She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
And they where not evidence in a criminal case. All they need was location.
they were used in a criminal case, but the charges were dropped. Just because the prosecuting attorney decides not to bring the case to trial doesn't mean the evidence does not exist.
It's a stolen laptop. "I didn't know it was stolen" is not a valid defense according to US law anymore than "I didn't know the speed limit". If she's somehow wins based on "I didn't know it was stolen" then that will make the "I didn't know" defense valid and suddenly anyone can claim "I didn't know" and get off.
She's going to lose the case. Sure the judge allowed her to proceed, but "I didn't know" is not an excuse to break the law. Besides her story doesn't really add up, buying a $60 laptop from a student and having it "fixed up" but never finding the tracking software? Somehow she was savvy enough to fix it but not smart enough to find the tracking software really doesn't add up, even if she hired someone to fix it they should have found the software.
My guess is she misunderstood. The flash drive that she demonstrates is only 16gb, there is no drive there that is labeled 2tb, and at one point in the video she even mistakenly calls it a 2 gigabyte drive instead of 2 terabyte indicating she's pretty good at making mistakes. She was probably told that in the future it could be 2tb, but it is not a product that will be released anytime soon.
Where is the justice in corporations like Mister Maester or Twentieth Century Fox making profts off the man's speech, and not paying him or his family anything?
I think this is a joke, although you didn't post as AC so maybe you're serious. I can see copyrighting something so someone can't use it for the wrong things, but if someone is making a movie about the message you were trying to spread to the world wouldn't you want that to be done as often as possible as long as the message was portrayed correctly?
Why aren't they using airships/blimps? Better payload, which allows larger batteries = longer runtime, larger range and larger amount of drugs so more destinations per trip, less expensive than quadcopters, won't "fall out of the sky" like quadcopters, rain will not hurt a blimp as much as it would quadcopter.
Blimps do get blown around a bit but I'm sure these hand-held quadcopters don't do well in heavy wind either, and a blimp is far less likely to crash than a quadcopter. Blimp would be larger but it doesn't sound like size is a huge concern, this isn't a spy drone to see enemy positions, it's a efficient delivery system.
Quadcopter would be nice for a once-in-awhile delivery or when seconds count making speed is crucial, but a blimp would be better for daily use or when you can wait a few minutes for the drugs to arrive.
I agree with this. Part of the reason ICVs were adopted is that re-energizing the vehicle was simply a matter of pumping gasoline into the tank. A five minute process and you're back on the road. Unless EVs can match the convenience of Internal Combustion Vehicles, they won't be much more than a fad. However, if the automakers can't even agree on an electrical connector, there's no way they'll agree to a swappable battery rack.
100% agree. EVs with gas-electric generators are the future, and like you said they can't even agree on an electrical connector but people think they're going to agree on one standard battery for ALL electric vehicles? Never going to happen. It's also impractical, tiny 2-seater EVs are not going to need the same battery a EV 1-ton truck would need.
Anyone working on a universal swappable battery for electric vehicles is wasting their time. Your best bet is just to put a small gasoline or diesel powered engine in the vehicle to charge the battery when needed. Jaguar is working on a range-extended EV that uses a turbine engine to charge the batteries: "When it runs out of juice, it can be topped up via a standard household mains outlet or be given a boost via two 70kW (94bhp) micro gas turbines."
You have no first amendment rights when it comes to talking to children. Sorry.
Having a right, and having your government fail to acknowledge that right, are two entirely different matters, ones that I wish people around here would get straight in their heads.
Not really. If I do something and I go to jail for doing it it doesn't matter if I had the right to do it or not, point is I'm still in prison.
If you think talking to a child is "child pornography", I suggest you look to other definitions of "intercourse". And further I suggest you turn off "safe search", use an unfiltered Internet connection, and educate yourself on what regular pornography is, so you don't make that mistake again.
Where in the First Amendment is there an exception based on age?
says pedobear
man walks up to your 6 yr old daughter at the park and starts talking to her.
You notice and walk over and say "Excuse me can I help you?"
"No", says the man, "I'm just talking to this girl."
"Ok," you say, "but she is my daughter and if you need to speak with her you should ask me first."
"No," says the man, "it's my first amendment right to talk to anyone I want."
They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.
You're basically saying that children (whatever that means) aren't human beings, but things to be given access to, authority over, educated, or abused. That's okay. I fear that a majority of adults feel the same way about them.
You fear? Wow is this post ever creepy... where's the Internet police we need to dun backtrace it
There really isnt any way that it doesnt violate the first amendment, except that technically it isnt "Congress" enacting the law (thank goodness for incorporation!).
Except that it doesn't violate the first amendment.
man walks up to your 6 yr old daughter at the park and starts talking to her. You notice and walk over and say "excuse me can I help you?". "no", says the man, "I'm just talking to this girl.". "ok," you say, "but she is my daughter and if you need to speak with her you should ask me first.". "No," says the man, "it's my first amendment right to talk to anyone I want.". o_O
the first amendment does not give you the right to speak to children. This law applied only to former students under 18 yrs old, so it does not violate the first amendment.
I see what you're saying, but the world has changed a lot in 15 years and so should most laws. Maybe this law wasn't worded perfectly but the idea is sound, that teachers do not need to be sending facebook messages or txt to underage students. I think we can all agree on that much, and you have to look at anyone that argues that they really must message underage students like o_O
Again, like others have said many times, this law only applied to children under 18 so it doesn't violate any amendments since you do not have the right to speak to other people's children.
the world existed before Facebook and texting and somehow we went through school just fine. The law is just trying to protect students from creepy teachers AND protect teachers from false accusations or accidentally getting in trouble ("Susie, why is your teacher mr Rodgers messaging you on Facebook?"). This law sounded good for everyone and its sensational journalism like "law stopping teachers from talking To Their Own Children (!!) has been rejected" that is ruining it.
Can someone explain why it's necessary for teachers and students to be Facebook friends? How exactly is it going to hurt education if they're not friends? Also the law does not prevent electronic communication, it only forbids it outside the watchful eye of school admin and parents. If the school setup their own social networking app that gave school admin and parents the right to see everything that would be fine.
I'm a bit surprised Facebook hasn't chimed in saying they'll add a feature allowing parents and school admin the ability to see student and teacher communications. That would solve this whole mess. Actually Facebook should probably add a few parental controls to accounts of those under 18 anyway.
No, it doesn't violate the first amendment because the law only applies to children under 18. Nothing in the first amendment says adults have the right to speak to other people's children, good thing because that would be a little creepy.
Just because you haven't found a personal need/use for a tablet, doesn't mean the millions who've bought them (iPads and the dozen or so Xooms and Galaxy's out there) haven't.
The CEO of Acer sounds like he's trying to make noise because Acer isn't in the competitive tablet business. In fact, nobody is in the competitive tablet business at this point, except Apple. And all signs point to it not slowing down anytime soon.
^---- This. Let me know when Apple declares tablet bubble.
Touchscreen, size, color, wireless are important.
Audio, video, GPS, 3G, phone, camera, could be optional. Mobile devices have been evolving into "swiss army knives". But this may not be necessary.
What do you mean "audio"? You mean you don't care if the tablet has no audio capabilities? Sorry I want a speaker, doesn't need to be Dolby 5.1 but I need *some* sound. Video: what do you mean "video"? I don't need the latest Radeon GPU but I want it to be able to play Youtube videos. GPS: Touchpad doesn't have GPS so that proves how much we care about that. 3G: again touchpad doesn't have that and it sold great. Camera: agreed, do not care. Wifi is a given, of course it must have that. And color? As in the color of the device? I could care less, I would have bought the touchpad even if it was fuschia, but I prefer black or brushed aluminum.
Top things most important to purchasing a touchpad:
price: obvious
build quality: if it's cheap chinese junk that falls apart or creaks every time you touch it up then I don't want it
touchscreen quality: if the touchscreen is crap then I can't use it
speed: if it's not fast enough to be usable then i can't use it
battery life: if it dies too fast then i can't use it
software: what OS does it use, what apps are available
size/weight: needs to be a reasonable size and weight
Do they really need an in-depth analysis for something that bloody simple?
In a word: YES.
I use to work for a marketing research firm, you'd be SHOCKED at some of the seemingly stupid surveys companies would send us. Absolutely horrible commercials to test pilot, horribly tasting food and beverages taste-testing next to something that tasted great. 100% of the time the surveys turned out exactly how you would expect, I still to this day do not know why they bothered.
I was invited to do a taste test for a new beer coming to market. Out of the three samples only one tasted decent, the other two were either way too sweet or way too bitter. I spoke to some of the people after the survey and they agreed, only one sample was decent. Why do they do dumb surveys like this? Does anyone know why companies do seemingly stupid surveys when the results are obvious?
I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue.
More taxes? Taxes is a percentage, and as salaries go up the amount collected by taxes increases, i.e. 5% of your salary now it probably more than what 5% of your salary was in 1990. So there's no reason for *more* taxes, they already receive more money now than they did 20 years ago.
Problem is the US is facing the worse economic depression since the 1930s so fewer people are working which means less money for taxes. Schools seem to not be able to figure this out and make cuts so they think cutting a day out of the week will make the difference. All that will happen is less education for the students so US students will be at an even more disadvantage compared to students in other countries.
This goes back to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Parents who can not afford to send their children to private schools are now faced with children that are receiving less education and decreases the chances of them getting in to good schools. They also have to find a way to provide childcare for their children now out of school one day a week which further hurts their income. Childcare for a day can range from $50-$100 so that's an extra $200-$400 a month they need to somehow pay for.
Then again this might be great for private schools, some parents that were wavering on private school might decide to just spend the money for private school rather than waste it on babysitting and risking their child's education, and if the public school lose too many children they might have to make even more cuts.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely true. While they make the claim "Our software refuses to give up easily — even laptops with wiped or removed hard drives can be recovered." they also have a limited number of OSes they support, Windows and Mac only. IF the LoJack was truly hardware based it really wouldn't matter what OS you're running. LoJack doesn't support Linux so wipe it and put any version of Linux on the drive and you're in the clear.
She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
And they where not evidence in a criminal case. All they need was location.
they were used in a criminal case, but the charges were dropped. Just because the prosecuting attorney decides not to bring the case to trial doesn't mean the evidence does not exist.
It's a stolen laptop. "I didn't know it was stolen" is not a valid defense according to US law anymore than "I didn't know the speed limit". If she's somehow wins based on "I didn't know it was stolen" then that will make the "I didn't know" defense valid and suddenly anyone can claim "I didn't know" and get off.
She's going to lose the case. Sure the judge allowed her to proceed, but "I didn't know" is not an excuse to break the law. Besides her story doesn't really add up, buying a $60 laptop from a student and having it "fixed up" but never finding the tracking software? Somehow she was savvy enough to fix it but not smart enough to find the tracking software really doesn't add up, even if she hired someone to fix it they should have found the software.
Transcend is a big name in flash drives, not a back ally Chinese computer store
My guess is she misunderstood. The flash drive that she demonstrates is only 16gb, there is no drive there that is labeled 2tb, and at one point in the video she even mistakenly calls it a 2 gigabyte drive instead of 2 terabyte indicating she's pretty good at making mistakes. She was probably told that in the future it could be 2tb, but it is not a product that will be released anytime soon.
Where is the justice in corporations like Mister Maester or Twentieth Century Fox making profts off the man's speech, and not paying him or his family anything?
I think this is a joke, although you didn't post as AC so maybe you're serious. I can see copyrighting something so someone can't use it for the wrong things, but if someone is making a movie about the message you were trying to spread to the world wouldn't you want that to be done as often as possible as long as the message was portrayed correctly?
^----- This. +5, Insightful
Because blimps are slow (bye bye speed advantage), helium is bloody expensive (and rightly so), and people are scared of hydrogen-filled bags.
No, blimps can be very fast, try 55km/h (34mph) for this RC blimp. Reason blimps can be as fast as copters is they use all of their thrust to move forward like an airplane, not wasting it to provide lift. Besides they're claiming the quadcopter only has a 10km range. At 55km/h that's barely 6 minutes, that's "quick" when you don't have access to roads. While they have not released the speed of their quadcopter I found this forum post that says a MikroKopter (MK) Quadcopter does 36mph which is equivalent to the blimp.
Helium is not that expensive, not when you're comparing it to a quadcopter with multiple charging stations and is more likely to crash.
As for being afraid have you not seen a quadcopter? It's four propellers moving very fast and sounding like 1,000 angry bees. A quadcopter is probably one of the scariest sounds in the world.
Quadcopters have their place, they're small, stealthy and fun, but I don't think they make a good daily delivery system.
Why aren't they using airships/blimps? Better payload, which allows larger batteries = longer runtime, larger range and larger amount of drugs so more destinations per trip, less expensive than quadcopters, won't "fall out of the sky" like quadcopters, rain will not hurt a blimp as much as it would quadcopter.
Blimps do get blown around a bit but I'm sure these hand-held quadcopters don't do well in heavy wind either, and a blimp is far less likely to crash than a quadcopter. Blimp would be larger but it doesn't sound like size is a huge concern, this isn't a spy drone to see enemy positions, it's a efficient delivery system.
Quadcopter would be nice for a once-in-awhile delivery or when seconds count making speed is crucial, but a blimp would be better for daily use or when you can wait a few minutes for the drugs to arrive.
I agree with this. Part of the reason ICVs were adopted is that re-energizing the vehicle was simply a matter of pumping gasoline into the tank. A five minute process and you're back on the road. Unless EVs can match the convenience of Internal Combustion Vehicles, they won't be much more than a fad. However, if the automakers can't even agree on an electrical connector, there's no way they'll agree to a swappable battery rack.
100% agree. EVs with gas-electric generators are the future, and like you said they can't even agree on an electrical connector but people think they're going to agree on one standard battery for ALL electric vehicles? Never going to happen. It's also impractical, tiny 2-seater EVs are not going to need the same battery a EV 1-ton truck would need.
Anyone working on a universal swappable battery for electric vehicles is wasting their time. Your best bet is just to put a small gasoline or diesel powered engine in the vehicle to charge the battery when needed. Jaguar is working on a range-extended EV that uses a turbine engine to charge the batteries:
"When it runs out of juice, it can be topped up via a standard household mains outlet or be given a boost via two 70kW (94bhp) micro gas turbines."
You have no first amendment rights when it comes to talking to children. Sorry.
Having a right, and having your government fail to acknowledge that right, are two entirely different matters, ones that I wish people around here would get straight in their heads.
Not really. If I do something and I go to jail for doing it it doesn't matter if I had the right to do it or not, point is I'm still in prison.
If you think talking to a child is "child pornography", I suggest you look to other definitions of "intercourse". And further I suggest you turn off "safe search", use an unfiltered Internet connection, and educate yourself on what regular pornography is, so you don't make that mistake again.
Tell it to this guy, who was arrested for talking to children. Yes, just talking, not soliciting sex. He was charge with annoying children under 18 years of age.
This man served 60 days "for shooting a video in front of a first grade class and later editing in sexually explicit lyrics as a joke and then posting that video on YouTube." He's lucky, he was facing 20 years.
You have no first amendment rights when it comes to talking to children. Sorry.
he kind of is... scroll down to the Child Pornography part of the First Amendment
Where in the First Amendment is there an exception based on age?
says pedobear
man walks up to your 6 yr old daughter at the park and starts talking to her.
You notice and walk over and say "Excuse me can I help you?"
"No", says the man, "I'm just talking to this girl."
"Ok," you say, "but she is my daughter and if you need to speak with her you should ask me first."
"No," says the man, "it's my first amendment right to talk to anyone I want."
o_O
They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.
here's a 2000 article about electricity generating shoes. here's a patent from 1992 and another from 1988. Doesn't anyone do an internet search before "inventing" something?
You're basically saying that children (whatever that means) aren't human beings, but things to be given access to, authority over, educated, or abused. That's okay. I fear that a majority of adults feel the same way about them.
You fear? Wow is this post ever creepy... where's the Internet police we need to dun backtrace it
+1,...Insightful?
There really isnt any way that it doesnt violate the first amendment, except that technically it isnt "Congress" enacting the law (thank goodness for incorporation!).
Except that it doesn't violate the first amendment.
man walks up to your 6 yr old daughter at the park and starts talking to her. You notice and walk over and say "excuse me can I help you?". "no", says the man, "I'm just talking to this girl.". "ok," you say, "but she is my daughter and if you need to speak with her you should ask me first.". "No," says the man, "it's my first amendment right to talk to anyone I want.". o_O
the first amendment does not give you the right to speak to children. This law applied only to former students under 18 yrs old, so it does not violate the first amendment.
I see what you're saying, but the world has changed a lot in 15 years and so should most laws. Maybe this law wasn't worded perfectly but the idea is sound, that teachers do not need to be sending facebook messages or txt to underage students. I think we can all agree on that much, and you have to look at anyone that argues that they really must message underage students like o_O
Again, like others have said many times, this law only applied to children under 18 so it doesn't violate any amendments since you do not have the right to speak to other people's children.
the world existed before Facebook and texting and somehow we went through school just fine. The law is just trying to protect students from creepy teachers AND protect teachers from false accusations or accidentally getting in trouble ("Susie, why is your teacher mr Rodgers messaging you on Facebook?"). This law sounded good for everyone and its sensational journalism like "law stopping teachers from talking To Their Own Children (!!) has been rejected" that is ruining it.
Can someone explain why it's necessary for teachers and students to be Facebook friends? How exactly is it going to hurt education if they're not friends? Also the law does not prevent electronic communication, it only forbids it outside the watchful eye of school admin and parents. If the school setup their own social networking app that gave school admin and parents the right to see everything that would be fine.
I'm a bit surprised Facebook hasn't chimed in saying they'll add a feature allowing parents and school admin the ability to see student and teacher communications. That would solve this whole mess. Actually Facebook should probably add a few parental controls to accounts of those under 18 anyway.
No, it doesn't violate the first amendment because the law only applies to children under 18. Nothing in the first amendment says adults have the right to speak to other people's children, good thing because that would be a little creepy.
Why did you post this as AC? This is the most informative post on here.
Just because you haven't found a personal need/use for a tablet, doesn't mean the millions who've bought them (iPads and the dozen or so Xooms and Galaxy's out there) haven't. The CEO of Acer sounds like he's trying to make noise because Acer isn't in the competitive tablet business. In fact, nobody is in the competitive tablet business at this point, except Apple. And all signs point to it not slowing down anytime soon.
^---- This. Let me know when Apple declares tablet bubble.
Touchscreen, size, color, wireless are important. Audio, video, GPS, 3G, phone, camera, could be optional. Mobile devices have been evolving into "swiss army knives". But this may not be necessary.
What do you mean "audio"? You mean you don't care if the tablet has no audio capabilities? Sorry I want a speaker, doesn't need to be Dolby 5.1 but I need *some* sound. Video: what do you mean "video"? I don't need the latest Radeon GPU but I want it to be able to play Youtube videos. GPS: Touchpad doesn't have GPS so that proves how much we care about that. 3G: again touchpad doesn't have that and it sold great. Camera: agreed, do not care. Wifi is a given, of course it must have that. And color? As in the color of the device? I could care less, I would have bought the touchpad even if it was fuschia, but I prefer black or brushed aluminum.
Top things most important to purchasing a touchpad:
price: obvious
build quality: if it's cheap chinese junk that falls apart or creaks every time you touch it up then I don't want it
touchscreen quality: if the touchscreen is crap then I can't use it
speed: if it's not fast enough to be usable then i can't use it
battery life: if it dies too fast then i can't use it
software: what OS does it use, what apps are available
size/weight: needs to be a reasonable size and weight
Do they really need an in-depth analysis for something that bloody simple?
In a word: YES.
I use to work for a marketing research firm, you'd be SHOCKED at some of the seemingly stupid surveys companies would send us. Absolutely horrible commercials to test pilot, horribly tasting food and beverages taste-testing next to something that tasted great. 100% of the time the surveys turned out exactly how you would expect, I still to this day do not know why they bothered.
I was invited to do a taste test for a new beer coming to market. Out of the three samples only one tasted decent, the other two were either way too sweet or way too bitter. I spoke to some of the people after the survey and they agreed, only one sample was decent. Why do they do dumb surveys like this? Does anyone know why companies do seemingly stupid surveys when the results are obvious?
I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue.
More taxes? Taxes is a percentage, and as salaries go up the amount collected by taxes increases, i.e. 5% of your salary now it probably more than what 5% of your salary was in 1990. So there's no reason for *more* taxes, they already receive more money now than they did 20 years ago.
Problem is the US is facing the worse economic depression since the 1930s so fewer people are working which means less money for taxes. Schools seem to not be able to figure this out and make cuts so they think cutting a day out of the week will make the difference. All that will happen is less education for the students so US students will be at an even more disadvantage compared to students in other countries.
This goes back to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Parents who can not afford to send their children to private schools are now faced with children that are receiving less education and decreases the chances of them getting in to good schools. They also have to find a way to provide childcare for their children now out of school one day a week which further hurts their income. Childcare for a day can range from $50-$100 so that's an extra $200-$400 a month they need to somehow pay for.
Then again this might be great for private schools, some parents that were wavering on private school might decide to just spend the money for private school rather than waste it on babysitting and risking their child's education, and if the public school lose too many children they might have to make even more cuts.