beyond recovery. It's up to you, your friends and society at large to decide how long you should be a victim.
Rape is just one form of violent assault. There is no reason it should fuck up a woman's life any more than if someone, say, broke her arm. Both are serious crimes and should be punished, but the society shouldn't stigmatize the victims and encourage them to feel victimized for the whole life in either case.
I guess Microsoft doesn't want these schools to teach any programming classes. This bundle is great for someone just looking for a good typewriter.