My phone has no GPS. Three or four years ago, Qwest wrote me saying they were "upgrading" their network and my phone wouldn't work anymore. They sent me a free replacement -- was worthless because I used my phone in a semi-remote area in which the internal antenna was not beefy enough. I looked around for a good phone with an external antenna port -- brick shape because I'm hard on phones -- but found nothing. I then went to the Qwest kiosk and asked them to make my phone work (it was supposed to be tri-band blah blah blah compatible everywhere or something like that). They fiddled with it for a while and voila, it worked.
Last year, the keyboard numbers 8 & 9 stopped working. I bought the same phone off ebay for $3 and swapped keyboards. Perhaps I should buy a couple more spares for when other parts go -- I spent $180 on the phone originally and now I could probably get 60 of them for that cost. The phone has great battery life, a workable speaker phone, and an external antenna port. No camera, no gimmicks, and no GPS. It's worth holding on to, if for no other reason than bragging rights on the oldest cell phone still in use among anyone I know (5.5 years).
Everything you cite is a specific act of some kind which the law proscribes. The current discussion is about whether the cops should have the power to arbitrarily search your computer in the ABSENCE of a court issued warrant, i.e., anytime they damn well please. That's a whole lot different from punishing a particular act.
Who cares if the cops program is exploitable or not? It's obvious that the user's computer is exploitable and plain that some nefarious group made use of that weakness. Then they began doing their thing, the cops noticed it, and exploited the computer yet again. If the cops want to see what's on the machine, why not get a warrant and look (here I'm thinking US, I know nothing of German procedures)?
Note that GP referenced "Thai iced tea". Thai iced tea is closer to the caloric value of a snickers bar than it is to that of water. Here's a recipe. Note the 6 cups of tea, 3/4 cup of sugar, plus cream and condensed milk.
The leap the author of this article makes is an astounding logic error. He is basically saying "Since the judge thinks this is a personal email (because the spammer signed it with his name), does the judge also think that I really own Slashdot?"
If the logical conclusion drawn from a set of assumptions is absurd, then some part of the assumptions must be wrong. We can use absurd results to double check decisions. The judge in this case made a set of faulty assumptions regarding the definition of spam under Washington State law. She felt that if a spam was sent personally, it couldn't be spam. That isn't what the law says. First it distinguishes commercial mail and then defines "Unpermitted or Misleading" email in a specific manner:
(2) "Commercial electronic mail message" means an electronic mail message sent for the purpose of promoting real property, goods, or services for sale or lease. It does not mean an electronic mail message to which an interactive computer service provider has attached an advertisement in exchange for free use of an electronic mail account, when the sender has agreed to such an arrangement.
(1) No person may initiate the transmission, conspire with another to initiate the transmission, or assist the transmission, of a commercial electronic mail message from a computer located in Washington or to an electronic mail address that the sender knows, or has reason to know, is held by a Washington resident that:
* * *
(b) Contains false or misleading information in the subject line.
The statute does not distinguish between personal and bulk mailings. Bulk mailings may be just fine. What it does forbid is commercial email with misleading or false information in the subject header.
The subject header of the email in question was misleading or false. If we assume for the moment the email meets the definition of "commercial mail", then WA law defines it as spam. The error the judge made was applying her own colloquial definition of spam to the message. The only definitions that matter in the suit are the legal ones.
Now, there is some question I think whether the message fit the "commercial" definition, but the ruling didn't explore that issue. The judge just went with her informal spam definition. This is where we can use the absurd result created by her ruling to show it is not correct: assuming a commercial nature, if the message is not spam, then the subject line is neither misleading nor false, meaning the recipient IS the owner of Slashdot. Yes, an abusrd result -- but that is the point, if the result is absurd, it is clue number one to check assumptions.
no, a 220 watt setup would let me run _2_ 100 watt bulbs. To run 20, I would have to store 10 hours worth sunlight in order to run those 20 for a single hour.
Ok -- got that. It doesn't change the fact that in 220 watt solar panel setup is only going to give a max of amount 2.2kWh in a 10 hour period. If I store that energy in a battery, at best, I'll get to run a 100 watt bulb for 22 hours, or 22 bulbs for an hour. That isn't a lot of power.
If a light burns 100 watts per hour, 2000 watts would give me 20 hours of light. If I ran twenty 100watt bulbs at once -- I'd use up that 2kw in one hour.
Don't worry -- real terrorists will start encrypting their data via spam, at which point their spam box becomes their data repository. Some kind of clever cross breeding between uudecode/encode and those people who've discovered how to make the word "viagra" intelligible despite 100 different spelling permutations. Just how many million v1@gr0 headers will the cops scan before looking at more interesting areas, perhaps encrypted, which when decrypted lead to false data?
IMHO, If we need to, as a civilization, we can survive on solar power using existing technologies if we reduce our consumption to more modest levels.
I have a pottery studio/kiln out in the county a little ways. When I first built it, I had no power of any kind, so I took to charging up a deep-cycle 12v marine battery at home and then carting it out there. With an inverter and a CFL, I'd get 12 hours of power or so. The battery weighs a ton (subjectively) and it was a pain, but also nice to be able to work in the evening. I would also run some other things off it on occasion. Anyway, I realized that even small amounts of electricity represent HUGE amounts of work -- and carrying that battery back and forth was actually the least of the "work" it took to get that bit of light.
We had a big windstorm a few days ago and power was out at the studio (I know have juice there) for the last day and a half. I used to love it when the power went out -- the world became quiet and I was forced to do quiet things I don't do enough of -- read, think, sleep. Now all I hear is the distant sound of generators running (note me -- others).
As a society, we have become so affluent (or debt ridden) that we are unwilling to give up electricity even for a few hours. We can't do without even for a few moments but it comes at a very high price which will be paid eventually. Anyway, back to your point, I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to reduce their energy usage enough. Even if you got 2kw per day out of the sun, that's only 20 hours for one 100 watt bulb. If you have a computer, fridge, 6 lights, and TV on, you could be hitting near 1000 watts per hour (depending on efficiency of course).
Even me -- I realize how work intensive electricity is, and I try to make sure to make efficient use of it by minimizing my use -- still, it would be very hard to limit myself to 2kw per day, which is what I'd get with 10 hours of sun (good luck in Dec) and $1350. Maybe there are better deals out there. I know for sure all those people firing up their generators sure won't survive on 2kw.
Considering AT&T's complicity with the US government, a government which is no longer about protecting freedom and much more about surveillance, why should I want the US to have anything to with the internet either?
Without advertising though, the cost of everything we buy would be less. So, instead of a mass of TV you don't like but pay for anyway buy buying anything but fresh produce at a local farmer's market, you'd only pay for the TV you like. This would save people who have taste money. Those who don't care what they watch, they'll pay more.
In the last year I've been increasing my cash use and decreasing my debit card use. This has made it easier for me to track my account balances (my accounting skills are around 3rd grade level) which has been a nice side effect of being paranoid about all the data collection going on. While I'm sure there's a tinfoil hat joke in here, sometimes it's smart to be paranoid.
I can't even begin to express my annoyance at the next election. We'll have Guliani and Clinton vying to be the next dictator-light of the US. Back in 2000, there really was a difference between Gore and Bush and I was pretty bitter with Nader, but this time around, we have a choice between more of the same or more of the same from a female. I'm voting 3d party this election, or if no third party, then for my cat, or for a dead opossum rotting on the side of the road.
If the democrats really wanted a landslide, they'd get someone who could realistically unite the country. Obviously they aren't interested in doing anything real...... You know what -- Fuck the Democrats! I've been a democrat all my life but I'm just done with them. Right here and right now, I'm packing my bags and moving on.
All I was trying to say is that the phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy," on which the legal test is currently based, is a shitty test, as what a reasonable person would "expect" the government to do is to violate you in any manner they can get away with.
It's really sad that our nation has come to this point, where our expectation is that the government will do all manner of shady things. It's been a little slow in coming but bit by bit over the last 50 years, we have eroded our core principles down to little nubs of what they used to be. All we're left with is "America -- Fuck Yeah" sentiment, a hollow constitution, and the looming demise of our empire -- maybe not in my lifetime, but soon enough -- especially if we keep undermining what America was meant to be right here at home. We don't need terrorists to ensure our destruction, we've got our own government doing the best it can to destroy us.
This would be a fail-safe switch for the bomber and the bomb, in case the terrorist is killed, the bomb goes off.
FYI, what you're talking about is a "fail deadly" system. However, the potential designs for such a device are myriad -- why get all paranoid about a cell phone jammer?
Potentials include handheld circuits that trigger when the circuit is broken (spring loaded button that opens the circuit when not depressed), for airplanes, pressure sensors that trigger the device if the pressure increases (obviously must be set after take off, though just having it trigger when the pressure decreases is simpler -- I think the Unabomber used these), light sensors that trigger when it gets dark (after you're dead, the cops investigate, head out and turn off the lights, bomb cleverly hidden in the wall by the light switch) -- any reasonably intelligent person could think of a million ways to make a trigger. Get a few wires, a stick of butter from the fridge, and some kind of weight -- now you have a fuse.
People need to quit being frightened of everything -- there is nothing in the world that can't be used in a dangerous manner and going nuts banning everything dangerous is thus futile. If people are truly interested in personal safety, and would be willing to exercise some intellectual honesty with themselves, they'd give up the biggest risk to life and limb over anything else in the world -- the car.
Slashdot Mirror
My phone has no GPS. Three or four years ago, Qwest wrote me saying they were "upgrading" their network and my phone wouldn't work anymore. They sent me a free replacement -- was worthless because I used my phone in a semi-remote area in which the internal antenna was not beefy enough. I looked around for a good phone with an external antenna port -- brick shape because I'm hard on phones -- but found nothing. I then went to the Qwest kiosk and asked them to make my phone work (it was supposed to be tri-band blah blah blah compatible everywhere or something like that). They fiddled with it for a while and voila, it worked.
Last year, the keyboard numbers 8 & 9 stopped working. I bought the same phone off ebay for $3 and swapped keyboards. Perhaps I should buy a couple more spares for when other parts go -- I spent $180 on the phone originally and now I could probably get 60 of them for that cost. The phone has great battery life, a workable speaker phone, and an external antenna port. No camera, no gimmicks, and no GPS. It's worth holding on to, if for no other reason than bragging rights on the oldest cell phone still in use among anyone I know (5.5 years).
Or a conservative constitutional scholar.
http://www.americanfreedomagenda.org/
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Watch it, Share it.
Sounds like what's going on in the middle east, yet all who oppose the west there are branded terrorists, not fighters in a civil war.
Everything you cite is a specific act of some kind which the law proscribes. The current discussion is about whether the cops should have the power to arbitrarily search your computer in the ABSENCE of a court issued warrant, i.e., anytime they damn well please. That's a whole lot different from punishing a particular act.
Who cares if the cops program is exploitable or not? It's obvious that the user's computer is exploitable and plain that some nefarious group made use of that weakness. Then they began doing their thing, the cops noticed it, and exploited the computer yet again. If the cops want to see what's on the machine, why not get a warrant and look (here I'm thinking US, I know nothing of German procedures)?
The left does not have a monopoly on fascism. The right is just as bad.
Note that GP referenced "Thai iced tea". Thai iced tea is closer to the caloric value of a snickers bar than it is to that of water. Here's a recipe. Note the 6 cups of tea, 3/4 cup of sugar, plus cream and condensed milk.
If the logical conclusion drawn from a set of assumptions is absurd, then some part of the assumptions must be wrong. We can use absurd results to double check decisions. The judge in this case made a set of faulty assumptions regarding the definition of spam under Washington State law. She felt that if a spam was sent personally, it couldn't be spam. That isn't what the law says. First it distinguishes commercial mail and then defines "Unpermitted or Misleading" email in a specific manner:
The statute does not distinguish between personal and bulk mailings. Bulk mailings may be just fine. What it does forbid is commercial email with misleading or false information in the subject header.
The subject header of the email in question was misleading or false. If we assume for the moment the email meets the definition of "commercial mail", then WA law defines it as spam. The error the judge made was applying her own colloquial definition of spam to the message. The only definitions that matter in the suit are the legal ones.
Now, there is some question I think whether the message fit the "commercial" definition, but the ruling didn't explore that issue. The judge just went with her informal spam definition. This is where we can use the absurd result created by her ruling to show it is not correct: assuming a commercial nature, if the message is not spam, then the subject line is neither misleading nor false, meaning the recipient IS the owner of Slashdot. Yes, an abusrd result -- but that is the point, if the result is absurd, it is clue number one to check assumptions.
no, a 220 watt setup would let me run _2_ 100 watt bulbs. To run 20, I would have to store 10 hours worth sunlight in order to run those 20 for a single hour.
Ok -- got that. It doesn't change the fact that in 220 watt solar panel setup is only going to give a max of amount 2.2kWh in a 10 hour period. If I store that energy in a battery, at best, I'll get to run a 100 watt bulb for 22 hours, or 22 bulbs for an hour. That isn't a lot of power.
If a light burns 100 watts per hour, 2000 watts would give me 20 hours of light. If I ran twenty 100watt bulbs at once -- I'd use up that 2kw in one hour.
Don't worry -- real terrorists will start encrypting their data via spam, at which point their spam box becomes their data repository. Some kind of clever cross breeding between uudecode/encode and those people who've discovered how to make the word "viagra" intelligible despite 100 different spelling permutations. Just how many million v1@gr0 headers will the cops scan before looking at more interesting areas, perhaps encrypted, which when decrypted lead to false data?
I have a pottery studio/kiln out in the county a little ways. When I first built it, I had no power of any kind, so I took to charging up a deep-cycle 12v marine battery at home and then carting it out there. With an inverter and a CFL, I'd get 12 hours of power or so. The battery weighs a ton (subjectively) and it was a pain, but also nice to be able to work in the evening. I would also run some other things off it on occasion. Anyway, I realized that even small amounts of electricity represent HUGE amounts of work -- and carrying that battery back and forth was actually the least of the "work" it took to get that bit of light.
We had a big windstorm a few days ago and power was out at the studio (I know have juice there) for the last day and a half. I used to love it when the power went out -- the world became quiet and I was forced to do quiet things I don't do enough of -- read, think, sleep. Now all I hear is the distant sound of generators running (note me -- others).
As a society, we have become so affluent (or debt ridden) that we are unwilling to give up electricity even for a few hours. We can't do without even for a few moments but it comes at a very high price which will be paid eventually. Anyway, back to your point, I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to reduce their energy usage enough. Even if you got 2kw per day out of the sun, that's only 20 hours for one 100 watt bulb. If you have a computer, fridge, 6 lights, and TV on, you could be hitting near 1000 watts per hour (depending on efficiency of course).
Even me -- I realize how work intensive electricity is, and I try to make sure to make efficient use of it by minimizing my use -- still, it would be very hard to limit myself to 2kw per day, which is what I'd get with 10 hours of sun (good luck in Dec) and $1350. Maybe there are better deals out there. I know for sure all those people firing up their generators sure won't survive on 2kw.
A breakfast in bed tray works well, at least when using a laptop on a bed. Not so great in a chair -- ok on a couch.
Considering AT&T's complicity with the US government, a government which is no longer about protecting freedom and much more about surveillance, why should I want the US to have anything to with the internet either?
Without advertising though, the cost of everything we buy would be less. So, instead of a mass of TV you don't like but pay for anyway buy buying anything but fresh produce at a local farmer's market, you'd only pay for the TV you like. This would save people who have taste money. Those who don't care what they watch, they'll pay more.
RTFA: "And most of the honorees? They're not NASA employees. They're from Boeing and other billion-dollar contractors that aren't picking up the tab."
In the last year I've been increasing my cash use and decreasing my debit card use. This has made it easier for me to track my account balances (my accounting skills are around 3rd grade level) which has been a nice side effect of being paranoid about all the data collection going on. While I'm sure there's a tinfoil hat joke in here, sometimes it's smart to be paranoid.
I can't even begin to express my annoyance at the next election. We'll have Guliani and Clinton vying to be the next dictator-light of the US. Back in 2000, there really was a difference between Gore and Bush and I was pretty bitter with Nader, but this time around, we have a choice between more of the same or more of the same from a female. I'm voting 3d party this election, or if no third party, then for my cat, or for a dead opossum rotting on the side of the road.
..... You know what -- Fuck the Democrats! I've been a democrat all my life but I'm just done with them. Right here and right now, I'm packing my bags and moving on.
If the democrats really wanted a landslide, they'd get someone who could realistically unite the country. Obviously they aren't interested in doing anything real.
Damn -- I gotta memorize that one!
Don't worry. Give us two more decades in the US and we'll be as free as China.
Wish I had mod points -- nice job ripping parent-idiot a new one and pouring in some logic.
It's really sad that our nation has come to this point, where our expectation is that the government will do all manner of shady things. It's been a little slow in coming but bit by bit over the last 50 years, we have eroded our core principles down to little nubs of what they used to be. All we're left with is "America -- Fuck Yeah" sentiment, a hollow constitution, and the looming demise of our empire -- maybe not in my lifetime, but soon enough -- especially if we keep undermining what America was meant to be right here at home. We don't need terrorists to ensure our destruction, we've got our own government doing the best it can to destroy us.
FYI, what you're talking about is a "fail deadly" system. However, the potential designs for such a device are myriad -- why get all paranoid about a cell phone jammer?
Potentials include handheld circuits that trigger when the circuit is broken (spring loaded button that opens the circuit when not depressed), for airplanes, pressure sensors that trigger the device if the pressure increases (obviously must be set after take off, though just having it trigger when the pressure decreases is simpler -- I think the Unabomber used these), light sensors that trigger when it gets dark (after you're dead, the cops investigate, head out and turn off the lights, bomb cleverly hidden in the wall by the light switch) -- any reasonably intelligent person could think of a million ways to make a trigger. Get a few wires, a stick of butter from the fridge, and some kind of weight -- now you have a fuse.
People need to quit being frightened of everything -- there is nothing in the world that can't be used in a dangerous manner and going nuts banning everything dangerous is thus futile. If people are truly interested in personal safety, and would be willing to exercise some intellectual honesty with themselves, they'd give up the biggest risk to life and limb over anything else in the world -- the car.