In other words, If I'm a spammer and following the laws regarding spamming
Without getting into a debate about the CANSPAM Act I don't think lawful spam is even the worry at this point. 90% of what is caught in my spam filters does NOT meet the standards of that law. An anecdote does not equal a data set, but the general consensus I get from slashdot and elsewhere is that this is the case for many others as well. Maybe if all the spammers were following the law then we'd have to come up with another plan, but the majority of spam I see is the illegal (under CANSPAM) kind and would certainly be filterable by that clause. And besides, I was proposing locating and cutting off net access for PCs that meet strict criteria of being trojaned boxes used as spam relays, I believe this would fall outside of net neutrality law as a seperate condition of using an ISP's services - keep your computer clean or no internet for you. Ignoring the problem has done nothing to stop it, and from what experts can tell the zombie network operations are getting more extensive and sophisticated as we continue to let them propigate unchecked.
Why? Spam doesn't take up a significantly large portion of internet traffic and is a lot harder to separate out of the mix,
I do realize that the amount of bandwidth for spam is much smaller than for bittorrent considering a lot of torrents are movies or large programs. However, I've seen some articles (and my spam folder contents) that indicate some spam is starting to move towards image-only in an attmept to get around filters, so there's a good chance spam bandwidth will increase. Also while it may be hard to seperate from the mix at the transport layer, it sure as hell is visible by the time it reaches the SMTP server, I have to imagine that there's going to be some cost savings (and headache reduction) in reducing the amount of filtering that has to be done to keep mail servers running. Plus spam is sometimes an indicator of a zombied computer, which can be used for other things besides just spamming, like DDOS attacks and propigating viruses - stuff that may not be a problem immediately, but could certainly cause trouble if/when thousands of zombie systems are commanded to do something nastier than hawk viagra and penny stocks. Probably better to start to erradicate the problem than to wait and see if it gets worse.
They want to shake down companies individually by threatening to degrade their service and not their competitor's. They care about money; no hypocrisy there. Well, that is the hypocracy isn't it? Because the major networks that don't want net neutrality aren't telling congress and the public at large that they're doing it for cash and to crush competition, they're cloaking it in other reasons. That's why they're being hypocritical. We (the tech-informed) know the real reasons, but mom and pop americans don't and what they're hearing is almost the opposite of what the networks are actually going to do.
How about before the ISPs even think of throttling down BitTorrent or any other type of traffic - they make even a casual effort to throttle back the 95% of email that is spam? If bandwidth is so precious that they need to consider slowing down one kind of traffic, why not start with the kind that is known to be illegitimate. Considering all the BS that is crammed into EULAs these days I think it would be actually reasonable to include a clause that says if your PC gets hijacked and zombied and is spewing garbage then we're going to cut you off until you fix it. The ISPs can certainly implement some algorithms to detect likely zombied computers, cut them off and redirect them to a page explaining the situation and common tools/resources to help fix their boxes, then the user clicks some link to get their connection reevaluated to regain net access. I'm in favor of net neutrality and no traffic throttling but I think the hypocracy of these ISPs should also be addressed. If half the money spent lobbying for net neutrality were spent tracking down spammers and helping users to identify and fix trojaned PCs then spam would be on the decline, not doubling every 3 months. Or here's an idea, how about using some of the no-doubt tens of millions of dollars that's about to be spent to change all the Cingular signs back to AT&T signs on fighting spam and botnets? But no, better to let the problem fester and the spammers grow richer and better armed (digitally) than let the company logos go un-revamped. Farking rediculous. [/rant]
>>First is the fact that Apple couldn't show that the Web sites in question knew their source was breaching an NDA.
I don't see a problem there, since they weren't trying to hold the blogger accountable for the breach, but merely to have the blogger reveal the name of the person who was responsible.
The problem is that the blogger(s) in question are acting as journalists, in fact this case upholds that as part of its findings according to the/. summary. Now, it may not mean much to you or Joe Blogger if Apple asked who was telling you secrets, but to a journalist that leaker is known as a SOURCE, and squealing on them is not only counter to the agreement the journalist had in place for their source to remain anonymous, but it also ruins their chances for getting info at a future point from that or any other source.
If the NY Times started printing the names of every "administration official" that dropped them inside facts for their stories even they would have a hard time getting new sources.
Well, we're sort of arguing a moot point since until/unless Haselton clarifies his conversation with this girl we'll never actually know. However from the way he worded the story it sounds as though there was at least tacit understanding that the woman would pay him back and she decided to try and go the "but I'm a girl" route to get out of it - I'm sure you've witnessed that kind of behavior before with certain girls/women, usually the pretty and spoiled ones. Additionally it was a charity luncheon, so it doesn't seem out of line to expect someone to pay their own way for charity, for $100 each they probably could have gone on a much nicer date than a for-charity meal. Plus the girl's excuse was that she'd forgotten her checkbook - implying that she was aware she needed to pay but was unable to at the time.
And under what dictionary does borrow mean never pay back? In day-to-day dealings with people you might "borrow" a stick of gum, sure, and it's understood you're not really going to pay back a single stick of gum. But $100 is a very different amount and certainly non-trivial for most everyone.
Dates aren't TVs, but if you invite someone on a date there's the assumption that you'll cover it, so you need to be clear if you're not before you get there, otherwise you can't expect them to cover it or pay you back. While I agree that the assumption when invited on a date is that the inviter will pay, it doesn't mean that assumption is somehow binding and can never be renegotiated. Might she have balked at being asked to pay when she showed up? Would that be considered rude of him? Sure, the answer is yes on both counts, but that doesn't mean there's no possible way to expect them to pay you back if it's agreed upon. If the guy said nothing and just dutifully doled out the cash for two tickets then there's no reasonable expectation of being paid back. But if he said "OK, I'll loan you the money" and she still went ahead and let him pay then there's an obligation for her to pay him back. Let's not couch this in some sexist debate either, people can change their minds if they don't like the terms of things, she could have said "no way" to paying the $100 and just not gone in. And as for your buying a TV example - which I found odd, did we really need an analogy for this? - the answer is no, I wouldn't find it odd if I went someplace with a friend, told him I forgot my checkbook on a purchase that was implied to be split and then he actually asks me "so when are you paying me back?"
Well, you're out-and-out wrong about at least one thing -- there is no "presumably there must be a trial" after the cessation of hostilities. The Geneva Conventions' presumption is that the POWs would simply be released. Soldiers who qualify for POW status are not criminals, no crime has been committed, and no trial is ever presumed or intended. (Of course, if certain detainees did commit crimes, then we should definitely put them on trial at the end of hostilities. But POWs are, by definition, *not* criminals and *not* accused of any crime.)
An excellent clarification, but I should point out that I was reffering to the scenario you addressed in the last sentence above - people arrested or otherwise taken into custody for criminal acts who are not soldiers in the conflict. As I understand it when habeas corpus is suspended during wartime under the Geneva Convention it would be suspended for everyone, not just soldiers. That may or may not be true, this is not an area where I am by any means an expert. As to our current treatment of "enemy combatant" detainess I have read a couple of articles (many from lewrockwell.com but I don't have the exact links handy) that point out that the idea of an "enemy combatant" is one that has been produced from whole cloth by this administration for the express purpose of circumventing the protections afforded by the Geneva Convention. Bascially the GC defines the rights of people captured during war, and was intended to cover ALL people, not just civilians or just soldiers, but ANYONE no matter what the particular charges against them may be. The fact that we have created a new class of people that fall outside of any protections should be disturbing to people. How is it that this never occurred in other wars? (Or has it and I'm just ignorant of some history? Please alert me if I am.) Now I am by no means saying that all of the people down in Gitmo should just be released or that they are all innocent of wrongdoing, but there have certainly been examples of people that were held there for years and were innocent (and some eventually freed). But to declare a near-perpetual war, and a new class of perpetually rights-less prisoners to go with it is terrifying. Either they are a threat to the US and/or have committed a crime and need to be tried and sentenced, or they are of unknown status and need to be tried to determine that status, not this limbo of indefinite detention until.... until what? The war ends? Even if we pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, and declared the War on Terror over, does anyone really think we'd just throw open the gates of Gitmo and let these people go? And why is the US dragging its feet to charge and try these people? We certainly have the time and resources to do that concurrently with the fighting going on, there is no reason to wait until the dust has settled unless there are alterior motives at work - which I contend is undoubtable. It may be avoiding the embarassment of admitting we held innocents without reason, or it may be part fo the larger erosion of people's rights that is ongoing. Either way, I have not heard any good argument as to why indefinite detention without trial is the only possible course of action.
Well, she didn't need to agree in advance of showing up, if at the time she had said she would pay him back then she's entered a verbal contract to do so. IANAL, but I doubt it gets much more straightforward than that (other than an actual written contract).
I'm curious about this common law writ of habeas corpus -- is it really true that there are no exceptions? For instance, the Geneva Conventions allow for POWs to be held without charge or trial for the duration of hostilities.
I think you may have answered your own question there. The Geneva convention only allows for suspension for the duration of hostilities, but after that presumably there must be a trial. Now of course, when governments start waging modern wars against concepts like "terrorism" with no defined end-point then that limitation becomes meaningless, but the crafters of that document probably expected that such an Orwellian concept as perpetual war would not be invoked by a freedom-loving nation. Additionally, AFAIK habeas corpus only says that one has a right to trial, not that it must be speedy, so even when the Geneva conventions suspend it during hostilities, the fact that it is intended to be re-instated later still holds to the spirit of the writ. I'm splitting hairs here, but take it as a devil's advocate response.;)
>>2. How many installs are erroneously flagged as not genuine?
> Not very many, there's an article now on Information Week that indicates the number is in the millions. This number was calculated by taking a previously disclosed 'half of one percent' estimate of false positives against into the total number of validations (512 million). Calculating the false positive isn't quite that easy, the rate of false positives climbs and falls when issues are discovered then fixed. Given that the false positive scenarios are time bound in this way it's not right to just use that number as a lifetime average.
Now wait a minute, you offered absolutely no data on what you believe the real percentage of false-positives is, instead saying that the percentage fluctuates up and down. OK, even so, pick a point in time as a reference, or a 60/120/365 day moving average, are you claiming that that number is still well below 0.5% (one half of one percent)? At even ONE TENTH of one percent we're talking about just over a half million Windows installs that are false-positives. The percentage sounds nice but the actual number of systems is still rather high. I'm sorry, but simply saying "the number fluctuates over time" doesn't defend the fact that unless Genuine Advantage is reporting better than 99.9% accurate then the number of legitimate users being labeled as pirates (and also being told by phone support to re-buy licenses to correct the problem in many cases) is still too high. If you're going to say "not very many" systems then you'd better back it up with some figures, and they really ought to represent a number that's actually not very many as even a HALF MILLION systems would still be MANY.
You bring up an interesting point about the ISPs becoming liable for critical services not being delivered. However, I doubt it will happen since as it stands now, no one is liable for bot-laden boxes except perhaps the
criminals who created them, assumig they are ever caught. If MS can get away with no culpability for easily exploited systems then it would be difficult to impossible to try to pin the blame on an ISP blocking access to an update, especially if there are other exploits not patched by the update - who would be held responsible for botnets created through those open holes? I think along with the current net neutrality debate the idea that a multibillion dollar corp can sell known-broken tools and claim no liability for their misuse needs to be revisted.
One other quick note: at best virii would be latin for 'men' (and even then it is spelled viri) and means nothing in english, please help stop the use of this rediculous made-up word.
Offtopic comment on your sig because I find it humorous. Sometime around 2001 I think it was, the internet was declared as non-Kosher for Orthodox Jews by the Jewish leaders who make these decisions, at least for that specific portion of the faith. So techncially, your sig's prediction has already come true.;)
Excellent points all, perhaps with better wording this bill could have been useful but in its current form can be abused or easily overstepped. Also I note your listed url is cs.cmu.edu, I myself am a graduate of CIT, and your/. ID is quite respectible, are you faculty?
Interesting! You wouldn't by any chance happen to have some useful NES resource links for how to fix that or other problems? My original NES finally kicked the bucket this fall and it just blinks for most games (but fails in other ways for other games) so I'm hoping there's a DIY solution somewhere on the net.
Not to mention more studies that prove or disprove a causal relationship between violent games and real life violence. And beyond that even, studies which show that those who may be affected are or are not similarly affected by other forms of violent media. There's certainly room for more psychological and sociological studies to help support or refute either argument before politicians should be allowed to wield their assertions as facts. I find your reasoning on the politicians' motivations to exploit grey areas of knowledge insightful, something I will take into consideration in the future.
I think we're all pretty sick of the constant political campaigns against violent games. In every case it's someone who goes nuts and commits some heinous crime and the fact that they played violent video games often is trotted out as either the sole cause or the trigger for the event. But there's thousands (maybe tens of thousands I don't have figures for EU) of other EU gamers playing HL and CS and somehow, beyond all odds, they manage to not go psycho and kill a bunch of people, how do they manage? [/sarcasm]
Why in this modern age must popliticians treat entire continental populations like a kindergarten class? A statistically insignificant number of people are in the ven diagram overlap of violent videogame players and violent criminals so such games are banned for everyone? Talk about lazy legislation, so sorry it's easier to try and ruin it for everyone else instead of actually investigating the other motivations and causes that lead to these tragedies and maybe learning to diagnose and treat or prevent such violent behavior. This has all been said before, it will all be said again, just ranting to get it out of my system.
a: you only listed 6 people. show me a movie made with only 6 people including the cast I listed only 6 as a general example of the support staff needed to run a studio, if you want to get technical it could take all day. A studio is a business or part of a larger business (if owned by a label) and requires an office staff, secretaries, renting space for the building, people to maintain that facility - from cleaning toilets all the way to an IT guy handling their computers. There's a lot of people involved in making a professional recording, and while it's not as many as it takes to make a movie, it's way way more than just six, even if they are not directly involved in the physical act of recording on a given day. And even so, even if it did only take the 6 people I listed before, don't those people deserve to get paid??
b: if it wasnt a shitty pop group, have those people wouldnt be necessary, or be needed minimally. ie. if the group had talent they wouldnt need someone to write their songs for them. if they could sing, they'd need less autotune to make them sound acceptable
So I'll throw this argument right back at you: if it weren't a shitty hollywood formulaic movie then each actor wouldn't require their own seperate hair stylist, makeup artist, and wardrobe manager, they wouldn't need 5 writers because they'd just hire the one good indy script writer, they wouldn't need super CGI special effects because the dialogue would carry the film, they wouldn't need an editing crew to put all the takes together and sequence them nicely they'd just do one perfect take every time.
Look it comes down to this: IN GENERAL making a movie takes more crew than making an album. And IN GENERAL a higher production value movie or album will require more crew than a lower quality production. If we're going to discuss high-cost movies then let's compare them to the music industry equivalent - a high-cost album production. So the OP's argument that pirating movies hurts hundreds of film crew but pirating music only hurts some theoretical "obsolete music executive" is bunk! Stealing music affects the dozens of crew involved in making that album. Yes, it is less people than it takes to make a movie, big deal, it's still way more than this lone greedy executive bullshit argument.
You can't claim to be all high and mighty in not pirating movies because "oooh think of the starving crew" but then turn around and think that the exact same situation doesn't occur in the music industry simply because it's a slightly smaller scale. If we accept the argument that "pirating media == crew not getting paid" then it applies to both industries because both require and pay support staff.
This doesn't get the actors, writers, camera operators, musicians, and the other countless number of people that it actually takes to produce a movie paid. This is one of the reasons why I don't pirate movies...too many people involved who won't get paid...people who are actually VERY important to the production. Music on the other hand...only person i'm screwing is an obsolete record company executive...BFD.
You're making a joke, right? Because to produce an album you also need song writers, an audio technician, probably a seperate studio engineer, managers, studio support staff, etc, etc. How can you say "all these people need to get paid" about the behind the scenes movie crew but totally ignore the fact that similar, if smaller in number, crews exist in the music world? Yes, it's true that for a couple grand someone can set up their own recording studio and put together a pretty decent album, but you can sorta do the same for video, these homebrew studios aren't what you're talking about. You're talking about professionally produced music from major labels which do incur studio and crew costs, just like movie studios. So what are you saying, that you don't care about the music studio crew because there are fewer involved, but once we get to movie crew size you're screwing over too many people? Tell me then, what is the exact number of people who need to have their income threatened for you to not pirate what they help produce? Hint, if you can't name a number then you're being hypocritical in your reasoning.
Additionally, you've got your argument confused as to who gets paid when. All those movie studio crews got paid before the movie hit the theaters, they got their hourly rate in weekly checks like most of us, and the actors get a hefty lump sum and then sometimes parts of the boxoffice take. By pirating movies those background people don't get paid only in the sense that the studios will lose money on the pirated film and choose not to shoot another film, thus not hiring any crew. In the music business the artists don't get paid when you pirate because the majority of their contracted income is based directly on album/songs sales (then seperately there is merch and concerts).
I'm trying to point out the inconsistencies in your reasoning here. You're free to decide to pirate or not, but you should at least get your story straight as to why if you're going to offer it to others in a public forum.
Knowing you're definitely not viewing illegal content... priceless.
Actually, that's kind of the irony here isn't it? If I had a pirated blueray movie, perhaps copied using the frame-capture exploit announced several weeks ago, then there wouldn't be any DRM on the disc preventing me from using it. Same as all those FBI copyright warnings you can't skip past on legally purchased media - they're totally absent from the pirated stuff and counter-productive too since I'd prefer to own media that doesn't force me to watch anything, let alone a segment that implies I'm a criminal.
My thoughts exactly, maybe if any of the myriad and ever-shifting reasons given as justification for the Iraq war were true then people wouldn't be giving this administration "so much shit for the last war."
Although unfortunately with the situation in N. Korea there is the added problem that S. Korea is basically a hostage (well within missle range), and Seoul with its ten million or so citizens will likely face annihilation should hostilities begin in the region.:/ Still, the hypocracy is deep with this one.
Also of note, the National Defense Authorization Act passed in October 2006 required Bush to appoint a Policy Coordinator to deal directly with N.K. issues within 60 days, that date has come and gone and the post remains unfilled.
if the "constant barrage of unconstitutionality" baffles you then maybe, just maybe, your interpretation of unconstitutionality is wrong?
I think you were just playing a little devils advocate to get a rise, but the GP poster is certainly not alone in his feeling that many things that Bush has done in office, or powers he claims are inherent in the presidency, are at best dubious and very likely unconstitutional. As evidenced by many of the posters here, the American Bar Association (who have condemned his signing statements as being wholly unconstitutional and against the rule of law), and many others. Plus just a read of the constitution fails to turn up any of the powers Bush has claimed as being inherent to the presidency, including the theory of the unitary executive. In fact that concept goes completely against the well-documented historic reasons for forming our union in the first place (power of the king being too great). Right now most of what he has done that is considered by many to be unconstitutional has gone unchecked because of sycophants and cronies in high level positions and party control of congress. Once the courts start getting involved we'll probably see a lot of changes IMHO.
I would imagine that through constant pressure you could probably "reprogram" a person to enjoy abuse you inflicted on them. But that doesn't make it any more right.
You bring up an excellent point, more specifically what is "right" to do to our hypothetical feeling robot? The difference, I believe, is based on morality, a concept that applies eclusively currently to humans. The thing is, even when you have a self-aware robot, it is still something that was created intentionally - even in the unlikely event that achieving consciousness was unintentional, as in so many scifi stories - the robot itself was built by people to be programmed by people. The robot's concepts of pain or abuse are based at some point upon the programming it has been given. So we're not talking about a natural system that is unchangable, it is a system that was by design able to be modified. Morality, i.e. the right and wrong, of changing the system doesn't apply as it would with people, so reprogramming the robot even against its 'will' takes on new meaning. This is sort of the heart of these arguments I guess, can we apply human morality to a purely human creation?
Also, consider the scenario in which from the start a conscious robot is designed to derive pleasure from being kicked (say, a fight-instructor droid) is it equally immoral to reprogram it to find being kicked painful? The 'right' and 'wrong' here go against what we would normally consider as people because all people take being kicked as inflicting pain, not pleasure. To the robot, however, it is all it has ever known, what we consider abuse, it considers love/pleasure. It may not be moral to alter a human's state of consciousness or perception of pain/pleasure, but that is because at the heart of it no matter how much someone is brainwashed there is residual damage to their personality and will. If a robot can be perfectly altered via its programming then I think the issue becomes moot. And I find it hard to argue that it is immoral to reprogram something that accepts reprogramming by design.
In the end much of the emotion a conscious robot displays is actually projected onto it by the observer, and even when a robot has real emotions of its own, it is hard for people to apply their morality to the robot since the underlying tenants of the robot's consciousness and perception of pleasure/pain are very different from ours in form, function, and intented design.
I am attempting to further develop my argument here off the cuff, I certainly welcome your opinions and reasonings if you agree or disagree.
Part of the reason we protect animals is because while they do not exhibit higher consciousness (not here to debate that term, but it's fuzzy to say the least) they do have some feelings and can certainly feel pain. Most of animal protection laws AFAIK deal mostly with not inflicting undue pain or stress on an animal. With robots - especially 'lower level' robots - there is very little in the current state of the art that we could call concepts of pain or stress. If anything like those exists in a robot, it is because it was explicitly programmed into the robot. This is where the concept begins to get a bit rediculous in the real world, at least at current tech levels. If a robot can feel pain of some sort, would it be against the law then to simply uninstall the pain perception ability? What counts as "pain" in a robot anyway? Are low batteries part of that? If a very simple light-seeking robot is put in a dark closet, are you depriving it of food/resources/joy? Robots are tools and you cannot hurt a tools feelings, even if you destroy it. Until some higher level of thought/consciousness/AI is inherent in all robots great or small then there's nothing to worry about. And if in that future your robot feels you are abusing it, well, then reprogram it to like the abuse.;)
Harrison Ford looked at the script and said, "this sucks" and Kershner agreed and they changed it.
If only it had been such an intentional alteration. In fact, the scene had so many takes that Ford had heard "I love you" so many times he finally replied "I know" half jokingly. They thought it fit Solo's character better and stuck with that line. The whole movie had to be re-edited at great expense because the first version was terrible. To get the movie we ended up with many of the scenes go right until the last frame of film that was shot to get them to work.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, If I'm a spammer and following the laws regarding spamming
Without getting into a debate about the CANSPAM Act I don't think lawful spam is even the worry at this point. 90% of what is caught in my spam filters does NOT meet the standards of that law. An anecdote does not equal a data set, but the general consensus I get from slashdot and elsewhere is that this is the case for many others as well. Maybe if all the spammers were following the law then we'd have to come up with another plan, but the majority of spam I see is the illegal (under CANSPAM) kind and would certainly be filterable by that clause. And besides, I was proposing locating and cutting off net access for PCs that meet strict criteria of being trojaned boxes used as spam relays, I believe this would fall outside of net neutrality law as a seperate condition of using an ISP's services - keep your computer clean or no internet for you. Ignoring the problem has done nothing to stop it, and from what experts can tell the zombie network operations are getting more extensive and sophisticated as we continue to let them propigate unchecked.
Why? Spam doesn't take up a significantly large portion of internet traffic and is a lot harder to separate out of the mix,
I do realize that the amount of bandwidth for spam is much smaller than for bittorrent considering a lot of torrents are movies or large programs. However, I've seen some articles (and my spam folder contents) that indicate some spam is starting to move towards image-only in an attmept to get around filters, so there's a good chance spam bandwidth will increase. Also while it may be hard to seperate from the mix at the transport layer, it sure as hell is visible by the time it reaches the SMTP server, I have to imagine that there's going to be some cost savings (and headache reduction) in reducing the amount of filtering that has to be done to keep mail servers running. Plus spam is sometimes an indicator of a zombied computer, which can be used for other things besides just spamming, like DDOS attacks and propigating viruses - stuff that may not be a problem immediately, but could certainly cause trouble if/when thousands of zombie systems are commanded to do something nastier than hawk viagra and penny stocks. Probably better to start to erradicate the problem than to wait and see if it gets worse.
They want to shake down companies individually by threatening to degrade their service and not their competitor's. They care about money; no hypocrisy there.
Well, that is the hypocracy isn't it? Because the major networks that don't want net neutrality aren't telling congress and the public at large that they're doing it for cash and to crush competition, they're cloaking it in other reasons. That's why they're being hypocritical. We (the tech-informed) know the real reasons, but mom and pop americans don't and what they're hearing is almost the opposite of what the networks are actually going to do.
How about before the ISPs even think of throttling down BitTorrent or any other type of traffic - they make even a casual effort to throttle back the 95% of email that is spam? If bandwidth is so precious that they need to consider slowing down one kind of traffic, why not start with the kind that is known to be illegitimate. Considering all the BS that is crammed into EULAs these days I think it would be actually reasonable to include a clause that says if your PC gets hijacked and zombied and is spewing garbage then we're going to cut you off until you fix it. The ISPs can certainly implement some algorithms to detect likely zombied computers, cut them off and redirect them to a page explaining the situation and common tools/resources to help fix their boxes, then the user clicks some link to get their connection reevaluated to regain net access. I'm in favor of net neutrality and no traffic throttling but I think the hypocracy of these ISPs should also be addressed. If half the money spent lobbying for net neutrality were spent tracking down spammers and helping users to identify and fix trojaned PCs then spam would be on the decline, not doubling every 3 months. Or here's an idea, how about using some of the no-doubt tens of millions of dollars that's about to be spent to change all the Cingular signs back to AT&T signs on fighting spam and botnets? But no, better to let the problem fester and the spammers grow richer and better armed (digitally) than let the company logos go un-revamped. Farking rediculous. [/rant]
>>First is the fact that Apple couldn't show that the Web sites in question knew their source was breaching an NDA.
/. summary. Now, it may not mean much to you or Joe Blogger if Apple asked who was telling you secrets, but to a journalist that leaker is known as a SOURCE, and squealing on them is not only counter to the agreement the journalist had in place for their source to remain anonymous, but it also ruins their chances for getting info at a future point from that or any other source.
I don't see a problem there, since they weren't trying to hold the blogger accountable for the breach, but merely to have the blogger reveal the name of the person who was responsible.
The problem is that the blogger(s) in question are acting as journalists, in fact this case upholds that as part of its findings according to the
If the NY Times started printing the names of every "administration official" that dropped them inside facts for their stories even they would have a hard time getting new sources.
Frank Herbert has prior art with Dune's windtraps.
;)
I don't know about that, after all, Luke's story took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Well, we're sort of arguing a moot point since until/unless Haselton clarifies his conversation with this girl we'll never actually know. However from the way he worded the story it sounds as though there was at least tacit understanding that the woman would pay him back and she decided to try and go the "but I'm a girl" route to get out of it - I'm sure you've witnessed that kind of behavior before with certain girls/women, usually the pretty and spoiled ones. Additionally it was a charity luncheon, so it doesn't seem out of line to expect someone to pay their own way for charity, for $100 each they probably could have gone on a much nicer date than a for-charity meal. Plus the girl's excuse was that she'd forgotten her checkbook - implying that she was aware she needed to pay but was unable to at the time.
And under what dictionary does borrow mean never pay back? In day-to-day dealings with people you might "borrow" a stick of gum, sure, and it's understood you're not really going to pay back a single stick of gum. But $100 is a very different amount and certainly non-trivial for most everyone.
Dates aren't TVs, but if you invite someone on a date there's the assumption that you'll cover it, so you need to be clear if you're not before you get there, otherwise you can't expect them to cover it or pay you back.
While I agree that the assumption when invited on a date is that the inviter will pay, it doesn't mean that assumption is somehow binding and can never be renegotiated. Might she have balked at being asked to pay when she showed up? Would that be considered rude of him? Sure, the answer is yes on both counts, but that doesn't mean there's no possible way to expect them to pay you back if it's agreed upon. If the guy said nothing and just dutifully doled out the cash for two tickets then there's no reasonable expectation of being paid back. But if he said "OK, I'll loan you the money" and she still went ahead and let him pay then there's an obligation for her to pay him back. Let's not couch this in some sexist debate either, people can change their minds if they don't like the terms of things, she could have said "no way" to paying the $100 and just not gone in.
And as for your buying a TV example - which I found odd, did we really need an analogy for this? - the answer is no, I wouldn't find it odd if I went someplace with a friend, told him I forgot my checkbook on a purchase that was implied to be split and then he actually asks me "so when are you paying me back?"
Well, you're out-and-out wrong about at least one thing -- there is no "presumably there must be a trial" after the cessation of hostilities. The Geneva Conventions' presumption is that the POWs would simply be released. Soldiers who qualify for POW status are not criminals, no crime has been committed, and no trial is ever presumed or intended. (Of course, if certain detainees did commit crimes, then we should definitely put them on trial at the end of hostilities. But POWs are, by definition, *not* criminals and *not* accused of any crime.)
An excellent clarification, but I should point out that I was reffering to the scenario you addressed in the last sentence above - people arrested or otherwise taken into custody for criminal acts who are not soldiers in the conflict. As I understand it when habeas corpus is suspended during wartime under the Geneva Convention it would be suspended for everyone, not just soldiers. That may or may not be true, this is not an area where I am by any means an expert.
As to our current treatment of "enemy combatant" detainess I have read a couple of articles (many from lewrockwell.com but I don't have the exact links handy) that point out that the idea of an "enemy combatant" is one that has been produced from whole cloth by this administration for the express purpose of circumventing the protections afforded by the Geneva Convention.
Bascially the GC defines the rights of people captured during war, and was intended to cover ALL people, not just civilians or just soldiers, but ANYONE no matter what the particular charges against them may be. The fact that we have created a new class of people that fall outside of any protections should be disturbing to people. How is it that this never occurred in other wars? (Or has it and I'm just ignorant of some history? Please alert me if I am.)
Now I am by no means saying that all of the people down in Gitmo should just be released or that they are all innocent of wrongdoing, but there have certainly been examples of people that were held there for years and were innocent (and some eventually freed). But to declare a near-perpetual war, and a new class of perpetually rights-less prisoners to go with it is terrifying. Either they are a threat to the US and/or have committed a crime and need to be tried and sentenced, or they are of unknown status and need to be tried to determine that status, not this limbo of indefinite detention until.... until what? The war ends? Even if we pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, and declared the War on Terror over, does anyone really think we'd just throw open the gates of Gitmo and let these people go? And why is the US dragging its feet to charge and try these people? We certainly have the time and resources to do that concurrently with the fighting going on, there is no reason to wait until the dust has settled unless there are alterior motives at work - which I contend is undoubtable. It may be avoiding the embarassment of admitting we held innocents without reason, or it may be part fo the larger erosion of people's rights that is ongoing. Either way, I have not heard any good argument as to why indefinite detention without trial is the only possible course of action.
Well, she didn't need to agree in advance of showing up, if at the time she had said she would pay him back then she's entered a verbal contract to do so. IANAL, but I doubt it gets much more straightforward than that (other than an actual written contract).
I'm curious about this common law writ of habeas corpus -- is it really true that there are no exceptions? For instance, the Geneva Conventions allow for POWs to be held without charge or trial for the duration of hostilities.
;)
I think you may have answered your own question there. The Geneva convention only allows for suspension for the duration of hostilities, but after that presumably there must be a trial. Now of course, when governments start waging modern wars against concepts like "terrorism" with no defined end-point then that limitation becomes meaningless, but the crafters of that document probably expected that such an Orwellian concept as perpetual war would not be invoked by a freedom-loving nation. Additionally, AFAIK habeas corpus only says that one has a right to trial, not that it must be speedy, so even when the Geneva conventions suspend it during hostilities, the fact that it is intended to be re-instated later still holds to the spirit of the writ. I'm splitting hairs here, but take it as a devil's advocate response.
>>2. How many installs are erroneously flagged as not genuine?
> Not very many, there's an article now on Information Week that indicates the number is in the millions. This number was calculated by taking a previously disclosed 'half of one percent' estimate of false positives against into the total number of validations (512 million). Calculating the false positive isn't quite that easy, the rate of false positives climbs and falls when issues are discovered then fixed. Given that the false positive scenarios are time bound in this way it's not right to just use that number as a lifetime average.
Now wait a minute, you offered absolutely no data on what you believe the real percentage of false-positives is, instead saying that the percentage fluctuates up and down. OK, even so, pick a point in time as a reference, or a 60/120/365 day moving average, are you claiming that that number is still well below 0.5% (one half of one percent)? At even ONE TENTH of one percent we're talking about just over a half million Windows installs that are false-positives. The percentage sounds nice but the actual number of systems is still rather high. I'm sorry, but simply saying "the number fluctuates over time" doesn't defend the fact that unless Genuine Advantage is reporting better than 99.9% accurate then the number of legitimate users being labeled as pirates (and also being told by phone support to re-buy licenses to correct the problem in many cases) is still too high. If you're going to say "not very many" systems then you'd better back it up with some figures, and they really ought to represent a number that's actually not very many as even a HALF MILLION systems would still be MANY.
You bring up an interesting point about the ISPs becoming liable for critical services not being delivered. However, I doubt it will happen since as it stands now, no one is liable for bot-laden boxes except perhaps the criminals who created them, assumig they are ever caught. If MS can get away with no culpability for easily exploited systems then it would be difficult to impossible to try to pin the blame on an ISP blocking access to an update, especially if there are other exploits not patched by the update - who would be held responsible for botnets created through those open holes? I think along with the current net neutrality debate the idea that a multibillion dollar corp can sell known-broken tools and claim no liability for their misuse needs to be revisted.
One other quick note: at best virii would be latin for 'men' (and even then it is spelled viri) and means nothing in english, please help stop the use of this rediculous made-up word.
Offtopic comment on your sig because I find it humorous. Sometime around 2001 I think it was, the internet was declared as non-Kosher for Orthodox Jews by the Jewish leaders who make these decisions, at least for that specific portion of the faith. So techncially, your sig's prediction has already come true. ;)
Excellent points all, perhaps with better wording this bill could have been useful but in its current form can be abused or easily overstepped. Also I note your listed url is cs.cmu.edu, I myself am a graduate of CIT, and your /. ID is quite respectible, are you faculty?
Interesting! You wouldn't by any chance happen to have some useful NES resource links for how to fix that or other problems? My original NES finally kicked the bucket this fall and it just blinks for most games (but fails in other ways for other games) so I'm hoping there's a DIY solution somewhere on the net.
Not to mention more studies that prove or disprove a causal relationship between violent games and real life violence. And beyond that even, studies which show that those who may be affected are or are not similarly affected by other forms of violent media. There's certainly room for more psychological and sociological studies to help support or refute either argument before politicians should be allowed to wield their assertions as facts. I find your reasoning on the politicians' motivations to exploit grey areas of knowledge insightful, something I will take into consideration in the future.
I think we're all pretty sick of the constant political campaigns against violent games. In every case it's someone who goes nuts and commits some heinous crime and the fact that they played violent video games often is trotted out as either the sole cause or the trigger for the event. But there's thousands (maybe tens of thousands I don't have figures for EU) of other EU gamers playing HL and CS and somehow, beyond all odds, they manage to not go psycho and kill a bunch of people, how do they manage? [/sarcasm]
Why in this modern age must popliticians treat entire continental populations like a kindergarten class? A statistically insignificant number of people are in the ven diagram overlap of violent videogame players and violent criminals so such games are banned for everyone? Talk about lazy legislation, so sorry it's easier to try and ruin it for everyone else instead of actually investigating the other motivations and causes that lead to these tragedies and maybe learning to diagnose and treat or prevent such violent behavior. This has all been said before, it will all be said again, just ranting to get it out of my system.
a: you only listed 6 people. show me a movie made with only 6 people including the cast
I listed only 6 as a general example of the support staff needed to run a studio, if you want to get technical it could take all day. A studio is a business or part of a larger business (if owned by a label) and requires an office staff, secretaries, renting space for the building, people to maintain that facility - from cleaning toilets all the way to an IT guy handling their computers. There's a lot of people involved in making a professional recording, and while it's not as many as it takes to make a movie, it's way way more than just six, even if they are not directly involved in the physical act of recording on a given day. And even so, even if it did only take the 6 people I listed before, don't those people deserve to get paid??
b: if it wasnt a shitty pop group, have those people wouldnt be necessary, or be needed minimally. ie. if the group had talent they wouldnt need someone to write their songs for them. if they could sing, they'd need less autotune to make them sound acceptable
So I'll throw this argument right back at you: if it weren't a shitty hollywood formulaic movie then each actor wouldn't require their own seperate hair stylist, makeup artist, and wardrobe manager, they wouldn't need 5 writers because they'd just hire the one good indy script writer, they wouldn't need super CGI special effects because the dialogue would carry the film, they wouldn't need an editing crew to put all the takes together and sequence them nicely they'd just do one perfect take every time.
Look it comes down to this: IN GENERAL making a movie takes more crew than making an album. And IN GENERAL a higher production value movie or album will require more crew than a lower quality production. If we're going to discuss high-cost movies then let's compare them to the music industry equivalent - a high-cost album production. So the OP's argument that pirating movies hurts hundreds of film crew but pirating music only hurts some theoretical "obsolete music executive" is bunk! Stealing music affects the dozens of crew involved in making that album. Yes, it is less people than it takes to make a movie, big deal, it's still way more than this lone greedy executive bullshit argument.
You can't claim to be all high and mighty in not pirating movies because "oooh think of the starving crew" but then turn around and think that the exact same situation doesn't occur in the music industry simply because it's a slightly smaller scale. If we accept the argument that "pirating media == crew not getting paid" then it applies to both industries because both require and pay support staff.
This doesn't get the actors, writers, camera operators, musicians, and the other countless number of people that it actually takes to produce a movie paid. This is one of the reasons why I don't pirate movies...too many people involved who won't get paid...people who are actually VERY important to the production. Music on the other hand...only person i'm screwing is an obsolete record company executive...BFD.
You're making a joke, right? Because to produce an album you also need song writers, an audio technician, probably a seperate studio engineer, managers, studio support staff, etc, etc. How can you say "all these people need to get paid" about the behind the scenes movie crew but totally ignore the fact that similar, if smaller in number, crews exist in the music world? Yes, it's true that for a couple grand someone can set up their own recording studio and put together a pretty decent album, but you can sorta do the same for video, these homebrew studios aren't what you're talking about. You're talking about professionally produced music from major labels which do incur studio and crew costs, just like movie studios. So what are you saying, that you don't care about the music studio crew because there are fewer involved, but once we get to movie crew size you're screwing over too many people? Tell me then, what is the exact number of people who need to have their income threatened for you to not pirate what they help produce? Hint, if you can't name a number then you're being hypocritical in your reasoning.
Additionally, you've got your argument confused as to who gets paid when. All those movie studio crews got paid before the movie hit the theaters, they got their hourly rate in weekly checks like most of us, and the actors get a hefty lump sum and then sometimes parts of the boxoffice take. By pirating movies those background people don't get paid only in the sense that the studios will lose money on the pirated film and choose not to shoot another film, thus not hiring any crew. In the music business the artists don't get paid when you pirate because the majority of their contracted income is based directly on album/songs sales (then seperately there is merch and concerts).
I'm trying to point out the inconsistencies in your reasoning here. You're free to decide to pirate or not, but you should at least get your story straight as to why if you're going to offer it to others in a public forum.
Knowing you're definitely not viewing illegal content... priceless.
Actually, that's kind of the irony here isn't it? If I had a pirated blueray movie, perhaps copied using the frame-capture exploit announced several weeks ago, then there wouldn't be any DRM on the disc preventing me from using it. Same as all those FBI copyright warnings you can't skip past on legally purchased media - they're totally absent from the pirated stuff and counter-productive too since I'd prefer to own media that doesn't force me to watch anything, let alone a segment that implies I'm a criminal.
New 1080p HD TV: $2,500
Vista OS Upgrade: $150
Card and cable for streaming HD A/V to TV: $180
Internal Blueray Drive: $900
Blueray movie: $40
Not being able to view legally purchased media on legally purchased hardware because of arbitrary content restrictions: $3770 apparently.
All prices approximate but realistic. Thanks Hollywood and Microsoft, obviously the consumer is king!
My thoughts exactly, maybe if any of the myriad and ever-shifting reasons given as justification for the Iraq war were true then people wouldn't be giving this administration "so much shit for the last war."
:/ Still, the hypocracy is deep with this one.
Although unfortunately with the situation in N. Korea there is the added problem that S. Korea is basically a hostage (well within missle range), and Seoul with its ten million or so citizens will likely face annihilation should hostilities begin in the region.
Also of note, the National Defense Authorization Act passed in October 2006 required Bush to appoint a Policy Coordinator to deal directly with N.K. issues within 60 days, that date has come and gone and the post remains unfilled.
if the "constant barrage of unconstitutionality" baffles you then maybe, just maybe, your interpretation of unconstitutionality is wrong?
I think you were just playing a little devils advocate to get a rise, but the GP poster is certainly not alone in his feeling that many things that Bush has done in office, or powers he claims are inherent in the presidency, are at best dubious and very likely unconstitutional. As evidenced by many of the posters here, the American Bar Association (who have condemned his signing statements as being wholly unconstitutional and against the rule of law), and many others. Plus just a read of the constitution fails to turn up any of the powers Bush has claimed as being inherent to the presidency, including the theory of the unitary executive. In fact that concept goes completely against the well-documented historic reasons for forming our union in the first place (power of the king being too great). Right now most of what he has done that is considered by many to be unconstitutional has gone unchecked because of sycophants and cronies in high level positions and party control of congress. Once the courts start getting involved we'll probably see a lot of changes IMHO.
I would imagine that through constant pressure you could probably "reprogram" a person to enjoy abuse you inflicted on them. But that doesn't make it any more right.
You bring up an excellent point, more specifically what is "right" to do to our hypothetical feeling robot? The difference, I believe, is based on morality, a concept that applies eclusively currently to humans. The thing is, even when you have a self-aware robot, it is still something that was created intentionally - even in the unlikely event that achieving consciousness was unintentional, as in so many scifi stories - the robot itself was built by people to be programmed by people. The robot's concepts of pain or abuse are based at some point upon the programming it has been given. So we're not talking about a natural system that is unchangable, it is a system that was by design able to be modified. Morality, i.e. the right and wrong, of changing the system doesn't apply as it would with people, so reprogramming the robot even against its 'will' takes on new meaning. This is sort of the heart of these arguments I guess, can we apply human morality to a purely human creation?
Also, consider the scenario in which from the start a conscious robot is designed to derive pleasure from being kicked (say, a fight-instructor droid) is it equally immoral to reprogram it to find being kicked painful? The 'right' and 'wrong' here go against what we would normally consider as people because all people take being kicked as inflicting pain, not pleasure. To the robot, however, it is all it has ever known, what we consider abuse, it considers love/pleasure. It may not be moral to alter a human's state of consciousness or perception of pain/pleasure, but that is because at the heart of it no matter how much someone is brainwashed there is residual damage to their personality and will. If a robot can be perfectly altered via its programming then I think the issue becomes moot. And I find it hard to argue that it is immoral to reprogram something that accepts reprogramming by design.
In the end much of the emotion a conscious robot displays is actually projected onto it by the observer, and even when a robot has real emotions of its own, it is hard for people to apply their morality to the robot since the underlying tenants of the robot's consciousness and perception of pleasure/pain are very different from ours in form, function, and intented design.
I am attempting to further develop my argument here off the cuff, I certainly welcome your opinions and reasonings if you agree or disagree.
Part of the reason we protect animals is because while they do not exhibit higher consciousness (not here to debate that term, but it's fuzzy to say the least) they do have some feelings and can certainly feel pain. Most of animal protection laws AFAIK deal mostly with not inflicting undue pain or stress on an animal. With robots - especially 'lower level' robots - there is very little in the current state of the art that we could call concepts of pain or stress. If anything like those exists in a robot, it is because it was explicitly programmed into the robot. This is where the concept begins to get a bit rediculous in the real world, at least at current tech levels. If a robot can feel pain of some sort, would it be against the law then to simply uninstall the pain perception ability? What counts as "pain" in a robot anyway? Are low batteries part of that? If a very simple light-seeking robot is put in a dark closet, are you depriving it of food/resources/joy? Robots are tools and you cannot hurt a tools feelings, even if you destroy it. Until some higher level of thought/consciousness/AI is inherent in all robots great or small then there's nothing to worry about. ;)
And if in that future your robot feels you are abusing it, well, then reprogram it to like the abuse.
Harrison Ford looked at the script and said, "this sucks" and Kershner agreed and they changed it.
If only it had been such an intentional alteration. In fact, the scene had so many takes that Ford had heard "I love you" so many times he finally replied "I know" half jokingly. They thought it fit Solo's character better and stuck with that line. The whole movie had to be re-edited at great expense because the first version was terrible. To get the movie we ended up with many of the scenes go right until the last frame of film that was shot to get them to work.