Please cite the law that says robots.txt is NOT voluntary. Until then you're wishing for a law, but you can't defend your stance legally based on a wish. Morally? Ethically? Sure, you have an argument. But you're demanding the ability to prosecute, which does not currently exist.
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives?
on
16GB Flash USB Dongle
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· Score: 1
As another poster pointed out earlier, take a look at the Lexar Jumpdrive Sport for a keychain solution that works. I'm not going to debate the drive itself (but I own 3 plus the mp3 player that uses them). But the rubber cap + wraparound band that fits in a recessed slot around the perimeter of the drive does an excellent job of keeping the whole thing attached and well protected. And when it comes time to plug it in the rubber cap/band stays on the keyring and the drive is free to be plugged in. Also, if you have a drive that attaches to a keyring from the base rather than the cap, why not just add a quick-disconnect clasp or barrel-clasp instead of putting it directly on the ring?
So what exactly would they be doing with 1000 cell phones?
No one else actually answered your question here but I followed the story through the news since I figured it would turn out to be exactly what it was: a moneymaking scheme. That's all. Turns out that discount superstores such as Walmart and Sams/BJs/Costco etc sell prepaid cell phones at a very steep discount to what they go for in other markets, such as NYC, NY. These guys have been doing this for a couple years, and in fact there are a number of groups of people that do it, especially in the TX/AK area. The reason why they were out driving around is because all the stores in their area had already been bought out. They said on average they make about $6K each after expenses doing this for a weekend. Not a bad profit.
While I understand the need for greater security, and that this bahavior was slightly suspicious (I build EOD robots, you'd be amazed at how many IEDs are cellphone activated) the response was handled poorly. Buying 1000 cellphones in and of itself is not illegal, and the arrests should not have been based on that. Instead of law enforcement rushing in and busting all these guys with no other evidence than a carload of phones, they should have, oh hell I dunno, done some investigative work. Employees of the Walmart in question, and other stores that sell the phones were interviewed by news outlets and guess what - many of them KNEW about this cellphone trade, and were aware that from time to time people buy them all out to resell.
OK, what about the using the money to fund terrorists angle? One may ask. There is nothing about making a quick buck that indicates the money is to fund terrorism, the only thing that made that a question was the race of the suspects. So OK, law enforcement, are we racially profiling or aren't we? Remember that subway searches in NY are performed at random and purposely select everyone from Arabs, to Japanese tourists, Latinos, and even little old Jewish ladies. Do we really think little old ladies are going to release sarin gas on the subway? Hell no, but our law enforcement is under the requirement to be fair and not racially profile. It's not always the best way to do things but it helps keep things fair in other areas. Anyway, I'm not here to get into a debate on racial profiling. But it seems that was the case here since nothing other than the race of the suspects was used to determine the money might be going to fund terrorism. More surveilance and investigation was called for before the law jumped the gun and started arresting people for practicing capitalism. Ironically these guys probably moved to America in the first place to enjoy the freedom and opportunity to make money. Well, we sure taught them a lesson, and ourselves one as well.
And real quick I'd also like to address your other statment: I have to justify every damn handgun I would like to purchase. So we've already allowed government to ask these kinds of questions. This is a terrible comparison. A handgun is a weapon, pure and simple, it has no other designed use. 1000 cellphones, while they have the potential to be used for ill - and really, what product doesn't - there ARE plenty of other uses for them, all very reasonable and legal. So are you suggesting that because we've allowed the government to place restrictions on WEAPONS purchases, we should allow it to do the same for anything that could ever possibly be used as a weapon? They really do not fall under the same category. Otherwise, look forward to 5 day waiting periods on bottles of bleach, any amount of AA batteries, and god forbid - gasoline. Did you know any 15 year old can just walk in off the street and buy 40 gallons of highly flammable gas?! OMFG Terrorist! Sorry, sarcasm aside you can see that there are reasonable limits to what we allow the government to regulate directly. Before you jump all over me though I will point out I strongly support 2nd amendment rights, but a gun is a gun and 1000 cellphones are not bombs without quite a bit of work, and even then they are only triggers, you still need explosives.
Once again, I understand the difference between civil and criminal cases re burden of proof. Criminal being "beyond a reasonable doubt" and civil being "preponderance of evindence." Perhaps people think I'm making that mistake because my example of being punished for a "could have" was a criminal offense.
What I'm saying is that the court shouldn't award max per-song damages simply because the defendent "could have" further shared each song thousands of times. There should be a requirement (to whatever burden of proof) that further sharing did occur. Otherwise, in every case where the RIAA has no evidence whether the person only had a personal copy and P2P sharing turned off, or if they were in fact a major redistributor, they would simply claim "your honor we think the defendent shared each song a million-billion times and we should receive the max per-song damages of $150,000." Why? Because the defendent "could have" shared it that many times. *I think that* during the damages phase the RIAA needs to prove that the defendent further shared the song with others, therefore making per-song damages higher. Just saying it's possible they shared each song 5000 times is not enough to increase damages. In that case, there's no proof at all! Not even a preponderance of evidence, merely the conjecture that it's a possibility. I base my statements on cases I have read about on/. and some on groklaw. In all of those I've read about I have not seen this type of thing taken into account. Instead it seems to be the more songs you had, the bigger the per-song damage. As if simply having more songs to pay the damages for weren't a big enough punishment! If this isn't the case then please feel free to correct me (links please!) and I will rescind my stance. But I have yet to see the RIAA lawyers come forward and say "your honor we have further proof this person shared each song with others multiple times and therefore ask for greater per-song damages." Or the opposite: "Your honor, we see that the defendent had sharing turned off and did not further distribute the songs so the minimum damages should be sufficient here." Of course, no lawayer would ever utter the latter, but I've not seen the former either.
because the *could have* becomes a *probably did*.
You're referring to the "could have" of the defendent possessing illegally obtained copies of songs, which by destroying the evidence defaults to admitting that she did. What I'm referring to is the "could have" of her further distributing those songs. Now, the evidence being destroyed, there's no way to prove [sorta, I'll get to this in a second] whether she only downloaded them and never shared them to others on the P2P network, or if she was a major distribution point and shared each song to 1000 other people. The point being, the damages awarded should be, in part, based on if she merely committed copyright infringement once for each file (personal only) or if she then went on to infringe many times over again by continuing to distribute her copies to others. One could argue that because of the inabaility to prove one or the other that the per-song penalty should be either the min or the max, or maybe somewhere in-between depending on the judge's mood. However, there should be some way for the RIAA to prove that she was a major distributor - like server logs from the ISP or P2P server showing those files were uploaded to others. I argue that if the RIAA has no other evidence that she distributed to 1000s of others - other than that she destroyed her files - then it should be the minimum damage per song. Otherwise, in any case where there is no evidence one way or the other that the songs were further shared, the RIAA could simply make up a number and claim max damages every time. Perhaps a bit different in this case because of the evidence destruction, but in other cases I have read about damages don't seem to be awarded based on how many times the user further infringed by distributing, but were more based on how many songs total they had. I concede that if a person has 1000 songs they probably deserve a bigger punishment than a person that had only 10. But it should also hold true that a person who has 1000 songs and never shared them with anyone else (P2P app sharing turned off) should face a lower fine than someone who had 1000 songs but shared each one 500 times.
Please point out where in my post I confused the notion of civil vs criminal proceedings. Becuase I didn't, and do infact understand the distinction. In cases such as these it is my understanding that there are two phases: the first phase determines if there is infringement and therefore liability, and the second phase determines damages to award. That's the point at which a defendent found guilty finds out if they owe the RIAA $750 per song or $150K per song. Now, IANAL, and I get most of my info from/. articles like these and the occasional groklaw article. But in all the cases I have read about I have seen no mention or proof of the number of copies that were shared playing a role in determining the damages. Usually it tends to be based entirely on the potential for further distribution, and the more songs that were being shared, the bigger the per-song award is set at. My point is that during the damages phase, when someone has alreay been found guilty of infringement, there needs to be a higher burden of proof of actual damages caused before setting the per-song damages above the minimum allowed.
Being an AC you'll probably never see this but you're way off base. The defendent apparently didn't wipe her drive, merely a portion of it, some other posters have discussed this at length. In any case, whatever data trail she left was sufficient to prove evidence was destroyed.
The only people who would benefit from this are the guys making the buyout.
Mod parent up. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. These guys aren't looking to turn MS' financials around because they want to see it become some better company, they want to take those slashed salaries as profits for themselves. If doing this to an $X billion company nets them $Y billion in profit, then doing this to MS at 10X valuation should net them 10Y. And with all the cited bloat there's likely lots of places to wring even more profit out of it. Capitalists do not perform multi-hundred-billion dollar buyouts in the name of corporate philanthropy.
Although, even through all that, i'm not sour i had to go and buy another copy.
Not slighting you, I definitely personally understand the need-it-now tech mentality. But unfortunately it's exactly that sort of behavior that software companies rely on these days to continue not caring about legitimate customers getting listed as pirates by the companies' flawed DRM systems. They know we (or at least a profitable percentage of 'we') will pay no matter what, sometimes more than once like in your case. I'm reminded of the quote from Fight Club regarding car company recall costs vs lawsuits: "If A + B * C is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." Sad but true. There needs to be a citizens lobby group (imagine that, needing a specific lobby to convince public representatives to actually represent the public) to get some laws passed to mandate companies using DRM have systems in place to handle false positives. And why not? These companies have gotten so many laws passed for their protection (beyond copyright and patents you have the DMCA for example) but with absolutely no clauses that require them to handle innocent casualties of these DRM systems. There's ALWAYS going to be false positives, no system will be perfect. But with no legal requirements for an avenue of redress, most companies just shrug of the sub-1% of customers who get screwed by the system. If these media companies want extra legal protections for their works then they need to make an equal concession to administrate fairly, which includes timely handling of issues. Especially in cases like yours where the consumer possesses indisputable proof of innocence. Whew, what a rant, sorry!
In the future though I recommend working up some good old fashioned indignation and rage and putting up a big stink and a big fight before just rolling over and repaying for something you know - and can prove - you legally bought once already.
Though with most filesharing software you automatically share the files with everyone else. She could have had thousands of songs, and thousands of people could have downloaded from her.
Emphasis mine. This is the problem as I see it with the damages being awarded for these infringement cases. Even if you prove the person had copies of the songs on their computer and were obtained through copyright infringement using a P2P service, where is the proof that thousands of others actually copied the songs from the defendent? And what about if the sharing feature of the P2P app is turned off? The courts are not in the business of punishing "could have" cases (except for this recent NH judgement which is rediculous, with the dissenting judge plainly stating no crime was committed or proven). So perhaps I should say the courts shouldn't be in the business of punishing "could have"s except where laws already allow for that sort of thing (e.g. attempted murder). But there are no laws that I am aware of that make the potential to copyright a crime. Otherwise, anyone owning a copy of a piece of media could be prosecuted because simply having the media would meet the low standard of having the ability to infringe copyright. IMHO if the RIAA wants damages of $150,000 per song they need to demonstrate that the defendent caused that much damage, not that they "could have" caused that much damage. If I own a gun and I'm arrested for some other crime, say tax evasion, can I also be convicted of attempted murder because I could have shot someone?
then I fear for the sanitized future of gaming should the Thompsons of the world prevail. I'm sorry, since when did cartoon piecharts chasing cartoon "ghosts" incite anyone to violence? Other than the tirade all of slashdot is about to go on over this totally sophomoric crap?
In other news having a Phd does not guarantee you're not a moron in other areas, like matching theoretical scales for violent content with REALITY.
Uhhh, ok thanks dictionary nazi. In the future, however, when spewing pedantic rants at people try and actually rebuke them for the mistakes they made. Instead of, y'know, berating me for 6 sentences on the distinction between tack and tact when I didn't use either in my post. Interesting side note though, one may jibe while tacking. Also, for the last time, my name isn't Jesus.
And for the record, trying to fix grammar and word usage on/. is tilting at windmills.
Re:It's harder than you might at first think
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Diebold Flops in Alaska
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· Score: 2, Informative
People who use an electronic voting system cannot go back and verify that their vote was cast correctly. No one can with any system in use in the US. In a paper system, however, you can go back and recount the original paper votes.
I don't disagree with this statement, and neither does my original post. The key idea here being the "current system in use in the US" which we all here on/. seem to agree is very flawed. My point was that the GP poster made very good arguments in favor of a paper-ONLY voting system, then stated at the end that we are able to process millions of banking transactions without issue. Those ideas are conflicting because the bank transactions are carried out electronically - yes they have a paper trail and are verifiable, a must for each system - but they are not paper-only transactions. If you're going to say "we should use paper only" you shouldn't then reference an electronic-based system as an exmaple of one that works. I can't think of a better example at the moment, but you get the idea. Saying we can process millions of bank transactions daily with a verifiable paper trail implies the same should be implemented easily enough for e-voting.
What blows my mind is that Diebold already produces ATMs that do exactly this, yet for some reason instead of starting with an ATM model they started from absolute scratch and botched it with years and millions of dollars at their disposal. Speaking as a robotics engineer working in an ISO9000 environment, while I recognize that ATMs are rather different in function from an e-voting machine; for a company with such experience to produce the garbage they have is shocking. At the very least the ATM division should have had a list of lessons learned and security/verification techniques that could have been used by the e-voting group as a good starting reference. But I guess good engineering sense just doesn't pad the budget enough when working on a government contract.
I'd love to hear the justification from the person who is authorizing this programme.
"I'm The Decider. I make the decisions."
Re:It's harder than you might at first think
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Diebold Flops in Alaska
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I used to be on the electronic voting bandwagon, but when I saw that it was prone to failure and couldn't be trusted, I jumped off. [...] We can process millions upon millions of bank transactions every day but cannot count votes without grotesque errors? Come on people! It's not that hard!
You make many good points which I agree with, but your first and last sentences above don't jive. We don't process millions of bank transactions daily by pencil and paper, it's done electronically. So if you're against electronic voting don't bring up the ability to securely process bank millions of transactions as an example since it's really an argument FOR e-voting. Just a thought. The holy grail of e-voting is the ability to tally all the votes very fast, because apparently people in this country freak out if it takes more than 24 hours to count some 150 million (gross estimate) votes. Not getting into all the other problems with the US voting system, I think it would benefit greatly if the system allowed for the tally to be done in however long it takes. I mean, we wait months until the officials elected by that vote even go into office, why is it that if all the votes aren't counted by the next day it's all doom and gloom? I know, time is an enemy as it allows for more opportunities for the system to be interefered with. But really, a secure paper system that's very tamper-proof should have been developed over the last 2+ centuries our republic has been around.
This will be heavily abused by kids just messing with each other. Yeah, no one would ever click this button as a joke on their friend. Without some sort of punishment for abuse of the system by the submitter this will work the same as blanket phone wiretaps - simply increase the size of the haystack in which one is searching for a needle.
Did you really assume that I thought the phrase "court of public opinion" meant an actual court? Of course it's not a real court, when I sad "with no regard to any formal legal process" I meant the media was painting the parents as guilty with no regard to what was being disclosed by the actual formal legal processes of the United States. Were the parents considered prime suspects by the police for a time? Yes, however many media outlets simply potrayed them as guilty, guilty, guilty. And as for your assertion that the court of public opinion serves no punishment or fines, you really don't think anyone treated the Ramseys differently because of what they had heard on the news? Individuals are certainly entitled to their opinions, the problem comes in how they choose to react to them. While I have no direct evidence to say the Ramseys were treated poorly, I think it's extremely likely that they underwent quite a bit of subtle (or obvious) harrassment from people who had judged them based solely on news reports.
As to which media, well hell I don't recall, it was a decade ago. But as someone else already said, you had to be living under a rock to miss it, it was all over the news for weeks and most of the discussions that I recall centered around the parents perpetrating the crime and how it would only be a matter of time before the police proved it and sent them to jail. Except that didn't happen.
Agreed, there is likely still more to the story, but the GP poster still has a valid point. The Ramseys were smeared by the media as guilty and tried in the court of public opinion with no regard to any formal legal process. If, in fact, the perpetrator who was caught today turns out to be solely responsible for the crime then that makes the original smearing even worse. When there was no closure to the case one could postulate that the parents may have indeed done it, if this is proven otherwise then what excuse do the media have for what they did?
I think it's very admirable that Mr. Ramsey has said in a recent public statement that the public should hold off on passing judgement on this new suspect until the trial is over, reminding us how the media treated him and his wife ten years ago. To have been subjected to such public condemnation, and to be referring to the person that may have killed his own daughter, that he has the ability to stand up and say "give this man a fair trial, unlike what was done for me." says an awful lot about his character and faith in the legal system.
Ironically right about now those division are probably wishing like all hell that people were pirating UMD movies. At least it would mean they were being used!
Global warming isn't the government's fault, it's OUR fault. Does the government make you drive a car to work?
OK, I'll bite, but keep in mind I'm half-joking here. (And I do agree that global warming is a collective "we" fault). Ok, so, the Federal Government has massive yearly deficits, and a total nation debt in the trillions, not even counting future promised expenditures such as Medicaid/care and Social Security payments. Refusing to raise taxes to cover these costs because it is politically untenable means that they must sell debt to foreign investors and then literally print the rest of the money. This is an inflationary policy that increases the money supply hugely, causing the misallocation of resources and fueling the boom-bust economic cycle while claiming to try to prevent it. This has caused a massive housing bubble which has seen home prices nearly double in many areas in the last 5 to 10 years. At the same time, real wages have barely kept up with core inflation (which itself is undercalculated by using metrics that don't actually apply to real-life costs). Thus the current average worker is even less able to afford housing today, especially in well-developed and urban areas where a great deal of commercial and industrial jobs are located. Hence, in order to be able to afford housing that fits their pay they must relocate to less densely populated areas where home prices and rents are within their means, and thus they must commute farther to their jobs. So, there, I proved the government makes us drive our cars to work.;)
Of course things like car-pooling, buying more efficient vehicles, cutting down on uneeded driving, etc are all things that help reduce emissions and are largely being ignored. There's no small solution to the problem. And while I was being rather tongue-in-cheek with my seven degrees of seperation style argument above, all of it is true to a certain extent. There are a lot of problems in this country that stem from a misallocation of resources due to Federal fiscal irresponsibility (Bush hasn't yet met a spending bill he didn't like, and none fo the spending bills have any 'signing statements' that reduce spending. Don't let my hatred of his policies make you marginalize me however, plenty of Dems are causing the spending problems too, the whole fed level is out of control in a nonpartisan way.). If the government would be reduced to a level that doesn't consume 40%+ of it's citizens' incomes, plus more deficit spending on top of that, then perhaps we'd have some "extra" capital to throw at other problems, gloabal warming being one among many but an important one. Food for thought.
But your hu-mon manager could somehow presciently account for all the rare cases you mentioned? I assume when there was something like a severe weather rush the manager picked up the phone and called off-duty employees to ask them to help, what prevents the store manager in the computer-run scenario from doing the same? Or hell, there could be an option on the screen "Recruit 'X' off-duty employees" and the system calls them and has them punch 1 for "I'll be right there" or 2 for "screw you Chad Vader, I'm not working Saturday night."
This system only removes the human element from the up front scheduling task, but it doesn't replace the shift manager position, there is still a person running things who can make decisions for rare cases.
No software out there is capable of predicting work conditions as well as someone who has experience.
Except that software and hardware have come a long ways since the mid 90s, and with proper "training" by an experienced manager the system could be taught the "intuition" that person knows, and do things like you suggested - monitoring weather and scheduling appropriately. Blizzard predicted this week? Past register data shows a 45% increase in customers starting 36 hours before the storm, better add 2 extra employees etc. Prediciton will never be 100%, but then, it's not with a human manager either, and if they really need another employee for some reason, the manager can still pick up the phone himself.
the fiber infrastructure buildout that was paid for with 200 Billion-with-a-B taxpayer dollars will be ready? What's that you say, not ready yet and you need more money? Gee, where could you find some? I have no idea... ooh look shiny new wimax towers!
Slashdot Mirror
unlock new swerve powers and furries for each increase of 0.01% alcohol by volume
:(
Well that's no fun, I'll have all the content by noon then.
Please cite the law that says robots.txt is NOT voluntary. Until then you're wishing for a law, but you can't defend your stance legally based on a wish. Morally? Ethically? Sure, you have an argument. But you're demanding the ability to prosecute, which does not currently exist.
As another poster pointed out earlier, take a look at the Lexar Jumpdrive Sport for a keychain solution that works. I'm not going to debate the drive itself (but I own 3 plus the mp3 player that uses them). But the rubber cap + wraparound band that fits in a recessed slot around the perimeter of the drive does an excellent job of keeping the whole thing attached and well protected. And when it comes time to plug it in the rubber cap/band stays on the keyring and the drive is free to be plugged in. Also, if you have a drive that attaches to a keyring from the base rather than the cap, why not just add a quick-disconnect clasp or barrel-clasp instead of putting it directly on the ring?
Is the ink cartridge half full or half empty?
As an engineer I'm inclined to say it's improperly designed!
So what exactly would they be doing with 1000 cell phones?
No one else actually answered your question here but I followed the story through the news since I figured it would turn out to be exactly what it was: a moneymaking scheme. That's all. Turns out that discount superstores such as Walmart and Sams/BJs/Costco etc sell prepaid cell phones at a very steep discount to what they go for in other markets, such as NYC, NY. These guys have been doing this for a couple years, and in fact there are a number of groups of people that do it, especially in the TX/AK area. The reason why they were out driving around is because all the stores in their area had already been bought out. They said on average they make about $6K each after expenses doing this for a weekend. Not a bad profit.
While I understand the need for greater security, and that this bahavior was slightly suspicious (I build EOD robots, you'd be amazed at how many IEDs are cellphone activated) the response was handled poorly. Buying 1000 cellphones in and of itself is not illegal, and the arrests should not have been based on that. Instead of law enforcement rushing in and busting all these guys with no other evidence than a carload of phones, they should have, oh hell I dunno, done some investigative work. Employees of the Walmart in question, and other stores that sell the phones were interviewed by news outlets and guess what - many of them KNEW about this cellphone trade, and were aware that from time to time people buy them all out to resell.
OK, what about the using the money to fund terrorists angle? One may ask. There is nothing about making a quick buck that indicates the money is to fund terrorism, the only thing that made that a question was the race of the suspects. So OK, law enforcement, are we racially profiling or aren't we? Remember that subway searches in NY are performed at random and purposely select everyone from Arabs, to Japanese tourists, Latinos, and even little old Jewish ladies. Do we really think little old ladies are going to release sarin gas on the subway? Hell no, but our law enforcement is under the requirement to be fair and not racially profile. It's not always the best way to do things but it helps keep things fair in other areas. Anyway, I'm not here to get into a debate on racial profiling. But it seems that was the case here since nothing other than the race of the suspects was used to determine the money might be going to fund terrorism. More surveilance and investigation was called for before the law jumped the gun and started arresting people for practicing capitalism.
Ironically these guys probably moved to America in the first place to enjoy the freedom and opportunity to make money. Well, we sure taught them a lesson, and ourselves one as well.
And real quick I'd also like to address your other statment: I have to justify every damn handgun I would like to purchase. So we've already allowed government to ask these kinds of questions.
This is a terrible comparison. A handgun is a weapon, pure and simple, it has no other designed use. 1000 cellphones, while they have the potential to be used for ill - and really, what product doesn't - there ARE plenty of other uses for them, all very reasonable and legal. So are you suggesting that because we've allowed the government to place restrictions on WEAPONS purchases, we should allow it to do the same for anything that could ever possibly be used as a weapon? They really do not fall under the same category. Otherwise, look forward to 5 day waiting periods on bottles of bleach, any amount of AA batteries, and god forbid - gasoline. Did you know any 15 year old can just walk in off the street and buy 40 gallons of highly flammable gas?! OMFG Terrorist! Sorry, sarcasm aside you can see that there are reasonable limits to what we allow the government to regulate directly. Before you jump all over me though I will point out I strongly support 2nd amendment rights, but a gun is a gun and 1000 cellphones are not bombs without quite a bit of work, and even then they are only triggers, you still need explosives.
Once again, I understand the difference between civil and criminal cases re burden of proof. Criminal being "beyond a reasonable doubt" and civil being "preponderance of evindence." Perhaps people think I'm making that mistake because my example of being punished for a "could have" was a criminal offense.
/. and some on groklaw. In all of those I've read about I have not seen this type of thing taken into account. Instead it seems to be the more songs you had, the bigger the per-song damage. As if simply having more songs to pay the damages for weren't a big enough punishment! If this isn't the case then please feel free to correct me (links please!) and I will rescind my stance. But I have yet to see the RIAA lawyers come forward and say "your honor we have further proof this person shared each song with others multiple times and therefore ask for greater per-song damages." Or the opposite: "Your honor, we see that the defendent had sharing turned off and did not further distribute the songs so the minimum damages should be sufficient here." Of course, no lawayer would ever utter the latter, but I've not seen the former either.
What I'm saying is that the court shouldn't award max per-song damages simply because the defendent "could have" further shared each song thousands of times. There should be a requirement (to whatever burden of proof) that further sharing did occur. Otherwise, in every case where the RIAA has no evidence whether the person only had a personal copy and P2P sharing turned off, or if they were in fact a major redistributor, they would simply claim "your honor we think the defendent shared each song a million-billion times and we should receive the max per-song damages of $150,000." Why? Because the defendent "could have" shared it that many times. *I think that* during the damages phase the RIAA needs to prove that the defendent further shared the song with others, therefore making per-song damages higher. Just saying it's possible they shared each song 5000 times is not enough to increase damages. In that case, there's no proof at all! Not even a preponderance of evidence, merely the conjecture that it's a possibility.
I base my statements on cases I have read about on
because the *could have* becomes a *probably did*.
You're referring to the "could have" of the defendent possessing illegally obtained copies of songs, which by destroying the evidence defaults to admitting that she did. What I'm referring to is the "could have" of her further distributing those songs. Now, the evidence being destroyed, there's no way to prove [sorta, I'll get to this in a second] whether she only downloaded them and never shared them to others on the P2P network, or if she was a major distribution point and shared each song to 1000 other people. The point being, the damages awarded should be, in part, based on if she merely committed copyright infringement once for each file (personal only) or if she then went on to infringe many times over again by continuing to distribute her copies to others. One could argue that because of the inabaility to prove one or the other that the per-song penalty should be either the min or the max, or maybe somewhere in-between depending on the judge's mood. However, there should be some way for the RIAA to prove that she was a major distributor - like server logs from the ISP or P2P server showing those files were uploaded to others. I argue that if the RIAA has no other evidence that she distributed to 1000s of others - other than that she destroyed her files - then it should be the minimum damage per song. Otherwise, in any case where there is no evidence one way or the other that the songs were further shared, the RIAA could simply make up a number and claim max damages every time. Perhaps a bit different in this case because of the evidence destruction, but in other cases I have read about damages don't seem to be awarded based on how many times the user further infringed by distributing, but were more based on how many songs total they had.
I concede that if a person has 1000 songs they probably deserve a bigger punishment than a person that had only 10. But it should also hold true that a person who has 1000 songs and never shared them with anyone else (P2P app sharing turned off) should face a lower fine than someone who had 1000 songs but shared each one 500 times.
Please point out where in my post I confused the notion of civil vs criminal proceedings. Becuase I didn't, and do infact understand the distinction. In cases such as these it is my understanding that there are two phases: the first phase determines if there is infringement and therefore liability, and the second phase determines damages to award. That's the point at which a defendent found guilty finds out if they owe the RIAA $750 per song or $150K per song. Now, IANAL, and I get most of my info from /. articles like these and the occasional groklaw article. But in all the cases I have read about I have seen no mention or proof of the number of copies that were shared playing a role in determining the damages. Usually it tends to be based entirely on the potential for further distribution, and the more songs that were being shared, the bigger the per-song award is set at. My point is that during the damages phase, when someone has alreay been found guilty of infringement, there needs to be a higher burden of proof of actual damages caused before setting the per-song damages above the minimum allowed.
Being an AC you'll probably never see this but you're way off base. The defendent apparently didn't wipe her drive, merely a portion of it, some other posters have discussed this at length. In any case, whatever data trail she left was sufficient to prove evidence was destroyed.
The only people who would benefit from this are the guys making the buyout.
Mod parent up.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. These guys aren't looking to turn MS' financials around because they want to see it become some better company, they want to take those slashed salaries as profits for themselves. If doing this to an $X billion company nets them $Y billion in profit, then doing this to MS at 10X valuation should net them 10Y. And with all the cited bloat there's likely lots of places to wring even more profit out of it. Capitalists do not perform multi-hundred-billion dollar buyouts in the name of corporate philanthropy.
Although, even through all that, i'm not sour i had to go and buy another copy.
Not slighting you, I definitely personally understand the need-it-now tech mentality. But unfortunately it's exactly that sort of behavior that software companies rely on these days to continue not caring about legitimate customers getting listed as pirates by the companies' flawed DRM systems. They know we (or at least a profitable percentage of 'we') will pay no matter what, sometimes more than once like in your case. I'm reminded of the quote from Fight Club regarding car company recall costs vs lawsuits: "If A + B * C is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." Sad but true. There needs to be a citizens lobby group (imagine that, needing a specific lobby to convince public representatives to actually represent the public) to get some laws passed to mandate companies using DRM have systems in place to handle false positives. And why not? These companies have gotten so many laws passed for their protection (beyond copyright and patents you have the DMCA for example) but with absolutely no clauses that require them to handle innocent casualties of these DRM systems. There's ALWAYS going to be false positives, no system will be perfect. But with no legal requirements for an avenue of redress, most companies just shrug of the sub-1% of customers who get screwed by the system. If these media companies want extra legal protections for their works then they need to make an equal concession to administrate fairly, which includes timely handling of issues. Especially in cases like yours where the consumer possesses indisputable proof of innocence. Whew, what a rant, sorry!
In the future though I recommend working up some good old fashioned indignation and rage and putting up a big stink and a big fight before just rolling over and repaying for something you know - and can prove - you legally bought once already.
Though with most filesharing software you automatically share the files with everyone else. She could have had thousands of songs, and thousands of people could have downloaded from her.
Emphasis mine. This is the problem as I see it with the damages being awarded for these infringement cases. Even if you prove the person had copies of the songs on their computer and were obtained through copyright infringement using a P2P service, where is the proof that thousands of others actually copied the songs from the defendent? And what about if the sharing feature of the P2P app is turned off? The courts are not in the business of punishing "could have" cases (except for this recent NH judgement which is rediculous, with the dissenting judge plainly stating no crime was committed or proven). So perhaps I should say the courts shouldn't be in the business of punishing "could have"s except where laws already allow for that sort of thing (e.g. attempted murder). But there are no laws that I am aware of that make the potential to copyright a crime. Otherwise, anyone owning a copy of a piece of media could be prosecuted because simply having the media would meet the low standard of having the ability to infringe copyright. IMHO if the RIAA wants damages of $150,000 per song they need to demonstrate that the defendent caused that much damage, not that they "could have" caused that much damage. If I own a gun and I'm arrested for some other crime, say tax evasion, can I also be convicted of attempted murder because I could have shot someone?
then I fear for the sanitized future of gaming should the Thompsons of the world prevail. I'm sorry, since when did cartoon piecharts chasing cartoon "ghosts" incite anyone to violence? Other than the tirade all of slashdot is about to go on over this totally sophomoric crap?
In other news having a Phd does not guarantee you're not a moron in other areas, like matching theoretical scales for violent content with REALITY.
Uhhh, ok thanks dictionary nazi. In the future, however, when spewing pedantic rants at people try and actually rebuke them for the mistakes they made. Instead of, y'know, berating me for 6 sentences on the distinction between tack and tact when I didn't use either in my post. Interesting side note though, one may jibe while tacking. Also, for the last time, my name isn't Jesus.
/. is tilting at windmills.
And for the record, trying to fix grammar and word usage on
People who use an electronic voting system cannot go back and verify that their vote was cast correctly. No one can with any system in use in the US. In a paper system, however, you can go back and recount the original paper votes.
/. seem to agree is very flawed. My point was that the GP poster made very good arguments in favor of a paper-ONLY voting system, then stated at the end that we are able to process millions of banking transactions without issue. Those ideas are conflicting because the bank transactions are carried out electronically - yes they have a paper trail and are verifiable, a must for each system - but they are not paper-only transactions. If you're going to say "we should use paper only" you shouldn't then reference an electronic-based system as an exmaple of one that works. I can't think of a better example at the moment, but you get the idea. Saying we can process millions of bank transactions daily with a verifiable paper trail implies the same should be implemented easily enough for e-voting.
I don't disagree with this statement, and neither does my original post. The key idea here being the "current system in use in the US" which we all here on
What blows my mind is that Diebold already produces ATMs that do exactly this, yet for some reason instead of starting with an ATM model they started from absolute scratch and botched it with years and millions of dollars at their disposal. Speaking as a robotics engineer working in an ISO9000 environment, while I recognize that ATMs are rather different in function from an e-voting machine; for a company with such experience to produce the garbage they have is shocking. At the very least the ATM division should have had a list of lessons learned and security/verification techniques that could have been used by the e-voting group as a good starting reference. But I guess good engineering sense just doesn't pad the budget enough when working on a government contract.
I'd love to hear the justification from the person who is authorizing this programme.
"I'm The Decider. I make the decisions."
I used to be on the electronic voting bandwagon, but when I saw that it was prone to failure and couldn't be trusted, I jumped off. [...] We can process millions upon millions of bank transactions every day but cannot count votes without grotesque errors? Come on people! It's not that hard!
You make many good points which I agree with, but your first and last sentences above don't jive. We don't process millions of bank transactions daily by pencil and paper, it's done electronically. So if you're against electronic voting don't bring up the ability to securely process bank millions of transactions as an example since it's really an argument FOR e-voting. Just a thought.
The holy grail of e-voting is the ability to tally all the votes very fast, because apparently people in this country freak out if it takes more than 24 hours to count some 150 million (gross estimate) votes. Not getting into all the other problems with the US voting system, I think it would benefit greatly if the system allowed for the tally to be done in however long it takes. I mean, we wait months until the officials elected by that vote even go into office, why is it that if all the votes aren't counted by the next day it's all doom and gloom? I know, time is an enemy as it allows for more opportunities for the system to be interefered with. But really, a secure paper system that's very tamper-proof should have been developed over the last 2+ centuries our republic has been around.
This will be heavily abused by kids just messing with each other. Yeah, no one would ever click this button as a joke on their friend. Without some sort of punishment for abuse of the system by the submitter this will work the same as blanket phone wiretaps - simply increase the size of the haystack in which one is searching for a needle.
Did you really assume that I thought the phrase "court of public opinion" meant an actual court? Of course it's not a real court, when I sad "with no regard to any formal legal process" I meant the media was painting the parents as guilty with no regard to what was being disclosed by the actual formal legal processes of the United States. Were the parents considered prime suspects by the police for a time? Yes, however many media outlets simply potrayed them as guilty, guilty, guilty. And as for your assertion that the court of public opinion serves no punishment or fines, you really don't think anyone treated the Ramseys differently because of what they had heard on the news? Individuals are certainly entitled to their opinions, the problem comes in how they choose to react to them. While I have no direct evidence to say the Ramseys were treated poorly, I think it's extremely likely that they underwent quite a bit of subtle (or obvious) harrassment from people who had judged them based solely on news reports.
As to which media, well hell I don't recall, it was a decade ago. But as someone else already said, you had to be living under a rock to miss it, it was all over the news for weeks and most of the discussions that I recall centered around the parents perpetrating the crime and how it would only be a matter of time before the police proved it and sent them to jail. Except that didn't happen.
Agreed, there is likely still more to the story, but the GP poster still has a valid point. The Ramseys were smeared by the media as guilty and tried in the court of public opinion with no regard to any formal legal process. If, in fact, the perpetrator who was caught today turns out to be solely responsible for the crime then that makes the original smearing even worse. When there was no closure to the case one could postulate that the parents may have indeed done it, if this is proven otherwise then what excuse do the media have for what they did?
I think it's very admirable that Mr. Ramsey has said in a recent public statement that the public should hold off on passing judgement on this new suspect until the trial is over, reminding us how the media treated him and his wife ten years ago. To have been subjected to such public condemnation, and to be referring to the person that may have killed his own daughter, that he has the ability to stand up and say "give this man a fair trial, unlike what was done for me." says an awful lot about his character and faith in the legal system.
Ironically right about now those division are probably wishing like all hell that people were pirating UMD movies. At least it would mean they were being used!
My vote is for Other: The H-Bridge.
Sorry, (non-civil) engineer joke.
Global warming isn't the government's fault, it's OUR fault. Does the government make you drive a car to work?
;)
OK, I'll bite, but keep in mind I'm half-joking here. (And I do agree that global warming is a collective "we" fault).
Ok, so, the Federal Government has massive yearly deficits, and a total nation debt in the trillions, not even counting future promised expenditures such as Medicaid/care and Social Security payments. Refusing to raise taxes to cover these costs because it is politically untenable means that they must sell debt to foreign investors and then literally print the rest of the money. This is an inflationary policy that increases the money supply hugely, causing the misallocation of resources and fueling the boom-bust economic cycle while claiming to try to prevent it. This has caused a massive housing bubble which has seen home prices nearly double in many areas in the last 5 to 10 years. At the same time, real wages have barely kept up with core inflation (which itself is undercalculated by using metrics that don't actually apply to real-life costs). Thus the current average worker is even less able to afford housing today, especially in well-developed and urban areas where a great deal of commercial and industrial jobs are located. Hence, in order to be able to afford housing that fits their pay they must relocate to less densely populated areas where home prices and rents are within their means, and thus they must commute farther to their jobs. So, there, I proved the government makes us drive our cars to work.
Of course things like car-pooling, buying more efficient vehicles, cutting down on uneeded driving, etc are all things that help reduce emissions and are largely being ignored. There's no small solution to the problem. And while I was being rather tongue-in-cheek with my seven degrees of seperation style argument above, all of it is true to a certain extent. There are a lot of problems in this country that stem from a misallocation of resources due to Federal fiscal irresponsibility (Bush hasn't yet met a spending bill he didn't like, and none fo the spending bills have any 'signing statements' that reduce spending. Don't let my hatred of his policies make you marginalize me however, plenty of Dems are causing the spending problems too, the whole fed level is out of control in a nonpartisan way.). If the government would be reduced to a level that doesn't consume 40%+ of it's citizens' incomes, plus more deficit spending on top of that, then perhaps we'd have some "extra" capital to throw at other problems, gloabal warming being one among many but an important one. Food for thought.
But your hu-mon manager could somehow presciently account for all the rare cases you mentioned? I assume when there was something like a severe weather rush the manager picked up the phone and called off-duty employees to ask them to help, what prevents the store manager in the computer-run scenario from doing the same? Or hell, there could be an option on the screen "Recruit 'X' off-duty employees" and the system calls them and has them punch 1 for "I'll be right there" or 2 for "screw you Chad Vader, I'm not working Saturday night."
This system only removes the human element from the up front scheduling task, but it doesn't replace the shift manager position, there is still a person running things who can make decisions for rare cases.
No software out there is capable of predicting work conditions as well as someone who has experience.
Except that software and hardware have come a long ways since the mid 90s, and with proper "training" by an experienced manager the system could be taught the "intuition" that person knows, and do things like you suggested - monitoring weather and scheduling appropriately. Blizzard predicted this week? Past register data shows a 45% increase in customers starting 36 hours before the storm, better add 2 extra employees etc. Prediciton will never be 100%, but then, it's not with a human manager either, and if they really need another employee for some reason, the manager can still pick up the phone himself.
the fiber infrastructure buildout that was paid for with 200 Billion-with-a-B taxpayer dollars will be ready? What's that you say, not ready yet and you need more money? Gee, where could you find some? I have no idea... ooh look shiny new wimax towers!