When you make claims like this its helpful to provide examples
Another example...
TinyMUSH is currently under active albeit leisurely development. David Passmore has been involved in the project for several years, and Lydia Leong even longer. Other members of the development team are also familiar names to those who've followed such for long.
The server is Open Source (Creative Commons Artistic License) and builds without modification on most *NIX-like systems (and I think with some effort Windows as well). I've built and run it succesfully under 2.2 and 2.4 Linux kernels and a recent version of Darwin (OS X).
Anyone must be able to deduce that it is not unreasonable to expect that at some point, they may be questioned by an officer... so it shouldn't come as a complete surprise
[...]If someone has a better idea on how the police should react when a person refuses to identify themselves, I would be keen to listen.
I think this misses the point... a demand for identification in this case was never necessary in the first place. Here's how it should have been handled, in my view:
Cop: Afternoon, sir... is everything here alright?
Hibel: No problem, officer... what's up?
Cop: Well, we had someone reporting a fight and need to check things out to make sure everything is OK. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm sure you understand that ww need to look into reports like this... Would you mind waiting over there...
Driver is directed to a place safely off the road where the cop (alone at that time?) can keep an eye on him while interviewing the daughter.
Cop talks to daughter, determines if anything is amiss -- does she seem upset beyond what might be expected from an argument and being a young driver confronted with a policeman, possibly for the first time? Been crying? Any obvious bruises? Does she plausibly deny having been hit? (yes, sometimes domestic violence victims deny having been abused. That dosen't mean you don't ask!)
In all likelihood, he'd have arrived at the truth of the matter in short order -- that the original report called in was an over reaction -- and he'd have shaken hands all around and created good rather than ill-will. In less time than his confrontational approach would have taken even if Hibel had cooperated from the outset.
And guess what? He'd never have needed to ask for IDs or names at all, or even called in the license plate of the pickup truck (though he probably did anyhow as a safety measure when he pulled up - a sane and non-invasive precaution.)
The ability to counterfeit holograms is a higher technical hurdle to clear. Anyone able to do that will find the effort to bypass this silly copy-prevention scheme trivial. So all the system under discussion does (against the counterfeiting of currency using holograms) is inconvenience the inoocent. The careless counterfeiter who would be caught anyhow because he printed to newsprint and lacked the hologram will simply circumvent it.
This is simply the deliberate introduction of potential bugs for the convenience of the authorities, and if it should become mandatory probably an illegal appropriation of property (CPU cycles of the user).
Exactly how is "Windows Source available on the internet" more dangerous than "Linux source available on the internet" ?
Because Linux has been open all along and subjected to a cummulative 10+ years of the equivalent of peer review. Windows source hasn't, and has only been reviewed/inspected by a relative handful of people with PHBs urging them to finish what they're doing to move on to the next project.
under non-monoculture conditions, the dilution of virus writers on any one platform would probably be matched by the dilution of anti-virus resources on that platform
Assuming the relative inherent security of any of the common platforms to be equal (debatable at best), diversification still carries the major benefit that no single attack can cripple things as badly. Even if the total number of attacks annually increases (and the total machines impacted remains relatively flat) as we move to a more diversified computing culture, the damage will tend to be more spread over time and hence can be managed more easily.
"Life critical" is relative. You're not going to find Windows running air traffic control systems, controlling raadiation exposure for cancer patients, or operating switches on a railway.
You will likely find them doing things like maintaining records of drug allergies, insurance coverage, etc. If those systems fail, people will hopefully fall back on manual records (assuming they exist in an accessable format), but that will introduce delays in treatment and admissions, which might well indirectly result in deaths.
E-mail to me doesn't seem a necessity in places where people rarely leave the village
Yes, and the claim that they were inaccessable to radio doesn't ring terribly true to me. Given the solar cells to drive a computer "6 hours a day", I think they'd be better off using tropospheric scatter propogation and a 5kW radio station in the nearest (up to several hundred km? It's been a while, but IIRC freqs in the 4-8MHz range work well for such) city and pumping out hygenie, argricultural, language, etc educational programs in the indigenous languages. Inexpensive receivers in the villages (rather than any sort of computer, regardless of how rudimentary) would more than offset the cost of running the centralized transmitter.
Granted this doesn't provide the two-way connectivity of email, but that same motorbike as used in the model described could carry postal mail (no parcels, just letters) as easily as the WiFi equipment, and the model of broadcasting to remote villages would still be cost effective, I suspect.
Who said anything about laws? They are being sent letters and asked to shut down the open relays.
A point largely overlooked here. This doesn't seem to be any sort of heavy-handed enforcement action; it seems more an informational email sent with whatever credibility the FTC has (slim to none, in my opinion, but that's just me). I see it as more targetted at the ignorant than the malicious.
Unfortunately I doubt that the FTC will do any independent verification that open relays are in fact running at the targetted addresses... in which case they become spammers themselves. If properly done, however, it's no different from postmaster@ mailing postmaster@ and bitching.
Refuse to accept it. Have a boilerplate response ready explaining that you only accept documents in open formats. Filter *.doc and similar as email attcahmnts.
You are indeed correct, and as soon as I read your reply I slapped my forehead. I was thinking e. coli because I'd read a report that the use of human waste as fertilizer was implicated as a likely cause, and both Hep-A and e. coli can spread by that vector.
Remember that cluster of e. coli cases in Pennsylvania last year? Contaminated green onions from Mexico supplied to a restaurant chain, but could have just as easily been supplied to a supermarket.
Actually if you re-read my post, I'm speaking in the 3rd person. I vote in every election, even though I feel the choices generally suck.
I stated the some people might stay away from the polls because they feel that the Presidential candidates are all bad; I see that as a shame because it means they won't vote in any of the other races, either. Giving them a means to express their disgust at the Presidential race with a "NOTA" option would, I think, increase turnout generally and voting in the other races where those people have an opinion, but not one to cuase them to go to the polling place in and of itself. I would tend to see NOTA as equating to "this space intentionally left blank" -- a means of making it clear that you're choosing not to vote for any of the options offered as a means of expressing your disapproval of them. In tallying the ballots, they'd be treated exactly as a blank is today, but broken out as a seperate category.
If you don't vote, you forfeit the right to complain about your President.
This is tired cliche. By that reasoning, people who don't vote should be exempt from taxes, because they bear none of the responsibility (indirectly) for the spending of government -- that suggestion is equally absurd as suggesting that they somehow forfeited their right to criticize.
In any case, it doesn't apply to me since as I stated I personally do vote. Often for someone who would be considered a longshot, and often even if I disagree with them strongly but want them to retain ballot status in Massachusetts (parties pulling a certain small percentage in an election are exempted from some of the onerous signature-gathering required to be on the ballot in the following election. Hence, I might vote for the Communist party candidate even though I'm violently opposed to what he stands for, but feel that party has a right to equal ballot access).
One small, concrete thing I'd like to see that I believe would help turnout would be for the press (newspapers, at least; I recognize the time constraints of TV & radio) to print the full results, tight down to "1 vote for Joe Smith's Dog (write-in)". If that were done routinely, those voting for the longshot candidates would at least know that their votes weren't simply discarded; voting is a form of political speech in a way and anything less than full reporting of the results squelches the less popular speech pretty completely.
Alternatively, some care deeply but think the candidates on the ballot all suck and stay away from the polls in disgust. Allowing them to vote "None of the Above" and having that total reported with the other results would likely increase turnout to fair degree, since their voice ould then be 'heard'.
I seem to recall that at least one state (Nevada?) does this and "NOTA" has on occasion 'won' in state-wide races.
Of course everyones listening habits are personal, but you left out the distinction between listening to it all and having it all available.
I know that if I load up 48 albums for a 1-week trip, even if i only listen to it for half an hour a day I will inevitably find myself in a mood where I want to listen to something in particular that I don't have with me.
Although I made the original point, it being a civil matter i think does preclude labelling it as "entrapment", which might (?) apply only to criminal matters, and possibly only misconduct by law enforcement agencies.
Oversight organizations in enforcing ethics are not limited to only punishing illegal acts, however; in theory they hold themselves to a stricter standard than the bare minimum required by law.
I suspect that we're all mostly whistling in the dark here and approaching this with a laymans' (mis)conception of US law. It's a matter for the Canadian courts to resolve, if it goes to trial. Hopefully someone familiar with Canadian law will post and make it clear that they're speaking from some knowlege, not just talking out their ass (like me, and possibly others).
As a general rule, though, I think my point is valid. Even taking the prestige of the law school (if any) out of the equation, "better" lawyers tend to rise to the top of their profession, can justify higher fees, and tend to be more likely to be hired by large firms that can afford them. On average.
Some excellent lawyers may choose to do pro-bono work out of a sense of social justice, and be compensated not by money, but by the good feeling they get from doing so. Most won't, however.
Still others will work on contingency... sometimes representing those truly wronged, sometimes just ambulance chasing looking for the 1-in-50 payday. Like any other field, you have your usual assorment of scumbags and saints.
Valid point. I believe that the RIAA v. 12-year-old-girl case was simply dropped by the RIAA (or settled before trial; I forget which) but that's irrelevant; one can argue that it never went to trial because the RIAA felt the bad PR would outweigh the benefits, or that no jury would convict due to sympathy.
Judges themselves, by and large, come from a background as lawyers -- professional members of the theatre, so to speak. They're also human beings, and despite their best intentions to be fair I suspect that many of them automatically give greater credence to the arguments more eloquently presented... if only out of professional respect. I'm not asserting that there's a concious bias (though there might be), just that it's extremely difficult for someone skilled in a particular field to be unbiased in deciding between the arguments presented by someone similarly skilled and someone of lesser ability.
Your point might hold true for jury trials, but what you're speaking of is jury nullification, which is generally suppressed by the presiding judge who instructs jurors that they are only to apply the law as presented to them (by the judge) and not consider how equitable or just that law is. Defense attorneys in many places are actually forbidden to raise the question of the propriety of the law to the jury in their arguments. I believe the jury does have not only the right but also the duty to judge the law as well as the persons charged under it, though. The Fully Infomed Jury Association has much material on this.
All of this is getting rather far afield though; I'm an American and just by virtue of statistics I suspect you're not a Canadian... so what we each have to say is likely colored by the biases of the systems we each live under.
The attempt to profit from a domain name is a statutory element of bad faith
If Microsoft or their legal representatives attempted to induce him violate the law you cite by introducing compensation into the equation (by making an insultingly low offer and in effect inviting a counter-offer), that's an attempt to induce a "criminal" (OK, probably falls under civil law) act.
The Canadian equivalent of the Board of Bar Overseers perhaps needs to open an ethics inquiry into the practices of Smart & Biggar (or was it Dewey, Cheetam & Howe?)
Am I the only one appalled that the lawyers decide to spend tons of money in legal fees
While I think MS is being somewhat of an ass in the present case, I understand why they don't want to set a precedent of making a non-trivial settlement which would encourage everyone and their uncle to register "smiliar" domain names and then extort MS for $10K a pop. Not that I personally would care about MS being ripped off in that manner, but it'd still be wrong and MS can't open themselves up to such a flood.
...think that the court decisions that accepted that theory were highly biased and suspect (though I didn't TRY to check for any evidence of bribery...
Unfortunately bribery isn't required. Consider what might happen in the case at hand: Microsoft has a large legal staff, many of whom graduated from the most prestigious law schools. If he's lucky, Mr. Rowe will have his family's small town lawyer, who is used to dealing with auto-insurance claims and the like and got his degree from a small (even if generally respectable) law school we've never heard of.
Trials are much like theatre, and we're dealing with the equivalent of Broadway stars against an amateur theatrical group. Guess who gives the better performance, even if their script sucks?
Do you seriously think that people going to his website are going to be fooled into thinking it's Microsoft?
Given the average quality of Microsoft products, why, yes, I could easilly be fooled into thinking a 17 year old wrote them all in his spare time. On second thought, that's a bit insulting to Mr. Rowe. I think Mr. Rowe should sue that upstart WA corporation for damaging his good name by marketing crap under the confusing name "Microsoft". Should be a slam dunk.
"it's because everyone is afraid of the RIAA's lawsuits"
Possibly... but perhaps the result of that fear was a decreased willingness to admit P2P usage to the survey organization rather than any actual change in usage... and then as it was widely reported the the lawsuits primarilly were targetting people sharing large collections, the statistics became less skewed (more accurate)
Patterns of behavior (such as downloading music) are much more resistant to change than the level of honesty on a survey when faced with the potential of a lawsuit for the "wrong" answer. I'm sure it was claimed the survey was "confidential" but very few people would accept such an assurance and admit to any kind of "crime" -- which is what the RIAA publicly asserts all such P2P use is.
Interesting. You didn't list the first thing that came to my mind, though... thin plastic film (like food wrap, but tougher; possibly as heavy as the polyester base used for photographic film or something like mylar minus the reflective aluminum coating), supply and take-up rollers and a mechanism to advance the film when it became dirty.
Little risk of damage to the solar panels
lightweight (well, lighter than the compressors or tanks required to blow the dust off the panels)
no jerky/rapid motion as in "shaking them off"
if the "cleaning" mechanism fails, you're no worse off than if you didn't have it at all (assuming you don't choose a material that actually attracts dust...)
Slashdot Mirror
TinyMUSH is currently under active albeit leisurely development. David Passmore has been involved in the project for several years, and Lydia Leong even longer. Other members of the development team are also familiar names to those who've followed such for long.
The server is Open Source (Creative Commons Artistic License) and builds without modification on most *NIX-like systems (and I think with some effort Windows as well). I've built and run it succesfully under 2.2 and 2.4 Linux kernels and a recent version of Darwin (OS X).
Cop: Afternoon, sir... is everything here alright?
Hibel: No problem, officer... what's up?
Cop: Well, we had someone reporting a fight and need to check things out to make sure everything is OK. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm sure you understand that ww need to look into reports like this... Would you mind waiting over there...
Driver is directed to a place safely off the road where the cop (alone at that time?) can keep an eye on him while interviewing the daughter.
Cop talks to daughter, determines if anything is amiss -- does she seem upset beyond what might be expected from an argument and being a young driver confronted with a policeman, possibly for the first time? Been crying? Any obvious bruises? Does she plausibly deny having been hit? (yes, sometimes domestic violence victims deny having been abused. That dosen't mean you don't ask!)
In all likelihood, he'd have arrived at the truth of the matter in short order -- that the original report called in was an over reaction -- and he'd have shaken hands all around and created good rather than ill-will. In less time than his confrontational approach would have taken even if Hibel had cooperated from the outset.
And guess what? He'd never have needed to ask for IDs or names at all, or even called in the license plate of the pickup truck (though he probably did anyhow as a safety measure when he pulled up - a sane and non-invasive precaution.)
This is simply the deliberate introduction of potential bugs for the convenience of the authorities, and if it should become mandatory probably an illegal appropriation of property (CPU cycles of the user).
You will likely find them doing things like maintaining records of drug allergies, insurance coverage, etc. If those systems fail, people will hopefully fall back on manual records (assuming they exist in an accessable format), but that will introduce delays in treatment and admissions, which might well indirectly result in deaths.
Granted this doesn't provide the two-way connectivity of email, but that same motorbike as used in the model described could carry postal mail (no parcels, just letters) as easily as the WiFi equipment, and the model of broadcasting to remote villages would still be cost effective, I suspect.
Unfortunately I doubt that the FTC will do any independent verification that open relays are in fact running at the targetted addresses... in which case they become spammers themselves. If properly done, however, it's no different from postmaster@ mailing postmaster@ and bitching.
Sadly, there are practical concerns.
You are indeed correct, and as soon as I read your reply I slapped my forehead. I was thinking e. coli because I'd read a report that the use of human waste as fertilizer was implicated as a likely cause, and both Hep-A and e. coli can spread by that vector.
Remember that cluster of e. coli cases in Pennsylvania last year? Contaminated green onions from Mexico supplied to a restaurant chain, but could have just as easily been supplied to a supermarket.
I stated the some people might stay away from the polls because they feel that the Presidential candidates are all bad; I see that as a shame because it means they won't vote in any of the other races, either. Giving them a means to express their disgust at the Presidential race with a "NOTA" option would, I think, increase turnout generally and voting in the other races where those people have an opinion, but not one to cuase them to go to the polling place in and of itself. I would tend to see NOTA as equating to "this space intentionally left blank" -- a means of making it clear that you're choosing not to vote for any of the options offered as a means of expressing your disapproval of them. In tallying the ballots, they'd be treated exactly as a blank is today, but broken out as a seperate category.
This is tired cliche. By that reasoning, people who don't vote should be exempt from taxes, because they bear none of the responsibility (indirectly) for the spending of government -- that suggestion is equally absurd as suggesting that they somehow forfeited their right to criticize.In any case, it doesn't apply to me since as I stated I personally do vote. Often for someone who would be considered a longshot, and often even if I disagree with them strongly but want them to retain ballot status in Massachusetts (parties pulling a certain small percentage in an election are exempted from some of the onerous signature-gathering required to be on the ballot in the following election. Hence, I might vote for the Communist party candidate even though I'm violently opposed to what he stands for, but feel that party has a right to equal ballot access).
One small, concrete thing I'd like to see that I believe would help turnout would be for the press (newspapers, at least; I recognize the time constraints of TV & radio) to print the full results, tight down to "1 vote for Joe Smith's Dog (write-in)". If that were done routinely, those voting for the longshot candidates would at least know that their votes weren't simply discarded; voting is a form of political speech in a way and anything less than full reporting of the results squelches the less popular speech pretty completely.
I seem to recall that at least one state (Nevada?) does this and "NOTA" has on occasion 'won' in state-wide races.
I know that if I load up 48 albums for a 1-week trip, even if i only listen to it for half an hour a day I will inevitably find myself in a mood where I want to listen to something in particular that I don't have with me.
Nextel is on the list of sample advertisers for unicast.com anyhow, so I've already written them off.
Oversight organizations in enforcing ethics are not limited to only punishing illegal acts, however; in theory they hold themselves to a stricter standard than the bare minimum required by law.
I suspect that we're all mostly whistling in the dark here and approaching this with a laymans' (mis)conception of US law. It's a matter for the Canadian courts to resolve, if it goes to trial. Hopefully someone familiar with Canadian law will post and make it clear that they're speaking from some knowlege, not just talking out their ass (like me, and possibly others).
As a general rule, though, I think my point is valid. Even taking the prestige of the law school (if any) out of the equation, "better" lawyers tend to rise to the top of their profession, can justify higher fees, and tend to be more likely to be hired by large firms that can afford them. On average.
Some excellent lawyers may choose to do pro-bono work out of a sense of social justice, and be compensated not by money, but by the good feeling they get from doing so. Most won't, however.
Still others will work on contingency... sometimes representing those truly wronged, sometimes just ambulance chasing looking for the 1-in-50 payday. Like any other field, you have your usual assorment of scumbags and saints.
Judges themselves, by and large, come from a background as lawyers -- professional members of the theatre, so to speak. They're also human beings, and despite their best intentions to be fair I suspect that many of them automatically give greater credence to the arguments more eloquently presented... if only out of professional respect. I'm not asserting that there's a concious bias (though there might be), just that it's extremely difficult for someone skilled in a particular field to be unbiased in deciding between the arguments presented by someone similarly skilled and someone of lesser ability.
Your point might hold true for jury trials, but what you're speaking of is jury nullification, which is generally suppressed by the presiding judge who instructs jurors that they are only to apply the law as presented to them (by the judge) and not consider how equitable or just that law is. Defense attorneys in many places are actually forbidden to raise the question of the propriety of the law to the jury in their arguments. I believe the jury does have not only the right but also the duty to judge the law as well as the persons charged under it, though. The Fully Infomed Jury Association has much material on this.
All of this is getting rather far afield though; I'm an American and just by virtue of statistics I suspect you're not a Canadian... so what we each have to say is likely colored by the biases of the systems we each live under.
The Canadian equivalent of the Board of Bar Overseers perhaps needs to open an ethics inquiry into the practices of Smart & Biggar (or was it Dewey, Cheetam & Howe?)
Trials are much like theatre, and we're dealing with the equivalent of Broadway stars against an amateur theatrical group. Guess who gives the better performance, even if their script sucks?
Patterns of behavior (such as downloading music) are much more resistant to change than the level of honesty on a survey when faced with the potential of a lawsuit for the "wrong" answer. I'm sure it was claimed the survey was "confidential" but very few people would accept such an assurance and admit to any kind of "crime" -- which is what the RIAA publicly asserts all such P2P use is.