Obama is an appeaser in the Neville Chamberlain mold.
There's an important distinction: Chamberlain loved his country. Obama loves the world.
Obama has one thing in common with all megalomaniacs: he loves himself. But that's no surprise: it's a requirement for anyone seeking that particular position.
Heck, this system will uses lots of RF antennas for input (such as the tracking radars)...a good back door could be triggered remotely, so long as you were running the same firmware revision as before. So even if you cut the cables linking the control centers together, one country could still remotely disable the defenses of another.
The only global cooperation here is the willingness for the global military industrial complex to bleed the taxpayer dry. The 'ballistic' missile shield is completely useless against cruise missiles. Now you have stealth cruise missiles, supersonic cruise missiles, long range cruise missiles, their now planning long range hypersonic cruise missles, so really who is kidding who here.
Not to mention orbital weapons platforms, thermonuclear or even just inertial (put a guidance system on a rock and drop it from high orbit.) It's a hell of a lot harder to hit an object that's coming from space. Are such already in place? I have no idea, but I do know that a lot of Shuttle missions were black. Probably just surveillance or communications equipment, but who knows.
More likely we need Russia on line to defend against the only country likely to be a powerful near future military adversary.... China (and possibly North Korea). Iran doesn't have what it takes.
Pakistan will be running on US funds for the foreseeable future and will be no threat to anyone but itself.
Terrorists use bombs, not intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I tend to agree. If there's a World War III, and it is fought with nuclear missiles of one kind or another, there's a possibility it will start between Russia and China. They share a huge border, and they go back a ways. It wouldn't hurt Russia to be on-board with us so far as deterrent and mutual defense are concerned. Russia may eventually end up becoming an ally. How does the old saw go? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Of course, it would probably be cheaper just to smuggle a few hundred tactical nukes into the enemy's territory and set them off when you need to. Anti-missile shields don't work well if the explosives are already in place. The U.S. and China, given the amount of material shipped in and out of each country, would make the easiest targets for such a plan.
If having all those corporations in the country tax-free is so good, then WHY is Ireland going bankrupt?
Because they are not related. The country is going bankrupt because the government gave guarantees to a large commercial bank and a number of commercial/consumer banks that had lended heavily to support a ridiculous property bubble. They didn't do proper due dilligence on the guarantees, were lied to by the bankers about the size of the hole they were in and now the tax payer is now faced with a debt so large that the 'real' economy can't possibly generate enough revenue to repay.
I was given to understand that the reason the Ipad hasn't succeeded in a business environment is because the Windows based Tablet already dominates that market. I know the local hospital purchased a ton of tablets recently when they underwent a huge remodeling.
Except that's not what the article or the summary say. It is about how the iPad is supplanting those traditional tablets.
It isn't the first time the article has been full of shit. I work in 2 government departments, they bought a stack of ipad's with the assumption that the intitial trial would lead to full scale rollout and do as the article suggested. It took all of about 3 weeks before most of the 30 trial ipads been returned to IT (think the number stands at 22 returned) and they went back to laptops/tablets. The Ipad is nice but it just isn't a good work tool, it is something for entertainment.
I'm not surprised at that result, and I agree: it's an entertainment device but then again... so what? Apple has never shown much interest in the business market. There are a whole host of headaches and liabilities (not the least of which is support) that Apple Computer is perfectly willing to leave to the likes of Dell, HP and others. The fact the the iPad (or the iAnything, including the Macintosh) don't serve as well in business roles as software and hardware meant for that purpose is likewise no surprise. If you want a business computer, buy a business computer from the hundreds of vendors that sell them. If you want what Apple has to offer, that's great, but it's best not to pretend that it's something that it isn't, and was never intended to be. People that do might as well complain that their PCs aren't any good at making mixed drinks.
It doesn't matter, Apple is evil. And closed. And all that other stuff. Stop pointing out the obvious benefits of Apple's approach. Don't you know it doesn't adhere to our strict open philosophy? It doesn't matter that people seem to like it, it seems to work, and it seems to be secure.
God, that is so true. In my business many of the people who use our software are older people, folks that have been in operations for decades. And you're absolutely correct: we are always getting requests to make things more easy to read.
And frankly, I'm at that point in my life where I realize just how much of modern consumer electronics are a young person's game. I remember when the very first Casio scientific calculator watch came out. Little teensy-tiny buttons, watch-sized display... yet, I could read and use it just fine. That was a quarter century ago. I bought a few of them at the time, figuring they wouldn't be on the market long (and I was right.) Not that it matters now: I look at the thing and all I see is a reddish grey blur.
I was more confused by the attempted assocation between Apple and freedom.
Aw, come on, Apple fanboys, it's a perfectly legitimate comment: I had the exact same reaction as CarpetShark. Moderate with honesty, not with your adrenal glands.
You can't tell me you're not aware of the controversy regarding Apple's management of the iPhone Market (or maybe you are, perhaps in your minds there can be no controversy) as one example. You may not like it, and it's obvious that you consider trading freedom for technical polish to be a worthy one, but it's the truth nevertheless.
Apple was told to go nibble on a shotgun last time around by the norwegian consumer board;)
Ripping dvds is legal, as is ripping bluray.
A while back someone pointed out that one of the laws being passed would make most of the politicians in the room criminals as they all had mp3-players. The law died faaast.
While I have a nagging worry in the back of my head I'm not -that- worried. Unlike the US system we have a myriad of political parties and there isnt really two big ones full of asshats in the same way.
I hope you're right. Really, I do. I look at what these criminal cartels have been doing to legal systems worldwide and I just shake my head in disgust.
Ripping DVDs is actually entirely legal in the U.S. as well, so long as it's for personal use (e.g., you can't distribute the copies.) The problem is, our much (and quite correctly) maligned DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) makes it illegal to traffic in software that would allow us to exercise those rights, and the vendors of copyrighted materials are not required to make it possible for us to do so. So, in effect, while we have the right, for all practical purposes it might as well not be there.
Yeah, twisted I know. Say, does Norway have any use for experienced software engineers?
and can prove it with the text of the bill that accomplishes his goals while doing that, then he may claim he's stopping theft without abrogating the First Amendment.
It's worse than that: he's not claiming that he won't violate the Amendment, he's claiming that it doesn't matter because that right simply doesn't apply in this case. Pretty twisted reasoning, but I think we've come to expect that from this man and his friends.
Technically speaking, that's not quite correct, as prison officials can hold a person in solitary confinement indefinitely, which would effectively prevent an individual from free associate, assembly and most speech of any sort.
That's very true, of course, and such treatment of prisoners carries its own share of Constitutional issues. But I think my point is still legitimate, that even a convict doesn't lose his right to free speech. That the government can, possibly illegally, deny him the ability to exercise a right doesn't mean that he's lost that right.
The fundamental problem here is that law enforcement and the courts have, quite unreasonably in my opinion, failed to connect the dots.
No no. I think they just don't *care*: it would be tantamount to admitting they don't have the right to judge you.
Oh... the courts may or may not care, but there are certain people in government who do care. Very much. That they are megalomaniacal sociopaths doesn't change the fact that they have the power to screw everything up for the rest of us.
That is a far more serious and permanent deprivation of liberty than the temporary loss of physical access to your laptop.
Uh, no. You can't just take someones property away. Not even temporarily. Again, the fourth amendment. They can't just make this stuff up (well, they can and they do, but it's not constitutional).
One might reasonably be deprived of one's laptop for a few minutes or even hours in service of some important public purpose
Important in this sense must mean whatever the government decides is important, because I certainly don't think this is important. I actually would like to follow the fourth amendment.
This is not reasonable at all.
It *is* in the era of electronic data.
Unless you were going around telling everyone about the data on your laptop, there is no reason they should be able to take it away to 'search' it, and the fourth amendment agrees.
Yes indeed. And a Federal judge ruled a couple of years ago that encryption keys and passwords, if they are in your head, cannot be demanded by law enforcement because Fourth Amendment protections still apply. Now, if you write down that password and the cops find it in the course of a legal search, it's fair game. But keep it in your head and they can't legally require you divulge it. Given that border searches are exempt from ordinary Constitutional protections that doesn't matter much in this case.
From a practical perspective, it's trivial to make such "searches" of laptops and other digital media irrelevant. Just keep your laptop's hard disk empty of anything confidential, and only access that data via the Internet when you arrive at your destination. The fact is, anyone who has anything important (from a terrorism perspective, certainly) is going to be fully aware of this and will take steps to make any border search fruitless. I know I will, just as a matter of principle: I don't like people going thorugh my stuff, nobody does, especially when you never know what they'll do with what they find, or if you'll ever see your property again. The Founders seemed to grok that. Too bad the TSA does not. It's also too bad that we can't force all government employees, including Congress and the TSA's upper management, to live under the same rules that we do. But they're royalty, exempt from suffering under the impact of their own fucking laws.
I remember being irritated the last time I flew from my home State to LAX. First, the line was so backed up that it ran up two flights of stairs. I was standing there, waiting to get down to the first floor where the security checkpoint was, when this Indian dude in an airport employee jacket comes along, and a heavily-accented voice said, "Please have your papers ready. Your papers, please." We all got the Nazi reference (even if this individual did not) and hearing it in such inoffensive tones was just hysterical. So at least I had some comic relief.
Then, when I finally got to the security area, the guard told me that my "ziplock was too large" and proceeded to dump the entire contents of my suitcase onto a table, underwear and all, in front of hundreds of other people. Presumably he was trying to find the hidden weapon in my shorts. I thought about telling him that was looking in the wrong place, but I figured if I did he'd pat me down and, frankly, I wasn't in the mood. He then proceeded to completely ignore my laptop and other electronics. Logical, because, as everyone knows by now, Fruit of the Loom is the weapon of choice of all professional terrorists.
He did maintain a polite, courteous demeanor throughout the entire exercise, I will give him that much.
It wasn't a practical necessity in the era of paper documents and scriveners to draw distinctions between information and the documents that carry it. It *is* in the era of electronic data.
Actually, what is important in the digital era is that the law very clearly state that, for the purposes of maintaining our civil liberties, there is no difference. Anything else is going to result in just the sort of abuses we're already seeing, and will continue to see. That's not complicated, and my original point stills stands: the Founders expected us to be able to make a reasonable and logical extension of the Fourth Amendment to cover future advances. The fact that we have proven incapable of that is a failure on our part, not theirs.
I understand the standards of proof are lower in civil court, but even those standards are not being met in my opinion. Then again, I know about things like assuming a static IP address on a DHCP network, routers with a tendency to spontaneously reset to factory default that includes open Wifi, etc.
It would be interesting to see what happens to a defendant who drives all over town, downloads 100 files from various open networks, walks into court, and says, "Before you get too excited about the plaintiff's evidence against me, I just downloaded 100 files from other people's networks all over town. How should THEIR cases be handled, and what makes you so sure that such actions are not a factor in THIS case?"
I think it will be interesting when these little pricks decide to go after a software engineer or a network expert, and then try to pull that "Your Honor, it's a fact that the IP address uniquely identifies the individual infringer" horsehocky and get ripped to shreds. I'm sure that they've already picked up on more than a few such people and, assuming they have any kind of a vetting process at all, wisely chose to leave them alone. These cases are entirely substantiated by utter technological ignorance on the part of the juries, the judges and the lawyers. 95% of the Slashdot population, if put in such a situation, could easily explain to their lawyers just how far off-base these cases really are, and how to mount a very effective defense. 95% of the general public, on the other hand, will have no choice but to believe the claims of "ha, we got you cold, buddy, now pay up."
The litigation is questionable and is used as a means to threaten thousands of people (some innocent) into simply paying up by settling which most would have done.
It's a business model, not trying to right a wrong.
The fact that alleged copyright infringers may not see the inside of a court room due to it is secondary.
Yes, it's an abuse of the legal system that was pioneered (so far as I'm aware) by the RIAA, in order to a. make money and b. bypass any semblance of due process. This idea of winning default judgments in venues that are far removed from the alleged infringers was a cornerstone of that practice, in that it would grant the media company lawyers an instant and inexpensive club useful for mass intimidation, while simultaneously making it difficult if not impossible to mount any kind of defense.
This Judge appears to have a clear understanding of the tactic, and she did not like it. She gets points for understanding that this is a business model, a revenue source, not an attempt at legitimate redress and gets bonus points for putting the skids on it. Several judges involved in the RIAA's ongoing rampage wrote similar decisions: I hope this starts to become popular.
Now, to be fair, this "U.S. Copyright Group" was very up front about what they were going to do, and why, and bragged about it as a way for movie makers to "monetize" copyright infringement. Of course, they failed to advertise that it was just as amoral and unethical as the RIAA's similar compaign, and just as destined to hurt innocent people.
Yay, another victory for pirates! Right, Slashdotters?
When did this place become a pro-piracy advocacy site?
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? RIAA and MPAA shills are not appreciated here, just so you know. Alternative perspectives, yes, but shills by definition have no viewpoint worthy of acknowledgement, much less discussion.
I agree, but career politicians are not in the business of appointing individuals who harbor crazy notions, such as returning power from the state, to the people.
Or that their job is not to make law but, rather, to interpret it.
I don't want them doing that, necessarily... a well-written law should require relatively little interpretation, only proper application.
Slashdot Mirror
I was told that voided my warranty. Such a shame :/
True. Also, may I point out that tablets make an excellent drug delivery system, so it's not really fair to say that tablets haven't taken off.
Obama is an appeaser in the Neville Chamberlain mold.
There's an important distinction: Chamberlain loved his country. Obama loves the world.
Obama has one thing in common with all megalomaniacs: he loves himself. But that's no surprise: it's a requirement for anyone seeking that particular position.
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
Simple. Not all Russians are evil. But some are.
Of course, you can say that about anyone.
Heck, this system will uses lots of RF antennas for input (such as the tracking radars)...a good back door could be triggered remotely, so long as you were running the same firmware revision as before. So even if you cut the cables linking the control centers together, one country could still remotely disable the defenses of another.
Joachim: "Our shields are dropping!"
Kahn: "Hit the override. The override!"
The only global cooperation here is the willingness for the global military industrial complex to bleed the taxpayer dry. The 'ballistic' missile shield is completely useless against cruise missiles. Now you have stealth cruise missiles, supersonic cruise missiles, long range cruise missiles, their now planning long range hypersonic cruise missles, so really who is kidding who here.
Not to mention orbital weapons platforms, thermonuclear or even just inertial (put a guidance system on a rock and drop it from high orbit.) It's a hell of a lot harder to hit an object that's coming from space. Are such already in place? I have no idea, but I do know that a lot of Shuttle missions were black. Probably just surveillance or communications equipment, but who knows.
More likely we need Russia on line to defend against the only country likely to be a powerful near future military adversary.... China (and possibly North Korea). Iran doesn't have what it takes.
Pakistan will be running on US funds for the foreseeable future and will be no threat to anyone but itself.
Terrorists use bombs, not intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I tend to agree. If there's a World War III, and it is fought with nuclear missiles of one kind or another, there's a possibility it will start between Russia and China. They share a huge border, and they go back a ways. It wouldn't hurt Russia to be on-board with us so far as deterrent and mutual defense are concerned. Russia may eventually end up becoming an ally. How does the old saw go? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Of course, it would probably be cheaper just to smuggle a few hundred tactical nukes into the enemy's territory and set them off when you need to. Anti-missile shields don't work well if the explosives are already in place. The U.S. and China, given the amount of material shipped in and out of each country, would make the easiest targets for such a plan.
If having all those corporations in the country tax-free is so good, then WHY is Ireland going bankrupt?
Because they are not related. The country is going bankrupt because the government gave guarantees to a large commercial bank and a number of commercial/consumer banks that had lended heavily to support a ridiculous property bubble. They didn't do proper due dilligence on the guarantees, were lied to by the bankers about the size of the hole they were in and now the tax payer is now faced with a debt so large that the 'real' economy can't possibly generate enough revenue to repay.
There's a decent explanation here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Why-the-Irish-Crisis-is-Going-usnews-4028366968.html?x=0
Hm. I'm an American, and that sounds eerily familiar.
I was given to understand that the reason the Ipad hasn't succeeded in a business environment is because the Windows based Tablet already dominates that market. I know the local hospital purchased a ton of tablets recently when they underwent a huge remodeling.
Except that's not what the article or the summary say. It is about how the iPad is supplanting those traditional tablets.
It isn't the first time the article has been full of shit. I work in 2 government departments, they bought a stack of ipad's with the assumption that the intitial trial would lead to full scale rollout and do as the article suggested. It took all of about 3 weeks before most of the 30 trial ipads been returned to IT (think the number stands at 22 returned) and they went back to laptops/tablets. The Ipad is nice but it just isn't a good work tool, it is something for entertainment.
I'm not surprised at that result, and I agree: it's an entertainment device but then again ... so what? Apple has never shown much interest in the business market. There are a whole host of headaches and liabilities (not the least of which is support) that Apple Computer is perfectly willing to leave to the likes of Dell, HP and others. The fact the the iPad (or the iAnything, including the Macintosh) don't serve as well in business roles as software and hardware meant for that purpose is likewise no surprise. If you want a business computer, buy a business computer from the hundreds of vendors that sell them. If you want what Apple has to offer, that's great, but it's best not to pretend that it's something that it isn't, and was never intended to be. People that do might as well complain that their PCs aren't any good at making mixed drinks.
It doesn't matter, Apple is evil. And closed. And all that other stuff. Stop pointing out the obvious benefits of Apple's approach. Don't you know it doesn't adhere to our strict open philosophy? It doesn't matter that people seem to like it, it seems to work, and it seems to be secure.
"Seems".
Older people hate "small displays".
God, that is so true. In my business many of the people who use our software are older people, folks that have been in operations for decades. And you're absolutely correct: we are always getting requests to make things more easy to read.
... yet, I could read and use it just fine. That was a quarter century ago. I bought a few of them at the time, figuring they wouldn't be on the market long (and I was right.) Not that it matters now: I look at the thing and all I see is a reddish grey blur.
And frankly, I'm at that point in my life where I realize just how much of modern consumer electronics are a young person's game. I remember when the very first Casio scientific calculator watch came out. Little teensy-tiny buttons, watch-sized display
The aging process sucks, any way you look at it.
>> why tablets have never taken off in business
No cupholders.
The reason tablets have never taken off is because you have to press that stylus really, really hard to cut into the stone.
I was more confused by the attempted assocation between Apple and freedom.
Aw, come on, Apple fanboys, it's a perfectly legitimate comment: I had the exact same reaction as CarpetShark. Moderate with honesty, not with your adrenal glands.
You can't tell me you're not aware of the controversy regarding Apple's management of the iPhone Market (or maybe you are, perhaps in your minds there can be no controversy) as one example. You may not like it, and it's obvious that you consider trading freedom for technical polish to be a worthy one, but it's the truth nevertheless.
And yes, the truth can hurt.
Apple was told to go nibble on a shotgun last time around by the norwegian consumer board ;)
Ripping dvds is legal, as is ripping bluray.
A while back someone pointed out that one of the laws being passed would make most of the politicians in the room criminals as they all had mp3-players. The law died faaast.
While I have a nagging worry in the back of my head I'm not -that- worried. Unlike the US system we have a myriad of political parties and there isnt really two big ones full of asshats in the same way.
I hope you're right. Really, I do. I look at what these criminal cartels have been doing to legal systems worldwide and I just shake my head in disgust.
Ripping DVDs is actually entirely legal in the U.S. as well, so long as it's for personal use (e.g., you can't distribute the copies.) The problem is, our much (and quite correctly) maligned DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) makes it illegal to traffic in software that would allow us to exercise those rights, and the vendors of copyrighted materials are not required to make it possible for us to do so. So, in effect, while we have the right, for all practical purposes it might as well not be there.
Yeah, twisted I know. Say, does Norway have any use for experienced software engineers?
Just asking.
and can prove it with the text of the bill that accomplishes his goals while doing that, then he may claim he's stopping theft without abrogating the First Amendment.
It's worse than that: he's not claiming that he won't violate the Amendment, he's claiming that it doesn't matter because that right simply doesn't apply in this case. Pretty twisted reasoning, but I think we've come to expect that from this man and his friends.
Technically speaking, that's not quite correct, as prison officials can hold a person in solitary confinement indefinitely, which would effectively prevent an individual from free associate, assembly and most speech of any sort.
That's very true, of course, and such treatment of prisoners carries its own share of Constitutional issues. But I think my point is still legitimate, that even a convict doesn't lose his right to free speech. That the government can, possibly illegally, deny him the ability to exercise a right doesn't mean that he's lost that right.
The fundamental problem here is that law enforcement and the courts have, quite unreasonably in my opinion, failed to connect the dots.
No no. I think they just don't *care*: it would be tantamount to admitting they don't have the right to judge you.
Oh ... the courts may or may not care, but there are certain people in government who do care. Very much. That they are megalomaniacal sociopaths doesn't change the fact that they have the power to screw everything up for the rest of us.
That is a far more serious and permanent deprivation of liberty than the temporary loss of physical access to your laptop.
Uh, no. You can't just take someones property away. Not even temporarily. Again, the fourth amendment. They can't just make this stuff up (well, they can and they do, but it's not constitutional).
One might reasonably be deprived of one's laptop for a few minutes or even hours in service of some important public purpose
Important in this sense must mean whatever the government decides is important, because I certainly don't think this is important. I actually would like to follow the fourth amendment.
This is not reasonable at all.
It *is* in the era of electronic data.
Unless you were going around telling everyone about the data on your laptop, there is no reason they should be able to take it away to 'search' it, and the fourth amendment agrees.
Yes indeed. And a Federal judge ruled a couple of years ago that encryption keys and passwords, if they are in your head, cannot be demanded by law enforcement because Fourth Amendment protections still apply. Now, if you write down that password and the cops find it in the course of a legal search, it's fair game. But keep it in your head and they can't legally require you divulge it. Given that border searches are exempt from ordinary Constitutional protections that doesn't matter much in this case.
From a practical perspective, it's trivial to make such "searches" of laptops and other digital media irrelevant. Just keep your laptop's hard disk empty of anything confidential, and only access that data via the Internet when you arrive at your destination. The fact is, anyone who has anything important (from a terrorism perspective, certainly) is going to be fully aware of this and will take steps to make any border search fruitless. I know I will, just as a matter of principle: I don't like people going thorugh my stuff, nobody does, especially when you never know what they'll do with what they find, or if you'll ever see your property again. The Founders seemed to grok that. Too bad the TSA does not. It's also too bad that we can't force all government employees, including Congress and the TSA's upper management, to live under the same rules that we do. But they're royalty, exempt from suffering under the impact of their own fucking laws.
I remember being irritated the last time I flew from my home State to LAX. First, the line was so backed up that it ran up two flights of stairs. I was standing there, waiting to get down to the first floor where the security checkpoint was, when this Indian dude in an airport employee jacket comes along, and a heavily-accented voice said, "Please have your papers ready. Your papers, please." We all got the Nazi reference (even if this individual did not) and hearing it in such inoffensive tones was just hysterical. So at least I had some comic relief.
Then, when I finally got to the security area, the guard told me that my "ziplock was too large" and proceeded to dump the entire contents of my suitcase onto a table, underwear and all, in front of hundreds of other people. Presumably he was trying to find the hidden weapon in my shorts. I thought about telling him that was looking in the wrong place, but I figured if I did he'd pat me down and, frankly, I wasn't in the mood. He then proceeded to completely ignore my laptop and other electronics. Logical, because, as everyone knows by now, Fruit of the Loom is the weapon of choice of all professional terrorists.
He did maintain a polite, courteous demeanor throughout the entire exercise, I will give him that much.
It wasn't a practical necessity in the era of paper documents and scriveners to draw distinctions between information and the documents that carry it. It *is* in the era of electronic data.
Actually, what is important in the digital era is that the law very clearly state that, for the purposes of maintaining our civil liberties, there is no difference. Anything else is going to result in just the sort of abuses we're already seeing, and will continue to see. That's not complicated, and my original point stills stands: the Founders expected us to be able to make a reasonable and logical extension of the Fourth Amendment to cover future advances. The fact that we have proven incapable of that is a failure on our part, not theirs.
Stop Uwe Boll Now. Don't wait until you or a loved one accidentally sees one of his movies.
{sigh} too late. Is there an antidote?
If people stole and presumably watch the movie Far Cry, *they* should be suing the studio for emotional distress or something.
*NO ONE* should be subjected to a Uwe Boll film.
I watched "Bloodrayne" without checking any of the credits first, and as I watched it I remember thinking, "Gagh, this is almost worthy of Uwe Boll."
Theft has a definition, it is not synonymous with copyright infringement.
Theft has a legal and non-legal definition, and neither one is synonymous with 'steal.'
Yes, but only the legal definition counts.
I understand the standards of proof are lower in civil court, but even those standards are not being met in my opinion. Then again, I know about things like assuming a static IP address on a DHCP network, routers with a tendency to spontaneously reset to factory default that includes open Wifi, etc.
It would be interesting to see what happens to a defendant who drives all over town, downloads 100 files from various open networks, walks into court, and says, "Before you get too excited about the plaintiff's evidence against me, I just downloaded 100 files from other people's networks all over town. How should THEIR cases be handled, and what makes you so sure that such actions are not a factor in THIS case?"
I think it will be interesting when these little pricks decide to go after a software engineer or a network expert, and then try to pull that "Your Honor, it's a fact that the IP address uniquely identifies the individual infringer" horsehocky and get ripped to shreds. I'm sure that they've already picked up on more than a few such people and, assuming they have any kind of a vetting process at all, wisely chose to leave them alone. These cases are entirely substantiated by utter technological ignorance on the part of the juries, the judges and the lawyers. 95% of the Slashdot population, if put in such a situation, could easily explain to their lawyers just how far off-base these cases really are, and how to mount a very effective defense. 95% of the general public, on the other hand, will have no choice but to believe the claims of "ha, we got you cold, buddy, now pay up."
The litigation is questionable and is used as a means to threaten thousands of people (some innocent) into simply paying up by settling which most would have done. It's a business model, not trying to right a wrong. The fact that alleged copyright infringers may not see the inside of a court room due to it is secondary.
Yes, it's an abuse of the legal system that was pioneered (so far as I'm aware) by the RIAA, in order to a. make money and b. bypass any semblance of due process. This idea of winning default judgments in venues that are far removed from the alleged infringers was a cornerstone of that practice, in that it would grant the media company lawyers an instant and inexpensive club useful for mass intimidation, while simultaneously making it difficult if not impossible to mount any kind of defense.
This Judge appears to have a clear understanding of the tactic, and she did not like it. She gets points for understanding that this is a business model, a revenue source, not an attempt at legitimate redress and gets bonus points for putting the skids on it. Several judges involved in the RIAA's ongoing rampage wrote similar decisions: I hope this starts to become popular.
Now, to be fair, this "U.S. Copyright Group" was very up front about what they were going to do, and why, and bragged about it as a way for movie makers to "monetize" copyright infringement. Of course, they failed to advertise that it was just as amoral and unethical as the RIAA's similar compaign, and just as destined to hurt innocent people.
Yay, another victory for pirates! Right, Slashdotters?
When did this place become a pro-piracy advocacy site?
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? RIAA and MPAA shills are not appreciated here, just so you know. Alternative perspectives, yes, but shills by definition have no viewpoint worthy of acknowledgement, much less discussion.
I agree, but career politicians are not in the business of appointing individuals who harbor crazy notions, such as returning power from the state, to the people.
Or that their job is not to make law but, rather, to interpret it.
I don't want them doing that, necessarily ... a well-written law should require relatively little interpretation, only proper application.