When I call AT&T to complain about the noise on my phone line, am I giving them permission to listen to my calls?
I suspect that you are. If that is what is required to define and isolate the problem.
If the lens on my digital camera breaks, can the repairman view my pictures?
How he can repair your camera if he cannot test your camera? If you don't want your photographs damaged or erased during a repair, what else can he do but download, record and display the files?
you can negotiate with a computer repair service--if one service offers "no privacy-we'll read all your files" and the other say "complete privacy, for a little bit more money" then you get to pick which one you like, and to sue the "complete privacy" company if they break their word.
somehow I think a jury is going to say that reporting a crime against a child counts for more than breaking their promise to you.
jury nullification cuts both ways.
but I think it is just as likely that a judge will say that it is against the public interest to enforce a contract that defines a promise of "complete privacy" as a promise to conceal the evidence of a crime.
Many states...have specific rights of privacy that apply to all citizens.
The key word here is specific.
I'll take a chance here and say that these laws do not require exclusion of evidence of a felony and do not give you a cause of action against the whistle blower who landed you in jail.
I don't fix my car myself, and I expect the technician not to rummage through stuff I may have left in the boot, looking for thrills.
The problem is, if he finds a body in the trunk, there isn't a jury in the world that will award you damages if he reports it to the police.
The truth is that - for all practical purposes - you did sign a blank check when you dropped the car off for repair.
His lawyer will argue that any illegal files may have been placed on his computer by the employees.
Because the average Circuit City service tech can easily sandwich in a ready to load porn stash that is perfectly consistent with every other file and folder on the drive.
You are accussing the service tech of multiple felony charges.
it doesn't matter whether you have a right to privacy or not. It's not a right you can rely on
The constitutional Right To Privacy, to the extent that it exists at all, applies only to govenment agencies.
The defendant might try bringing a civil action.
But no matter hiw you frame the issues, there is only a snowball's chance in hell that a jury will punish Circuit City for reporting a crime it discovered in the ordinary course of business.
To Clippy? Consumers and business users don't buy patents. They buy products that make their lives easier or more productive, yet Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to turn its patent portfolio into much more than life support for its existing Office and Windows monopolies
"Clippy?"
The Geek never learns to retire a joke that was never particurlarly true or funny to begin with.
Slashdot will probably be still using the Borg icon for Bill Gates when the Gates Foundation wins him the Nobel Peace Prize for the fight against Malaria.
"Life support" for Windows and Office?
The OfficeMax gift special is an $800 widescreen Vista Premium HP laptop, dual core AMD CPU and 2 GB RAM, bundled with an HP multifunction printer, and a 6.2 megapixel HP digital camera.
MS Office dominates retail software sales. If OfficeMax has a lick of sense, Office Home will be positioned to leave the store in the same cart as those $800 laptops.
Microsoft took off like a rocket in its first quarter and doesn't show any signs of slowing down in the second.
I'm not really sure how a laser would bring down a plane though.
Fire up Flight Simulator. Chose an aircraft that is notoriously tempermental and demanding at low speeds and low altidudes. Fly it blindfolded through Manhatten at 500 feet for thirty seconds.
If an aircraft accidently happened to wander in to the path when I was showing somebody where M31 or Comet 17P/Holmes was, is it a crime? I don't think so.
What is the effective range of your pointer?
You probably have a defense if it's a jumbo jet moving at mach 0.6 at 20,000 feet. Maybe not if it's a helicopter at 250-500 feet and closing at a speed of only 45 mph or so. Neither silent or invisible.
Were you paying attention? Were you as careful as you needws to be with that pointer?
You had better be damn sure M31 was in line of sight with the aircraft before taking this argument into court.
If they are telling a lie to protect themselves from harsher punishment, then harsher punishment they should get. Unless a third person can come forward and state that harmful intent was desired, then the judge will have to go on the sworn testimony of the two.
The judge [or jury] isn't obliged to believe that you are telling the truth. Even when you are under oath. Even when your testimony is not directly contradicted. His only obligation is to make a decision based on the evidence as a whole. How many Geeks have to learn this lesson the hard way?
If the charge is based on conduct that is defined as criminally careless, reckless as a matter of law then your "intent" isn't going to matter very much:
"I'm sorry we pointed a laser at the cockpt. I am sorry we held it there long enough to blind the pilot. I am sorry he crashed the plane. I am sorry about the people who died on the ground."
] wouldn't. I'd rather tune down my power consumption by a magnitude and switch to solar energy or something. I don't think this will fly.
Temperatures this past summer held in the mid nineties with 80% humidity. Winters can be just as brutal with lows near zero and winds gusting to fifty. You are going to find very tough to lower your power consumption "by an order of magnitude" under those conditions. There are no easy or obvious alternatives for the neighborhood, the nursing home, the single family residence.
If your router transfers the data but you don't know what the data is...then you are effectively a common carrier and not held liable for the data forwarded by the router.
it is this kind of thinking that pays for your lawyer's Hilton Head condo.
Here's a guy who just happens to be a KID of someone who created something fine. Someone else, who puts his money, time and name on the line decides to produce the movie.
That kid is the reason why the backstory of the Lord of the Rings has made it into print.
You would have be very knowledgable about the man and his work as well as endlessly patient and resourceful to shape this material into anything like an intelligible form.
To say that Christopher has no "moral connection" to his father's work is absolute nonsense.
LOTR could very easily have faded into obscurity as a cultural artifact of the sixties, when it first attracted a significant number of readers.
LOTR has been adapted for radio and the stage. there have two animated films. The risk and expense in filming LOTR is inherent in the story and not in the copyright.
Your boss demands content protection. Your family expects DVD play. The Geek has his freedom. Microsoft has one billion users for its client OS.
Software and hardware. The high price of the OS
The HP Vista Premium Desktop with 20" LCD Monitor, Dual Core AMD CPU, and 320 GB HDD is $640 at Walmart.com.
The HP multifunction Windows printer-scanner at Walmart.com starts at $50.
No one gives a damn about the price of the OS.
You do not see mass market pricing for PC hardware and software in the immature - fragmented - market that existed before MSDOS and Windows.
FOSS projects like Firefox and OpenOffice.org have visibility and financial support precisely because they have been ported to Windows or began as native Windows apps.
Standards
The standards committe takes the Greyhound bus and spends most of its time quarreling over who gets to sit up front. The proprietary vendor rides the executive jet and has made his decisions before take-off.
He told me that when he was shopping for a Mac for Christmas, he said going to the Apple store was a useless effort. He could not get the attention of a sales person to save his life. They were utterly flooded with customers. It was complete chaos.
In New York there are only a half dozen or so Apple stores outside metro New York City.
You will find them - quite predictably - in the upscale Galleria mall. Targeting the same demographic Appple has mined for the last twenty-five years.
The question is, is the Mac the hot seller or a stocking-stuffer like the iPod Nano?
it just won't matter, in the long run. The fact is, they're big, they're fat, and they have company politics all over the place. They make *acceptable* products, but they compete based on their overwhelming market strength, not on their merit.
Office 2007 is more than merely "acceptable." The Geek who pretends otherwise is just blowing smoke.
The New Slashdot Meme is to insist that Slashdot is full of knee-jerk anti-Microsofties, that Microsoft products really are the best available for the purposes they're used, and infer that Microsoft business practices really ain't Evil..
Who do you think you are kidding?
The Borg icon for Gates. The stained glass window. Microsoft spelled with a dollar sign. The inane and ridiculous flamepoint stories that appear on a slow news day. Twitter, twit, twit.
The first Windows XP was something that was avoided by most for over a year. Win2k was stable, rock solid, why upgrade for the eye candy?
And now everyone believes XP is the second coming or something. Just hurts your head sometimes...
W2K made no significant inroads into the consumer market.
"Rock solid" usually translates to "when running certified apps and certified drivers on mid-line hardware or better."
The eye candy in XP can be turned off.
What you can't turn off or slow down is development for the mass-market platform. The SOHO user running Quicken and Rhapsody and pricing the upgrade to his first DVD burner.
His first digital camera. His first multifunction printer-scanner.
Then perhaps six months in the county jug will help jog your memory.
Meanwhile the state will be more than happy to help recover your passwords - and whatever else might be exposed along the way.
It isn't prudent to play games with a judge. It isn't prudent to lie to a judge. You won't like what he has to say if it turns out you were accessing the encrypted files or volumes a week before your appearance in court.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that you are. If that is what is required to define and isolate the problem.
If the lens on my digital camera breaks, can the repairman view my pictures?
How he can repair your camera if he cannot test your camera? If you don't want your photographs damaged or erased during a repair, what else can he do but download, record and display the files?
somehow I think a jury is going to say that reporting a crime against a child counts for more than breaking their promise to you.
jury nullification cuts both ways.
but I think it is just as likely that a judge will say that it is against the public interest to enforce a contract that defines a promise of "complete privacy" as a promise to conceal the evidence of a crime.
The key word here is specific.
I'll take a chance here and say that these laws do not require exclusion of evidence of a felony and do not give you a cause of action against the whistle blower who landed you in jail.
The problem is, if he finds a body in the trunk, there isn't a jury in the world that will award you damages if he reports it to the police. The truth is that - for all practical purposes - you did sign a blank check when you dropped the car off for repair.
Tell me why a legitimate "security researcher" calls himself "porky the pig." Tell me why I should trust anything he says.
Because the average Circuit City service tech can easily sandwich in a ready to load porn stash that is perfectly consistent with every other file and folder on the drive.
You are accussing the service tech of multiple felony charges.
I think you will find that judges don't take well to schemes intended to extend the attorney-client privilege beyond its original scope.
"Bonded" simply means "insured."
The constitutional Right To Privacy, to the extent that it exists at all, applies only to govenment agencies.
The defendant might try bringing a civil action.
But no matter hiw you frame the issues, there is only a snowball's chance in hell that a jury will punish Circuit City for reporting a crime it discovered in the ordinary course of business.
"Clippy?"
The Geek never learns to retire a joke that was never particurlarly true or funny to begin with.
Slashdot will probably be still using the Borg icon for Bill Gates when the Gates Foundation wins him the Nobel Peace Prize for the fight against Malaria.
"Life support" for Windows and Office?
The OfficeMax gift special is an $800 widescreen Vista Premium HP laptop, dual core AMD CPU and 2 GB RAM, bundled with an HP multifunction printer, and a 6.2 megapixel HP digital camera.
MS Office dominates retail software sales. If OfficeMax has a lick of sense, Office Home will be positioned to leave the store in the same cart as those $800 laptops.
Microsoft took off like a rocket in its first quarter and doesn't show any signs of slowing down in the second.
Fire up Flight Simulator. Chose an aircraft that is notoriously tempermental and demanding at low speeds and low altidudes. Fly it blindfolded through Manhatten at 500 feet for thirty seconds.
Ever wonder why night vision aids use green-glowing phosphers?
The pilot doesn't have to be injured, he only has to be disoriented at a critical moment.
Helicopters are tempermental beasts at best and at low altitudes you have very little time for recovery.
What is the effective range of your pointer?
You probably have a defense if it's a jumbo jet moving at mach 0.6 at 20,000 feet. Maybe not if it's a helicopter at 250-500 feet and closing at a speed of only 45 mph or so. Neither silent or invisible.
Were you paying attention? Were you as careful as you needws to be with that pointer? You had better be damn sure M31 was in line of sight with the aircraft before taking this argument into court.
The judge [or jury] isn't obliged to believe that you are telling the truth. Even when you are under oath. Even when your testimony is not directly contradicted. His only obligation is to make a decision based on the evidence as a whole. How many Geeks have to learn this lesson the hard way?
If the charge is based on conduct that is defined as criminally careless, reckless as a matter of law then your "intent" isn't going to matter very much:
"I'm sorry we pointed a laser at the cockpt. I am sorry we held it there long enough to blind the pilot. I am sorry he crashed the plane. I am sorry about the people who died on the ground."
Sometimes feeling sorry isn't good enough,
Temperatures this past summer held in the mid nineties with 80% humidity. Winters can be just as brutal with lows near zero and winds gusting to fifty. You are going to find very tough to lower your power consumption "by an order of magnitude" under those conditions. There are no easy or obvious alternatives for the neighborhood, the nursing home, the single family residence.
it is this kind of thinking that pays for your lawyer's Hilton Head condo.
That kid is the reason why the backstory of the Lord of the Rings has made it into print.
You would have be very knowledgable about the man and his work as well as endlessly patient and resourceful to shape this material into anything like an intelligible form.
To say that Christopher has no "moral connection" to his father's work is absolute nonsense.
LOTR could very easily have faded into obscurity as a cultural artifact of the sixties, when it first attracted a significant number of readers.
LOTR has been adapted for radio and the stage. there have two animated films. The risk and expense in filming LOTR is inherent in the story and not in the copyright.
and access the Internet through a dial-up connection. there are a remarkable number of home town ISPs that have that to be a profitable niche market.
I would have to say that an explicitly Christian sense of sin and evil is no less the core of Tolkien than it is of C.S. Lewis.
DRM.
Your boss demands content protection. Your family expects DVD play. The Geek has his freedom. Microsoft has one billion users for its client OS.
Software and hardware. The high price of the OS
The HP Vista Premium Desktop with 20" LCD Monitor, Dual Core AMD CPU, and 320 GB HDD is $640 at Walmart.com. The HP multifunction Windows printer-scanner at Walmart.com starts at $50.
No one gives a damn about the price of the OS.
You do not see mass market pricing for PC hardware and software in the immature - fragmented - market that existed before MSDOS and Windows.
FOSS projects like Firefox and OpenOffice.org have visibility and financial support precisely because they have been ported to Windows or began as native Windows apps.
Standards
The standards committe takes the Greyhound bus and spends most of its time quarreling over who gets to sit up front. The proprietary vendor rides the executive jet and has made his decisions before take-off.
W2K held a 10% share as late as August of last year.
The trend line is irretrivably downward.
W2K was never a mass-market OS. Vista's present strength is in the OEM consumer market and is probably under-represented in the w3Schools stats.
What matters is that Vista is the only OS in these stats showing significant growth.
Vista 6.3%
Growing at slightly under 1% a month.
This train may have been slow leaving the station, but it is building up momentum.
XP 72.8%
XP's loss is Vista's gain?
The so-called "upgrade" migration to XP is beginning to look like just another Geek fantasy.
W2K 5.1%
Some good news for the die-hards.
Linux 3.3%
Slow erosion all year, and not much to show for four years of "The Year of Linux"
OSX 3.9%
A healthy niche, but ending the year where it began.
In New York there are only a half dozen or so Apple stores outside metro New York City.
You will find them - quite predictably - in the upscale Galleria mall. Targeting the same demographic Appple has mined for the last twenty-five years.
The question is, is the Mac the hot seller or a stocking-stuffer like the iPod Nano?
Office 2007 is more than merely "acceptable." The Geek who pretends otherwise is just blowing smoke.
The New Slashdot Meme is to insist that Slashdot is full of knee-jerk anti-Microsofties, that Microsoft products really are the best available for the purposes they're used, and infer that Microsoft business practices really ain't Evil..
Who do you think you are kidding?
The Borg icon for Gates. The stained glass window. Microsoft spelled with a dollar sign. The inane and ridiculous flamepoint stories that appear on a slow news day. Twitter, twit, twit.
Need I go on?
W2K made no significant inroads into the consumer market.
Its decline in other markets can be seen in the w3Schools OS Platform stats:
42% in March 03
20% in March 05
5% in October 07
"Rock solid" usually translates to "when running certified apps and certified drivers on mid-line hardware or better."
The eye candy in XP can be turned off.
What you can't turn off or slow down is development for the mass-market platform. The SOHO user running Quicken and Rhapsody and pricing the upgrade to his first DVD burner. His first digital camera. His first multifunction printer-scanner.
Then perhaps six months in the county jug will help jog your memory.
Meanwhile the state will be more than happy to help recover your passwords - and whatever else might be exposed along the way.
It isn't prudent to play games with a judge. It isn't prudent to lie to a judge. You won't like what he has to say if it turns out you were accessing the encrypted files or volumes a week before your appearance in court.