I'm getting ready to re-read the paper, not the article, which sucks, and even though I love physics with a passion, I feel a re-reading is in order.
The reason I'm making this post is that I want to point out one thing. Alot of times, when mods, myself included (I metamod about three times a day), come across an article that ranges beyond or above our understanding of a topic, its hard to make a decision as to whether or not something is "informative", like in this article, where I see one post supporting the theory modded informative, and one post criticsing the theory also modded informative. This is physics, people, not YRO. You're either right or wrong in this case. Please do some basic research, please, before modding a post up, just because it sounds intelligent and is well written.
Btw, for all the detractors, this paper was originally published in a European Physics Journal, and most papers submitted to said journals undergo stringent review before being published as fact. This kid is getting supporters in all the right places, and you'll notice that many of his detractors tend to be the type of people who were still arguing the Earth was flat back in the 1800's. Some people just don't want to change, and many of these people are also detractors of Superstring Theory, and are apparently comfortable in dealing with the conflict between quantum mechanics and the theories of general and special relativity.
Another thing I'd like to point out are some of the problems this guy has had getting this paper to light, and receiving the help he deserved from memebers of academia, because of his lack of academic credentials. This is, to a degree, still going on right now. People need to realize that this guy is taking a lot of flak from various experts simply because he doesn't meet their academic pedigree.
Some "experts" need to be reminded that once upon a time someone wrote a very special paper, also widely denounced, also widely refuted for a while. And that person wasn't a department head at a prestigous university, nor was he being funded by wealthy patrons to run his own lab. He worked at a patent office.
And you seem to be one of those who assumes that whenever a law is passed, its sanctified by your deity of choice and becomes holy legal writ, not meant to be questioned.
Simply put, in this case, the law is wrong and needs to be changed. It is wrong for the RIAA to be able to sue someone $750 all the way to $150,000 for "supposedly" sharing a song. And theres the fact that in most cases they seem to want to go after the maximum amount. All the RIAA is doing is searching Kazaa and other services to see what everyone has available for sharing. They aren't checking to see if a file has been shared, or how many times its been shared. Remember, even when the college kids earlier in the year were sued, the RIAA gave a count of the number of files they were supposedly sharing, they never gave an account as to how many times each song was downloaded, etc. The amounts they are able to sue for are "perceieved amounts" in terms of financial damages, and have no basis in reality.
For example, lets say Billy Jo Bob, a newly signed country singer, makes an album. Billy joe sucks, and very, very few people like him. His album grosses, not nets, but grosses, $50,000. Now, lets say that one of the few people who bought it rips it, shares it, and is then sued by the RIAA. For each TRACK, not entire compilation, they can legally sue for $150,000. Now, lets say the album had 10 tracks on it, and the user puts them all up for grabs. That user can be legally sued for "costing" the record company $1,500,000, even if theres no proof that a single song was downloaded from him. All of an album that grossed barely a percentage of that amount.
To put it in terms that you might be abe to understand, this is the legal equivalent of saying that if you own a gun, and someone on your street is murdered using a gun, you're guilty. The police do not need to gather evidence beyond your owning the gun, for example, ballitics or checking alibis for veracity. Then, the family of the murder victim can sue you for wages lost, and the total they can legally sue you for is the same as if the guy became CEO of a Fortune 500 company and worked til he was 80.
Instead of adopting the holier than thou attitude, consider that this is a democracy. We are, at least in theory, in charge of this country, not the lawmakers. The rights of protest and civil disobedience are etched throughout the history of our legal system. And, from what I understand, the stance that MIT and BC are taking is that they're being polite right now, giving the RIAA a gracious way out, but if the RIAA still pursues the information, they will tell them to shove it.
As for file sharing itself, I'm not saying its right and legal. I do it myself, and I acknowledge I'm breaking the law. And I could care less. I have my reasons, none of which I will speak of here, but I do acknowledge it is not legal by any means. However, it is not the place of the RIAA to be creating so much FUD and irresponsible litigation. I imagine if the laws were changed to something somewhat sane, the universities would have no major issues with giving the RIAA the information. As of now however, I hope that they're seeing an abuse of the system, and an opportunity to protect their students from a ravenous corporate beast, while they deal with the issue themselves.
However, jusding by your apprent support for the DMCA:
Clearly central government don't have the resources to combat this problem effectively, which is why they pushed through the DMCA in the first place.
I expect you might need help in understanding all these big words.
I'm not surprised that MIT is attempting to reject the RIAA's efforts to abuse the court system and make general asses of themselves. My hope is that other colleges and institutions realize that when one of the most prestigous colleges in the country is willing to tell the RIAA to f off, thats a bandwagon worth jumping on. Simply put, it is the responsiblity of the college to monitor their networks, and take actions against those who break the law when it concerns usage of those networks. It is not the RIAA's place to dictate what colleges will do with their own networks, and what they will do to the users of those networks.
To start getting spam mail about this. "Yes, you too can earn millions like your favorite corporations like SCO and engage in frivilous litigation! All at home, and in under 8 hours a week!!".
Oh well, at least if I get part of the settlement I can start buying some of those penis pills and russian brides everyone keeps telling me about. I mean honestly, I don't even know half of these people. I guess I just met em at a party or something, but they seem to have gotten my name confused with someone elses. Jesus, you'd think I was on some kind of mailing list or something.
You know, despite the fact that SCO is acting like a flagrant bastard, while I flip them off with my right hand I am compelled to give them a thumbs up with my left.
To put it simply, SCO is wielding the FUD with a grace and skill not seen in years. They have truly mastered the power and glory of the FUD, and all behold their splendor.
For example, SCO is putting forth a media orgy of baseless speculation, veiled, hinted, possible threats, and ambiguous remarks that say much but mean little. But any company can do that. No, wherein we find SCO's true mastery of the FUD is in the fact that they contradict themselves more often than not, on purpose. Brilliant. I mean think about it, first this is a suit against IBM involving copyright. Oh, but now it isn't. But wait, Mcbride just said it was! Hold on, it isn't again. But now they're requiring a liscence to use the software without fear of reprecussion, which is only associat3ed with copyright.
What SCO is doing, and not just on the copyright front, is a far more complex version of someone saying something like "I do not disagree in the negative context of the opposite of the inverse of the reverse polarity of the mirror-image of what you are saying." By the time the media flood is done, everything, every fact, figure, stance, and position will have been switched around so many times that only SCO itself will be able to let us know what exactly they're talking about, and at that point, they will have achieved their goal.
For those people who think this issue will ever see a courtroom, where facts and positions and statements must be bound by at least a modicum of reason and structure, you're insane. The Sword of FUD (+5), can never be wielded in such confines of logic and reason. Only in the chaos of the media, and the swirling maelstrom of the message board can the masters of the FUD fully orchestrate their hellish dance. Behold the power of the FUD, and know thy doom.
The only way this will ever be resolved in court, which is the only place the powers of the FUD can be contained, is if IBM takes a proactive stance and drags SCO, kicking and screaming in front of a judge. Why IBM hasn't done that yet, I can't guess, expect for the slim possibility than even they aren't sure how sound the footing beneath them is. If they do go to court against SCO, they'll be bringing several issues, such as the GPL and various software patent issues, to their first true legal test, and I can empathize if they are slightly uncomfortable in doing so.
Right now I'm fairly certain that a band of mismatched, racially diverse IBM lawyers have undertaken the quest for the Shield of Legal Certainty, and may the fates speed them on their way.
Actually, they are.
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Even very, very small amounts of uranium are highly, highly poisonous. For example, mercury, which is far, far less poisonous, can kill someone over a very short period of time if even a drop is left on the carpet in a house, as happened a few years ago, just from the vapors
Likewise, you' be surprised just how small an amount of uranium actually goes into making a full fledged nuclear weapon. Those "few flakes in a jiffy bag", would be fatal to a very, very large number of people if refined, and then mixed in a town's water supply.
Anyways, no way these guys can be for real. I think the editors need to get their BS detectors checked. While it is possible to sell refined uranium and uranium ores on the free market, it ain't easy, and it sure as hell doesn't use paypal.
Some people have pointed out that maybe someone just looking through a database on legitimate business sees an interesting patient file, and opens it up, just to look.
One reason this idea would be especially good for hospitals is because such actions have gotten hospitals sued in the past. Simply put, no hospital employee is supposed to view a patient's information unless required. So, if Nurse Betty is looking up "John F. Kennedan's" file, and also sneaks a peek at "John F. Kennedy's", she just broke federal law, and the hospital is going to want to know about that.
As for false positives in other instances, people seem to be just trolling. For example, every single day at a former employer of mine, a cell phone provider, we'd get false positives on customer who may or may not have been using fraudulent information to sign up for service. As such, we would stop and call the verification services we used, and verify that customer. So sure, out of thirty customers a day, it would generate five warnings, four of which were false. But one of them wasn't, and that makes all the difference.
Theres never going to be some "All seeing Eye of God" security system, but every little bit helps. Especially, as noted, in both banking and hospitals, where customer's information is bound to a need-to-know basis by federal law.
I propose a memorial...
on
All The Rave
·
· Score: 1
It will be placed on the MIT campus, etched forever into a block of marble:
The Server of the Unknown File-Sharer
I'm thinking a sculpture of a nice server, with space for extra hard drives, and A cable modem or ISDN line beside it. Instead of an Eternal Torch, we can have orange LED modkit lights, and instead of a changing of the guard, we can have a rebooting of the system every 24 hours.
Napster's height coincided with my immersion into the internet, and I have fond memories of downloading 3.5 MB songs over my 56k modem(Running at 54000, booya) at an agonizingly slow 3 or 4 kb/s. And now, when I can download a movie in less time that a half an album used to take, I can only look ahead to a steady 1 gig connection, and a new 120 gig hard drive or two.
And thus the need for the memorial, to remind we pirates, we digital bucaneers, plundering the high seas of bandwidth on the good ship Broadband of our heritage. God rest ye Napster, and fare-thee-well.
After a victory, it is considered proper form to refrain from gloating over your opponent.
However, its perfectly acceptable to insult their lineage, mock the size of their respective genitalia, and generally make them feel inferior to you in every way, which, of course, they are =).
I'd be surprised if something like this managed to happen in the US though. Theres to much lean and sway in the judicial system for megacorps. If it did happen however, I can only liken Sony and EMI to a three year old sent outside into the world's largest hailstorm/tornado that hit a razor blade factory. Megacorp-Puree' anyone?
I feel bad for the poor bastard who has to look at everyone of these images as people walk through the terminal. Yeah, you get the occasional hot chick, but more often than not its gonna be Uncle Butch and Aunt Myrtle from East Jesus, AL back from their yearly tropical vacation, where they managed to devour close to two tons of fresh seafood between them...Ugh. Ugh-Ugh......
I've was in since Beta 2, and I can honestly say I damn near died when they announced that they were releasing it June 26th. This game is by no means ready whatsoever.
The main problems right now are that the economy is poor, with items being sold at a fraction of cost just to get rid of them, so no one can really make a living crafting yet. And the biggest problem is that combat in this game sucks bad. It is very, very boring, and this is coming from someone who has played many a MMORPG.
I'd wait until the space expansion comes out before thinking about buying this game. Maybe then they'll have fixed most of the problems.
Apprently this problem is protected by a SEP shield(Somebody Else's Problem). Simply put, it doesn;t affect these people directly, so they could give a wingnut less.
As much pomp and posturing as some of these organizations do, in my experience, the FBI guy you talked to was right: unless its a big company that has the cash to sue the government for not enforcing the laws, or at least raise a stink about it, these organizations will do nothing.
The reason for this, as I see it, is that most of the legal side of this stuff is handled at a federal level. So if only say, 100 people or so are affected, they're simply not going to waste their time on it. The only solution I could see to this problem is that, once the general populace becomes better educated to whats out there and what all this "fancy internet stuff" means, there is the possibility that smaller, more municipal "cyber crime" organizations may spring up, to deal with complaints coming from people in their municipality. Until then, its a jungle out there, and its every man for himself.
I'm just waiting to see the ad campaign featuring the slogan:
"Everytime you use Linux/Unix/BSD/The Bathroom, a Terrorist-Drug Dealer-Music Pirate-Pedophile-Mad Scientist kills a Kitten. Why do you hate kittens?"
Watch for it, its coming soon to a patent infringing form of communication near you!
Calm Down, they legally have to turn them off
on
Walmart to Push RFID
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· Score: 1
Any retailer who used RFID tags would be legally required to turn them off once you left the building. It would be completely illegal for them to continue tracking these inside of your home, people.
I'd imagine it'd be the same as cops using heat sensors or wiretaps or radio scanners to track you inside your home without a warrant. Right now, thats a power the federal government resrves for itself. Otherwise, this would be a case of invasive collection of information from inside them home, which, I believe, is still illegal. Wal-Mart would get slapped with a class action suit so big and so hard it'd scare John Holmes.
I'm sure they've already planned on sending some sort of kill signal or magnetic swipe when you leave the store, and they'll probably have to hand any analog devices that would damaged by the swipe to a greeting clerk, who would pass them by the device.
Simply put, while I'm sure Wally World gives a rat's ass about the morals involved, deliberately opening themselves up for a slew of lawsuits isn't on the agenda. So take some deep breaths, and relax.....
"In your letter, you analogize SCO's campaign against the Linux community to that of the record industry against major corporations whose servers contained downloaded music files. There are crucial differences between the two campaigns. The record industry has provided specific information to back up its allegation, while SCO steadfastly refuses to do so. In its allegation letter, the record industry provides evidence of allegedly infringing activity that is specific to the targeted company. This offers the company real notice of the activity, sufficient information to evaluate the allegation, and an opportunity to stop the activity if it determines the allegation is true. If SCO wants to compare its actions to those of the record industry, it should follow the example set by that industry and present specific evidence of the alleged infringement."
You know you're bad off when it's considered an improvement if you start acting like the RIAA.
Here I am, a huge fan of the series, and I'm stuck in Nashville, TN which is about the last place in America this will get shown I'm sure. It was the same with Sprirted Away, and any other full length anime release that cruel geography and dumb luck managed to deprive me of. Excuse me now, I'm going to go weep bitter tears in the bathroom.
Considering the fact that theres like, what, a half a billion + websites that doing streaming video, can you imagine the sheer awesome might of a nearly industry wide class action lawsuit against these guys?
It would be like a massive horde of little white knights rushing to breach......wait. Lets not go there.
Is where, after the incident halfway through the series, hes strolling through, breakin up the hostage situation, singing that lovely little song. Fans of the series will know what I'm talking about.
I'm really excited to see CN bring Trigun on board, but I wish they'd do something for anime like what they did for the older cartoons on Boomerang. Just devote a whole freakin subcription channel to anime only. I'd sure as hell pay for it.
Why I'm for it
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 0, Redundant
I agree that Bush doesn;t give a rats ass about human rights conditions, or the brutality of Saddam and his family against the local peoples. He wants the oil. But I think that there are a lot, and I do mean alot, of US and British servicemen and women who know why they're going there.
When its all over, I do honestly, truly belive, that, like in Afghanistan, the ordinary, innocent civilians are gonna thank us for it, before Bush rapes their oil fields anyways.
Now heres to hoping we nail the bastard before it comes to urban combat.
He Came from A Mountain On High. And Borne Upon His Shoulders Was Borne The Sacrificial Bull of An SCO CEO. And Thus He Spake
"Be Not Afraid My Children, For I Have Busted Them Gorts Up."
Amen
Btw, as I noticed the site had been slashdotted, a thought occured to me. When this happens to a site, does anyone else sit back and imagine a poor, defenseless server shrieking its last, dying breath, before being blown through the stratosphere while melting off slag? No. K.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason I'm making this post is that I want to point out one thing. Alot of times, when mods, myself included (I metamod about three times a day), come across an article that ranges beyond or above our understanding of a topic, its hard to make a decision as to whether or not something is "informative", like in this article, where I see one post supporting the theory modded informative, and one post criticsing the theory also modded informative. This is physics, people, not YRO. You're either right or wrong in this case. Please do some basic research, please, before modding a post up, just because it sounds intelligent and is well written.
Btw, for all the detractors, this paper was originally published in a European Physics Journal, and most papers submitted to said journals undergo stringent review before being published as fact. This kid is getting supporters in all the right places, and you'll notice that many of his detractors tend to be the type of people who were still arguing the Earth was flat back in the 1800's. Some people just don't want to change, and many of these people are also detractors of Superstring Theory, and are apparently comfortable in dealing with the conflict between quantum mechanics and the theories of general and special relativity.
Another thing I'd like to point out are some of the problems this guy has had getting this paper to light, and receiving the help he deserved from memebers of academia, because of his lack of academic credentials. This is, to a degree, still going on right now. People need to realize that this guy is taking a lot of flak from various experts simply because he doesn't meet their academic pedigree.
Some "experts" need to be reminded that once upon a time someone wrote a very special paper, also widely denounced, also widely refuted for a while. And that person wasn't a department head at a prestigous university, nor was he being funded by wealthy patrons to run his own lab. He worked at a patent office.
Simply put, in this case, the law is wrong and needs to be changed. It is wrong for the RIAA to be able to sue someone $750 all the way to $150,000 for "supposedly" sharing a song. And theres the fact that in most cases they seem to want to go after the maximum amount. All the RIAA is doing is searching Kazaa and other services to see what everyone has available for sharing. They aren't checking to see if a file has been shared, or how many times its been shared. Remember, even when the college kids earlier in the year were sued, the RIAA gave a count of the number of files they were supposedly sharing, they never gave an account as to how many times each song was downloaded, etc. The amounts they are able to sue for are "perceieved amounts" in terms of financial damages, and have no basis in reality.
For example, lets say Billy Jo Bob, a newly signed country singer, makes an album. Billy joe sucks, and very, very few people like him. His album grosses, not nets, but grosses, $50,000. Now, lets say that one of the few people who bought it rips it, shares it, and is then sued by the RIAA. For each TRACK, not entire compilation, they can legally sue for $150,000. Now, lets say the album had 10 tracks on it, and the user puts them all up for grabs. That user can be legally sued for "costing" the record company $1,500,000, even if theres no proof that a single song was downloaded from him. All of an album that grossed barely a percentage of that amount.
To put it in terms that you might be abe to understand, this is the legal equivalent of saying that if you own a gun, and someone on your street is murdered using a gun, you're guilty. The police do not need to gather evidence beyond your owning the gun, for example, ballitics or checking alibis for veracity. Then, the family of the murder victim can sue you for wages lost, and the total they can legally sue you for is the same as if the guy became CEO of a Fortune 500 company and worked til he was 80.
Instead of adopting the holier than thou attitude, consider that this is a democracy. We are, at least in theory, in charge of this country, not the lawmakers. The rights of protest and civil disobedience are etched throughout the history of our legal system. And, from what I understand, the stance that MIT and BC are taking is that they're being polite right now, giving the RIAA a gracious way out, but if the RIAA still pursues the information, they will tell them to shove it.
As for file sharing itself, I'm not saying its right and legal. I do it myself, and I acknowledge I'm breaking the law. And I could care less. I have my reasons, none of which I will speak of here, but I do acknowledge it is not legal by any means. However, it is not the place of the RIAA to be creating so much FUD and irresponsible litigation. I imagine if the laws were changed to something somewhat sane, the universities would have no major issues with giving the RIAA the information. As of now however, I hope that they're seeing an abuse of the system, and an opportunity to protect their students from a ravenous corporate beast, while they deal with the issue themselves.
However, jusding by your apprent support for the DMCA:
Clearly central government don't have the resources to combat this problem effectively, which is why they pushed through the DMCA in the first place.
I expect you might need help in understanding all these big words.
Oh well, at least if I get part of the settlement I can start buying some of those penis pills and russian brides everyone keeps telling me about. I mean honestly, I don't even know half of these people. I guess I just met em at a party or something, but they seem to have gotten my name confused with someone elses. Jesus, you'd think I was on some kind of mailing list or something.
To put it simply, SCO is wielding the FUD with a grace and skill not seen in years. They have truly mastered the power and glory of the FUD, and all behold their splendor.
For example, SCO is putting forth a media orgy of baseless speculation, veiled, hinted, possible threats, and ambiguous remarks that say much but mean little. But any company can do that. No, wherein we find SCO's true mastery of the FUD is in the fact that they contradict themselves more often than not, on purpose. Brilliant. I mean think about it, first this is a suit against IBM involving copyright. Oh, but now it isn't. But wait, Mcbride just said it was! Hold on, it isn't again. But now they're requiring a liscence to use the software without fear of reprecussion, which is only associat3ed with copyright.
What SCO is doing, and not just on the copyright front, is a far more complex version of someone saying something like "I do not disagree in the negative context of the opposite of the inverse of the reverse polarity of the mirror-image of what you are saying." By the time the media flood is done, everything, every fact, figure, stance, and position will have been switched around so many times that only SCO itself will be able to let us know what exactly they're talking about, and at that point, they will have achieved their goal.
For those people who think this issue will ever see a courtroom, where facts and positions and statements must be bound by at least a modicum of reason and structure, you're insane. The Sword of FUD (+5), can never be wielded in such confines of logic and reason. Only in the chaos of the media, and the swirling maelstrom of the message board can the masters of the FUD fully orchestrate their hellish dance. Behold the power of the FUD, and know thy doom.
The only way this will ever be resolved in court, which is the only place the powers of the FUD can be contained, is if IBM takes a proactive stance and drags SCO, kicking and screaming in front of a judge. Why IBM hasn't done that yet, I can't guess, expect for the slim possibility than even they aren't sure how sound the footing beneath them is. If they do go to court against SCO, they'll be bringing several issues, such as the GPL and various software patent issues, to their first true legal test, and I can empathize if they are slightly uncomfortable in doing so.
Right now I'm fairly certain that a band of mismatched, racially diverse IBM lawyers have undertaken the quest for the Shield of Legal Certainty, and may the fates speed them on their way.
Likewise, you' be surprised just how small an amount of uranium actually goes into making a full fledged nuclear weapon. Those "few flakes in a jiffy bag", would be fatal to a very, very large number of people if refined, and then mixed in a town's water supply.
Server of Talc
Anyways, no way these guys can be for real. I think the editors need to get their BS detectors checked. While it is possible to sell refined uranium and uranium ores on the free market, it ain't easy, and it sure as hell doesn't use paypal.
One reason this idea would be especially good for hospitals is because such actions have gotten hospitals sued in the past. Simply put, no hospital employee is supposed to view a patient's information unless required. So, if Nurse Betty is looking up "John F. Kennedan's" file, and also sneaks a peek at "John F. Kennedy's", she just broke federal law, and the hospital is going to want to know about that.
As for false positives in other instances, people seem to be just trolling. For example, every single day at a former employer of mine, a cell phone provider, we'd get false positives on customer who may or may not have been using fraudulent information to sign up for service. As such, we would stop and call the verification services we used, and verify that customer. So sure, out of thirty customers a day, it would generate five warnings, four of which were false. But one of them wasn't, and that makes all the difference.
Theres never going to be some "All seeing Eye of God" security system, but every little bit helps. Especially, as noted, in both banking and hospitals, where customer's information is bound to a need-to-know basis by federal law.
The Server of the Unknown File-Sharer
I'm thinking a sculpture of a nice server, with space for extra hard drives, and A cable modem or ISDN line beside it. Instead of an Eternal Torch, we can have orange LED modkit lights, and instead of a changing of the guard, we can have a rebooting of the system every 24 hours.
Napster's height coincided with my immersion into the internet, and I have fond memories of downloading 3.5 MB songs over my 56k modem(Running at 54000, booya) at an agonizingly slow 3 or 4 kb/s. And now, when I can download a movie in less time that a half an album used to take, I can only look ahead to a steady 1 gig connection, and a new 120 gig hard drive or two.
And thus the need for the memorial, to remind we pirates, we digital bucaneers, plundering the high seas of bandwidth on the good ship Broadband of our heritage. God rest ye Napster, and fare-thee-well.
However, its perfectly acceptable to insult their lineage, mock the size of their respective genitalia, and generally make them feel inferior to you in every way, which, of course, they are =).
I'd be surprised if something like this managed to happen in the US though. Theres to much lean and sway in the judicial system for megacorps. If it did happen however, I can only liken Sony and EMI to a three year old sent outside into the world's largest hailstorm/tornado that hit a razor blade factory. Megacorp-Puree' anyone?
The main problems right now are that the economy is poor, with items being sold at a fraction of cost just to get rid of them, so no one can really make a living crafting yet. And the biggest problem is that combat in this game sucks bad. It is very, very boring, and this is coming from someone who has played many a MMORPG.
I'd wait until the space expansion comes out before thinking about buying this game. Maybe then they'll have fixed most of the problems.
As much pomp and posturing as some of these organizations do, in my experience, the FBI guy you talked to was right: unless its a big company that has the cash to sue the government for not enforcing the laws, or at least raise a stink about it, these organizations will do nothing.
The reason for this, as I see it, is that most of the legal side of this stuff is handled at a federal level. So if only say, 100 people or so are affected, they're simply not going to waste their time on it. The only solution I could see to this problem is that, once the general populace becomes better educated to whats out there and what all this "fancy internet stuff" means, there is the possibility that smaller, more municipal "cyber crime" organizations may spring up, to deal with complaints coming from people in their municipality. Until then, its a jungle out there, and its every man for himself.
"Everytime you use Linux/Unix/BSD/The Bathroom, a Terrorist-Drug Dealer-Music Pirate-Pedophile-Mad Scientist kills a Kitten. Why do you hate kittens?"
Watch for it, its coming soon to a patent infringing form of communication near you!
I'd imagine it'd be the same as cops using heat sensors or wiretaps or radio scanners to track you inside your home without a warrant. Right now, thats a power the federal government resrves for itself. Otherwise, this would be a case of invasive collection of information from inside them home, which, I believe, is still illegal. Wal-Mart would get slapped with a class action suit so big and so hard it'd scare John Holmes.
I'm sure they've already planned on sending some sort of kill signal or magnetic swipe when you leave the store, and they'll probably have to hand any analog devices that would damaged by the swipe to a greeting clerk, who would pass them by the device.
Simply put, while I'm sure Wally World gives a rat's ass about the morals involved, deliberately opening themselves up for a slew of lawsuits isn't on the agenda. So take some deep breaths, and relax.....
You know you're bad off when it's considered an improvement if you start acting like the RIAA.
Oh well, theres always DVD.
It would be like a massive horde of little white knights rushing to breach......wait. Lets not go there.
All we have to do is file a patent on global warming, then sue the sun to stop violating our patent. Easy as pie.
I'm really excited to see CN bring Trigun on board, but I wish they'd do something for anime like what they did for the older cartoons on Boomerang. Just devote a whole freakin subcription channel to anime only. I'd sure as hell pay for it.
When its all over, I do honestly, truly belive, that, like in Afghanistan, the ordinary, innocent civilians are gonna thank us for it, before Bush rapes their oil fields anyways.
Now heres to hoping we nail the bastard before it comes to urban combat.
"Be Not Afraid My Children, For I Have Busted Them Gorts Up."
Amen
Btw, as I noticed the site had been slashdotted, a thought occured to me. When this happens to a site, does anyone else sit back and imagine a poor, defenseless server shrieking its last, dying breath, before being blown through the stratosphere while melting off slag? No. K.