Based on what I remember, sitting in school that day, and what my wife has said of sitting in school that day, and what most of the other people have said that I've discussed it with, who themselves were sitting in school that day, yeah, I'd say that it falls into the bad-idea end of the spectrum.
It's a Catch-22 for those whose finances are in such a poor state that they must go overdraft in order to remain solvent to those to whom they owe money, because either they continue to owe those people money (ie, no overdraft option) or they owe the bank extra money that they obviously don't have (using an overdraft option).
Their owing money they don't have, in either case, is a Catch-22.
In my experience, it's almost impossible to exclude things, as search engines don't want basic boolean functions (ie, NOT, which a minus sign would be) to work anymore.
They may think that it's legal to set-up a Rube Goldberg Machine scenario to attempt to put the final actions at arms' length, but the fact that they set up all conditions along the way should mean that they cannot make such an arms' length claim.
As far as intent to commit an illegal act, it looks like they did intend to commit an illegal act, and are trying to somehow get that illegal act interpreted as art or speech or whatever Swiss law has as an equivalent. I don't think that their attempt will fly.
As to keeping whatever contraband was ordered, normally for contraband to be used in some fashion when it's otherwise illega, it's cleared in-advance with a prosecuting authority and a court, giving the entity using the contraband some form of limited immunity for possessing the contraband. That we're having this discussion indicates that this was not done. When I was a kid, I was taught to never buy something illegal (like drugs) from someone with the intention of presenting those drugs to the authorities, because it was still illegal for me to be in possession of those drugs and illegal to purchase those drugs, and I wouldn't have had any prior immunity to protect me. Even if my intentions were completely above-board I'd still get into trouble. That's where they are now, at a minimum, assuming as the party that set this software bot up is held responsible for its actions.
If I father a child (creator) and raise it to be... less than respectful of the law... my child then robs a bank. Do they put *me* in jail? By your definition they should...
Honestly, while I definitely have a problem with sins of the father punishment, where progeny is punished solely because they're the offspring of someone that did something wrong, I don't really have a problem with the idea that a parent, in some specific circumstances, could be held accountable for something that their offspring did. If a pattern of encouraging despicable and illegal behavior was promoted by a parent to a child, and that child while still directly under the influence of the parent or free from it for only a short time committed certain types of felonies related to that encouragement, then I really don't have a problem with there being some legal consequences for the parent.
But, there's something else that completely invalidates your argument- people are recognized as having rights, including a right to self-determination, even before they reach the age of majority for many of their rights. Computers, machines, pets, livestock, and anything else that can be considered property does not have rights, and as property is owned by a party that can be held responsible for the repercussions of the actions, or even when abandoned the former owner, the ramifications of abandoned property can still fall on that former owner.
It's called liability. It's another reason why LLCs exist, they will usually take out liability coverage insurance based on their business, and in some circumstances are required to take out insurance.
“But our lawyer and the Swiss constitution says art in the public interest is allowed to be free.”
The distinction comes from the possibility for art to also be something else. I find some automobiles to be works of art, but that doesn't mean that I can drive them any way, anywhere I want, or can park them to display them anywhere I want. Even if I create a car or re-body a car so that it's truly unique, the rules of being a car are still in-effect.
The rules of being a computer program or a device should still apply even if the program or device can also be called art.
Unfortunately, by using an SSL site without having a non-SSL site provide a redirect, they make it a lot harder for your average person to figure out how to go there, hence the insane URL read-off.
The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible, as that creator set the conditions for the operation of the device.
The creators knew both that they were designing something to make its own decisions without programming any real concept of legality in the process, and setting it to operate in an environment which is known to have served to facilitate criminal activity.
The degree of responsibility is up for grabs, and that's why things like limited liability corporations exist, to attempt to shield the owners from being personally liable, but the act itself is still criminal. One can even debate the line between engineering and art, since the bot is an artificial construct that actively does something in the greater world, rather than a passive display or something contained to its own small environment.
Have you actually sat through a Dawkins presentation?
He maintains that on a graduated scale, with one end being an absolute certainty in the existence of god, and the other end an absolute certainty in the lack of existence of god, he falls near the lack of existence end, but not right on the end. In part, per his words, because one can't prove a negative, but also because he as not seen any evidence as to demonstrate the existence of god. His entire point is that science should focus on testable observations and hypotheses and theories that use some form of the Scientific Method, while religion should stop trying to disprove science without using the Scientific Method. When religion tries to disprove science and there's evidence that science is correct, it makes those that refuse to accept it and who actively fight it look silly at-best, and threatening for their possibility of heading toward a violent inquisition or war at-worst.
If the devout don't want their religion questioned, then they need to stop believing in proven falsehoods. Science generally isn't claiming a disexistence of god, people that value the processes of the Scientific Method are fighting against those who refuse to back down even when they're proven wrong, that attempt to justify multiply-translated-and-transcribed parables in their religion as literal fact.
Analyse his tweet? He probably chose his wording with care because he's limited to 140 characters including the spaces between words and the punctuation. Also, if you don't like him, try not following him on twitter. If you don't like the news media reporting on what he says, try getting your news from elsewhere or *gasp* doing without it, You'll find life is a lot more golden and happy when everything isn't treated like a crisis.
"Thank you for calling the Federal Communications Commission. Please select an option from the menu or say outloud what you would like to do"
"File a complaint."
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."
"FILE a comPLAINT!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."
"Goddamn this menu system, I SAID I WANTED TO FILE A COMPLAINT!"
"You said that you want to compain about our menu system. Forwarding you to the suggestion box, so that you make express your concerns with the Federal Communications Department before hanging up."
"GODDAMMIT SO MUCH! THIS SYSTEM SUCKS!"
Your concern has been recorded and will be submitted for consideration to improve our systems. Thank you for calling the Federal Communications Commission. Good bye!"
If it were companies that'd be one thing, but I get explicit search terms that do not appear in the resultant pages, nor do quoted expressions work as well as they used to.
This is more for Daniel Roseis, but to what do you attribute the seeming decline in the quality of search results? I used Digital's Alta Vista search engine when it was fairly new and it seemed revolutionary and seemed to provide me with exactly what I wanted. Over time that declined and Alta Vista as it was ceased to be, and Google initially also seemed to provide me with exactly what I wanted. Now it seems like I have to put a whole lot of thought into faking Google into performing a somewhat-boolean-style search for me, and normal boolean expressions themselves no longer seem to work.
Is this the result of attempting to dumb-down the interface for tailored results, or something else or more insidious? Obviously the amount of content on the Internet is growing, but the computing power to process through all of it is growing too, so I would expect it wouldn't be getting this much worse, this quickly.
They accept VPN access because the VPN server in the United States is acting as a proxy for the network traffic, and they're not making an attempt to determine where possible VPN servers or networks to blacklist their IPs or the users on them.
I've got another one that a coworker told me about this morning- some new wireless device from Apple did not get along with the new Macintosh running the latest version of OSX. Older Apples running older OSX had no problems. He did a factory-reload on the Mac, still no workie. Finally blew it away with a reload sourced from Apple via the Internet, that made it work.
It's awfully bad form for a company that likes to tout how all of its stuff in a given generation works together when that equipment doesn't actually get along without spending several hours to make changes so that it does.
No, quackery like "orthodox innovation" fundamentalism, where one essentially creates a new belief while claiming that the new belief is actually an old one. Kind of like how everyone harkens back to the 1950s, where the girls were virtuous, the boys were all healthy, athletic, and strong, and the kids ate their vegetables and listened to their parents that were faithful to each other. In reality, I expect that people in the 1950s were a lot like they are today, just with less technology to make for more leisure time.
Then you have politicians that flirt with separatist fringe groups in Texas and in Alaska, simply to get their votes, with absolutely no intention of succession.
Pretty much. Not trying to spend money that one cannot make good on or doesn't have is the best way to avoid debt problems. And an overdraft fee is a form of a debt problem.
Well, the content owners that agreed to license their content to the television show or movie for a certain area (like the United States) or for a certain broadcast medium in that country (ie, one country's rules allow for Internet-transmission for TV shows with all of the music, other countries require the TV show producers to renegotiate a deal for the music) then someone is losing-out, and that's part of the reason why country-specific laws exist.
It's just damned annoying as a consumer that I can't get a show on DVD or streaming that I watched on broadcast TV 20 years ago because the music isn't licensed for redistribution.
The absolutely are voices in the scientific community that are quite vocal about keeping the poison of prejudicial religious preconceptions out of scientific pursuits.
...with the regulations in place that generally put limits on their bad behavior, aren't looking so bad now, are they?
And for those who want to go off on overdraft fees, you can have your account set to simply not let you go overdraft. It'll deny any transactions that would let you overdraft though, so it's a catch-22.
I have no love for big banks, but at least there are rules governing how my accounts are handled, they can't brazenly steal all my money in one swoop.
It's not really in Netflix's interest to bust people for doing it anyway, especially if they can truly claim ignorance of the scale of it. After all, restricting countries by IP address could be considered reasonable, plus they get the revenue of the subscriptions that they might not otherwise have if people in those countries specifically signed up for Netflix in order to do this.
It probably won't happen unless content owners sue.
It also seems like our American politicians that land on the side of the quackery don't actually believe it most of the time, they're using a population that's too stupid to see that their patron only wants their votes. The politician almost always stops short of fully committing to the quackery cause.
These reports make it clear that many politicians in other countries either are much less cautious, or actually do support these crazy notions.
Granted, we could just be seeing the crazy part, as crap rises to the top and makes for good press, regardless of how fringe it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Based on what I remember, sitting in school that day, and what my wife has said of sitting in school that day, and what most of the other people have said that I've discussed it with, who themselves were sitting in school that day, yeah, I'd say that it falls into the bad-idea end of the spectrum.
It's a Catch-22 for those whose finances are in such a poor state that they must go overdraft in order to remain solvent to those to whom they owe money, because either they continue to owe those people money (ie, no overdraft option) or they owe the bank extra money that they obviously don't have (using an overdraft option).
Their owing money they don't have, in either case, is a Catch-22.
In my experience, it's almost impossible to exclude things, as search engines don't want basic boolean functions (ie, NOT, which a minus sign would be) to work anymore.
(to both parent comment and grandparent comment)
They may think that it's legal to set-up a Rube Goldberg Machine scenario to attempt to put the final actions at arms' length, but the fact that they set up all conditions along the way should mean that they cannot make such an arms' length claim.
As far as intent to commit an illegal act, it looks like they did intend to commit an illegal act, and are trying to somehow get that illegal act interpreted as art or speech or whatever Swiss law has as an equivalent. I don't think that their attempt will fly.
As to keeping whatever contraband was ordered, normally for contraband to be used in some fashion when it's otherwise illega, it's cleared in-advance with a prosecuting authority and a court, giving the entity using the contraband some form of limited immunity for possessing the contraband. That we're having this discussion indicates that this was not done. When I was a kid, I was taught to never buy something illegal (like drugs) from someone with the intention of presenting those drugs to the authorities, because it was still illegal for me to be in possession of those drugs and illegal to purchase those drugs, and I wouldn't have had any prior immunity to protect me. Even if my intentions were completely above-board I'd still get into trouble. That's where they are now, at a minimum, assuming as the party that set this software bot up is held responsible for its actions.
Honestly, while I definitely have a problem with sins of the father punishment, where progeny is punished solely because they're the offspring of someone that did something wrong, I don't really have a problem with the idea that a parent, in some specific circumstances, could be held accountable for something that their offspring did. If a pattern of encouraging despicable and illegal behavior was promoted by a parent to a child, and that child while still directly under the influence of the parent or free from it for only a short time committed certain types of felonies related to that encouragement, then I really don't have a problem with there being some legal consequences for the parent.
But, there's something else that completely invalidates your argument- people are recognized as having rights, including a right to self-determination, even before they reach the age of majority for many of their rights. Computers, machines, pets, livestock, and anything else that can be considered property does not have rights, and as property is owned by a party that can be held responsible for the repercussions of the actions, or even when abandoned the former owner, the ramifications of abandoned property can still fall on that former owner.
It's called liability. It's another reason why LLCs exist, they will usually take out liability coverage insurance based on their business, and in some circumstances are required to take out insurance.
The distinction comes from the possibility for art to also be something else. I find some automobiles to be works of art, but that doesn't mean that I can drive them any way, anywhere I want, or can park them to display them anywhere I want. Even if I create a car or re-body a car so that it's truly unique, the rules of being a car are still in-effect.
The rules of being a computer program or a device should still apply even if the program or device can also be called art.
Unfortunately, by using an SSL site without having a non-SSL site provide a redirect, they make it a lot harder for your average person to figure out how to go there, hence the insane URL read-off.
The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible, as that creator set the conditions for the operation of the device.
The creators knew both that they were designing something to make its own decisions without programming any real concept of legality in the process, and setting it to operate in an environment which is known to have served to facilitate criminal activity.
The degree of responsibility is up for grabs, and that's why things like limited liability corporations exist, to attempt to shield the owners from being personally liable, but the act itself is still criminal. One can even debate the line between engineering and art, since the bot is an artificial construct that actively does something in the greater world, rather than a passive display or something contained to its own small environment.
Just curious if any of these work, at all.
Have you actually sat through a Dawkins presentation?
He maintains that on a graduated scale, with one end being an absolute certainty in the existence of god, and the other end an absolute certainty in the lack of existence of god, he falls near the lack of existence end, but not right on the end. In part, per his words, because one can't prove a negative, but also because he as not seen any evidence as to demonstrate the existence of god. His entire point is that science should focus on testable observations and hypotheses and theories that use some form of the Scientific Method, while religion should stop trying to disprove science without using the Scientific Method. When religion tries to disprove science and there's evidence that science is correct, it makes those that refuse to accept it and who actively fight it look silly at-best, and threatening for their possibility of heading toward a violent inquisition or war at-worst.
If the devout don't want their religion questioned, then they need to stop believing in proven falsehoods. Science generally isn't claiming a disexistence of god, people that value the processes of the Scientific Method are fighting against those who refuse to back down even when they're proven wrong, that attempt to justify multiply-translated-and-transcribed parables in their religion as literal fact.
Analyse his tweet? He probably chose his wording with care because he's limited to 140 characters including the spaces between words and the punctuation. Also, if you don't like him, try not following him on twitter. If you don't like the news media reporting on what he says, try getting your news from elsewhere or *gasp* doing without it, You'll find life is a lot more golden and happy when everything isn't treated like a crisis.
"Thank you for calling the Federal Communications Commission. Please select an option from the menu or say outloud what you would like to do"
"File a complaint."
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."
"FILE a comPLAINT!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."
"Goddamn this menu system, I SAID I WANTED TO FILE A COMPLAINT!"
"You said that you want to compain about our menu system. Forwarding you to the suggestion box, so that you make express your concerns with the Federal Communications Department before hanging up."
"GODDAMMIT SO MUCH! THIS SYSTEM SUCKS!"
Your concern has been recorded and will be submitted for consideration to improve our systems. Thank you for calling the Federal Communications Commission. Good bye!"
"FUUUUUUUUUU..."
If it were companies that'd be one thing, but I get explicit search terms that do not appear in the resultant pages, nor do quoted expressions work as well as they used to.
This is more for Daniel Roseis, but to what do you attribute the seeming decline in the quality of search results? I used Digital's Alta Vista search engine when it was fairly new and it seemed revolutionary and seemed to provide me with exactly what I wanted. Over time that declined and Alta Vista as it was ceased to be, and Google initially also seemed to provide me with exactly what I wanted. Now it seems like I have to put a whole lot of thought into faking Google into performing a somewhat-boolean-style search for me, and normal boolean expressions themselves no longer seem to work.
Is this the result of attempting to dumb-down the interface for tailored results, or something else or more insidious? Obviously the amount of content on the Internet is growing, but the computing power to process through all of it is growing too, so I would expect it wouldn't be getting this much worse, this quickly.
They accept VPN access because the VPN server in the United States is acting as a proxy for the network traffic, and they're not making an attempt to determine where possible VPN servers or networks to blacklist their IPs or the users on them.
I've got another one that a coworker told me about this morning- some new wireless device from Apple did not get along with the new Macintosh running the latest version of OSX. Older Apples running older OSX had no problems. He did a factory-reload on the Mac, still no workie. Finally blew it away with a reload sourced from Apple via the Internet, that made it work.
It's awfully bad form for a company that likes to tout how all of its stuff in a given generation works together when that equipment doesn't actually get along without spending several hours to make changes so that it does.
No, quackery like "orthodox innovation" fundamentalism, where one essentially creates a new belief while claiming that the new belief is actually an old one. Kind of like how everyone harkens back to the 1950s, where the girls were virtuous, the boys were all healthy, athletic, and strong, and the kids ate their vegetables and listened to their parents that were faithful to each other. In reality, I expect that people in the 1950s were a lot like they are today, just with less technology to make for more leisure time.
Then you have politicians that flirt with separatist fringe groups in Texas and in Alaska, simply to get their votes, with absolutely no intention of succession.
Pretty much. Not trying to spend money that one cannot make good on or doesn't have is the best way to avoid debt problems. And an overdraft fee is a form of a debt problem.
Well, the content owners that agreed to license their content to the television show or movie for a certain area (like the United States) or for a certain broadcast medium in that country (ie, one country's rules allow for Internet-transmission for TV shows with all of the music, other countries require the TV show producers to renegotiate a deal for the music) then someone is losing-out, and that's part of the reason why country-specific laws exist.
It's just damned annoying as a consumer that I can't get a show on DVD or streaming that I watched on broadcast TV 20 years ago because the music isn't licensed for redistribution.
The absolutely are voices in the scientific community that are quite vocal about keeping the poison of prejudicial religious preconceptions out of scientific pursuits.
...with the regulations in place that generally put limits on their bad behavior, aren't looking so bad now, are they?
And for those who want to go off on overdraft fees, you can have your account set to simply not let you go overdraft. It'll deny any transactions that would let you overdraft though, so it's a catch-22.
I have no love for big banks, but at least there are rules governing how my accounts are handled, they can't brazenly steal all my money in one swoop.
Aren't they owned by News Corp now?
It's not really in Netflix's interest to bust people for doing it anyway, especially if they can truly claim ignorance of the scale of it. After all, restricting countries by IP address could be considered reasonable, plus they get the revenue of the subscriptions that they might not otherwise have if people in those countries specifically signed up for Netflix in order to do this.
It probably won't happen unless content owners sue.
Keep your fluoridated water away from my precious bodily fluids...
It also seems like our American politicians that land on the side of the quackery don't actually believe it most of the time, they're using a population that's too stupid to see that their patron only wants their votes. The politician almost always stops short of fully committing to the quackery cause.
These reports make it clear that many politicians in other countries either are much less cautious, or actually do support these crazy notions.
Granted, we could just be seeing the crazy part, as crap rises to the top and makes for good press, regardless of how fringe it is.