Here's an idea: what if the prices for ringtones were kept at the current level no matter what, whereas the record companies etc. were forced to turn over their excess profits so they can be invested into space exploration?
Then the consumers AND the investors get ripped off by the government. (And only the well-to-do get ring tones.)
(Besides, you KNOW they'll use it for something else. Like $6,000,000 each cars for mass transit that doesn't go thorugh any two points between which masses need transit.)
Where people get turned away from voting stations by police,
I've seen a number of claims that poll workers turned away people, but not that police did it. Closet I've seen is the claim that running traffic checkpoints far from the polls on election night is somehow more likely to apprehend or delay Democrats than Republicans. (Not claiming there ARE no items to that effect. But five minutes of plausible searches with google didn't find 'em for me.) References please?
(I do agree that traffic stops on election night are a bad idea. Let's not have even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, let alone an opportunity for the real thing. But weren't the CLEOs who ordered those traffic checks Democrats?)
disenfranchised because they share the same name as people who were previously convicted of crimes in other US states,
All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact, well before the election, by a letter to their registered mailing address, which gave the procedure to correct any error and the necessary contact information to make it convenient.
Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats? Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?
have to put up with butterfly ballot papers (only in the poorest districts though)
Which were designed by an election official who happens to be a Democrat...
and where chads reign supreme.
The whole bit with "hanging chads" was from the interminable recouts, where the Democrats tried to count the ballots in every way possible to find a few hundred more Gore votes, or lose a few hundred for Bush.
And you know what? No matter HOW they counted them - or even how the news media commissioned after-the-supreme-court-said-give-it-up counters counted them, they were NEVER able to find enough extra votes for Gore to change the election.
Which, in my opinion, is just a BIG whitewash to cover the REAL manipulation of the Florida election: by the broadcast news media, which tried to swing it to Gore.
In case you've forgotten:
Florida is in two time zones. The peninsula is in the Eastern zone, and the panhandle is in the Central zone. As a result the polls close in the panhandle an hour after they close in the peninsula. The panhandle is heavily Republican while the peninsula tends Democratic.
But right after the polls closed in the peninsula, with nearly an hour of voting to go in the panhandle, the media called the election for Gore, claiming exit polling gave him a significant margin. They kept running that story until a few minutes before the polls closed in the panhandle - much too late for any Republican voters who decided to skip the lost cause to go back to the polls and get in line to vote. Then (miracle of miracles), first they "realized" they shouldn't be reporting yet, then they "realized" that the election wasn't close enough to call after all.
In case you weren't aware, the reason the media no longer report election results until polls are closed is that this has been shown to cause a major drop in voter turnout as soon as the results are broadcast. And since voters for different parties vote at different times of day this can have a significant effect on the results. Florida happens to be an EXTREME case because of the population distribution and time zone issue.
The effect of this fraudulent coverage in Florida, with a large number of heavily Republican districts not yet closed, would obviously be to cut Bush's count a LOT more than it did Gore's.
Yet DESPITE this MAJOR penalty against Bush they didn't QUITE swing it to Gore. And dispite days of recounting (and months of recounting even after Bush was in office) they STILL couldn't find enough dimpled chads, hanging chads, and couldn't knock out enough extra chads, to give the election to Gore.
What makes anyone think that Florida will get in right this time?
What makes you think they got it wrong LAST time? B-)
Use of this service leaves a record at the server of your location, movements, and who you are associating with.
Maybe the fun is worth it. Maybe not. But if you subscribe, you might want to be careful about who your friends are. If they screw up with the law, the law might just decide you're a gang member, vandal, or terrorist. B-(
I don't understand this recent fascination with multi-tasking on your phone. I must be out of touch with the hip crowd, because I only use my phone to talk to people. No games, no sms messages, no camera.
Adolescent primates try out new things and see how they work. (Typically one of the things they try is breaking one major taboo.)
Sometimes it works out very well. Then they are wildly successful and teach the rest of the primates (starting with their family and cronies) about a new food source, technique, etc.
Sometimes it's a disaster. Then they die.
Most of the time it's just interesting to them and maybe fun for a while, then it gets old and gets dropped.
Adolescence is the right time for this sort of behavior. Adolescents are mature enough that they're not likely to fail just through lack of strength, knowldege or skill. But less of the rest of the tribe's resources are sunk by their loss, and their loss is less damaging to the tribe's future, than if they pull this and lose later in life, say once they have young to raise and others who have become dependent on them. Thus do post-adolescents become more conservative, and less experimental and risk-taking, once they have accepted major long-term responsibilities.
Even so, a large number of guns are bought for use only in self defense (ie, hoping to never need to use them). But I think (haven't checked) that 99.98% is a bit much, unless you also count toy guns.
Well, let's try this.
There are over 300,000,000 guns in the US. (Probably much higher.)
There are about 35,000 gun-related deaths of all kinds per year.
So in any given year, AT LEAST 99.9983% of the guns were not involved in a gun related death.
Assuming a gun that is used in a gun-related death is NEVER used in another, and no guns are built or retired, it still would take about 17 years to get down to the 99.98% figure.
But more guns are being made constantly. The potential life of a gun is longer than 17 years, but the average age of guns still in circulation is probably quite a bit less than that. (We could get accurate numbers by examining the production in the last couple decades.) So the 99.98% figure is probably a bit low just on that ground.
A much bigger factor is that a few guns are used over and over again in crimes - including multiple murders. That completely swamps the no-more-than-one-killing assumption, making the 99.98% figure significantly low.
The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence
Pardon? I'm sorry, but published crime statistics do not agree with that at all.
Actually, they do, as does quite a bunch of research. You're just misinterpreting some datapoints - or having the misinterpretations fed to you.
Let me explain, by giving you only a part of the reason these items don't say what you think.
The USA has some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, and is one of the few western countries in which firearms are routinely available to regular people.
First off, that's flat-out false.
The USA does have higher crime than some cultures. But that is because it allows massive immigration from other, more violent cultures, and doesn't require the immigrants to abandon their heritage.
Nevertheless, crimes tend to be committed within each ethnic group far more than between members of different groups, which makes it easy to break it down. When you do this you find:
- Americans of English descent have a lower probability of being injured or killed by criminal violence than Englishmen in England.
- Americans of African descent have a lower probability of being injured or killed by criminal violence than Africans.
- Ditto for Americans of Japanese descent vs. Japanese in Japan.
- Ditto for Americans of other European descent vs. those still in Europe.
- Ditto for Americans of South American descent than South Americans. And so on.
But it's cultural, not racial. For instance Blacks who have achieved middle class or higher income and acculturation have about the same rates as Whites of the same standing, not the sky-high rates of lower-income Blacks.
And that's just for criminal activity. It doesn't even TOUCH the much higher body counts for the periodic tribal wars of Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Africa, etc.
Then there's the point that gun laws and their enforcement vary by state and city. And violence is enormously higher in those regions where gun ownership and carrying is suppressed than in those where it is allowed or encouraged.
Now I'm not saying that there is a proven causal link there (although I personally believe there is) but to say that having guns leads to a "massive and sustained" decrease is quite unbelieveable.
But there IS a causual link, and it DOES go from more guns to less crime. For a long time it was an open question whether citizen armament suppressed crime or whether high crime led to passage of gun bans. But then a few states began allowing concealed carry by all non-criminals who applied (and went through whatever red tape was required). The bloodbaths predicted by the hysterics failed to appear, and crime dropped like a rock - leading more jurisdictions to try it. Then the academics researched this unintended controlled experiment and found that the only explanation for the numbers was causality, and it was strong. More guns, less crime.
USA is 8th in the world for gun murders
So it's worse to shoot someone than club them to death, cut them up, strangle them, run them down, or beat them to death by hand? No, I don't think so.
(I, for one would rather be attacked by a crookie with a gun than in any other mode. On the average I'd be far less likely to be actually wounded, suffer less pain if I WAS wounded, be less likely to die, and if I survived wounding to make a more complete recovery.)
USA is 24th in the world for murder of all kinds (better!)
Much better comparison. But try breaking it down by ethnic group.
Also: different countries count things differently:
US counts a murder when the police find a body with signs of foul play. England counts one when they get a conviction.
If a man kills his wife, three, kids, and himself, the US counts four murders and a suicide, Japan five suicides.
I know you were being facetious. But yes they are.
"God created men. Sam Colt made them equal."
Disarming the law-abiding doesn't solve the crime problem.
Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks,...
And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.
What guns do is make it possible for anyone, strong or weak, young or old, male or female, black, white, yellow, or brown, to be about equally deadly - with minimal expense and a few hours of training.
The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence. The good guys were never a problem. The bad guys mostly learn to stop attacking the good guys (and stick to stealing their stuff when they're not there to watch). The few who insist on attacking an armed population repeatedly are soon wounded and taken "out of service".
And on the political level, the government with an armed population is much less able to oppress it.
A vote for citizen disarmament is a vote for violent crime, tyranny, genocide, and the rule of psychpathic strongmen - at both the wholesale and retail level.
In that case, more than 99.98% of guns are defective because they never killed anything.
Different guns are designed for different things. All are designed to throw pellets really fast. But what they do with the pellets are different.
Some are intended for games. (Target shooting, shotgun games like skeet and trap, etc.)
Some are designed for hunting. (Lots of different designs, too, for different game and different conditions.)
Some are designed for war. (Which means trying to WOUND the guy on the other side, since that takes MORE people out of action than killing them. They make rotten hunting guns. Too likely to leave a wounded animal around instead of killing it cleanly and with less suffering than ANY other way for it to die.)
Some are designed to protect the user from attack, by stopping a threatened attack or an attack in progress. (Just as war guns aren't intended to kill, neither are these. Unfortunately, to be effective at stopping attack, if you actually have to shoot the attacker maybe one in four he dies. Fortunately, you almost never have to actually SHOOT him. Just seeing you have a gun usually makes him stop attacking.)
Some are designed for multiple purposes - and virtually all of them can be used for more than one thing, with varying degrees of effectiveness.
But (like gulf clubs and vehicles), there are a LOT of different designs, each optimized for a different purpose. But virtually NONE of them (except hunting guns) are designed to kill - and of those that are, essentially all are designed to kill animals, not people.
If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law [...]
If one of the contract provisions is illegal, the party to the contract is not bound by it, and may violate it with impunity.
Unless there is verbage to the effect that some rights granted to that party conditional on his performance on that provision, and are voided if he can not perform on his side due to laws to the contray, he doesn't lose the rights granted. The illegal provisions are by default separable.
At least that's how I, who ANAL, understand it.
The primary function of the CSS and its licensing regime is not to inhibit unauthorized copying (although it does make it - along with fair use - slightly more difficult for the non-techies among the general population).
The primary purpose is to support both shady and explicitly illegal business activity: Regional pricing / price fixing and inhibition of international resale, regional distribution timing and availability control, and regional content censorship.
This could be construed to make adherence to the contract terms that require sale of chips only to licensees who build products that adhere to the regional coding schemes unenforcable.
= = = =
I just realized: It might be possible to bring a suit against the MPAA/CSS scheme in international courts under GATT!
Is it just me or does this entire concept scare the bejesus out of you?
The fbi etal want, as a default option, the ability to listen in to ANY call made by VOIP. This means that, as standard, any/all calls can be monitored, any/everyone (even non-American people[1]) whenever they want or indefinatly.
Why are you only getting scared NOW?
Ever since the CALEA was made law they've had that ability with POTS and cellphones. Why the sudden shudder when calls are starting to move to VoIP and they try to retain their old stranglehold?
...which is to say, the consumer of VOIP will foot the bill for allowing the government to listen in on our phone calls.
Newsflash: through taxes, consumers pay for EVERYTHING that the government does.
And it's appropriate for the extra work to be paid for by the people reaping the benefits.
In the case of VoIP, that's everybody EXCEPT the person using VoIP, whether they are VoIP subscribers or not.
If the "wiretapping service" gave a security benefit ONLY to VoIP customers it might make sense to surcharge the VoIP customers for it. Since it (allegedly) benefits everybody in the US, it should come out of the general defense budget, not a specific tax on VoIP service and/or an unfunded mandate (whose cost must be passed on to customers) on VoIP service providers.
... these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter. If an attack were to happen on US soil for which the planning occurred over VOIP lines, or email, or normal phone lines, and the CIA couldn't prevent it because they couldn't tap lines, then we would all be up in arms.
I wouldn't be. (Not against our government, anyhow.)
As for dealing with terrorism, IMHO it's the same problem as dealing with crime. The solution is an armed population.
If the people on the planes hadn't been disarmed by 30,000 anti-gun laws and an "airport security" regime that kept them from having even pocket knives on an airplane, a handfull of terrorists wouldn't have been able to take over four aircraft with hundres of passengers each using only boxcutters (little sticks with razor blades on the end of them), and use them to kill thousands of people.
While none of us would like to incur more fees, the simple fact that my Vonage bill is currently about $60.00 less per month then my Bell South bill, a small additional fee to cover this wouldn't be so bad. You can debate the pros and cons of whether or not VoIP wiretapping should even be done, but if it does, a small added fee to an already inexpensive service shouldn't be a problem.
The problem is, it won't be a SMALL fee.
VoIP comptuer-to-computer calls are (with certain exceptions) peer-to-peer bulk data transactions. The connection negotiation MAY go through a centeral server (such as a SIP redirect or proxy server). But the data representing the conversation (session) does not.
Exceptions:
- When you bridge to the PSTN to call an ordinary phone, your data goes through the gateway server.
- SOME services may also run your call through a session proxy (for instance to avoid both NAT and the ugly workarounds for establishing a peer-to-peer connection through a NAT box.)
The NOC of a VoIP service using such a peer-to-peer model has a very small internet bandwidth, since it only handles the tiny setup data and lets the internet handle the rest. Requiring them to provide a tap means they now have to buy servers and internet bandwidth to handle the data part of their calls in order to have it on hand to clone it.
If they do this for all their calls it is an ENORMOUS extra expense - comparable to running an ordinary phone company. (There goes your price advantage.) If they only do it for the calls being tapped, the client can determine whether he's being tapped from the routing information on the packets.
That should work for virus and worm detection, too!
Even moreso, since viruses are much more a compilation of a set of previous constructions with a few mods than a new composition not necessarily based on the wording of old scams.
And Viruses and worms (especially worms) are more constratined by their environment, requiring an exploit of a vulnerability and the instation of work-doing code. Though gene-shuffling techniques might be able to bury much of the code, the basic exploit must continue to be some sort of match to the vulnerability's "receptor".
Start rhyming, because your grasp on history leaves something to be desired. Reconstruction was a Republican program. It was misused at times, with Democrats being the ones on the short end of the stick.
I'm afraid it's you who needs the history lesson - starting with the fact that "Reconstruction" refers, not just to the program, but to the period. It is the latter definition I was using.
Yes, Reconstruction was a Republican program: Its primary purpose was to protect the newly enfranchised blacks and poor whites, establish schools and roads, and generally rebuild the south and prevent its return to feudalism under the thumbs of a few rich plantation owners.
And that's exactly what it did. And the newly enfranchised blacks and poor whites (who had previously been unable to vote but subject to conscription as guards to recapture escaped slaves) organized local Republican parties.
Meanwhile, the rich whites who had run the show and started the war organized the Ku Klux Klan - one of the classic terrorist organizations of all time. After a few years they were reenfranchised. And within a few years after that, with the aid of their KKK terror, their Democratic party had regained control of the southern governments.
They immediately passed the Jim Crow laws, to consoldate their power and again disenfranchise the blacks and poor whites. "Grandfather clauses" - so only people whose ancesters had voted before the war could vote now. "Literacy tests" for voting - where blacks, poor whites, and known Republicans mibht be given their "test" in Chinese. "Poll Taxes" - so only the rich could afford to pay the tax and thus vote. The first gun control laws - to disarm the blacks and poor whites, leaving them helpless before the KKK.
("Saturday Night Special" dates from the debate over one such law - banning all but one of the most expensive guns as being unsafe. The full term is "Niggertown Saturday Night Special", from the claim that it is suitable only for use in "Niggertown on a Saturday Night".)
And the KKK - the same people as the Democratic party structure - ran rampant, intimidating Republican voters into not voting and potential candidates into not running, lynching or burning those who refused to intimidate. The blacks and poor whites appealed to the federal government for troops to stop their literal slaughter. But they didn't get them.
Because president Johnson - who had been added pre-war to Lincoln's ticket to balance it by appealing to the southern vote, and succeeded him after the assasination, blocked the further implementation of the Reconstruction - over the voiciferous opposition of the rest of the Republican party. For this he was impeached (but not convicted).
And the Democrats took over in the south. And were the power structure of the south once again, for over a century - until the civil rights laws, and the freedom rides set the stage, and the burning of the cities in the '60s finally led to the restoration of black voting rights.
All the way from the Reconstruction era to the 1970s, "Southern Democrat" meant a heavy-handed pro-segregation politician. But once the blacks once again had the vote, they suddenly had a "change of heart". Even the poster-boy of segregation, George Wallace (who bolted the Democratic party and founded his own) eventually "became the black man's friend".
The first civil rights law was proposed, and signed into law, by Eisenhower, with the Kennedys voting against it (something that historical revisionists conveniently forget). What they WILL tell you about is the SECOND civil rights act, promoted by the Johnson who succeeded Kennedy upon HIS assination.
LBJ was as much a maveric to his Democratic party as Lincoln's Johnson was to the Civil War era Republicans. He was honestly in favor of ending segregation and promoting full cicizenship for blacks. And he is known to have despised the Kennedies. He promoted the second Civil Rights act as a "memorial to JFK" - ove
Photons don't have rest mass. They do have mass (the E=mc^2 equivalent amount of mass to their energy) and produce (and are affected by) gravitational fields accordingly.
It would seem to make sence that when 2 objects align their gravitational effects on a 3rd body would be "serial" and combine.
They combine by addition. The claim here seems to be that there is something besides that happening - like the moon blocking a tiny bit of gravity from the sun.
Or are you thinking of tides?
Which makes me wonder if they took tidal forces, and the (delayed) flexing of the earth and motion of the atmosphere and water in response to them, into account correctly.
For now I'll presume they did, since missing that would be a stupendous booboo.
It's ALWAYS going to be a good thing to know who someone really is from a security point of view.
Not true. In addition to impeeding ordinary travelers (thus doing damage FOR the terrorists), it's an innefective waste of resources that could otherwise be used to do something useful.
Such as random searches.
A watch list means anybody on the watch list is harrassed, and KNOWS it, while anybody NOT on the list passes through. This means that the terrorists can do a dry run and find out which of them are not on the list and pass through unhampered. Then the ones that succeed get togther and do the REAL hijacking - with no problems.
And the terrorists already knew this. They did dry runs immediately before the 9/11 event.
Had the resources been used instead for random checks, being passed through without search once would give no improvement whatsoever on the probability of being searched on the next trip. Mixes of the two are progressively less effective as the fraction of random searches goes down and watchlist searches goes up. (There was a recent paper on this published, and referenced here on slashdot.)
Meanwhile, having a watch list means having a government black list, selecting out a subset of the population for systematic penalization and harrassment. That's already unconstitutional, in the absense of individiualized evidence of wrongdoing and legal action to determine guilt, under the equal protection clause. But doubly so when it can be shown that a watchlist is not effective for its stated purpose, so no pressing government interest is served.
And of course there's the issue of harassment of additional people improperly put on the list - with T. Kennedy as the poster child.
When I learned IV insertion we practiced on a loose-fitting concentric rubber tubes with liquid between them. The inner tube squirmed around about as much as a normal vein.
It's nice to see that they're getting more realistic.
At some point they are going to start doing this to anybody they think is a Democrat or a liberal or just a non-creationist.
You mean like Democrats have done since at least the post-Civil-War Reconstruction? (Most recent example I recall: feloniously "losing" California voter-registration-drive forms for anyone not signing on with any other party. But I could go on for pages, with 1 1/2 centuries to mine.)
THE most classic technique of propaganda is to accuse ones opponent of one's own most glaring faults. Especially the sins that one's side commits systematically and one's opponent's side tries to avoid.
It shorts their opponents out when they try to point out when the propagandists' side does something wrong, making it look like a playground "no, HE did it" spat. And it gives the propagandists a golden opportunity to score points and propagate the story further whenever one of the other side DOES screw up, or even does something that can be spun to look that way.
But, despite my understanding of the dumbing-down of the population by the public schools and establishment media, it never ceases to amaze me how many allegedly intelligent people contiue to fall for and propagate these memes.
The allmighty GALL!
But keep it up, anyhow. Especially on the "internal security" insanity. That is a VERY powerful tool for anyone who WOULD deliberately and systematically misuse it in such a fashion. I really want to see that dismantled before the next time a Democrat is in the White House.
You KNOW they'll use it that way. Because they're already talking about the possibilities.
Those who do not understand history are doomed to rhyme.
How long...until people start spamming using their competition's address to facilitate them getting thrown off their host?
About an hour after the first site thrown off.
Not because the competition did it.
The spammers will start doing unsolicited, plausible-looking, freebies for large, rich corporations with significant internet components to their business model. This costs the spammers virtually nothing.
The ISPs will then be unable to enforce this policy. If they kick off the big guys when they were innocent, they're in for a big suit. If they kick off only little guys, they're in for a different big suit - over discrimination AND improper termination. If they try to sort out real spam from disinformation spam and only kick out the spammers real customers they're in for suits claiming they're wrong - even when they're right.
Wow, you've bought into SCO's position regarding their distribution of GPL'd code.... that it was improperly added by a third party and their subsequent distribution does not obligate them to honor the GPL's terms because they were deceived.
Not at all.
I'm saying that:
- The GPL itself CLAIMS not to apply to code illegitimately inserted.
- That leaving no way for companies that are in the position SCO claims to be in to defend IP they did not intend to release will result in companies that otherwise would release SOME of their code under GPL chosing to release NONE, for fear of compromsing the REST of it.
This would greatly reduce the amount of code released under GPL. So the issue needs to be addressed - if nothing else, to eliminate the ambiguity.
1: Regarding "greatly hamper the adoption", you're just dead wrong. Take a look around. Adoption of GPL code is progressing very well. Linux is growing dramatically.
Yes it's progressing. But I claim it will progress faster if the issue is addressed than otherwise.
Meanwhile, let's see how the results of the SCO suit affect the progress - especially if the "meeting GPL obligations legitimizes past 'theft'" doctrine is accepted by the courts.
2: The primary purpose of the GPL is to ensure freedom to modify and distribute original and modified code. That is why the GPL exists, not to enhance adoption by companies with particular proprietary interests.
It is also there to encourage the release of code to that commons. By guaranteeing your not locked out of future revsions of your own code it encourages that release. But if it puts at risk code you didn't intend to release, it discourages release.
I claim we can have both those cakes, not just one.
(actually, not disputing the definition of, for the sake of the discussion)
non-licensed distribution of code as theft, then it would also be a bad idea to allow someone to steal others code by not following the GPL.
Quite.
And SCO (or other people in the postion they claim to be in) would have to stop selling the product to new customers (unless they replace the offending sections or throw in the towel and releast them under GPL).
I'm just saying that if the GPL is interpreted to give them no way to act legitimately while defending IP claims over improperly-inserted code, it puts at risk code that companies did not INTEND to release, and thus inhibits adoption of the GPL by companies otherwise inclined to do so.
If what you're saying is that SCO was distributing source to fulfill a prior obligation created by distributing a binary, then no, that's different, I agree, and I don't think that would constitute placing their embedded IP under the GPL.
Yep. That's EXACTLY what I'm saying.
But putting the GPLed materials up for public download-- for anyone, including NEW persons who never recieved a binary from SCO or Caldera-- cannot really be said to be there for the purpose of fulfilling that obligation. This is a new act of distribution.
Nope. If they shipped even one binary without source, they must make the source available to all comers, in order to make it available to anyone to whom a copy of the binary-only release was transferred. This has the side-effect of making it availalable to people who did not get the object from them - but it IS still required.
It would make sense to me to require them to post a conspicuous warning on the download site that this source is being provided solely to satisfy that obligation to previous customers/downloaders, that it contains (through no fault of their own) IP over which they are claiming rights, that they have ceased selling or otherwise making available the code to new users, and that new users downloading and using the code may infringe on their claimed rights, yadda yadda.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an idea: what if the prices for ringtones were kept at the current level no matter what, whereas the record companies etc. were forced to turn over their excess profits so they can be invested into space exploration?
Then the consumers AND the investors get ripped off by the government. (And only the well-to-do get ring tones.)
(Besides, you KNOW they'll use it for something else. Like $6,000,000 each cars for mass transit that doesn't go thorugh any two points between which masses need transit.)
The tales do grow in the telling, don't they?
Where people get turned away from voting stations by police,
I've seen a number of claims that poll workers turned away people, but not that police did it. Closet I've seen is the claim that running traffic checkpoints far from the polls on election night is somehow more likely to apprehend or delay Democrats than Republicans. (Not claiming there ARE no items to that effect. But five minutes of plausible searches with google didn't find 'em for me.) References please?
(I do agree that traffic stops on election night are a bad idea. Let's not have even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, let alone an opportunity for the real thing. But weren't the CLEOs who ordered those traffic checks Democrats?)
disenfranchised because they share the same name as people who were previously convicted of crimes in other US states,
All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact, well before the election, by a letter to their registered mailing address, which gave the procedure to correct any error and the necessary contact information to make it convenient.
Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats? Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?
have to put up with butterfly ballot papers (only in the poorest districts though)
Which were designed by an election official who happens to be a Democrat...
and where chads reign supreme.
The whole bit with "hanging chads" was from the interminable recouts, where the Democrats tried to count the ballots in every way possible to find a few hundred more Gore votes, or lose a few hundred for Bush.
And you know what? No matter HOW they counted them - or even how the news media commissioned after-the-supreme-court-said-give-it-up counters counted them, they were NEVER able to find enough extra votes for Gore to change the election.
Which, in my opinion, is just a BIG whitewash to cover the REAL manipulation of the Florida election: by the broadcast news media, which tried to swing it to Gore.
In case you've forgotten:
Florida is in two time zones. The peninsula is in the Eastern zone, and the panhandle is in the Central zone. As a result the polls close in the panhandle an hour after they close in the peninsula. The panhandle is heavily Republican while the peninsula tends Democratic.
But right after the polls closed in the peninsula, with nearly an hour of voting to go in the panhandle, the media called the election for Gore, claiming exit polling gave him a significant margin. They kept running that story until a few minutes before the polls closed in the panhandle - much too late for any Republican voters who decided to skip the lost cause to go back to the polls and get in line to vote. Then (miracle of miracles), first they "realized" they shouldn't be reporting yet, then they "realized" that the election wasn't close enough to call after all.
In case you weren't aware, the reason the media no longer report election results until polls are closed is that this has been shown to cause a major drop in voter turnout as soon as the results are broadcast. And since voters for different parties vote at different times of day this can have a significant effect on the results. Florida happens to be an EXTREME case because of the population distribution and time zone issue.
The effect of this fraudulent coverage in Florida, with a large number of heavily Republican districts not yet closed, would obviously be to cut Bush's count a LOT more than it did Gore's.
Yet DESPITE this MAJOR penalty against Bush they didn't QUITE swing it to Gore. And dispite days of recounting (and months of recounting even after Bush was in office) they STILL couldn't find enough dimpled chads, hanging chads, and couldn't knock out enough extra chads, to give the election to Gore.
What makes anyone think that Florida will get in right this time?
What makes you think they got it wrong LAST time? B-)
Use of this service leaves a record at the server of your location, movements, and who you are associating with.
Maybe the fun is worth it. Maybe not. But if you subscribe, you might want to be careful about who your friends are. If they screw up with the law, the law might just decide you're a gang member, vandal, or terrorist. B-(
I don't understand this recent fascination with multi-tasking on your phone. I must be out of touch with the hip crowd, because I only use my phone to talk to people. No games, no sms messages, no camera.
Adolescent primates try out new things and see how they work. (Typically one of the things they try is breaking one major taboo.)
Sometimes it works out very well. Then they are wildly successful and teach the rest of the primates (starting with their family and cronies) about a new food source, technique, etc.
Sometimes it's a disaster. Then they die.
Most of the time it's just interesting to them and maybe fun for a while, then it gets old and gets dropped.
Adolescence is the right time for this sort of behavior. Adolescents are mature enough that they're not likely to fail just through lack of strength, knowldege or skill. But less of the rest of the tribe's resources are sunk by their loss, and their loss is less damaging to the tribe's future, than if they pull this and lose later in life, say once they have young to raise and others who have become dependent on them. Thus do post-adolescents become more conservative, and less experimental and risk-taking, once they have accepted major long-term responsibilities.
Even so, a large number of guns are bought for use only in self defense (ie, hoping to never need to use them). But I think (haven't checked) that 99.98% is a bit much, unless you also count toy guns.
Well, let's try this.
There are over 300,000,000 guns in the US. (Probably much higher.)
There are about 35,000 gun-related deaths of all kinds per year.
So in any given year, AT LEAST 99.9983% of the guns were not involved in a gun related death.
Assuming a gun that is used in a gun-related death is NEVER used in another, and no guns are built or retired, it still would take about 17 years to get down to the 99.98% figure.
But more guns are being made constantly. The potential life of a gun is longer than 17 years, but the average age of guns still in circulation is probably quite a bit less than that. (We could get accurate numbers by examining the production in the last couple decades.) So the 99.98% figure is probably a bit low just on that ground.
A much bigger factor is that a few guns are used over and over again in crimes - including multiple murders. That completely swamps the no-more-than-one-killing assumption, making the 99.98% figure significantly low.
The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence
Pardon? I'm sorry, but published crime statistics do not agree with that at all.
Actually, they do, as does quite a bunch of research. You're just misinterpreting some datapoints - or having the misinterpretations fed to you.
Let me explain, by giving you only a part of the reason these items don't say what you think.
The USA has some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, and is one of the few western countries in which firearms are routinely available to regular people.
First off, that's flat-out false.
The USA does have higher crime than some cultures. But that is because it allows massive immigration from other, more violent cultures, and doesn't require the immigrants to abandon their heritage.
Nevertheless, crimes tend to be committed within each ethnic group far more than between members of different groups, which makes it easy to break it down. When you do this you find:
- Americans of English descent have a lower probability of being injured or killed by criminal violence than Englishmen in England.
- Americans of African descent have a lower probability of being injured or killed by criminal violence than Africans.
- Ditto for Americans of Japanese descent vs. Japanese in Japan.
- Ditto for Americans of other European descent vs. those still in Europe.
- Ditto for Americans of South American descent than South Americans.
And so on.
But it's cultural, not racial. For instance Blacks who have achieved middle class or higher income and acculturation have about the same rates as Whites of the same standing, not the sky-high rates of lower-income Blacks.
And that's just for criminal activity. It doesn't even TOUCH the much higher body counts for the periodic tribal wars of Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Africa, etc.
Then there's the point that gun laws and their enforcement vary by state and city. And violence is enormously higher in those regions where gun ownership and carrying is suppressed than in those where it is allowed or encouraged.
Now I'm not saying that there is a proven causal link there (although I personally believe there is) but to say that having guns leads to a "massive and sustained" decrease is quite unbelieveable.
But there IS a causual link, and it DOES go from more guns to less crime. For a long time it was an open question whether citizen armament suppressed crime or whether high crime led to passage of gun bans. But then a few states began allowing concealed carry by all non-criminals who applied (and went through whatever red tape was required). The bloodbaths predicted by the hysterics failed to appear, and crime dropped like a rock - leading more jurisdictions to try it. Then the academics researched this unintended controlled experiment and found that the only explanation for the numbers was causality, and it was strong. More guns, less crime.
USA is 8th in the world for gun murders
So it's worse to shoot someone than club them to death, cut them up, strangle them, run them down, or beat them to death by hand? No, I don't think so.
(I, for one would rather be attacked by a crookie with a gun than in any other mode. On the average I'd be far less likely to be actually wounded, suffer less pain if I WAS wounded, be less likely to die, and if I survived wounding to make a more complete recovery.)
USA is 24th in the world for murder of all kinds (better!)
Much better comparison. But try breaking it down by ethnic group.
Also: different countries count things differently:
US counts a murder when the police find a body with signs of foul play. England counts one when they get a conviction.
If a man kills his wife, three, kids, and himself, the US counts four murders and a suicide, Japan five suicides.
USA is number 5 in the world for assualts
And v
Guns: Sacred and necessary.
...
I know you were being facetious. But yes they are.
"God created men. Sam Colt made them equal."
Disarming the law-abiding doesn't solve the crime problem.
Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks,
And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.
What guns do is make it possible for anyone, strong or weak, young or old, male or female, black, white, yellow, or brown, to be about equally deadly - with minimal expense and a few hours of training.
The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence. The good guys were never a problem. The bad guys mostly learn to stop attacking the good guys (and stick to stealing their stuff when they're not there to watch). The few who insist on attacking an armed population repeatedly are soon wounded and taken "out of service".
And on the political level, the government with an armed population is much less able to oppress it.
A vote for citizen disarmament is a vote for violent crime, tyranny, genocide, and the rule of psychpathic strongmen - at both the wholesale and retail level.
Guns were designed to kill things,
In that case, more than 99.98% of guns are defective because they never killed anything.
Different guns are designed for different things. All are designed to throw pellets really fast. But what they do with the pellets are different.
Some are intended for games. (Target shooting, shotgun games like skeet and trap, etc.)
Some are designed for hunting. (Lots of different designs, too, for different game and different conditions.)
Some are designed for war. (Which means trying to WOUND the guy on the other side, since that takes MORE people out of action than killing them. They make rotten hunting guns. Too likely to leave a wounded animal around instead of killing it cleanly and with less suffering than ANY other way for it to die.)
Some are designed to protect the user from attack, by stopping a threatened attack or an attack in progress. (Just as war guns aren't intended to kill, neither are these. Unfortunately, to be effective at stopping attack, if you actually have to shoot the attacker maybe one in four he dies. Fortunately, you almost never have to actually SHOOT him. Just seeing you have a gun usually makes him stop attacking.)
Some are designed for multiple purposes - and virtually all of them can be used for more than one thing, with varying degrees of effectiveness.
But (like gulf clubs and vehicles), there are a LOT of different designs, each optimized for a different purpose. But virtually NONE of them (except hunting guns) are designed to kill - and of those that are, essentially all are designed to kill animals, not people.
If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law [...]
If one of the contract provisions is illegal, the party to the contract is not bound by it, and may violate it with impunity.
Unless there is verbage to the effect that some rights granted to that party conditional on his performance on that provision, and are voided if he can not perform on his side due to laws to the contray, he doesn't lose the rights granted. The illegal provisions are by default separable.
At least that's how I, who ANAL, understand it.
The primary function of the CSS and its licensing regime is not to inhibit unauthorized copying (although it does make it - along with fair use - slightly more difficult for the non-techies among the general population).
The primary purpose is to support both shady and explicitly illegal business activity: Regional pricing / price fixing and inhibition of international resale, regional distribution timing and availability control, and regional content censorship.
This could be construed to make adherence to the contract terms that require sale of chips only to licensees who build products that adhere to the regional coding schemes unenforcable.
= = = =
I just realized: It might be possible to bring a suit against the MPAA/CSS scheme in international courts under GATT!
Is it just me or does this entire concept scare the bejesus out of you?
The fbi etal want, as a default option, the ability to listen in to ANY call made by VOIP. This means that, as standard, any/all calls can be monitored, any/everyone (even non-American people[1]) whenever they want or indefinatly.
Why are you only getting scared NOW?
Ever since the CALEA was made law they've had that ability with POTS and cellphones. Why the sudden shudder when calls are starting to move to VoIP and they try to retain their old stranglehold?
It's not like this was a new thing.
Newsflash: through taxes, consumers pay for EVERYTHING that the government does.
And it's appropriate for the extra work to be paid for by the people reaping the benefits.
In the case of VoIP, that's everybody EXCEPT the person using VoIP, whether they are VoIP subscribers or not.
If the "wiretapping service" gave a security benefit ONLY to VoIP customers it might make sense to surcharge the VoIP customers for it. Since it (allegedly) benefits everybody in the US, it should come out of the general defense budget, not a specific tax on VoIP service and/or an unfunded mandate (whose cost must be passed on to customers) on VoIP service providers.
... these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter. If an attack were to happen on US soil for which the planning occurred over VOIP lines, or email, or normal phone lines, and the CIA couldn't prevent it because they couldn't tap lines, then we would all be up in arms.
I wouldn't be. (Not against our government, anyhow.)
As for dealing with terrorism, IMHO it's the same problem as dealing with crime. The solution is an armed population.
If the people on the planes hadn't been disarmed by 30,000 anti-gun laws and an "airport security" regime that kept them from having even pocket knives on an airplane, a handfull of terrorists wouldn't have been able to take over four aircraft with hundres of passengers each using only boxcutters (little sticks with razor blades on the end of them), and use them to kill thousands of people.
While none of us would like to incur more fees, the simple fact that my Vonage bill is currently about $60.00 less per month then my Bell South bill, a small additional fee to cover this wouldn't be so bad. You can debate the pros and cons of whether or not VoIP wiretapping should even be done, but if it does, a small added fee to an already inexpensive service shouldn't be a problem.
The problem is, it won't be a SMALL fee.
VoIP comptuer-to-computer calls are (with certain exceptions) peer-to-peer bulk data transactions. The connection negotiation MAY go through a centeral server (such as a SIP redirect or proxy server). But the data representing the conversation (session) does not.
Exceptions:
- When you bridge to the PSTN to call an ordinary phone, your data goes through the gateway server.
- SOME services may also run your call through a session proxy (for instance to avoid both NAT and the ugly workarounds for establishing a peer-to-peer connection through a NAT box.)
The NOC of a VoIP service using such a peer-to-peer model has a very small internet bandwidth, since it only handles the tiny setup data and lets the internet handle the rest. Requiring them to provide a tap means they now have to buy servers and internet bandwidth to handle the data part of their calls in order to have it on hand to clone it.
If they do this for all their calls it is an ENORMOUS extra expense - comparable to running an ordinary phone company. (There goes your price advantage.) If they only do it for the calls being tapped, the client can determine whether he's being tapped from the routing information on the packets.
That should work for virus and worm detection, too!
Even moreso, since viruses are much more a compilation of a set of previous constructions with a few mods than a new composition not necessarily based on the wording of old scams.
And Viruses and worms (especially worms) are more constratined by their environment, requiring an exploit of a vulnerability and the instation of work-doing code. Though gene-shuffling techniques might be able to bury much of the code, the basic exploit must continue to be some sort of match to the vulnerability's "receptor".
Start rhyming, because your grasp on history leaves something to be desired. Reconstruction was a Republican program. It was misused at times, with Democrats being the ones on the short end of the stick.
I'm afraid it's you who needs the history lesson - starting with the fact that "Reconstruction" refers, not just to the program, but to the period. It is the latter definition I was using.
Yes, Reconstruction was a Republican program: Its primary purpose was to protect the newly enfranchised blacks and poor whites, establish schools and roads, and generally rebuild the south and prevent its return to feudalism under the thumbs of a few rich plantation owners.
And that's exactly what it did. And the newly enfranchised blacks and poor whites (who had previously been unable to vote but subject to conscription as guards to recapture escaped slaves) organized local Republican parties.
Meanwhile, the rich whites who had run the show and started the war organized the Ku Klux Klan - one of the classic terrorist organizations of all time. After a few years they were reenfranchised. And within a few years after that, with the aid of their KKK terror, their Democratic party had regained control of the southern governments.
They immediately passed the Jim Crow laws, to consoldate their power and again disenfranchise the blacks and poor whites. "Grandfather clauses" - so only people whose ancesters had voted before the war could vote now. "Literacy tests" for voting - where blacks, poor whites, and known Republicans mibht be given their "test" in Chinese. "Poll Taxes" - so only the rich could afford to pay the tax and thus vote. The first gun control laws - to disarm the blacks and poor whites, leaving them helpless before the KKK.
("Saturday Night Special" dates from the debate over one such law - banning all but one of the most expensive guns as being unsafe. The full term is "Niggertown Saturday Night Special", from the claim that it is suitable only for use in "Niggertown on a Saturday Night".)
And the KKK - the same people as the Democratic party structure - ran rampant, intimidating Republican voters into not voting and potential candidates into not running, lynching or burning those who refused to intimidate. The blacks and poor whites appealed to the federal government for troops to stop their literal slaughter. But they didn't get them.
Because president Johnson - who had been added pre-war to Lincoln's ticket to balance it by appealing to the southern vote, and succeeded him after the assasination, blocked the further implementation of the Reconstruction - over the voiciferous opposition of the rest of the Republican party. For this he was impeached (but not convicted).
And the Democrats took over in the south. And were the power structure of the south once again, for over a century - until the civil rights laws, and the freedom rides set the stage, and the burning of the cities in the '60s finally led to the restoration of black voting rights.
All the way from the Reconstruction era to the 1970s, "Southern Democrat" meant a heavy-handed pro-segregation politician. But once the blacks once again had the vote, they suddenly had a "change of heart". Even the poster-boy of segregation, George Wallace (who bolted the Democratic party and founded his own) eventually "became the black man's friend".
The first civil rights law was proposed, and signed into law, by Eisenhower, with the Kennedys voting against it (something that historical revisionists conveniently forget). What they WILL tell you about is the SECOND civil rights act, promoted by the Johnson who succeeded Kennedy upon HIS assination.
LBJ was as much a maveric to his Democratic party as Lincoln's Johnson was to the Civil War era Republicans. He was honestly in favor of ending segregation and promoting full cicizenship for blacks. And he is known to have despised the Kennedies. He promoted the second Civil Rights act as a "memorial to JFK" - ove
"Photons have mass. "
They don't. They do have momentum though.
Photons don't have rest mass. They do have mass (the E=mc^2 equivalent amount of mass to their energy) and produce (and are affected by) gravitational fields accordingly.
It would seem to make sence that when 2 objects align their gravitational effects on a 3rd body would be "serial" and combine.
They combine by addition. The claim here seems to be that there is something besides that happening - like the moon blocking a tiny bit of gravity from the sun.
Or are you thinking of tides?
Which makes me wonder if they took tidal forces, and the (delayed) flexing of the earth and motion of the atmosphere and water in response to them, into account correctly.
For now I'll presume they did, since missing that would be a stupendous booboo.
It's ALWAYS going to be a good thing to know who someone really is from a security point of view.
Not true. In addition to impeeding ordinary travelers (thus doing damage FOR the terrorists), it's an innefective waste of resources that could otherwise be used to do something useful.
Such as random searches.
A watch list means anybody on the watch list is harrassed, and KNOWS it, while anybody NOT on the list passes through. This means that the terrorists can do a dry run and find out which of them are not on the list and pass through unhampered. Then the ones that succeed get togther and do the REAL hijacking - with no problems.
And the terrorists already knew this. They did dry runs immediately before the 9/11 event.
Had the resources been used instead for random checks, being passed through without search once would give no improvement whatsoever on the probability of being searched on the next trip. Mixes of the two are progressively less effective as the fraction of random searches goes down and watchlist searches goes up. (There was a recent paper on this published, and referenced here on slashdot.)
Meanwhile, having a watch list means having a government black list, selecting out a subset of the population for systematic penalization and harrassment. That's already unconstitutional, in the absense of individiualized evidence of wrongdoing and legal action to determine guilt, under the equal protection clause. But doubly so when it can be shown that a watchlist is not effective for its stated purpose, so no pressing government interest is served.
And of course there's the issue of harassment of additional people improperly put on the list - with T. Kennedy as the poster child.
When I learned IV insertion we practiced on a loose-fitting concentric rubber tubes with liquid between them. The inner tube squirmed around about as much as a normal vein.
It's nice to see that they're getting more realistic.
At some point they are going to start doing this to anybody they think is a Democrat or a liberal or just a non-creationist.
You mean like Democrats have done since at least the post-Civil-War Reconstruction? (Most recent example I recall: feloniously "losing" California voter-registration-drive forms for anyone not signing on with any other party. But I could go on for pages, with 1 1/2 centuries to mine.)
THE most classic technique of propaganda is to accuse ones opponent of one's own most glaring faults. Especially the sins that one's side commits systematically and one's opponent's side tries to avoid.
It shorts their opponents out when they try to point out when the propagandists' side does something wrong, making it look like a playground "no, HE did it" spat. And it gives the propagandists a golden opportunity to score points and propagate the story further whenever one of the other side DOES screw up, or even does something that can be spun to look that way.
But, despite my understanding of the dumbing-down of the population by the public schools and establishment media, it never ceases to amaze me how many allegedly intelligent people contiue to fall for and propagate these memes.
The allmighty GALL!
But keep it up, anyhow. Especially on the "internal security" insanity. That is a VERY powerful tool for anyone who WOULD deliberately and systematically misuse it in such a fashion. I really want to see that dismantled before the next time a Democrat is in the White House.
You KNOW they'll use it that way. Because they're already talking about the possibilities.
Those who do not understand history are doomed to rhyme.
How long...until people start spamming using their competition's address to facilitate them getting thrown off their host?
About an hour after the first site thrown off.
Not because the competition did it.
The spammers will start doing unsolicited, plausible-looking, freebies for large, rich corporations with significant internet components to their business model. This costs the spammers virtually nothing.
The ISPs will then be unable to enforce this policy. If they kick off the big guys when they were innocent, they're in for a big suit. If they kick off only little guys, they're in for a different big suit - over discrimination AND improper termination. If they try to sort out real spam from disinformation spam and only kick out the spammers real customers they're in for suits claiming they're wrong - even when they're right.
3) install firewall or activate build-in FW
So why isn't the damned thing ON BY DEFAULT?
(Not that it will help. Turn it on by default and the next generation of worms will all use exploits that work despite it.)
Wow, you've bought into SCO's position regarding their distribution of GPL'd code.... that it was improperly added by a third party and their subsequent distribution does not obligate them to honor the GPL's terms because they were deceived.
Not at all.
I'm saying that:
- The GPL itself CLAIMS not to apply to code illegitimately inserted.
- That leaving no way for companies that are in the position SCO claims to be in to defend IP they did not intend to release will result in companies that otherwise would release SOME of their code under GPL chosing to release NONE, for fear of compromsing the REST of it.
This would greatly reduce the amount of code released under GPL. So the issue needs to be addressed - if nothing else, to eliminate the ambiguity.
1: Regarding "greatly hamper the adoption", you're just dead wrong. Take a look around. Adoption of GPL code is progressing very well. Linux is growing dramatically.
Yes it's progressing. But I claim it will progress faster if the issue is addressed than otherwise.
Meanwhile, let's see how the results of the SCO suit affect the progress - especially if the "meeting GPL obligations legitimizes past 'theft'" doctrine is accepted by the courts.
2: The primary purpose of the GPL is to ensure freedom to modify and distribute original and modified code. That is why the GPL exists, not to enhance adoption by companies with particular proprietary interests.
It is also there to encourage the release of code to that commons. By guaranteeing your not locked out of future revsions of your own code it encourages that release. But if it puts at risk code you didn't intend to release, it discourages release.
I claim we can have both those cakes, not just one.
Since you are defining
(actually, not disputing the definition of, for the sake of the discussion)
non-licensed distribution of code as theft, then it would also be a bad idea to allow someone to steal others code by not following the GPL.
Quite.
And SCO (or other people in the postion they claim to be in) would have to stop selling the product to new customers (unless they replace the offending sections or throw in the towel and releast them under GPL).
I'm just saying that if the GPL is interpreted to give them no way to act legitimately while defending IP claims over improperly-inserted code, it puts at risk code that companies did not INTEND to release, and thus inhibits adoption of the GPL by companies otherwise inclined to do so.
If what you're saying is that SCO was distributing source to fulfill a prior obligation created by distributing a binary, then no, that's different, I agree, and I don't think that would constitute placing their embedded IP under the GPL.
Yep. That's EXACTLY what I'm saying.
But putting the GPLed materials up for public download-- for anyone, including NEW persons who never recieved a binary from SCO or Caldera-- cannot really be said to be there for the purpose of fulfilling that obligation. This is a new act of distribution.
Nope. If they shipped even one binary without source, they must make the source available to all comers, in order to make it available to anyone to whom a copy of the binary-only release was transferred. This has the side-effect of making it availalable to people who did not get the object from them - but it IS still required.
It would make sense to me to require them to post a conspicuous warning on the download site that this source is being provided solely to satisfy that obligation to previous customers/downloaders, that it contains (through no fault of their own) IP over which they are claiming rights, that they have ceased selling or otherwise making available the code to new users, and that new users downloading and using the code may infringe on their claimed rights, yadda yadda.