I'm also extremely curious as to what the $1million that has to be spent to repair the "damage" is required for and hope the defence and judge push hard for an explanation of this unusual claim
It's a bullshit claim, I'm sure. Such things are always vastly inflated so as to make law enforcement believe that a serious crime was committed. The old Bell System did that when a couple of (ahem!) "hackers" released some supposedly confidential internal documents back in the early eighties (if I remember correctly.) They were claimed to be worth some insane amount of money, when it turned out that anyone could order them for a couple of bucks. There's also a degree of ass-covering involved in situations like this. Now, when you get right down to it, this sounds more like a matter of bad policies enforced by poor management, leavened by politics. The end result is as expected, but the fact that cops got into the mix is just unconscionable.
Although, if Childs is correct about the level of incompetence in that particular IT department, it may well turn out that that million dollars is a lowball figure. Never underestimate the power of the truly stupid to cause damage far beyond their pay grade, given the opportunity.
Oh, God, don't you think we've TRIED? Forget the legal system; you can't get the ordinary person on the street to deal with the idea that computers are science, not black magic!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - - Arthur C. Clarke
The problem is, a lot of people are insufficiently advanced, and are unable to make that distinction.
So, not special trials per se, but a process that rules out anyone with domain knowledge relevant to the trial is fundamentally broken.
So in a medical misconduct trial you want 12 doctors on the jury, able to understand the medical evidence?
Possibly. But the GP's term "domain knowledge" can mean different things: you don't necessarily have to have specific knowledge of the particular fields involved in a trial to be a better juror. Honestly, a jury with a basic understanding of scientific method, and an adequate command of math and statistics would help a lot. Is that asking too much?
With respect, none of this is as complex as DNA and other forensic evidence which is handled quite well in criminal trials every day.
With equal respect, have you ever been through jury selection? I have (a number of times unfortunately: every time I move they waste a day of my time not selecting me) and the GP is correct. The system selects for the most ignorant of any issues relevant to the proceedings, and anyone who could be presumed to have knowledge of mathematics or statistics suffer the first peremptory challenges issued. Don't want someone who can see through the numbers the trial lawyers and their expert witnesses pull out of their nether regions. I'm just a software engineer, and every god damn time I was asked what I do for a living I was promptly removed from the jury. The people that were left were often very nice people (you get to know some of your potential fellow jurors in the jury pool beforehand) but not people that I would want on my jury, if I were accused of a computer crime... especially if I were innocent. The naked fear so many individuals have of computers, and especially those who are accused of computer crimes is unnerving. Fear of the unknown is not intrinsically irrational: but fear of gaining understanding is.
All the juries I've (almost) been on are filled with people to whom a trial about computer systems is, in fact, just as unfamiliar and frightening as a trial involving DNA or other complex evidence, and might just as well be about DNA so far as their level of understanding is concerned. The idea of a technical court is not a bad one at all, particularly given the importance of sophisticated science and technology to all of us, not just those with technical backgrounds. Imagine judges with engineering or science degrees running the show in such trials. Honestly, if we had such courts the patent system probably wouldn't be broken and the RIAA would have been laughed out of court from day one. I can just see a judge who just incidentally happened to have a degree in computer science asking an RIAA attorney: "So, you're claiming that a logged IP address infallibly identifies an individual copyright infringer? Hm. Not on this planet, bucko."
Truly, in these times ignorance is not bliss, and we as a society are paying the price for allowing our adversarial system to dumb down those who judge us. Remember, our justice system was developed in much simpler times. The pace of change being what it is, it's too much to expect the law itself to always be on top of things, but it shouldn't be too much to expect our juries to really be composed of our peers.
The more they restrict these products, the more attractive torrents start to look...
Torrents already look good, and as more users gain access to even faster connections, they'll start looking better. That's why there's so much focus on killing off the indexing sites.
Watching shows via torrent downloading kinda changes the way you watch TV... makes it more like listening to MP3s. And if you have a portable player than can handle the more common video formats like AVI you're gold, if not there's plenty of good transcoding software out there. You just grab the files you want, stick them somewhere on your computer, and view them at your leisure. Generally, given the quality of digitizer boards nowadays, and the fact that the commercials are usually removed, the overall experience is better than what you get on your cable or satellite box.
I've been watching them lately since my UVerse setup has had all kins of line noise problems and I've been missing all my favorite shows. Gateway shuts down every so often from excessive FEC errors and the DVR then hangs. Pain in the ass (although the problem may end up being with the power company, we'll see.) In the meantime, I've been grabbing a few torrents since I don't want to miss my shows. I'm still paying for service that isn't working right, and until it does I'll find another way to get what I'm paying for.
Granted, such downloading doesn't leave much room for broadcasters to make any advertising dollars, but there are other ways to get paid. Matter of fact, one of those ways is the cable bill that I pay every month... so far as I'm concerned, these wallet vamps have been double-dipping for a long time.
Does anyone else remember when the big sales pitch for cable TV was that there weren't any commercials because you were paying for the service rather than getting it for free? It was nice while it lasted, but it didn't last long.
If the only defence for their actions is that it benefits Apple, that's hardly a ringing endorsement. And every other phone on the market can run applications from anywhere without needing corporate approval, so the answer to "What the hell is Apple supposed to do" is "Do what every other company manages to do".
In other words, Apple is like a lot of companies, including Microsoft and AT&T... it's owned and operated by dicks.
We (overseas people) have the same right to get those jobs in a global economy.
Sure you do! Likewise, we people have the right to do what we think is best for us regardless of your perceived "rights". Keep that firmly in mind: too many other countries seem to think that the United States (or China, or any other major industrial power) is somehow obligated to share. We're not.
Trust me, we have plenty of Passholes here in the Midwest. Usually some dimbulb in a giant SUV, with a cellphone plastered to the side of their head and a kilowatt of incessant pounding rhythm irritating everyone in the immediate vicinity. I spend twenty-five miles or so on the expressway every day, and believe me, IQs are dropping all around. I don't know if it's people damaging their brains from the RF output of their cell phones, or if we're just becoming a culture of sociopathic fucktards, but man, it's murder out there.
If Comcast is prevented from acquiring someone due to federal interference, they will probably sue because they will claim that the free market is being tampered with.
As the summary states, Comcast has an enormous stash of (not-so-hard-earned) cash. They're acting like squirrels: if they see food they don't need right away, they just shove it into a hole somewhere until they find a use for it. That probably should not be allowed: it's one thing to put something away for a rainy day, but when corporations end up so flush with cash that they can influence entire markets and ruthlessly suppress competition something is wrong. It also means they're probably significantly overcharging for their goods and services (as an ex-Comcast-down-to-the-depths-of-Hell subscriber I can attest to that.)
Comcast's management also has other things in common with squirrels.
You might feel you have the write to copy it to your Iphone but you dont.
Actually, I do have the write (sic.) I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. For the time being, I'm going to assume you work for a cable company and have an axe to grind.
I suppose this is what happens when you appoint a half-dozen ex-RIAA attorneys to top spots in the Justice Department. President Obama assured us that rules were put into place to prevent this sort of activity, but apparently that doesn't matter. Not that I'm the least bit surprised by that. Frankly, I think the Justice Department should have better things to occupy their time than civil lawsuits. That kind of bias ought to be considered malfeasance in office, or something else worthy of immediate dismissal.
1.92 million dollars for copyright violations by an individual? Now that's Justice for you. Personally, I've never believed that the law should be used to make examples out of people, no matter how distasteful their crimes. That simply breeds more disrespect for the law, which is something the RIAA is apparently unable to understand. They will continue to reap the rewards of that lack of understanding, regardless of what ultimately happens to Jammie Thomas.
Punishment should fit the crime: otherwise it is just government-sanctioned brutality.
If you can figure out when fatigued metal will break under a certain sheer force, that's approximately the same class of problem. It hasn't happened yet, AFAIK.
True, I suppose... although the scale of the problem is somewhat greater. Rock also tends to flow under pressure, so it's not a simple matter of shear force.
Do you want to be sued by every whacko that do not understand the product and decides to sue ?
Well, then they should move to have their online business units fall under Common Carrier regulation, just like their telephone services. What, that would cost money? We'd have to live with QOS standards and pay fines if we don't comply with the regs?
Maybe if they get hit with a few expensive class-action suits they'll rethink the exemption they paid for from the Communications Act that allows data services to be treated differently than phone service.
If there isn't, why don't they just turn the port off completely instead of sending data through it that nobody can use?
PR, I would assume. They can claim that they're making data available without actually making it available. "The port is active, but if people don't know how to use it it's not our fault."
Wait until the kids that grew up with broadband are old enough to approach venture capitalists, to lobby congress, to go to court. Then we'll see some change.
Probably not (although I hope I'm wrong.) We're being trained to accept this bullshit as the price we have to pay to receive our entertainment. Personally, I like to keep things in an open format so I can transcode them to, say, my G1 and watch them when I want to, wherever I want to. I guess I'm one of those people that hasn't been adequately monetized yet.
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I'm also extremely curious as to what the $1million that has to be spent to repair the "damage" is required for and hope the defence and judge push hard for an explanation of this unusual claim
It's a bullshit claim, I'm sure. Such things are always vastly inflated so as to make law enforcement believe that a serious crime was committed. The old Bell System did that when a couple of (ahem!) "hackers" released some supposedly confidential internal documents back in the early eighties (if I remember correctly.) They were claimed to be worth some insane amount of money, when it turned out that anyone could order them for a couple of bucks. There's also a degree of ass-covering involved in situations like this. Now, when you get right down to it, this sounds more like a matter of bad policies enforced by poor management, leavened by politics. The end result is as expected, but the fact that cops got into the mix is just unconscionable.
Although, if Childs is correct about the level of incompetence in that particular IT department, it may well turn out that that million dollars is a lowball figure. Never underestimate the power of the truly stupid to cause damage far beyond their pay grade, given the opportunity.
The person that should have taken this all into hand and resulted in a normal dismissal instead of an arrest is Chris Vein.
Of course, had he actually been a good manager, there probably would have been no need for any of this, much less a dismissal.
COSF is the government. While they may have no interest in someone's WoW password, this sounds like it's going in the wrong direction to me.
They went in the wrong direction a looooong time ago.
Oh, God, don't you think we've TRIED? Forget the legal system; you can't get the ordinary person on the street to deal with the idea that computers are science, not black magic!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - - Arthur C. Clarke
The problem is, a lot of people are insufficiently advanced, and are unable to make that distinction.
So, not special trials per se, but a process that rules out anyone with domain knowledge relevant to the trial is fundamentally broken.
So in a medical misconduct trial you want 12 doctors on the jury, able to understand the medical evidence?
Possibly. But the GP's term "domain knowledge" can mean different things: you don't necessarily have to have specific knowledge of the particular fields involved in a trial to be a better juror. Honestly, a jury with a basic understanding of scientific method, and an adequate command of math and statistics would help a lot. Is that asking too much?
With respect, none of this is as complex as DNA and other forensic evidence which is handled quite well in criminal trials every day.
With equal respect, have you ever been through jury selection? I have (a number of times unfortunately: every time I move they waste a day of my time not selecting me) and the GP is correct. The system selects for the most ignorant of any issues relevant to the proceedings, and anyone who could be presumed to have knowledge of mathematics or statistics suffer the first peremptory challenges issued. Don't want someone who can see through the numbers the trial lawyers and their expert witnesses pull out of their nether regions. I'm just a software engineer, and every god damn time I was asked what I do for a living I was promptly removed from the jury. The people that were left were often very nice people (you get to know some of your potential fellow jurors in the jury pool beforehand) but not people that I would want on my jury, if I were accused of a computer crime ... especially if I were innocent. The naked fear so many individuals have of computers, and especially those who are accused of computer crimes is unnerving. Fear of the unknown is not intrinsically irrational: but fear of gaining understanding is.
All the juries I've (almost) been on are filled with people to whom a trial about computer systems is, in fact, just as unfamiliar and frightening as a trial involving DNA or other complex evidence, and might just as well be about DNA so far as their level of understanding is concerned. The idea of a technical court is not a bad one at all, particularly given the importance of sophisticated science and technology to all of us, not just those with technical backgrounds. Imagine judges with engineering or science degrees running the show in such trials. Honestly, if we had such courts the patent system probably wouldn't be broken and the RIAA would have been laughed out of court from day one. I can just see a judge who just incidentally happened to have a degree in computer science asking an RIAA attorney: "So, you're claiming that a logged IP address infallibly identifies an individual copyright infringer? Hm. Not on this planet, bucko."
Truly, in these times ignorance is not bliss, and we as a society are paying the price for allowing our adversarial system to dumb down those who judge us. Remember, our justice system was developed in much simpler times. The pace of change being what it is, it's too much to expect the law itself to always be on top of things, but it shouldn't be too much to expect our juries to really be composed of our peers.
The more they restrict these products, the more attractive torrents start to look...
Torrents already look good, and as more users gain access to even faster connections, they'll start looking better. That's why there's so much focus on killing off the indexing sites.
... makes it more like listening to MP3s. And if you have a portable player than can handle the more common video formats like AVI you're gold, if not there's plenty of good transcoding software out there. You just grab the files you want, stick them somewhere on your computer, and view them at your leisure. Generally, given the quality of digitizer boards nowadays, and the fact that the commercials are usually removed, the overall experience is better than what you get on your cable or satellite box.
... so far as I'm concerned, these wallet vamps have been double-dipping for a long time.
Watching shows via torrent downloading kinda changes the way you watch TV
I've been watching them lately since my UVerse setup has had all kins of line noise problems and I've been missing all my favorite shows. Gateway shuts down every so often from excessive FEC errors and the DVR then hangs. Pain in the ass (although the problem may end up being with the power company, we'll see.) In the meantime, I've been grabbing a few torrents since I don't want to miss my shows. I'm still paying for service that isn't working right, and until it does I'll find another way to get what I'm paying for.
Granted, such downloading doesn't leave much room for broadcasters to make any advertising dollars, but there are other ways to get paid. Matter of fact, one of those ways is the cable bill that I pay every month
Does anyone else remember when the big sales pitch for cable TV was that there weren't any commercials because you were paying for the service rather than getting it for free? It was nice while it lasted, but it didn't last long.
If the only defence for their actions is that it benefits Apple, that's hardly a ringing endorsement. And every other phone on the market can run applications from anywhere without needing corporate approval, so the answer to "What the hell is Apple supposed to do" is "Do what every other company manages to do".
In other words, Apple is like a lot of companies, including Microsoft and AT&T ... it's owned and operated by dicks.
I don't see anything that did wrong here.
For about 200 ms I started to take you seriously, and then I started laughing. Good job.
With Boetox?
+5 Fucking Epic
We (overseas people) have the same right to get those jobs in a global economy.
Sure you do! Likewise, we people have the right to do what we think is best for us regardless of your perceived "rights". Keep that firmly in mind: too many other countries seem to think that the United States (or China, or any other major industrial power) is somehow obligated to share. We're not.
There is a reason we're called Massholes here.
Trust me, we have plenty of Passholes here in the Midwest. Usually some dimbulb in a giant SUV, with a cellphone plastered to the side of their head and a kilowatt of incessant pounding rhythm irritating everyone in the immediate vicinity. I spend twenty-five miles or so on the expressway every day, and believe me, IQs are dropping all around. I don't know if it's people damaging their brains from the RF output of their cell phones, or if we're just becoming a culture of sociopathic fucktards, but man, it's murder out there.
Just name each machine with an ID and put the information in a spreadsheet somewhere. It's not a complicated problem.
Too much work. I just call all my machines "Bob".
Comcast's management also has other things in common with squirrels.
They always have nuts in their mouths?
No, their customer's and, like squirrels, sometimes they get hungry.
If Comcast is prevented from acquiring someone due to federal interference, they will probably sue because they will claim that the free market is being tampered with.
As the summary states, Comcast has an enormous stash of (not-so-hard-earned) cash. They're acting like squirrels: if they see food they don't need right away, they just shove it into a hole somewhere until they find a use for it. That probably should not be allowed: it's one thing to put something away for a rainy day, but when corporations end up so flush with cash that they can influence entire markets and ruthlessly suppress competition something is wrong. It also means they're probably significantly overcharging for their goods and services (as an ex-Comcast-down-to-the-depths-of-Hell subscriber I can attest to that.)
Comcast's management also has other things in common with squirrels.
Oh, sure. How could you have Judgment Day without a bunch of lawyers present?
You know, I think that's a great idea. We might get a continuance!
You might feel you have the write to copy it to your Iphone but you dont.
Actually, I do have the write (sic.) I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. For the time being, I'm going to assume you work for a cable company and have an axe to grind.
When the boot is on the other foot.
Good one, Jack!
I suppose this is what happens when you appoint a half-dozen ex-RIAA attorneys to top spots in the Justice Department. President Obama assured us that rules were put into place to prevent this sort of activity, but apparently that doesn't matter. Not that I'm the least bit surprised by that. Frankly, I think the Justice Department should have better things to occupy their time than civil lawsuits. That kind of bias ought to be considered malfeasance in office, or something else worthy of immediate dismissal.
1.92 million dollars for copyright violations by an individual? Now that's Justice for you. Personally, I've never believed that the law should be used to make examples out of people, no matter how distasteful their crimes. That simply breeds more disrespect for the law, which is something the RIAA is apparently unable to understand. They will continue to reap the rewards of that lack of understanding, regardless of what ultimately happens to Jammie Thomas.
Punishment should fit the crime: otherwise it is just government-sanctioned brutality.
If you can figure out when fatigued metal will break under a certain sheer force, that's approximately the same class of problem. It hasn't happened yet, AFAIK.
True, I suppose ... although the scale of the problem is somewhat greater. Rock also tends to flow under pressure, so it's not a simple matter of shear force.
Under Mussolini, Italy became highly dependent upon Germany.
I presume he thought he'd come down on the winning side.
Would this include every tinfoil-hat wearing /. reader as well?
No, because tinfoil hats only pick up the Universe, not U-Verse.
Do you want to be sued by every whacko that do not understand the product and decides to sue ?
Well, then they should move to have their online business units fall under Common Carrier regulation, just like their telephone services. What, that would cost money? We'd have to live with QOS standards and pay fines if we don't comply with the regs?
Maybe if they get hit with a few expensive class-action suits they'll rethink the exemption they paid for from the Communications Act that allows data services to be treated differently than phone service.
If there isn't, why don't they just turn the port off completely instead of sending data through it that nobody can use?
PR, I would assume. They can claim that they're making data available without actually making it available. "The port is active, but if people don't know how to use it it's not our fault."
Wait until the kids that grew up with broadband are old enough to approach venture capitalists, to lobby congress, to go to court. Then we'll see some change.
Probably not (although I hope I'm wrong.) We're being trained to accept this bullshit as the price we have to pay to receive our entertainment. Personally, I like to keep things in an open format so I can transcode them to, say, my G1 and watch them when I want to, wherever I want to. I guess I'm one of those people that hasn't been adequately monetized yet.