Why is copyright infringement an issue of homeland security?
The Coast Guard, the Secret Service and all other federal criminal investigation and police forces are now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) does a lot of the forensic work in computer related investigations:
Child pornography. The sex trade in women and children. Identity theft. Intelectual property rights. Art and antiquities. Money laundering. Counterfeit drugs. Arms trafficking and so on. Cyber Crimes Center
In the American federal system, economic and property crimes with an interstate or foreign dimension are a federal responsibility.
The production budget for "Rango" was $135 million dollars. The domestic gross for "Toy Story 3," $414 million to date.
The feds, not surprisingly, like to see investment and return on that scale in home-grown industries, and will do what they can to protect them.
It sucks for the geek who wants his free movie fix, of course.
In the early days of railways and canals there was similar "anti" hysteria - clergymen claiming that canals would be destroyed because it was blasphemy for men to ape their Creator by making rivers, idiots claiming that traveling at speed would prevent people from breathing
But it is useful to remember that American railroads fought tooth and claw any of a dozen long-overdue reforms.
Use of the telegraph for traffic control Steel passenger cars with steam heat. Automatic coupling. Air brakes.
Useful to remember as well that the canal and the railroad could spread an epidemic disease inland with frightening speed. Cholera rides the rails.
Tens of thousands of people were probably killed by the quake and the resulting tsunami. But anti-nuke activists will consider this the worse tragedy...
It seems to me a little too early for the geek to be breaking out the champagne.
These reactors - plural, remember - have no containment structures. There could still be major aftershocks, a second tsunami.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Maybe it doesn't need no stinking *Apple* app store if other contenders (I'm looking at you, Android) are clever enough to offer better conditions to open source developers.
It doesn't matter that the shelves are filled if the store is empty.
Look, w3schools shows Linux at 5%, an all time high and not that far behind Apple. I actually know normal people, not geeks, who have installed Linux entirely as their own idea. And of course, Linux rules the world in phones at the moment
The W3Schools stats have always been most generous to Linux.
But a bare 3% growth in eight years is telling when compared to the vitality shown by its competitors.
In North America, the iOS rules in mobile. Globally, it is Symbian. The Android is a strong competitor. But Android is unmistakably a Google production.
Now Microsoft has the "monopoly advantage" if they say now you need to cut off your left feet to implement Direct3D the videocard fabricant (Intel, Nvidia principally) will find somebody in charge of getting his or her feet cut off to keep the market.
This is nonsense.
The reality is that Microsoft works closely with the hardware and software developer so that everyone remains on the same page.
Microsoft builds a consensus around what is possible and what is desirable - not only in video and sound, but in every aspect of PC gaming.
Why would a robot need a display in its head? Wouldn't it just think the info, not display it to its own eyes? Yah, not as thrilling to the audience to show a robot standing there staring and analyzing.
In Wall-E, the Autopilot cannot command systems directly, he has to physically work the controls on the bridge.
That exposes his actions to the audience. It catches their eye. But it is also a pointed reminder that the Captain is the one who is supposed to be the one in charge here.
In animation you need to make your story points economically, while giving your audience something interesting to look at.
How do you think H.264 started out ? With zero hardware support, this is where VP8 was a few months ago. Now they have a few hardware manufacturers
H.264 is supported by every digital HDTV system on the planet. It is studio production codec, a broadcast, cable and satellite distribution codec.
It is deeply entrenched in CCTV, commercial, industrial, medical, military and security applications.
Yes, VP8 has the support of a few hardware manufacturers.
But H.264 is suppported by Apple, Fitjusitu, Hitachi, JVC, Microsoft, NTT, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and Yamaha.
In the second tier, by the 953 H.264 licensees like LG and Vizio.
The whole H.264 / VP8 debate is also about looking at the future not just now.
Then you need to be thinking about the next-generation codec, HEVC/H.265, which should be ready in a year or two.
HEVC aims to substantially improve coding efficiency compared to AVC High Profile, i.e. reduce bitrate requirements by half with comparable image quality, probably at the expense of increased computational complexity. Depending on the application requirements, HEVC should be able to trade off computational complexity, compression rate, robustness to errors and processing delay time.
HEVC is targeted at next-generation HDTV displays and content capture systems which feature progressive scanned frame rates and display resolutions from QVGA (320x240) up to 1080p and Ultra HDTV (7680x4320), as well as improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color gamut and dynamic range.{/quote>
High Efficiency Video Coding
That's because your jealous coworker pirated himself a copy of this program, fed some writing of yours through it, and then kept editing those death threats until the program claimed they sounded just like you.
The poison pen is ego driven. The ultimate DIY project.
Here is sampling of the real thing:
Perverts welcome.
When a male teacher was in the mood for a little sex between classes, militant teacher [Jane Doe] was happy to help out, by writing a hall pass for a female student.
They seriously think an 80% success rate is good enough to be used in court?
I'm betting the real reason is so they can go to a judge with their pseudo-evidence to get a warrant for more invasive spying.
The geek never gets these things right.
The standards for discovery in a civil case and for a warrant in a criiminal are not the same as the burden of proof at trial.
Judges do not like excluding relevant evidence even if that evidence is in some ways uncertain or imperfect. Few things in life are certain and perfected
The burden of proof in a civil case is light:
"More probable than not." You may not even need a unaminous verdict.
Civil cases in state court
Size and unanimity requirements in civil cases vary considerably under state laws. Less than half the states require twelve-person juries, and about half the states allow for non-unanimous verdicts.
Calling textual analysis "psuedo evidence" leads nowhere. Courts have been asked to establish the authorship and authenticity of texts and documents for thousands of years. The methods used here may be automated - but they are not unfamiliar.
All those examples involve being convicted of a CRIME.
No they don't.
The law is framed much more broadly than that.
And yes, joking around in poor taste on facebook may not be something people should be doing, but it's certainly not a crime
Defamation is not a joke. In 17 U.S. states it is a crime.
In most states, false accusations of sexual perversion or sexual crimes are libelous as a matter of law. You do not have to prove damages to be awarded damages.
For instance, in libel law, one is not eligible for more than token damages if nobody who read the statement took it seriously.
The Wikipedia makes it plain enough:
Defamation per se
All states except Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee recognize that some categories of false statements are so innately harmful that they are considered to be defamatory per se.
In the common law tradition, damages for such false statements are presumed and do not have to be proved.
"Statements are defamatory per se where they falsely impute to the plaintiff one or more of the following things":
Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
Allegations or imputations "of loathsome disease" (historically leprosy and sexually transmitted disease, now also including mental illness)
Allegations or imputations of "unchastity" (usually only in unmarried people and sometimes only in women)
Allegations or imputations of criminal activity (sometimes only crimes of moral turpitude)
To assert that the school has the power to require a student to show the principal the contents of the student's facebook account, and further to require the student to delete any offending posts, is going way too far, IMO.
To assert that the school has the power to require a student to show the principal the contents of the student's facebook account, and further to require the student to delete any offending posts, is going way too far, IMO.
There are times when a school has parental authority over a child. There are times when it can and should act quickly and decisively.
Local Courts, apparently. Or better yet, how about just banning local dumbshit judges that are still stuck in 1947 or whatever the hell yesteryear they graduated from law school in?
This in a country with a population of 74.8 million - -- and it may help to explain why a Turkish court sends an early morning wake-up call to Google.
The Turkish system is very different from the U.S.
There are no juries, only judges and panels of judges.
There is no intermediate appelate system.
Which means that the decisions of your "dumbshit" local judge carry very real weight.
Your judge will have four years of law school under his belt, two years of judicial internship and will have been no older than 35 if he held a masters or doctorate degree when he passed his entrance exam.
No older than 30 if he entered the system straight out of law school.
Allow me to suggest that playing the age card is not the brightest idea you ever had.
Levelling 'paedophile' against a teacher is insanely damaging. They work with kids. As soon as the accusation is made it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.
In the mail box this week:
Perverts welcome at [your suburban high school]
When a male teacher was in the mood for a little sex between classes, militant teacher [Jane Doe] was happy to help out, by writing a hall pass for a female student.
The School Board disciples of militant preacher [John Smith], are very proud to jeopardize your children with their forgiveness and rewarding of deviants.
The poster was identified by one eyewitness as former school board member whose association with an anonymous scandal sheet helped grease the skids for his departure in our last election.
"Smith" is the pastor of a mainstream Protestant church.
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel
It is never safe to generalize about U.S. state law.
Colorado is one of 17 states with a criminal libel statute, which is different from the civil libel laws in all 50 states that allow victims of allegedly defamatory statements to seek compensation from speakers. Criminal libel laws allow the state to fine or imprison speakers of defamatory statements.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is copyright infringement an issue of homeland security?
The Coast Guard, the Secret Service and all other federal criminal investigation and police forces are now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) does a lot of the forensic work in computer related investigations:
Child pornography. The sex trade in women and children. Identity theft. Intelectual property rights. Art and antiquities. Money laundering. Counterfeit drugs. Arms trafficking and so on. Cyber Crimes Center
In the American federal system, economic and property crimes with an interstate or foreign dimension are a federal responsibility.
The production budget for "Rango" was $135 million dollars. The domestic gross for "Toy Story 3," $414 million to date.
The feds, not surprisingly, like to see investment and return on that scale in home-grown industries, and will do what they can to protect them.
It sucks for the geek who wants his free movie fix, of course.
In the early days of railways and canals there was similar "anti" hysteria - clergymen claiming that canals would be destroyed because it was blasphemy for men to ape their Creator by making rivers, idiots claiming that traveling at speed would prevent people from breathing
But it is useful to remember that American railroads fought tooth and claw any of a dozen long-overdue reforms.
Use of the telegraph for traffic control
Steel passenger cars with steam heat.
Automatic coupling.
Air brakes.
Useful to remember as well that the canal and the railroad could spread an epidemic disease inland with frightening speed. Cholera rides the rails.
Tens of thousands of people were probably killed by the quake and the resulting tsunami. But anti-nuke activists will consider this the worse tragedy...
It seems to me a little too early for the geek to be breaking out the champagne.
These reactors - plural, remember - have no containment structures. There could still be major aftershocks, a second tsunami.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
---Winston Churchill
Problem fixed.
Number of replies to this story: 88 (as of 10:45 PM ET, March 12)
4.5 Million Tablets Were Sold in Q3 2010; 4.2 Million Were iPads
You do the math.
Maybe it doesn't need no stinking *Apple* app store if other contenders (I'm looking at you, Android) are clever enough to offer better conditions to open source developers.
It doesn't matter that the shelves are filled if the store is empty.
No customers.
iPad to grab up to 80 percent of the 2011 tablet market share, report claims
Look, w3schools shows Linux at 5%, an all time high and not that far behind Apple. I actually know normal people, not geeks, who have installed Linux entirely as their own idea. And of course, Linux rules the world in phones at the moment
The W3Schools stats have always been most generous to Linux.
But a bare 3% growth in eight years is telling when compared to the vitality shown by its competitors.
In North America, the iOS rules in mobile. Globally, it is Symbian. The Android is a strong competitor. But Android is unmistakably a Google production.
Not a community oriented Linux distribution.
Now Microsoft has the "monopoly advantage" if they say now you need to cut off your left feet to implement Direct3D the videocard fabricant (Intel, Nvidia principally) will find somebody in charge of getting his or her feet cut off to keep the market.
This is nonsense.
The reality is that Microsoft works closely with the hardware and software developer so that everyone remains on the same page.
Microsoft builds a consensus around what is possible and what is desirable - not only in video and sound, but in every aspect of PC gaming.
Why would a robot need a display in its head? Wouldn't it just think the info, not display it to its own eyes? Yah, not as thrilling to the audience to show a robot standing there staring and analyzing.
In Wall-E, the Autopilot cannot command systems directly, he has to physically work the controls on the bridge.
That exposes his actions to the audience. It catches their eye. But it is also a pointed reminder that the Captain is the one who is supposed to be the one in charge here.
In animation you need to make your story points economically, while giving your audience something interesting to look at.
Why do computers on TV have to display all the photos/fingerprints in its database when doing any kind of search?
Because it is a visually appealing and dramatically effective way of suggesting the size and complexity of the database.
What lunacy...I guess Linux didn't go anywhere either cause it's open source...or Chrome.....or Firefox.....
The Mozilla Foundation lives and dies by the add click.Where would Firefox be without the port to Windows?
Unrestricted net assets - Revenues and other support (2009)
Royalties: $101,537,000
Contributions: $50,000
Note 2 - Summary of significant accounting practices
(e) Receivables
Receivables consist primarilly of amounts due from contracts with multiple search engine and information providers
Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiaries
As a desktop client OS, the traditional community-oriented Linux distribution may not be six feet under. But neither is it in the best of health:
Net Applications (March)
Linux 0.92%
iOS 1.8%
Android 0.5%
Operating System Market Share
Statcounter (March)
Linux 1%
Top 5 Operating Systems
W3Schools (January)
Win 7 31%
Up 31% since January 2009
Linux 5%
Up 3% since March 2003
OS PLatform Statistics
How do you think H.264 started out ? With zero hardware support, this is where VP8 was a few months ago. Now they have a few hardware manufacturers
H.264 is supported by every digital HDTV system on the planet. It is studio production codec, a broadcast, cable and satellite distribution codec.
It is deeply entrenched in CCTV, commercial, industrial, medical, military and security applications.
Yes, VP8 has the support of a few hardware manufacturers.
But H.264 is suppported by Apple, Fitjusitu, Hitachi, JVC, Microsoft, NTT, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and Yamaha.
In the second tier, by the 953 H.264 licensees like LG and Vizio.
The whole H.264 / VP8 debate is also about looking at the future not just now.
Then you need to be thinking about the next-generation codec, HEVC/H.265, which should be ready in a year or two.
HEVC aims to substantially improve coding efficiency compared to AVC High Profile, i.e. reduce bitrate requirements by half with comparable image quality, probably at the expense of increased computational complexity. Depending on the application requirements, HEVC should be able to trade off computational complexity, compression rate, robustness to errors and processing delay time.
HEVC is targeted at next-generation HDTV displays and content capture systems which feature progressive scanned frame rates and display resolutions from QVGA (320x240) up to 1080p and Ultra HDTV (7680x4320), as well as improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color gamut and dynamic range.{/quote> High Efficiency Video Coding
Traditional shareware, I mean. Has anyone ever made a living off of it?
mIRC chart is a classic $20 shareware program, introduced in 1995, now at. v7.17.
32 million dowloads from CNET's Download.com (since Dec 2010), currently about 125,000 downloads a week from CNET alone.
TreeCardGames's SolSuite Solitaire (now at v 11.2) is another example, with about 4,000 downloads a week from Download.com.
That's because your jealous coworker pirated himself a copy of this program, fed some writing of yours through it, and then kept editing those death threats until the program claimed they sounded just like you.
The poison pen is ego driven. The ultimate DIY project.
Here is sampling of the real thing:
Perverts welcome.
When a male teacher was in the mood for a little sex between classes, militant teacher [Jane Doe] was happy to help out, by writing a hall pass for a female student.
They seriously think an 80% success rate is good enough to be used in court?
I'm betting the real reason is so they can go to a judge with their pseudo-evidence to get a warrant for more invasive spying.
The geek never gets these things right.
The standards for discovery in a civil case and for a warrant in a criiminal are not the same as the burden of proof at trial.
Judges do not like excluding relevant evidence even if that evidence is in some ways uncertain or imperfect. Few things in life are certain and perfected
The burden of proof in a civil case is light: "More probable than not." You may not even need a unaminous verdict.
Civil cases in state court
Size and unanimity requirements in civil cases vary considerably under state laws. Less than half the states require twelve-person juries, and about half the states allow for non-unanimous verdicts.
Calling textual analysis "psuedo evidence" leads nowhere. Courts have been asked to establish the authorship and authenticity of texts and documents for thousands of years. The methods used here may be automated - but they are not unfamiliar.
An elderly person has no incentive to donate his organs on death, if his surviving loved ones do not profit from it.
The elderly person may have nothing of value to donate.
I'd love to see Skype come out with a supported, up to date version of their client for Linux first.
I want a pony.
But Facebook brings 700 million users to the table.
All those examples involve being convicted of a CRIME.
No they don't.
The law is framed much more broadly than that.
And yes, joking around in poor taste on facebook may not be something people should be doing, but it's certainly not a crime
Defamation is not a joke. In 17 U.S. states it is a crime.
In most states, false accusations of sexual perversion or sexual crimes are libelous as a matter of law. You do not have to prove damages to be awarded damages.
As unfortunate as it is, old media does use all its arsenal to protect their interests.
"New media" is not a free ticket to every game.
For instance, in libel law, one is not eligible for more than token damages if nobody who read the statement took it seriously.
The Wikipedia makes it plain enough:
Defamation per se
All states except Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee recognize that some categories of false statements are so innately harmful that they are considered to be defamatory per se.
In the common law tradition, damages for such false statements are presumed and do not have to be proved.
"Statements are defamatory per se where they falsely impute to the plaintiff one or more of the following things":
Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
Allegations or imputations "of loathsome disease" (historically leprosy and sexually transmitted disease, now also including mental illness)
Allegations or imputations of "unchastity" (usually only in unmarried people and sometimes only in women)
Allegations or imputations of criminal activity (sometimes only crimes of moral turpitude)
Defamation in the United States
To assert that the school has the power to require a student to show the principal the contents of the student's facebook account, and further to require the student to delete any offending posts, is going way too far, IMO.
To assert that the school has the power to require a student to show the principal the contents of the student's facebook account, and further to require the student to delete any offending posts, is going way too far, IMO.
There are times when a school has parental authority over a child. There are times when it can and should act quickly and decisively.
Local Courts, apparently. Or better yet, how about just banning local dumbshit judges that are still stuck in 1947 or whatever the hell yesteryear they graduated from law school in?
The broadcast rights to Spor Toto Super League matches are worth $321 million dollars. Blogger becomes latest victim of Turkish Internet bans
This in a country with a population of 74.8 million - -- and it may help to explain why a Turkish court sends an early morning wake-up call to Google.
The Turkish system is very different from the U.S.
There are no juries, only judges and panels of judges.
There is no intermediate appelate system.
Which means that the decisions of your "dumbshit" local judge carry very real weight.
Your judge will have four years of law school under his belt, two years of judicial internship and will have been no older than 35 if he held a masters or doctorate degree when he passed his entrance exam.
No older than 30 if he entered the system straight out of law school.
Allow me to suggest that playing the age card is not the brightest idea you ever had.
The Three Most Important Features of Turkey's Legal System That Others Should Know
Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it certainly isn't working for drugs.
Per capita consumption of beer in the U.S., 1911-1915, 29 gallons.
In 1934, 13 gallons.
In the prosperous mid-fifties, 23 gallons. Drinking in America: A History
These comic books may be expensive, but I doubt that they're valuable.
Today's Google Doodle is a tribute to Will Eisner and The Spirit
It took a long time for the comic book to gain respectability as the "graphic novel."
But the Americam comic strip and comic book have attracted some very gifted artists and writers from the beginning. The Will Eisner Hall of Fame
How is it that we as a society have become to treat anything posted online as the gospel?
I think it was Francis Bacon who made a case for the prosecution of witches.
Not because he believed in their magic.
But because they were driven by malice. Hell-bent on causing mischief. Playing on people's fears. Disturbing the peace.
Levelling 'paedophile' against a teacher is insanely damaging. They work with kids. As soon as the accusation is made it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.
In the mail box this week:
Perverts welcome at [your suburban high school]
When a male teacher was in the mood for a little sex between classes, militant teacher [Jane Doe] was happy to help out, by writing a hall pass for a female student.
The School Board disciples of militant preacher [John Smith], are very proud to jeopardize your children with their forgiveness and rewarding of deviants.
The poster was identified by one eyewitness as former school board member whose association with an anonymous scandal sheet helped grease the skids for his departure in our last election.
"Smith" is the pastor of a mainstream Protestant church.
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel
It is never safe to generalize about U.S. state law.
Colorado is one of 17 states with a criminal libel statute, which is different from the civil libel laws in all 50 states that allow victims of allegedly defamatory statements to seek compensation from speakers. Criminal libel laws allow the state to fine or imprison speakers of defamatory statements.
Former high school student pleads guilty to criminal libel [2006]