Holland keeps its third place but loses a whole 9 points (US lost 14), the only reason we are still 3rd is because everyone started from a worse positin but it is hardly good. Wonder if anyone dares to call out Rukker on this (Previous Prime Minsters was Bakellende, the cambion offspring off Bush and Blair, Rukker is that guys pet rock, an object with absolutely no ideas, opinions or passion)... doubt it, probably everyone pats themselves on the back for still being 3rd no matter how steep the downwards slope is.
You do NOT have a right to commit a crime and calling your drug dealer is NOT something that society wants you to get away with.
If society wanted people to be able to commit crimes, it wouldn't have created the police and spend billions on funding for it. It would simply have kept anarchy. The police instead have been given powers to track criminals down and this has always meant powers to track people and communication. Why should your phone logs NOT be available after a court order has been issued for them?
That is the problem with this entire debade, you got complete and utter nutters who somehow thinkt that the general public is on the side of criminals in their cat and mouse game with the police and is rooting for criminals to get away with crimes.
Allt he provisions of "innocent until proven guilty" and provisions against illegal searches are there to protect the innocent, NOT the guilty. Saying you don't want the police to be able to find out about your crimes might work on some of the/. populace who have lost all touch with reality but it just hampers people who really care about privacy of INNOCENT people.
I think that reasonable people who agree that crime should be punished but that we don't want to create an uncontrollable police state, that we should focus on creating proper procedures with check and balances for dealing with our changing society. Log internet data the same as call data already is but make it that the police must get a warrant for a limitted time that will become a matter of public record after a set time so we know who was investigated and why so we can see if it was for legit or illegitimate purposes.
But just a blanket pardon for all criminal behavior, that will never fly and any party that is associated with such claims will loose in an election because once again, no matter what some here might claim, the average citizen does NOT think it right for you to call your drug dealer.
And if you want to live in a society with no rules, Somalia is that away. Have fun, nobody here will miss you.
Just a few stories below is the story about a judge claiming that a similar composition is copyright infringement, while clearly insane, how would this ruling apply to these two games? Well BOTH are first and foremost SimTower ripoffs. And that just asumes that SimTower was not based on something else.
Every idea is based on another idea. Where do you stop with copyright infringement when somebody copies an idea? Where would/. be if the idea of a forum was granted copyright?
As bad as it may be to swallow, for a large part this is just life and we got to accept it. If I open a bakery with real bread in the US, I just got to accept that then anyone from the EU can do the same and start selling real food in the US (I been to the US, god knows there is a market for it).
How does a simple portrait photo survive your thinking? Same angle, same composition, some treatment. Oops!
What about a CV or any standard document? My CV is certainly my creation so if you copy my style, are you an infringer?
Terry Pratchett is rather famous (a reviewer on the BBC I think slammed him for it and was torn to shreds for it) for not using chapters. So if I write without chapters, I am infringing? Only one person can write without chapters? For that matter, isn't the idea of dividing a story in chapters a copyrighted idea?
There are some compositions that stand out, I wrote another comment about the Abby Road cover but what of that shot in Star Wars of Luke standing with two suns in the background? It is a classic shot, with a very simple effect it instantly creates an alien world. But it is NOT a new idea, lots of covers of old sci-fi and fantasy books do the same, showing the hero looking out over an alien landscape. HOW the landscape is alien might differ, dragons in the sky, a gigantic moon, rings in orbot, but the idea is the same. Who owns that composition?
The idea of owning a specific composition, an idea, is frightening. It is one thing for the Disney corporation to have infinite copyright on Mickey Mouse but to give them ownership of the idea of a cartoon mouse... EVEN Disney would not go, has not gone, that far. See Tom and Jerry, The Secret of Nimh and others.
For that matter, what would happen to the web? How many sites use the same composition, header, footer, body? Are newspaper columns now owned by the first newspaper? The BBC itself is in serious trouble, who owns the composition off the news reader looking straight into the camera from behind a desk while reading the news? Can you imagine the hazzle of every news show having to come up with a new composition that isn't to similar to every one elses? There are 179 or so countries, each with at least 1 news show...any new program would have to come up with something amazing not to infringe.
No, I think this Judge let himself be ruled by the other infringement facts of the case and wanted to rule against the defense no matter how it would affect the rest of the world. The 2nd foto was taken to avoid paying for the 1st one, that is not nice BUT to make it illegal to punish the not so nice defendant is to let loose the lawyers of frivolous lawsuits. This judge will be remembered for a long time. And not in a good way.
Kubism as a movement in art to portray things in a certain way. There are others but Kubism was specifically invented in relevant recent times by well known artists... AND used by a lot more. With no problem. It was invented but it was also a copy, it was based on more primitive art, some statues from Africa have similar stark angular lines that you can buy at any tourist trap but are most certainly not Kubist themselves but based on far far older works.
For that matter, how would this judge deal with portraits? That style is so copied that it has become law, your passport portrait MUST look a certain way.
Sometimes judges rulings should be pre-read and if they open to big a can of worms they should be shot (the judges, not the worms) and replaced with a more sensible judge. You can bet your ass that this ruling WILL be abused. There are so many compositions that have been copied over and over again. It was for thousands of years considered normal, a tribute to the original, a sign you inspired others.
What will now happen to anyone who copies the composition of the Abby Road album cover (the 4 beatles on zebra crossing)? What about the composition idea of taking a shot of big ben in such a way that the person in the foreground seems to be the same size? You would have to lock up and brutally torture every tourist... oooh, not bad at all. Sometimes a stupid ruling is worth it after all!
He was talking about real writers, who drank and wrote fucking awesome novels... that they had mental disorders doesn't factor into this. That they suffered for the art doesn't factor into it. They were fucking great writers not artsy types sipping 5 dollar coffees waiting for inspiration. Inspiration comes from real life and any two bit drunk with severe mental issues will see more of it then any wannabe at Starbucks.
Normal people don't write great works of art. Normal people buy them and wish they had a fraction of the talent without being willing to pay the price for it. The candle that burns brightest, burns the shortest. Now if I was a heavy drinker, had mental problems that would make any shrink go "get him off, GET HIM OFF!" and blew my brains out at the end of my natural life expectancy, this post would have been a lot better.
First off, what is your credit card processing fee? There is a reason Apple isn't laughing all of the way to the bank with iTunes but the credit companies ARE laughing their ass off. It all depends on your size and your risks (chargebacks) but gosh darn, you might be suprised that your 25 cent fee ends up mostly at the credit card company. That is nobody does a charge back and you have to pay anywhere up from ten bucks for it. With your 25 cents, 1 chargeback costs you 40 paying customers, well it would IF you could use all their quarters to pay for the 1 chargeback, which you can't because other things will have to payed from it as I already stated.
Further more, you say the movie costs 20 bucks, even if rentals worked like that, which they don't, you need 80 paying customers (IF you could keep the entire quarter) just to break even. Meanwhile, your entire legal case rests on the fact that there is only ONE copy around for each possesion, so if 80 customers want the same movie at the same time, you need 80 x 20 bucks to satisfy demand. Now you need a total of 640 paying customers... IF you could keep the entire quarter which once again, you cannot.
I keep hammering on this because a lot of noobs to business think that money is free. You sell something and everything the customer pays, ends up in your pocket. Transaction costs HURT many a small business and is the reason you can't buy a nickle item with a credit card.
The most annoying thing is that this doesn't have to be the case, in the EU payments systems are far far cheaper per transaction, on the order of cents rather then quarters and are even free. Whenever I have to implement a CC solution because people in the EU thinks it will mean the world I find it very amusing to show them the fee structures. It is like telling a baby how their candy will be taken.
Oh, and those transaction costs, you have them DOUBLE. Two transactions... all to be payed out of 1 quarter dollar along with all your other costs.
You should put this in a business case and present it at your bank. They need a good laugh.
Not only IS it very cheap to lay down cables along rail tracks, it so CHEAP that in Holland one of the current telco's started out just like this as a daughter of the dutch railway company (NS + BT created Telfort). How do you think signals are connected? Once you laid one cable, adding more is incredible cheap especially if you can lay it down over very long distances and only need to deal with 1 owner of the land, yourself.
If you think that all forms of radiation from the sun are absorbed by the atmosphere before they reach human beings on the surface, it must be very dark where you are. And cold.
Lethal UV radiation reaches us all the time...oh okay, I am dutch, 3 days of the year. Which is celebrated by exposing as much of our skins as is legal to it till it cries out in terror and reacts violently to the radiation.
Humans eh. no wonder we still haven't discovered slood.
Then you would know that if people can edit their posts, they post one thing, then change it later making the comments look out of place or even to spam a board by first getting modded up with a joke, and then editting it into a troll.
First rule of designing for the internet, the trolls WILL abuse it.
I am old, all it means I get payed more then my fellow developers.
As for 35... I remember 35... dimly. Saying that I am past 35 is like saying the Voyager 1 is a bit far. Hell, I was once amazed at the high tech in Voyager... I think so, that far back the memory... what was I talking about?
Oh, you might be right when you think programmers are the kiddies who work in Access but real developers? People who know how to turn an idea into a working product from start to finish? They are FUCKING hard to find. Granted, I live in Holland where the economy is so bad that when the government wanted to issue a new loan they got a NEGATIVE interest (meaning that the finance industry thinks it is safer to PAY the dutch to please allow them to loan their money is the safest bet) and unemployment is fairly low (4-5%) but the list of open vacancies for developers is staggering that right now I get offers for more money in fields I have no experience with in languages I never used because they can't find anyone else.
Saying that employment is hard as programmer who has aged, is like saying that being a chef is not a long term job because there are no 35+ burger flippers. Granted, if you spent 17 years not learning a single additional skill, that might be true, but then that would be true in most fields.
Oh wait, like so many you don't know what it truly means to be literate. To be literate is NOT to know what a word means but to be capable of learning the meaning of a new word.
To explain: A research animal hits a level with a image and gets a nut. The animal likes nuts so will associate the image with a nut. If another leaver has another image and delivers an electric shock, which the animal does not like, he will associate that image with the shock.
But the animal has no understanding of the image. The image could a photo, a drawing, a glyph or word but it has no understanding of it beyond a simple association with the lever and the result.
You could teach some animals a hundred words but that does not make them literate UNTIL they can learn new words just by deduction. For instance, if you know what Audiophile and Xenophobe means, including that the words in questions are combo's of simpler words, then can you guess what the made up word Audiophobe might mean? THEN you are literate. Same as simply being able to recite multiplication tables does not make you understand math, just being able to use a computer by pressing the key that gives the nut is not being computer literate.
A computer literate person could be set in front of a different OS or program and deduce how it works without constant hand holding.
A test? Take a new MMO like Star Wars: The Old Republic. It isn't exactly pushing new boundaries,you would expect that anyone with experience with either another MMO or games in general (and for some functions, computer programs in general) to be able to sort it out. And yet, general chat is filled with people asking the most inane questions.
NOT so much because of a low IQ and their parents being siblings BUT because they only learned to hit the right key at the right time. They did NOT learn how to deal with stuff, they learned a routine, there is no understanding anymore then the lab animal understand the lever or electricity or the biology of nuts.
People are afraid, if you mess with a running car engine you can loose fingers, mess with a running OS and... nothing at all can happen. A crashed car engine is going to cost you, a crashed desktop is a mild nuisance. If you can even manage to do it anymore, but still people treat computers and software as if it was a loaded gun... that is for that percentage of the population that does not end up shooting themselves in the head AND miss their brain.
Lots of "training" is just for routine, hit this button, then that one rather then UNDERSTANDING why. And the "why" goes deep. Mouses have two buttons, 99% of the time if the desired action cannot be achieved with a left click, try a right one. Don't worry, the computer will NOT explode.
Lack of processing feedback. Impatience with feedback. You can make a button flash for attention and people will look right over it. Force a popup that blocks all other input until you sign in blood that you have read the message and people will STILL not read it because surely it can't be relevant.
But this about more then computer literacy. Take this real life case: Public transport suffers from broken doors, it happens. How do you signal to the customer the door is broken and they got to use another? Do you put a RED sign at EYE height? ignored. Red sign above the button. Ignored. Color button red permanently with leds instead of black when in motion and green when stopped? Ignored. Do you put a sticker OVER the button making it impossible to operate? Ignored. Do you make EVERYONE else in the train move to another door when they see it? Ignored.
Yet those people can still "operate" their computer, unless something happens that is not part of the routine. Would you judge a person as public transport literate if they can open a normal door but are completely lost with a broken door? No.
I don't think everyone should be at the same level, I was completely lost when I was rushed to hospital after 20 years of not even seeing a doctor and needed a lo
Geez gods, these discussions always have posts like this. What are you supposed to do? Hire a lawyer who will argue your case. If you are accussed of killing someone in your car and blood is found in your car then you tell your lawyer how the blood came to be there if not from the murder and your lawyer will present this as evidence on your behalf.
Justice is not a binary machine, in free countries it allows a counter argument. You can then present your case, provide evidence for it and most legal cases work out alright. Yes, there are exceptions but the idea that you will go to jail for not known the key to your password file is just silly. Your lawyer would have to be amazingly bad for this to happen. Not realisitic unless you get your legal advice on Slashdot.
If I am on a jury and you refused to enter your password, why should I refuse to convict you? I and most people are NOT in favor of letting criminals go off just because they found a loophole. In fact, you using a loophole that pretty much says "I did it" by using the loophole is a surefire way to get the jury to rule guilty.
What makes some people on slashdot in these discussions so delusional that they think normal people on jury duty want to fight the system to get criminals off?
The system needing your passphrase is only needed in a fair legal system where they can't just create evidence...
So, what is an innocent pleb like "us" going to have to appeal? You give your passphrase, no evidence is found since you are innocent and so you go free... so either you are so insane you would appeal an innocent verdict against yourself OR you are not innocent.
Which one is it?
Read the real world news, in dictatorships they don't bother with searches, they create fake evidence. Keys are only needed in courts that want evidence to be legit.
It is known that you have a gun, you are accused of killing someone with a gun. Can you be forced to hand over the gun that the police have given evidence for that you own it?
Yes.
If you think anything else, then you are an idiot. You cannot be ordered to hand over the murder weapon but you can be ordered to hand over a weapon that the prosecuter thinks is linked to the case one way or another.
This is as so often the silly debating of the law of little kiddies and the reason lawyers in general are so reluctant to discuss law. First year law teachers hate their job because of the constant attempts by students to re-examine the laws that has already been re-examined for hundreds of years by far greater minds then the average student... like cats.
An execution is written down as a murder. Every executed prisoner in the US is a murder victim. Just that the law has ways of allowing such a thing to happen, in certain circumstances while murder in general is forbidden.
You can see kiddies at work when it comes to the police speeding without lights or sirens. Allowed? YES, regardless of what you think the law says, especially traffic law, IF the police has good reasons to do so and with a high expectation of the police not to endanger others. But if the police on their way to a crime scene feel the need to turn of the siren to avoid alerting the criminals and you jump in front of them on a zebra crossing... don't expect much sympathy from a judge.
It is the INTENT of the law vs the actual wording in a changing world. Jews do it all the time, the Sabbath rules are hard to deal with in a modern world of electricity, batteries and essential technology. Can you use an elevator on the Sabbath? In a skyscaper? With a bad heart? It didn't matter when there were no elevators or when the highest floor could be reached by anyone able to survive for that long. But modern medicine has allowed people to continue to live when they became feeble and created housing so high that even top fit humans would need to take a breather.
What about a fridge? Even if you don't use it, you are using it. Food put in before the Sabbath if kept fresh for you by the labour of someone else at the power company. The laws were written in a time before fridges, how do interpret them?
This is an interesting exercise because you avoid the emotional baggage of the 5th and protection against unreonable searches and can focus on a simpler balance (provided you ain't religious yourself) of the "Intent of the law" and the "written law". On the "need" for their being one day of the week in which the people can reflect (except farmers (livestock) of course who never can take a day off) on their god AND the "need" to deal with the parts of the world that cannot be told to wait for one day.
There are of course many types of labor, especially labor itself (woman giving birth) that have not been part of the sabbath rules for millenia, mid-wiving for instance. Taking care of the dead. Health-care in general. And yet, when thousands of years later the standbye mode is inventented, it has to be discussed how this applies to Jews who want to observe the laws of their fate.
Computer encryption is the same to our general law. The intent of the law is that the police when in possession of a search warrant, can search. I had it happen to me, I lived in small room inside a larger house and a warrant had been issued on the house, so my room was searched. Not very thoroughly, they were looking for a person and the room as said was small, but I was still very upset about it AND unable to do anything about it. Because the law was written with an intent, not a complete checklist for every exception.
And if they had found a dozen children in my room, tortured and killed. Could the police have done anything?
THINK carefully, the answer might surprise you. YES and NO... how can that be? They certainly could have launched an investigation HOWEVER it is highly likely you would walk away from it IF there is no way to find any evidence without having to go through the illegally obtained evidence first.
And that sucks... but if they had seen a blank CD that I had payed the fee for artists on... should they be able to launch an investigation?
No, they can't (and wouldn't for that matter) but why?
Because we INTEND the law to weigh the needs of society vs the needs of the individual. There is no way to write this d
Well, the corrupt ones at least. The moment you file a request for information about the business of government, they just say "I forgot". It is a very old standby of the rich and powerful.
Thank god for morons such as you that give them this tool.
What you can see from a lot of the posts, or at least the ones not modded down by libertarian nutjobs is the believe that it is the criminal against the system and our only concern should be for the criminal, not the system.
Yes, it is true, the innocent really have nothing to fear from the system, if the system is honest. If the system wasn't honest, they wouldn't need your password, they would simply state they have found evidence and you would be convicted purely on that statement... that is what happens in countries with a less honest system.
The US 5th is often trotted out but they forget that all such things exist in a careful balance. It is the protection of the individual vs the needs of society and that balance does not swing purely one way.
Encryption has thrown a monkey wrench into the works but hardly a new one. People have always tried to hide data tied to crimes from the police, just that in older days the police could call on people smart enough to break the encryption off criminals, With modern encryption software, any idiot can hide data the police need to perform their task of enforcing the law.
But a lot of losers fantasize about hiding god knows what (what do you really have to hide the police is really intrested in and if it is so innocent why have you let your democracy slide so much?) from the police and believe they can re-interpret the law as they see fit without accepting that law is often more about intent then precise wording. Remember this, the constitution was written by slave owners. All your supposed freedoms based on this document that found it perfectly alright to put a man, woman or child in chains for their entire life merely on the idea that they could be owned for no particular reason.
Do you REALLY think these people who in our day would be in jail for life if not actually executed (gosh I wonder how many of their slaves died due to inhuman treatment) would really rule on your side of wanting to hide data about how you embezzled them from the police?
It is similar to the idea people have of some obscure forgotten law having any value. If you managed to find a law in English history that made it legal for you to kill the queen and claim the throne, don't count on it being valid. It is the standard that no law can go against the intent of the law in general. The whole system doesn't go into a robotic Star Trek lockdown if a contradiction occurs, it is simply routed around by asking "what is the intended result from the perspective of our time" and that is what is the new law and the old one simply gets thrown out and ignored.
That is for instance why rights of passage, no matter how fucking old don't apply to aircraft. You can claim your family owned lands X for thousands of years, get evidence that all the kings regonized this and STILL not be able to ban aircraft from flying over.
The intent of the law is that the police have extreme powers of investigation, long ago, in a different age, some white men wrote laws to prevent other white men from some of the excesses of their time such as torture. Not having to testify against yourself is a protection from torture, NOT a police interview and most certainly not the "right" to hide everything.
Same with protection against unreasonable searches. This was supposed to protect people from random searches looking for anything at all to prosecute people with. It is NOT supposed to allow criminals to hide anything they want behind a door and the police unable to go beyond it.
The reason most lawyers are rather snobbish to the average person is that they know this but have to deal everyday with clients who have constructed some fantasy land of law and order in their head and then the lawyer has to carefully explain to people with average IQ's that the law doesn't work like that.
And a good thing too... because we know what happens when the police can't do their job from the time of royalty or other forms of untouchables that the law can't touch. These are not good times. The p
You are taking your nerd jerk-off way to far. What next, claiming a MP3 does not contain music data until it is combined with a player, a soundcard, a speaker and a codec?
An encrypted message does not contain the message... really, how lost can you get in your mothers basement if you think that even makes sense. The law just doesn't work as you imagine it in your tiny little mind, no serious cryptographer will agree with you either.
It also shows a remarkable lack of understanding on your part. No HD contains just a plain text file, it will be stored as a series of ones and zeroes, no wait, not evnn that but magnetic variances. An encoding if you like that your computer does everytime you write or read a file... for that matter, a word document isn't plain text either. A PDF sure as hell isn't either...
No understanding of computers or the law. You will go far.
That Vader killed Anakin is hardly unknown in story telling, in fact quite a few stories tell that of the adult version killing the child version of the same person.
In Red Dwarf, Rimmers lost good points are shown as graves in his sub concious.
It is a pretty weak attempt to show a loop hole just because someone uses a bit of flowery language. What next, if you found out your grandfather didn't really go to sleep but croaked you are going to claim you parents lied as well? Really kid, read a book. Just one.
The twin sister bit is also easily explained, Leia shows no signs of being a Jedi, Luke does. It isn't until the expanded universe that sorce sensitivity in Leia is ever mentioned let alone developed as her being nearly as powerful.
Granted it is rather sexist but the son following the father and the daughter just being there to look pretty is hardly unheard off in fantasy stories.
Ooh, I got another one for you, how come a Star Destroyer is less powerful then a Death Star that can only kill planets?
The original was the result of a lot of talented people, many barely recognized by the casual fan, coming together and doing what they do best without to many pressures to deliver because nobody expected a Sci-Fi movie to do all that well in the late 70's.
The next two movies were made with bigger budgets but also greater expectations, partly this was delivered on with greater special effects and better writing in the second, even better special effects in the third but at that time the demand for merchandise had overridden the need for a good story and so we got the ewoks.
Then insane demand for more with extreem greed and no budget gave us the Holiday Special when the entire US was consumed with the idea that you could continue outsourcing animation to the lowest bidder and still have the old school classic quality of 30 years before.
Then the special editions hit which was basically one of the talented guy's who made the original crapping over the rest of the teams work.
The prequels of course never happened so they cannot be discussed here but if they had been made it would be by the one guy who was very good at getting a team together not getting a team together and doing everything himself...
Rule34 then came along and redid star wars if it was a porn story.
And now this movie shows what the original would have been like if social media users had made it... Star Wars: The Greater Internet Fuckwad cut.
The only people that find this funny are Family Guy fans. I get the joke, doing a classic scene in another format, haha... that is funny for about 10 seconds and then it is time to cut to the next joke. It has been done! We have had lego Star Wars, ascii Star Wars and even Family Guy Star Wars (granted only watched a bit until I realized that the entire singe joke was that Family Guy did Star Wars and that parodie apparently is some kind of bird to the writers).
The movie lasts 2 hours and 3 minutes, that is 2 hours to long. The joke of a redone Star Wars has been done to death. Let it die, stop beating that dead horse, let it rest, put it out of its misery, don't repeat yourself over and over again... get it?
As a European I can only make sense of the republican efforts so far if they decided they have absolutely no hope of going against Obama so they are pulling a The Official Monster Raving Loony Party because if they don't show up for the election the won't get their card stamped but their is no point in putting someone forward who is actually sane... they are keeping them for the next election because they can't afford to waste them.
Mind you, the tories did that with Major of London election when they let Boris run and jezus christ, he won! And he still looks sane when you put them next to any of the republican candidates.
I tried to watch the debates and just couldn't. This cannot be real, it must be a very elaborate hoax on the rest of the world. Right? Right!?! RIGHT????
Is this the same Kroes who failed so bad in her own country? Minister of transport thanks to whose brilliant leadership competition on the rail network meant giving one company a tiny bit of rail (Amsterdam Zandvoort) and the new high speed link straight to the NS because you know, that encourages competition? Thanks to whose contracts that same NS can ignore some lines in its performance report and cancelled trains don't count towards the number of trains not driving on time?
Slashdot Mirror
Holland keeps its third place but loses a whole 9 points (US lost 14), the only reason we are still 3rd is because everyone started from a worse positin but it is hardly good. Wonder if anyone dares to call out Rukker on this (Previous Prime Minsters was Bakellende, the cambion offspring off Bush and Blair, Rukker is that guys pet rock, an object with absolutely no ideas, opinions or passion)... doubt it, probably everyone pats themselves on the back for still being 3rd no matter how steep the downwards slope is.
You do NOT have a right to commit a crime and calling your drug dealer is NOT something that society wants you to get away with.
If society wanted people to be able to commit crimes, it wouldn't have created the police and spend billions on funding for it. It would simply have kept anarchy. The police instead have been given powers to track criminals down and this has always meant powers to track people and communication. Why should your phone logs NOT be available after a court order has been issued for them?
That is the problem with this entire debade, you got complete and utter nutters who somehow thinkt that the general public is on the side of criminals in their cat and mouse game with the police and is rooting for criminals to get away with crimes.
Allt he provisions of "innocent until proven guilty" and provisions against illegal searches are there to protect the innocent, NOT the guilty. Saying you don't want the police to be able to find out about your crimes might work on some of the /. populace who have lost all touch with reality but it just hampers people who really care about privacy of INNOCENT people.
I think that reasonable people who agree that crime should be punished but that we don't want to create an uncontrollable police state, that we should focus on creating proper procedures with check and balances for dealing with our changing society. Log internet data the same as call data already is but make it that the police must get a warrant for a limitted time that will become a matter of public record after a set time so we know who was investigated and why so we can see if it was for legit or illegitimate purposes.
But just a blanket pardon for all criminal behavior, that will never fly and any party that is associated with such claims will loose in an election because once again, no matter what some here might claim, the average citizen does NOT think it right for you to call your drug dealer.
And if you want to live in a society with no rules, Somalia is that away. Have fun, nobody here will miss you.
Just a few stories below is the story about a judge claiming that a similar composition is copyright infringement, while clearly insane, how would this ruling apply to these two games? Well BOTH are first and foremost SimTower ripoffs. And that just asumes that SimTower was not based on something else.
Every idea is based on another idea. Where do you stop with copyright infringement when somebody copies an idea? Where would /. be if the idea of a forum was granted copyright?
As bad as it may be to swallow, for a large part this is just life and we got to accept it. If I open a bakery with real bread in the US, I just got to accept that then anyone from the EU can do the same and start selling real food in the US (I been to the US, god knows there is a market for it).
How does a simple portrait photo survive your thinking? Same angle, same composition, some treatment. Oops!
What about a CV or any standard document? My CV is certainly my creation so if you copy my style, are you an infringer?
Terry Pratchett is rather famous (a reviewer on the BBC I think slammed him for it and was torn to shreds for it) for not using chapters. So if I write without chapters, I am infringing? Only one person can write without chapters? For that matter, isn't the idea of dividing a story in chapters a copyrighted idea?
There are some compositions that stand out, I wrote another comment about the Abby Road cover but what of that shot in Star Wars of Luke standing with two suns in the background? It is a classic shot, with a very simple effect it instantly creates an alien world. But it is NOT a new idea, lots of covers of old sci-fi and fantasy books do the same, showing the hero looking out over an alien landscape. HOW the landscape is alien might differ, dragons in the sky, a gigantic moon, rings in orbot, but the idea is the same. Who owns that composition?
The idea of owning a specific composition, an idea, is frightening. It is one thing for the Disney corporation to have infinite copyright on Mickey Mouse but to give them ownership of the idea of a cartoon mouse... EVEN Disney would not go, has not gone, that far. See Tom and Jerry, The Secret of Nimh and others.
For that matter, what would happen to the web? How many sites use the same composition, header, footer, body? Are newspaper columns now owned by the first newspaper? The BBC itself is in serious trouble, who owns the composition off the news reader looking straight into the camera from behind a desk while reading the news? Can you imagine the hazzle of every news show having to come up with a new composition that isn't to similar to every one elses? There are 179 or so countries, each with at least 1 news show...any new program would have to come up with something amazing not to infringe.
No, I think this Judge let himself be ruled by the other infringement facts of the case and wanted to rule against the defense no matter how it would affect the rest of the world. The 2nd foto was taken to avoid paying for the 1st one, that is not nice BUT to make it illegal to punish the not so nice defendant is to let loose the lawyers of frivolous lawsuits. This judge will be remembered for a long time. And not in a good way.
Kubism as a movement in art to portray things in a certain way. There are others but Kubism was specifically invented in relevant recent times by well known artists... AND used by a lot more. With no problem. It was invented but it was also a copy, it was based on more primitive art, some statues from Africa have similar stark angular lines that you can buy at any tourist trap but are most certainly not Kubist themselves but based on far far older works.
For that matter, how would this judge deal with portraits? That style is so copied that it has become law, your passport portrait MUST look a certain way.
Sometimes judges rulings should be pre-read and if they open to big a can of worms they should be shot (the judges, not the worms) and replaced with a more sensible judge. You can bet your ass that this ruling WILL be abused. There are so many compositions that have been copied over and over again. It was for thousands of years considered normal, a tribute to the original, a sign you inspired others.
What will now happen to anyone who copies the composition of the Abby Road album cover (the 4 beatles on zebra crossing)? What about the composition idea of taking a shot of big ben in such a way that the person in the foreground seems to be the same size? You would have to lock up and brutally torture every tourist... oooh, not bad at all. Sometimes a stupid ruling is worth it after all!
You expect people with that kind of dogma to be sensible and focus on the facts?
You must be new here.
He was talking about real writers, who drank and wrote fucking awesome novels... that they had mental disorders doesn't factor into this. That they suffered for the art doesn't factor into it. They were fucking great writers not artsy types sipping 5 dollar coffees waiting for inspiration. Inspiration comes from real life and any two bit drunk with severe mental issues will see more of it then any wannabe at Starbucks.
Normal people don't write great works of art. Normal people buy them and wish they had a fraction of the talent without being willing to pay the price for it. The candle that burns brightest, burns the shortest. Now if I was a heavy drinker, had mental problems that would make any shrink go "get him off, GET HIM OFF!" and blew my brains out at the end of my natural life expectancy, this post would have been a lot better.
First off, what is your credit card processing fee? There is a reason Apple isn't laughing all of the way to the bank with iTunes but the credit companies ARE laughing their ass off. It all depends on your size and your risks (chargebacks) but gosh darn, you might be suprised that your 25 cent fee ends up mostly at the credit card company. That is nobody does a charge back and you have to pay anywhere up from ten bucks for it. With your 25 cents, 1 chargeback costs you 40 paying customers, well it would IF you could use all their quarters to pay for the 1 chargeback, which you can't because other things will have to payed from it as I already stated.
Further more, you say the movie costs 20 bucks, even if rentals worked like that, which they don't, you need 80 paying customers (IF you could keep the entire quarter) just to break even. Meanwhile, your entire legal case rests on the fact that there is only ONE copy around for each possesion, so if 80 customers want the same movie at the same time, you need 80 x 20 bucks to satisfy demand. Now you need a total of 640 paying customers... IF you could keep the entire quarter which once again, you cannot.
I keep hammering on this because a lot of noobs to business think that money is free. You sell something and everything the customer pays, ends up in your pocket. Transaction costs HURT many a small business and is the reason you can't buy a nickle item with a credit card.
The most annoying thing is that this doesn't have to be the case, in the EU payments systems are far far cheaper per transaction, on the order of cents rather then quarters and are even free. Whenever I have to implement a CC solution because people in the EU thinks it will mean the world I find it very amusing to show them the fee structures. It is like telling a baby how their candy will be taken.
Oh, and those transaction costs, you have them DOUBLE. Two transactions... all to be payed out of 1 quarter dollar along with all your other costs.
You should put this in a business case and present it at your bank. They need a good laugh.
Not only IS it very cheap to lay down cables along rail tracks, it so CHEAP that in Holland one of the current telco's started out just like this as a daughter of the dutch railway company (NS + BT created Telfort). How do you think signals are connected? Once you laid one cable, adding more is incredible cheap especially if you can lay it down over very long distances and only need to deal with 1 owner of the land, yourself.
If you think that all forms of radiation from the sun are absorbed by the atmosphere before they reach human beings on the surface, it must be very dark where you are. And cold.
Lethal UV radiation reaches us all the time...oh okay, I am dutch, 3 days of the year. Which is celebrated by exposing as much of our skins as is legal to it till it cries out in terror and reacts violently to the radiation.
Humans eh. no wonder we still haven't discovered slood.
Then you would know that if people can edit their posts, they post one thing, then change it later making the comments look out of place or even to spam a board by first getting modded up with a joke, and then editting it into a troll.
First rule of designing for the internet, the trolls WILL abuse it.
I am old, all it means I get payed more then my fellow developers.
As for 35... I remember 35... dimly. Saying that I am past 35 is like saying the Voyager 1 is a bit far. Hell, I was once amazed at the high tech in Voyager... I think so, that far back the memory ... what was I talking about?
Oh, you might be right when you think programmers are the kiddies who work in Access but real developers? People who know how to turn an idea into a working product from start to finish? They are FUCKING hard to find. Granted, I live in Holland where the economy is so bad that when the government wanted to issue a new loan they got a NEGATIVE interest (meaning that the finance industry thinks it is safer to PAY the dutch to please allow them to loan their money is the safest bet) and unemployment is fairly low (4-5%) but the list of open vacancies for developers is staggering that right now I get offers for more money in fields I have no experience with in languages I never used because they can't find anyone else.
Saying that employment is hard as programmer who has aged, is like saying that being a chef is not a long term job because there are no 35+ burger flippers. Granted, if you spent 17 years not learning a single additional skill, that might be true, but then that would be true in most fields.
Oh wait, like so many you don't know what it truly means to be literate. To be literate is NOT to know what a word means but to be capable of learning the meaning of a new word.
To explain: A research animal hits a level with a image and gets a nut. The animal likes nuts so will associate the image with a nut. If another leaver has another image and delivers an electric shock, which the animal does not like, he will associate that image with the shock.
But the animal has no understanding of the image. The image could a photo, a drawing, a glyph or word but it has no understanding of it beyond a simple association with the lever and the result.
You could teach some animals a hundred words but that does not make them literate UNTIL they can learn new words just by deduction. For instance, if you know what Audiophile and Xenophobe means, including that the words in questions are combo's of simpler words, then can you guess what the made up word Audiophobe might mean? THEN you are literate. Same as simply being able to recite multiplication tables does not make you understand math, just being able to use a computer by pressing the key that gives the nut is not being computer literate.
A computer literate person could be set in front of a different OS or program and deduce how it works without constant hand holding.
A test? Take a new MMO like Star Wars: The Old Republic. It isn't exactly pushing new boundaries,you would expect that anyone with experience with either another MMO or games in general (and for some functions, computer programs in general) to be able to sort it out. And yet, general chat is filled with people asking the most inane questions.
NOT so much because of a low IQ and their parents being siblings BUT because they only learned to hit the right key at the right time. They did NOT learn how to deal with stuff, they learned a routine, there is no understanding anymore then the lab animal understand the lever or electricity or the biology of nuts.
But this about more then computer literacy. Take this real life case: Public transport suffers from broken doors, it happens. How do you signal to the customer the door is broken and they got to use another? Do you put a RED sign at EYE height? ignored. Red sign above the button. Ignored. Color button red permanently with leds instead of black when in motion and green when stopped? Ignored. Do you put a sticker OVER the button making it impossible to operate? Ignored. Do you make EVERYONE else in the train move to another door when they see it? Ignored.
Yet those people can still "operate" their computer, unless something happens that is not part of the routine. Would you judge a person as public transport literate if they can open a normal door but are completely lost with a broken door? No.
I don't think everyone should be at the same level, I was completely lost when I was rushed to hospital after 20 years of not even seeing a doctor and needed a lo
Geez gods, these discussions always have posts like this. What are you supposed to do? Hire a lawyer who will argue your case. If you are accussed of killing someone in your car and blood is found in your car then you tell your lawyer how the blood came to be there if not from the murder and your lawyer will present this as evidence on your behalf.
Justice is not a binary machine, in free countries it allows a counter argument. You can then present your case, provide evidence for it and most legal cases work out alright. Yes, there are exceptions but the idea that you will go to jail for not known the key to your password file is just silly. Your lawyer would have to be amazingly bad for this to happen. Not realisitic unless you get your legal advice on Slashdot.
If I am on a jury and you refused to enter your password, why should I refuse to convict you? I and most people are NOT in favor of letting criminals go off just because they found a loophole. In fact, you using a loophole that pretty much says "I did it" by using the loophole is a surefire way to get the jury to rule guilty.
What makes some people on slashdot in these discussions so delusional that they think normal people on jury duty want to fight the system to get criminals off?
The system needing your passphrase is only needed in a fair legal system where they can't just create evidence...
So, what is an innocent pleb like "us" going to have to appeal? You give your passphrase, no evidence is found since you are innocent and so you go free... so either you are so insane you would appeal an innocent verdict against yourself OR you are not innocent.
Which one is it?
Read the real world news, in dictatorships they don't bother with searches, they create fake evidence. Keys are only needed in courts that want evidence to be legit.
It is known that you have a gun, you are accused of killing someone with a gun. Can you be forced to hand over the gun that the police have given evidence for that you own it?
Yes.
If you think anything else, then you are an idiot. You cannot be ordered to hand over the murder weapon but you can be ordered to hand over a weapon that the prosecuter thinks is linked to the case one way or another.
This is as so often the silly debating of the law of little kiddies and the reason lawyers in general are so reluctant to discuss law. First year law teachers hate their job because of the constant attempts by students to re-examine the laws that has already been re-examined for hundreds of years by far greater minds then the average student... like cats.
An execution is written down as a murder. Every executed prisoner in the US is a murder victim. Just that the law has ways of allowing such a thing to happen, in certain circumstances while murder in general is forbidden.
You can see kiddies at work when it comes to the police speeding without lights or sirens. Allowed? YES, regardless of what you think the law says, especially traffic law, IF the police has good reasons to do so and with a high expectation of the police not to endanger others. But if the police on their way to a crime scene feel the need to turn of the siren to avoid alerting the criminals and you jump in front of them on a zebra crossing... don't expect much sympathy from a judge.
It is the INTENT of the law vs the actual wording in a changing world. Jews do it all the time, the Sabbath rules are hard to deal with in a modern world of electricity, batteries and essential technology. Can you use an elevator on the Sabbath? In a skyscaper? With a bad heart? It didn't matter when there were no elevators or when the highest floor could be reached by anyone able to survive for that long. But modern medicine has allowed people to continue to live when they became feeble and created housing so high that even top fit humans would need to take a breather.
What about a fridge? Even if you don't use it, you are using it. Food put in before the Sabbath if kept fresh for you by the labour of someone else at the power company. The laws were written in a time before fridges, how do interpret them?
This is an interesting exercise because you avoid the emotional baggage of the 5th and protection against unreonable searches and can focus on a simpler balance (provided you ain't religious yourself) of the "Intent of the law" and the "written law". On the "need" for their being one day of the week in which the people can reflect (except farmers (livestock) of course who never can take a day off) on their god AND the "need" to deal with the parts of the world that cannot be told to wait for one day.
There are of course many types of labor, especially labor itself (woman giving birth) that have not been part of the sabbath rules for millenia, mid-wiving for instance. Taking care of the dead. Health-care in general. And yet, when thousands of years later the standbye mode is inventented, it has to be discussed how this applies to Jews who want to observe the laws of their fate.
Computer encryption is the same to our general law. The intent of the law is that the police when in possession of a search warrant, can search. I had it happen to me, I lived in small room inside a larger house and a warrant had been issued on the house, so my room was searched. Not very thoroughly, they were looking for a person and the room as said was small, but I was still very upset about it AND unable to do anything about it. Because the law was written with an intent, not a complete checklist for every exception.
And if they had found a dozen children in my room, tortured and killed. Could the police have done anything?
THINK carefully, the answer might surprise you. YES and NO... how can that be? They certainly could have launched an investigation HOWEVER it is highly likely you would walk away from it IF there is no way to find any evidence without having to go through the illegally obtained evidence first.
And that sucks... but if they had seen a blank CD that I had payed the fee for artists on... should they be able to launch an investigation?
No, they can't (and wouldn't for that matter) but why?
Because we INTEND the law to weigh the needs of society vs the needs of the individual. There is no way to write this d
Well, the corrupt ones at least. The moment you file a request for information about the business of government, they just say "I forgot". It is a very old standby of the rich and powerful.
Thank god for morons such as you that give them this tool.
What you can see from a lot of the posts, or at least the ones not modded down by libertarian nutjobs is the believe that it is the criminal against the system and our only concern should be for the criminal, not the system.
Yes, it is true, the innocent really have nothing to fear from the system, if the system is honest. If the system wasn't honest, they wouldn't need your password, they would simply state they have found evidence and you would be convicted purely on that statement... that is what happens in countries with a less honest system.
The US 5th is often trotted out but they forget that all such things exist in a careful balance. It is the protection of the individual vs the needs of society and that balance does not swing purely one way.
Encryption has thrown a monkey wrench into the works but hardly a new one. People have always tried to hide data tied to crimes from the police, just that in older days the police could call on people smart enough to break the encryption off criminals, With modern encryption software, any idiot can hide data the police need to perform their task of enforcing the law.
But a lot of losers fantasize about hiding god knows what (what do you really have to hide the police is really intrested in and if it is so innocent why have you let your democracy slide so much?) from the police and believe they can re-interpret the law as they see fit without accepting that law is often more about intent then precise wording. Remember this, the constitution was written by slave owners. All your supposed freedoms based on this document that found it perfectly alright to put a man, woman or child in chains for their entire life merely on the idea that they could be owned for no particular reason.
Do you REALLY think these people who in our day would be in jail for life if not actually executed (gosh I wonder how many of their slaves died due to inhuman treatment) would really rule on your side of wanting to hide data about how you embezzled them from the police?
It is similar to the idea people have of some obscure forgotten law having any value. If you managed to find a law in English history that made it legal for you to kill the queen and claim the throne, don't count on it being valid. It is the standard that no law can go against the intent of the law in general. The whole system doesn't go into a robotic Star Trek lockdown if a contradiction occurs, it is simply routed around by asking "what is the intended result from the perspective of our time" and that is what is the new law and the old one simply gets thrown out and ignored.
That is for instance why rights of passage, no matter how fucking old don't apply to aircraft. You can claim your family owned lands X for thousands of years, get evidence that all the kings regonized this and STILL not be able to ban aircraft from flying over.
The intent of the law is that the police have extreme powers of investigation, long ago, in a different age, some white men wrote laws to prevent other white men from some of the excesses of their time such as torture. Not having to testify against yourself is a protection from torture, NOT a police interview and most certainly not the "right" to hide everything.
Same with protection against unreasonable searches. This was supposed to protect people from random searches looking for anything at all to prosecute people with. It is NOT supposed to allow criminals to hide anything they want behind a door and the police unable to go beyond it.
The reason most lawyers are rather snobbish to the average person is that they know this but have to deal everyday with clients who have constructed some fantasy land of law and order in their head and then the lawyer has to carefully explain to people with average IQ's that the law doesn't work like that.
And a good thing too... because we know what happens when the police can't do their job from the time of royalty or other forms of untouchables that the law can't touch. These are not good times. The p
You are taking your nerd jerk-off way to far. What next, claiming a MP3 does not contain music data until it is combined with a player, a soundcard, a speaker and a codec?
An encrypted message does not contain the message... really, how lost can you get in your mothers basement if you think that even makes sense. The law just doesn't work as you imagine it in your tiny little mind, no serious cryptographer will agree with you either.
It also shows a remarkable lack of understanding on your part. No HD contains just a plain text file, it will be stored as a series of ones and zeroes, no wait, not evnn that but magnetic variances. An encoding if you like that your computer does everytime you write or read a file... for that matter, a word document isn't plain text either. A PDF sure as hell isn't either...
No understanding of computers or the law. You will go far.
That Vader killed Anakin is hardly unknown in story telling, in fact quite a few stories tell that of the adult version killing the child version of the same person.
In Red Dwarf, Rimmers lost good points are shown as graves in his sub concious.
It is a pretty weak attempt to show a loop hole just because someone uses a bit of flowery language. What next, if you found out your grandfather didn't really go to sleep but croaked you are going to claim you parents lied as well? Really kid, read a book. Just one.
The twin sister bit is also easily explained, Leia shows no signs of being a Jedi, Luke does. It isn't until the expanded universe that sorce sensitivity in Leia is ever mentioned let alone developed as her being nearly as powerful.
Granted it is rather sexist but the son following the father and the daughter just being there to look pretty is hardly unheard off in fantasy stories.
Ooh, I got another one for you, how come a Star Destroyer is less powerful then a Death Star that can only kill planets?
The original was the result of a lot of talented people, many barely recognized by the casual fan, coming together and doing what they do best without to many pressures to deliver because nobody expected a Sci-Fi movie to do all that well in the late 70's.
The next two movies were made with bigger budgets but also greater expectations, partly this was delivered on with greater special effects and better writing in the second, even better special effects in the third but at that time the demand for merchandise had overridden the need for a good story and so we got the ewoks.
Then insane demand for more with extreem greed and no budget gave us the Holiday Special when the entire US was consumed with the idea that you could continue outsourcing animation to the lowest bidder and still have the old school classic quality of 30 years before.
Then the special editions hit which was basically one of the talented guy's who made the original crapping over the rest of the teams work.
The prequels of course never happened so they cannot be discussed here but if they had been made it would be by the one guy who was very good at getting a team together not getting a team together and doing everything himself...
Rule34 then came along and redid star wars if it was a porn story.
And now this movie shows what the original would have been like if social media users had made it... Star Wars: The Greater Internet Fuckwad cut.
The only people that find this funny are Family Guy fans. I get the joke, doing a classic scene in another format, haha... that is funny for about 10 seconds and then it is time to cut to the next joke. It has been done! We have had lego Star Wars, ascii Star Wars and even Family Guy Star Wars (granted only watched a bit until I realized that the entire singe joke was that Family Guy did Star Wars and that parodie apparently is some kind of bird to the writers).
The movie lasts 2 hours and 3 minutes, that is 2 hours to long. The joke of a redone Star Wars has been done to death. Let it die, stop beating that dead horse, let it rest, put it out of its misery, don't repeat yourself over and over again... get it?
As a European I can only make sense of the republican efforts so far if they decided they have absolutely no hope of going against Obama so they are pulling a The Official Monster Raving Loony Party because if they don't show up for the election the won't get their card stamped but their is no point in putting someone forward who is actually sane... they are keeping them for the next election because they can't afford to waste them.
Mind you, the tories did that with Major of London election when they let Boris run and jezus christ, he won! And he still looks sane when you put them next to any of the republican candidates.
I tried to watch the debates and just couldn't. This cannot be real, it must be a very elaborate hoax on the rest of the world. Right? Right!?! RIGHT????
Is this the same Kroes who failed so bad in her own country? Minister of transport thanks to whose brilliant leadership competition on the rail network meant giving one company a tiny bit of rail (Amsterdam Zandvoort) and the new high speed link straight to the NS because you know, that encourages competition? Thanks to whose contracts that same NS can ignore some lines in its performance report and cancelled trains don't count towards the number of trains not driving on time?
Yeah, real competent.