As are the people who might want to buy a figure like this one.
Personally, I have no interest in anything that creepy, but given that Apple is being such a legal dick about this (and many other things recently) I'd buy one on principle.
BR
And then I'd stash it away, unopened, until I retire and then I'd put it on E-Bay.
Time for Google to have a big banner saying, "Interested in providing free news to the entire world? Give us your reports directly, as we no longer aggregate ___, ___, and ___."
I just think it's a weird contradiction for people to get on their soapbox simply because he was American.
No offense, but I don't actually see your point. We're Americans and are subject to our own laws and the whims of our political leaders: basic self-interest makes the fate of one of our own more relevant than a person in a distant land. When the public trust is violated to such a degree, any of us, innocent or otherwise, is subject to assassination by accusation.
Granted, it would be weird for a Canadian or French or Egyptian or Pakistani to get on their soapbox because the Federal Government whacked a U.S. citizen without just cause, due process, or any of the other things for which our legal system is famous. I mean, it's not their problem, and would at most be a curiosity. On the other hand, it's not at all out of line for we Americans to get bent when our government does something that is clearly not in our best interests, and violates our laws and our traditions. That's the case for citizens of any country, when you get right down to it.
Maybe if we'd been having discussions like this ten, twenty or thirty years ago none of this would be happening. If you're trying to keep matters from going from bad to worse, a soapbox is a good place to start.
We now live in a world that simply by order of the president, any US citizen...
You know one of the reasons the rest of the world thinks you suck?
Yeah, that's it right there, only US citizens have rights in your eyes.
How you derived that nonsense from what the GP said is beyond me. Besides, we're in the process of criticizing ourselves in this thread and we don't need irrational comments from the foreign peanut gallery.
And in a few weeks it wont matter. All they have to do is point a finger in your general direction and you are 'disappeared'. Then you have to pay lots of money to fight your way back online.
Disappearing Google might be a bit tougher than that. Even the DoJ would hesitate before going after Google. Or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or anyone else in that league. Taking down a Web presence with the power and reach of Google would bring down a global shitstorm of hate and discontent.
That's fine for the big boys... us small fry will be so much SOPA toast.
Yes, but unfortunately such automation is Google's claim to fame, and was naturally the direction to which they turned. Perhaps they underestimated the potential for abuse.
+5 Insightful? "DMCA itself is good"? Are you serous? It most definitely is not "good": that abomination should never, ever have been signed into law in its current form. Have you read it? If not, I suggest you do. Yes, SOPA is worse, but keep in mind that an MPAA law firm wrote the DMCA, and handed the thing to their tame Congressman for submission. We know this because a reporter extracted the metadata from the original Word document, and found the names of all the attorneys that had modified or reviewed it. It was not designed to balanced or fair, or to be a reasonable augmentation to copyright to accommodate technological advances. It was, purely and simply, all they thought they could get away with at the time. Look at the history of copyright extension in the U.S. the DMCA was only one of a long line of unholy modifications to copyright law that have done nothing but screw the American people, harm the public domain, and tie up an incredible quantity of court time on issues that often have nothing to do with copyright! It's an excellent period in U.S. history to become an "intellectual property" (whatever the Hell that actually means) lawyer, I suppose. That's another reason why these laws get passed: certain sectors of the legal profession make a lot of money.
So now, a decade down the road, they're pulling out all the stops, buying all the Congresspeople they can, to finally and permanently remove copyright from its Constitutionally-mandated role to "promote the advancement of the useful arts and sciences." Remember who you are dealing with here: you cannot argue with them, you cannot reason with them, and they absolutely will not stop. Period. End of statement.
Personally, I believe the practice of public officials taking bribes from foreign-owned corporations should be considered treasonous. But that's just me. I also have a fond wish that the Department of Justice would expel the ex-RIAA attorneys that our friend and savior Barack Obama appointed, and go after the corporations and corrupt Federal officials that have turned our patent and copyright systems into a corporatist welfare system.
Then why can i buy DVD ripping software from staples for 29.99?
Probably because they haven't been sued yet. A number of software companies have been put out of business because of the copy-protection provision of the DMCA. Possibly an exception was allowed for that purpose, I don't know. But I doubt it.
Members of Congress have and never will eat their own dog food anyways. So it's far worse than you think.
No, I have a pretty good idea just how bad it is: I agree with you. Congress has their own private healthcare system: they don't care what happens to us because, like most of the laws they make, they don't have to suffer the consequences of their malfeasance.
Nonsense. Just look at the statistics - healthcare in the rest of the world is just as good, and even adjusted, costs far, far less. That's an accurate metric.
I've heard that before. And if you'd stop jerking your knee and read my post, you'd understand that my complaint is not with the idea of socialized medicine, but with the implementation. For the most part, our Federal Government has failed miserably at delivering anything resembling cost-effective, comprehensive medical care. And don't even bother to bring up Medicare: it's rife with fraud and isn't remotely comprehensive... I had to go down that road with my father once his private insurer (Aetna, as it happens) jacked up his premiums to over twenty grand a year. Fortunately he suffered total renal failure, which is one of the few conditions that will automatically get you Medicare regardless of age since he was only fifty-nine at the time. They would cover treatment and medication that was directly related to his kidney issue and dialysis (for which I was grateful) but that was it, and I went way into the red covering everything else out of my pocket.
Point is, I for one do not trust my government (any of my various governments) to be able to competently manage anything as complex as national health care with out bungling it, or becoming completely subservient to the private sector. Either way, the American people get screwed.
False. The only thing you need to do is COMPARE your private sector option with a public one. There is no absolute, only relative comparison between the two.
From what I heard, seems like your private sector has proven, time and time again to be far more cruel, far more (self)destructive and far more egoistical then public one.
True, as it happens. And "what you heard" is irrelevant: it's apparent that you don't understand what is really going on here. And, as I pointed out, America has turned into a corporatist nightmare, so you the dichotomy between the public and private sectors is no longer so clear-cut.
In the US, the same ones that run things like the TSA.
That, actually, is the crux of the matter. Any discussion of whether socialized medicine is "better" or "worse" than private insurance must take into account the relative trustworthiness of a given country's bureaucracy. Ours has proven itself, time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with our money. Neither, unfortunately, can our private insurers, which leaves us in something of a bind. The solution to such problems has traditionally been heavily-regulated private-sector organizations providing the actual service, with the government making damn sure they do it right. The heavily corporatist leanings of our current regime makes that unworkable, and the idea of giving those 535 sociopaths collectively known as "Congress" complete control over our health care is not a viable solution here either. That should scare anyone who is paying attention to what the United States Federal Government has become, that is, a danger to itself and everyone subject to it.
When you get right down to cases, insurance of any kind is fundamentally socialist in nature. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of many paying into the kitty, and some withdrawing in time of need. A number of very large corporations self-insure their employees: that can work out much better than private insurance. In any event, the issue is primarily one of administration: Germany, for example, does very well with socialized medicine because they have a fundamentally more trustworthy bureaucratic setup than the United States has ever had. Consequently, socializing our medical system, especially the way Obama wants to do it, is probably doomed to failure. Even if it proves effective, odds are it will be so expensive that we'll go broke trying to maintain it.
Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they didn't happen.
Windows 7 is configured by default to restart immediately after a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) or other major system problem. This reboot usually happens too fast to see the error message on screen.
I've had Windows 7 BSOD (actually, I've seen a few different colors), usually because of a driver problem at startup. The last one was due to a multi-port USB -> RS232/485 serial converter. Installed the drivers and *POW*, instant BSOD when we restarted the system. To Win7's credit, we let it run an automatic repair (which took about an hour) and when it was done everything worked fine. I have no idea what it did, but it did manage to fix itself.
The converter used an FTDI chipset: I've had driver issues with those things before, on a number of products from different vendors that all used one of FTDI's chipsets.
Yes, because when I think of efficient, reasonable-priced, effective health care delivery... I think GE and Microsoft.
This isn't going to end well. Not for their customers at any rate.
Re:You can put anything on iPhone without a jailbr
on
Carrier IQ Drama Continues
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· Score: 3, Insightful
A good chunk of developer freedom is tied up in distribution.
If you're allowed to develop, but not distribute, then your freedom as a developer has been compromised. Consider the various free applications available from the Cedega app installer - there's no entrepreneurial angle there.
There would be nothing from stopping you distributing your code for an iOS app. In order for your "users" to install it though, they would need to pay the $99 fee for a developer license or be jailbroken. Your right as a developer to distribute software is still there, not very conveniently though but there none the less.
Not really, at least not in any meaningful sense. Just like how copyright law allows you to make duplicates of copyrighted material for personal use... but denies you the right to acquire the tools needed to do that in most cases. A right that you have but do not have the power to exercise is not a right but is, in the end, a privilege. On that may be revoked at any time.
That might be so, but it doesn't change the fact that it's only Android devices where it's enabled by default.
So what? Don't try to make this into an Android vs iOS issue, because it's not. The real question is: who put it there, and who decides whether it's enabled?
Put it this way: there's no real percentage to installing anything like this for Google or the hardware manufacturers, whose credibility would be shot once it gets out. So far as I'm aware, no such application exists in the Android Open Source Project source tree: if there were, we'd have heard about it by now considering how many eyes are on that code. Most likely it's the carriers that are installing this for their own purposes (nefarious or not, we don't know yet.)
If it bothers you that much, buy the phone direct rather than from a provider and check it to see if it has CarrierIQ on it. Alternatively, root it and install Cyanogenmod or some other decent third-party ROM. I run CM myself, and it doesn't have CarrierIQ. Keep in mind that the big boys generally have source code access to the phones they sell. In the case of Android, well, that's because it's an open source operating system, which allows them to do anything they wish including installing unwanted system apps. Even with Windows Mobile and iOS, odds are they have agreements with Microsoft and Apple to allow them some level of access to the source. Even if that weren't so, if AT&T were to tell Apple "ship this app or we won't let your iOS on our network", well, believe me that app will be there... Apple is not your friend in this regard.
Basically, if you're buying a computer system from an untrustworthy source (and none of the major cellular providers qualify as trustworthy) you can expect this kind of nonsense to occur regardless of the device or its operating system. Google allows the entire world to see what is in its stock firmware releases, so if something untoward appears on your device, you have a pretty good idea who put it there.
dont you find it weird that governments are spying on their own citizens MORE than they spy on the enemy ? and even do it more effectively ?
Not really. Because, when you get right down to it, the only real enemy of government officials are their own citizens who might fight to displace them.
Initiate several processes on your desktop to just go about the web looking at random sites, following links, etc. You don't even need to load all content from pages, just do it like Lynx would and scan for HREF tags. Enough people do this and the government's storage will become overbudened. Probably could do this with a minimal effort to code.
Now, doesn't that just sound like all kinds of fun?!?
It would make for an interesting botnet, wouldn't it? Just run a process on fifty or sixty million machines whose only task is to crawl the Web. Wouldn't even need to use a noticeable amount of bandwidth or CPU time. Just sit in the background hitting sites.
It's those who would shut it down that made it about Assange. His name was basically unknown compared to WikiLeaks until the bogus sexual harassment character assassination thing hit.
That's very true: I'd known of Wikileaks for years, but his name never really came up in relation to it, not in the regular media anyway. Once his crowd started hitting a little too close to home they took more direct measures. I'm surprised that one of the multi-billion-dollar outfits whose dirt he's been publishing hasn't had him killed yet, although they might be afraid of creating a martyr. The Wikileaks crowd is pretty damned hard to intimidate, it seems.
Who knows... if HIllary Clinton gets her way, the CIA might get tasked to bump him off. I was appalled at the members of our government who publicly called for his assassination. That's the kind of thing that people should remember when it comes time to cast their votes.
Anything that's fun is illegal in some way so you have to be a complete sourpuss to obey every single law in existence. I doubt if it's even physically possible.
It's worse than that, really. An innocent man is hard to control: make him a criminal, especially if he isn't even aware that he is, and you have him by the short and curly any time you want him.
Interpretation and enforcement of laws is typically a shade of grey though. There is not a single law that says do x and pay y, there's always exceptions, loopholes and if you have enough money to afford lawyers, judges and lawmakers you're typically going to be on the white side of the law, if you don't have enough money you're typically on the black side.
More to the point, we have judges in the loop, because not everyone should receive the exact same punishment under the law. For example, I got nailed for making a left turn in front of a school bus at an intersection. I stopped and waited for the bus to go, since it pulled up first. The bus driver waved me on, so I made my turn.
Five blocks later, I get pulled over for passing a school bus with its sign out (I mean, wtf?) by a fat cop with coke-bottle glasses. I doubt he could have seen ten feet in front of his nose, much less five blocks away. Regardless, a couple of weeks later I show up in court. The judge told me that according to a new statute, this particular offense carried a mandatory six-month suspension of my driver's license. My jaw dropped, and I remember saying "Six months, Your Honor." She said if I were to be convicted of the charge, there was nothing she could do, but recommended that I come back in a month with an attorney.
So I came back in a month, with my lawyer, and ended up in front of the same judge. She asked me how long it had been since my last moving violation. It had been about seven years, and I told her that. So she has the prosecutor poring over a huge tome, looking for some way to reduce the charge. Turns out that the law did allow the judge some discretion: the ticket was plead down to "making an illegal left turn." So that's what I was convicted of: a relatively minor violation. The judge wanted to throw the case out (I think she knew that cop pretty well) but the law didn't allow her to do that, apparently. Yeah, it cost me a $100 plus $250 for my attorney, but at least I walked out of there able to drive my car. She also gave me court supervision, so it didn't end up on my driving record.
Yes, traffic tickets are a money-making system for the State, but that's not the point. That judge was able to perceive some shades of grey, and while justice was hardly served (I had actually done nothing wrong) the punishment ended up not being ridiculously out of line with the crime. I commute sixty miles a day: not being able to drive for half a year would likely have cost me my job.
That law isn't kicking in until you give those files (or discs) to someone else.
However, I don't blame you for not wanting to be seen downloading the tools to do it.
You have the legal right to make copies for personal use, but the media companies got around that by making the requisite software illegal. Your basic Catch 22.
That only applies to copy protection and CSS isn't copy protection.Moreover it only applies to effective copy protection
It most certainly is copy protection. And why would you think the DMCA only applies to "effective" protection? I know of no such distinction in the law. You'd be surprised how many times the DMCA has been invoked during lawsuits: printer cartridges, garage-door remotes... even data streams that were not by any stretch of the imagination "encrypted" have still fallen under the DMCA.
Regardless, you could take your data, XOR each byte with 0xFF, call it copy protection, and anyone that tries to recover your data by flipping the bits back is in violation of the relevant DMCA provisions. Period.
and CSS definitely isn't effective at controlling copies by any definition one might want to apply.
Sure it is. It's extremely effective. The reality is the bulk of people who buy DVDs will never bother to make a copy, and for those that do, CSS stops them in their tracks. Sure, it's not effective at controlling decrypted copies disseminated via the Internet, but that was never the purpose of CSS. It's intent was to raise the bar sufficiently that only the most knowledgeable individuals would be able to make physical copies, to make it too inconvenient for Joe Average. And you know what? That's still true today.
Haven't most of the SyFy(lis) channels movies been cheap monster movies, with but a single monster each?
Not all, just most.
Yeah, pretty much. There was the one flick that had none other than Stargate's Samantha Carter in it, where some kind of new power plant generated an artificial black hole that (of course) threatened the entire planet. There was another where a cache of pterodactyl eggs hatched and a whole bunch of the things were flying around eating people. And of course, one of the single-monster jobs you mentioned, starring Corin Nemec.
I can't believe I've actually watched those movies. I don't anymore. Besides, since the SyFy (gack!) Channel kinda lost focus and started going after viewers that haven't got a clue what science-fiction actually is I don't even have them in my lineup.
Slashdot Mirror
As are the people who might want to buy a figure like this one.
Personally, I have no interest in anything that creepy, but given that Apple is being such a legal dick about this (and many other things recently) I'd buy one on principle.
BR And then I'd stash it away, unopened, until I retire and then I'd put it on E-Bay.
Time for Google to have a big banner saying, "Interested in providing free news to the entire world? Give us your reports directly, as we no longer aggregate ___, ___, and ___."
Why bother? They already have G+.
I just think it's a weird contradiction for people to get on their soapbox simply because he was American.
No offense, but I don't actually see your point. We're Americans and are subject to our own laws and the whims of our political leaders: basic self-interest makes the fate of one of our own more relevant than a person in a distant land. When the public trust is violated to such a degree, any of us, innocent or otherwise, is subject to assassination by accusation.
Granted, it would be weird for a Canadian or French or Egyptian or Pakistani to get on their soapbox because the Federal Government whacked a U.S. citizen without just cause, due process, or any of the other things for which our legal system is famous. I mean, it's not their problem, and would at most be a curiosity. On the other hand, it's not at all out of line for we Americans to get bent when our government does something that is clearly not in our best interests, and violates our laws and our traditions. That's the case for citizens of any country, when you get right down to it.
Maybe if we'd been having discussions like this ten, twenty or thirty years ago none of this would be happening. If you're trying to keep matters from going from bad to worse, a soapbox is a good place to start.
You know one of the reasons the rest of the world thinks you suck?
Yeah, that's it right there, only US citizens have rights in your eyes.
How you derived that nonsense from what the GP said is beyond me. Besides, we're in the process of criticizing ourselves in this thread and we don't need irrational comments from the foreign peanut gallery.
And in a few weeks it wont matter. All they have to do is point a finger in your general direction and you are 'disappeared'. Then you have to pay lots of money to fight your way back online.
Disappearing Google might be a bit tougher than that. Even the DoJ would hesitate before going after Google. Or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or anyone else in that league. Taking down a Web presence with the power and reach of Google would bring down a global shitstorm of hate and discontent.
... us small fry will be so much SOPA toast.
That's fine for the big boys
Yes, but unfortunately such automation is Google's claim to fame, and was naturally the direction to which they turned. Perhaps they underestimated the potential for abuse.
DMCA itself is good.
+5 Insightful? "DMCA itself is good"? Are you serous? It most definitely is not "good": that abomination should never, ever have been signed into law in its current form. Have you read it? If not, I suggest you do. Yes, SOPA is worse, but keep in mind that an MPAA law firm wrote the DMCA, and handed the thing to their tame Congressman for submission. We know this because a reporter extracted the metadata from the original Word document, and found the names of all the attorneys that had modified or reviewed it. It was not designed to balanced or fair, or to be a reasonable augmentation to copyright to accommodate technological advances. It was, purely and simply, all they thought they could get away with at the time. Look at the history of copyright extension in the U.S. the DMCA was only one of a long line of unholy modifications to copyright law that have done nothing but screw the American people, harm the public domain, and tie up an incredible quantity of court time on issues that often have nothing to do with copyright! It's an excellent period in U.S. history to become an "intellectual property" (whatever the Hell that actually means) lawyer, I suppose. That's another reason why these laws get passed: certain sectors of the legal profession make a lot of money.
So now, a decade down the road, they're pulling out all the stops, buying all the Congresspeople they can, to finally and permanently remove copyright from its Constitutionally-mandated role to "promote the advancement of the useful arts and sciences." Remember who you are dealing with here: you cannot argue with them, you cannot reason with them, and they absolutely will not stop. Period. End of statement.
Personally, I believe the practice of public officials taking bribes from foreign-owned corporations should be considered treasonous. But that's just me. I also have a fond wish that the Department of Justice would expel the ex-RIAA attorneys that our friend and savior Barack Obama appointed, and go after the corporations and corrupt Federal officials that have turned our patent and copyright systems into a corporatist welfare system.
I don't expect to get much joy there either.
Then why can i buy DVD ripping software from staples for 29.99?
Probably because they haven't been sued yet. A number of software companies have been put out of business because of the copy-protection provision of the DMCA. Possibly an exception was allowed for that purpose, I don't know. But I doubt it.
Members of Congress have and never will eat their own dog food anyways. So it's far worse than you think.
No, I have a pretty good idea just how bad it is: I agree with you. Congress has their own private healthcare system: they don't care what happens to us because, like most of the laws they make, they don't have to suffer the consequences of their malfeasance.
Nonsense. Just look at the statistics - healthcare in the rest of the world is just as good, and even adjusted, costs far, far less. That's an accurate metric.
I've heard that before. And if you'd stop jerking your knee and read my post, you'd understand that my complaint is not with the idea of socialized medicine, but with the implementation. For the most part, our Federal Government has failed miserably at delivering anything resembling cost-effective, comprehensive medical care. And don't even bother to bring up Medicare: it's rife with fraud and isn't remotely comprehensive ... I had to go down that road with my father once his private insurer (Aetna, as it happens) jacked up his premiums to over twenty grand a year. Fortunately he suffered total renal failure, which is one of the few conditions that will automatically get you Medicare regardless of age since he was only fifty-nine at the time. They would cover treatment and medication that was directly related to his kidney issue and dialysis (for which I was grateful) but that was it, and I went way into the red covering everything else out of my pocket.
Point is, I for one do not trust my government (any of my various governments) to be able to competently manage anything as complex as national health care with out bungling it, or becoming completely subservient to the private sector. Either way, the American people get screwed.
False. The only thing you need to do is COMPARE your private sector option with a public one. There is no absolute, only relative comparison between the two.
From what I heard, seems like your private sector has proven, time and time again to be far more cruel, far more (self)destructive and far more egoistical then public one.
True, as it happens. And "what you heard" is irrelevant: it's apparent that you don't understand what is really going on here. And, as I pointed out, America has turned into a corporatist nightmare, so you the dichotomy between the public and private sectors is no longer so clear-cut.
In the US, the same ones that run things like the TSA.
That, actually, is the crux of the matter. Any discussion of whether socialized medicine is "better" or "worse" than private insurance must take into account the relative trustworthiness of a given country's bureaucracy. Ours has proven itself, time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with our money. Neither, unfortunately, can our private insurers, which leaves us in something of a bind. The solution to such problems has traditionally been heavily-regulated private-sector organizations providing the actual service, with the government making damn sure they do it right. The heavily corporatist leanings of our current regime makes that unworkable, and the idea of giving those 535 sociopaths collectively known as "Congress" complete control over our health care is not a viable solution here either. That should scare anyone who is paying attention to what the United States Federal Government has become, that is, a danger to itself and everyone subject to it.
When you get right down to cases, insurance of any kind is fundamentally socialist in nature. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of many paying into the kitty, and some withdrawing in time of need. A number of very large corporations self-insure their employees: that can work out much better than private insurance. In any event, the issue is primarily one of administration: Germany, for example, does very well with socialized medicine because they have a fundamentally more trustworthy bureaucratic setup than the United States has ever had. Consequently, socializing our medical system, especially the way Obama wants to do it, is probably doomed to failure. Even if it proves effective, odds are it will be so expensive that we'll go broke trying to maintain it.
I haven't seen a BSOD in a long while.
Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they didn't happen.
Windows 7 is configured by default to restart immediately after a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) or other major system problem. This reboot usually happens too fast to see the error message on screen.
I've had Windows 7 BSOD (actually, I've seen a few different colors), usually because of a driver problem at startup. The last one was due to a multi-port USB -> RS232/485 serial converter. Installed the drivers and *POW*, instant BSOD when we restarted the system. To Win7's credit, we let it run an automatic repair (which took about an hour) and when it was done everything worked fine. I have no idea what it did, but it did manage to fix itself.
The converter used an FTDI chipset: I've had driver issues with those things before, on a number of products from different vendors that all used one of FTDI's chipsets.
Blue screen of literal death.
Yes, because when I think of efficient, reasonable-priced, effective health care delivery ... I think GE and Microsoft.
This isn't going to end well. Not for their customers at any rate.
A good chunk of developer freedom is tied up in distribution.
If you're allowed to develop, but not distribute, then your freedom as a developer has been compromised. Consider the various free applications available from the Cedega app installer - there's no entrepreneurial angle there.
There would be nothing from stopping you distributing your code for an iOS app. In order for your "users" to install it though, they would need to pay the $99 fee for a developer license or be jailbroken. Your right as a developer to distribute software is still there, not very conveniently though but there none the less.
Not really, at least not in any meaningful sense. Just like how copyright law allows you to make duplicates of copyrighted material for personal use ... but denies you the right to acquire the tools needed to do that in most cases. A right that you have but do not have the power to exercise is not a right but is, in the end, a privilege. On that may be revoked at any time.
That might be so, but it doesn't change the fact that it's only Android devices where it's enabled by default.
So what? Don't try to make this into an Android vs iOS issue, because it's not. The real question is: who put it there, and who decides whether it's enabled?
... Apple is not your friend in this regard.
Put it this way: there's no real percentage to installing anything like this for Google or the hardware manufacturers, whose credibility would be shot once it gets out. So far as I'm aware, no such application exists in the Android Open Source Project source tree: if there were, we'd have heard about it by now considering how many eyes are on that code. Most likely it's the carriers that are installing this for their own purposes (nefarious or not, we don't know yet.)
If it bothers you that much, buy the phone direct rather than from a provider and check it to see if it has CarrierIQ on it. Alternatively, root it and install Cyanogenmod or some other decent third-party ROM. I run CM myself, and it doesn't have CarrierIQ. Keep in mind that the big boys generally have source code access to the phones they sell. In the case of Android, well, that's because it's an open source operating system, which allows them to do anything they wish including installing unwanted system apps. Even with Windows Mobile and iOS, odds are they have agreements with Microsoft and Apple to allow them some level of access to the source. Even if that weren't so, if AT&T were to tell Apple "ship this app or we won't let your iOS on our network", well, believe me that app will be there
Basically, if you're buying a computer system from an untrustworthy source (and none of the major cellular providers qualify as trustworthy) you can expect this kind of nonsense to occur regardless of the device or its operating system. Google allows the entire world to see what is in its stock firmware releases, so if something untoward appears on your device, you have a pretty good idea who put it there.
dont you find it weird that governments are spying on their own citizens MORE than they spy on the enemy ? and even do it more effectively ?
Not really. Because, when you get right down to it, the only real enemy of government officials are their own citizens who might fight to displace them.
Initiate several processes on your desktop to just go about the web looking at random sites, following links, etc. You don't even need to load all content from pages, just do it like Lynx would and scan for HREF tags. Enough people do this and the government's storage will become overbudened. Probably could do this with a minimal effort to code.
Now, doesn't that just sound like all kinds of fun?!?
It would make for an interesting botnet, wouldn't it? Just run a process on fifty or sixty million machines whose only task is to crawl the Web. Wouldn't even need to use a noticeable amount of bandwidth or CPU time. Just sit in the background hitting sites.
You could call it "TrackTHIS!".
It's those who would shut it down that made it about Assange. His name was basically unknown compared to WikiLeaks until the bogus sexual harassment character assassination thing hit.
That's very true: I'd known of Wikileaks for years, but his name never really came up in relation to it, not in the regular media anyway. Once his crowd started hitting a little too close to home they took more direct measures. I'm surprised that one of the multi-billion-dollar outfits whose dirt he's been publishing hasn't had him killed yet, although they might be afraid of creating a martyr. The Wikileaks crowd is pretty damned hard to intimidate, it seems.
... if HIllary Clinton gets her way, the CIA might get tasked to bump him off. I was appalled at the members of our government who publicly called for his assassination. That's the kind of thing that people should remember when it comes time to cast their votes.
Who knows
Also, software raid is plenty fast, and typically more robust than consumer-grade "hardware" solutions. Very happy with MD raid-5.
Yes, my Debian servers run software RAID. For what I do at home it's more than adequate, and it is damn fast.
Anything that's fun is illegal in some way so you have to be a complete sourpuss to obey every single law in existence. I doubt if it's even physically possible.
It's worse than that, really. An innocent man is hard to control: make him a criminal, especially if he isn't even aware that he is, and you have him by the short and curly any time you want him.
Interpretation and enforcement of laws is typically a shade of grey though. There is not a single law that says do x and pay y, there's always exceptions, loopholes and if you have enough money to afford lawyers, judges and lawmakers you're typically going to be on the white side of the law, if you don't have enough money you're typically on the black side.
More to the point, we have judges in the loop, because not everyone should receive the exact same punishment under the law. For example, I got nailed for making a left turn in front of a school bus at an intersection. I stopped and waited for the bus to go, since it pulled up first. The bus driver waved me on, so I made my turn.
Five blocks later, I get pulled over for passing a school bus with its sign out (I mean, wtf?) by a fat cop with coke-bottle glasses. I doubt he could have seen ten feet in front of his nose, much less five blocks away. Regardless, a couple of weeks later I show up in court. The judge told me that according to a new statute, this particular offense carried a mandatory six-month suspension of my driver's license. My jaw dropped, and I remember saying "Six months, Your Honor." She said if I were to be convicted of the charge, there was nothing she could do, but recommended that I come back in a month with an attorney.
So I came back in a month, with my lawyer, and ended up in front of the same judge. She asked me how long it had been since my last moving violation. It had been about seven years, and I told her that. So she has the prosecutor poring over a huge tome, looking for some way to reduce the charge. Turns out that the law did allow the judge some discretion: the ticket was plead down to "making an illegal left turn." So that's what I was convicted of: a relatively minor violation. The judge wanted to throw the case out (I think she knew that cop pretty well) but the law didn't allow her to do that, apparently. Yeah, it cost me a $100 plus $250 for my attorney, but at least I walked out of there able to drive my car. She also gave me court supervision, so it didn't end up on my driving record.
Yes, traffic tickets are a money-making system for the State, but that's not the point. That judge was able to perceive some shades of grey, and while justice was hardly served (I had actually done nothing wrong) the punishment ended up not being ridiculously out of line with the crime. I commute sixty miles a day: not being able to drive for half a year would likely have cost me my job.
That law isn't kicking in until you give those files (or discs) to someone else.
However, I don't blame you for not wanting to be seen downloading the tools to do it.
You have the legal right to make copies for personal use, but the media companies got around that by making the requisite software illegal. Your basic Catch 22.
That only applies to copy protection and CSS isn't copy protection.Moreover it only applies to effective copy protection
It most certainly is copy protection. And why would you think the DMCA only applies to "effective" protection? I know of no such distinction in the law. You'd be surprised how many times the DMCA has been invoked during lawsuits: printer cartridges, garage-door remotes ... even data streams that were not by any stretch of the imagination "encrypted" have still fallen under the DMCA.
Regardless, you could take your data, XOR each byte with 0xFF, call it copy protection, and anyone that tries to recover your data by flipping the bits back is in violation of the relevant DMCA provisions. Period.
and CSS definitely isn't effective at controlling copies by any definition one might want to apply.
Sure it is. It's extremely effective. The reality is the bulk of people who buy DVDs will never bother to make a copy, and for those that do, CSS stops them in their tracks. Sure, it's not effective at controlling decrypted copies disseminated via the Internet, but that was never the purpose of CSS. It's intent was to raise the bar sufficiently that only the most knowledgeable individuals would be able to make physical copies, to make it too inconvenient for Joe Average. And you know what? That's still true today.
Haven't most of the SyFy(lis) channels movies been cheap monster movies, with but a single monster each? Not all, just most.
Yeah, pretty much. There was the one flick that had none other than Stargate's Samantha Carter in it, where some kind of new power plant generated an artificial black hole that (of course) threatened the entire planet. There was another where a cache of pterodactyl eggs hatched and a whole bunch of the things were flying around eating people. And of course, one of the single-monster jobs you mentioned, starring Corin Nemec.
I can't believe I've actually watched those movies. I don't anymore. Besides, since the SyFy (gack!) Channel kinda lost focus and started going after viewers that haven't got a clue what science-fiction actually is I don't even have them in my lineup.