"Who is it who decides that bread and tortilla products are unrelated?"
The whole concept behind store layout is to ensure that the average customer has to pass as much of the shelf space in the shop as possible. The theory is that, in doing this, impulse buying rates are increased. This is also the reason that shops rearrange the products on a regular basis, so that shoppers are forces to pay attention to the products on the shelves rather than go directly towards those they actually want to buy.
Of course, I imagine someday soon MS will wake up and go "Waitaminute, if that crazy GPL is invalid, that means all that 'You buy it but not really, you're just renting it' part of our EULA might not be valid either. Crap!"
They already think that, that's what UCITA is intended to fix.
"1. every major journalist worth his/her salt would be all over it within hours."
Don't be naive. How long do you think that any mainstream journalist who made a story of this would have a job for? The answer - not long. The US media in particular, although the UK is getting as bad, is little more than a relay system for government propaganda and real, detailed, complete examination of government behaviour, with equal air time to truly dissenting opinions (how many times has Chomsky been on CNN in the past 4 months?) is out of the question. What the government does is Good and Right and Should Not Be Questioned.
It isn't a troll, but perhaps you're asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking why picking a commercial solution when no open one exist is remarkable, ask why it is remarkable that the NSA have selected a commercial solution instead of developing their own version of it.
It can be - one explanation I've heard is that tinitus is a manifestation or damage to the delicte hairs in the cochlea, which could be caused loud noise. However, I've also read that it could be degenerative damage in the vestibular or acoustic nerves or areas of the auditory cortex.
Probably there's lots of different causes and it is located in different places in different people.
"Or is he the same person that came up with the design at 12ghosts.de?"
My German is a bit rusty, but AFAICT Philip Ahrens is behind the ideas on 12ghosts, Carsten Frank Buschmann is acknowledging Ahrens' patents which, as he says, Ahrens has allowed to be used for private use (probably just a "not for commercial exploitation without a license from me" restriction).
Theoretically, I agree. But put yourself in the place of AOL - they start asking people whether they want Messenger Service disabled and the first thign they'll see is a massive increase in the number of people phoning the technical support line asking why their computer is asking them this question, then they'll find (as anothe rposter suggested) that many of them will get confused and refuse it and then they'll have yet more people on the phone complaining that something has gone wrong "because fo that fix you did" (when it is likely to be just psychological, or somethign the user has done). Trust me, I've done tech support, the very LAST thing you want to do is ask the average, bearly computer literate user, questions about technical issues on their machines.
While the ethics are questionable, IMO AOL is aimed at people who are not and have no intention of becoming technically literate, and as such they are dangerous - to themselves and the net - when a known exploit exists on their machines. In exactly this situation, I have no problem with the action. Ys, I'd be annoyed if anyone tried it on my machines, but I'm with an ISP that expects some technical ability.
Actually, only later Amiga programmers used timer.device, the earlier ones just grabbed the system clock from the hardware directly - less overhead.
Mind you, on pentiums and later you can use (IIRC) the RDTSC instruction, which gives you the number of clock cycles since the last reset as a 64bit number.
While I'd agree about being better than most current games, I wouldn't call it really good - a couple of pegs up from Unreal 2's predictable, cliche-ridden doggrel but not exactly good.
Argue it in front of a judge? Hardly, as I said IANAL, but it meets both requirements - it is unrequested, as you asked for the page not any additional junk (you'll note that in the UK we have a law that requires you to notify users of cookies, what they are needed for and allow them to be refused - sending people stuff for no good reason is covered by this) and as for modifying the computer, how is opening a window, chaning the contents of memort and the display not a modification fo the contents of a computer?
As for the rest, the definition of hinders does not include "isn't considered hindering if you can press a few buttons" - ANY unauthorised modification or manipulation of the computer is covered by the CMA. Sure, I'm stretching it as something of an academic exercise and this is IMO not "as a legal expert" but if I had the money spare it'd be an interesting test.
Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) section 3 covers things like "A person is guilty of an offence if he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer;" (opening unrequested popup advertisements.. well, they are modification of the contents of the computer that are unauthorised, so got them there). Now, subsection 2 gives the requirements for intent as given in subsection 1, and "to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer" sounds very much like popunders to me: they are hindering you seeing the contents of the popup by placing the main window in the way. Subsections 3, 4 and 5 are even nastier for them.
IMO popunders are a blantant violation of the UK's computer misuse act, unrequested popups probably are as well as they hinder the use of the main browser and are unauthorised and unrequested.
I did not say the plans for the Manhattan Project had been released, I said "details of how to build a nuke have been available for years now". Unless I underestimate American arrogance, you must admit that more than one country on the planet has developed nuclear weapons, and that there is a significant amount of information available on how to build one, if you look hard enough.
"The only way to stop spam is to stop the spammers. The only way to stop the spammers is to stop those that pay them or otherwise make money trough the spam."
Actually, I can think of several inventive and above all painful (for spammers and friends) methods to stop them. Permanently. The problem is that it requires you to catch the spammers and transfer them to a Secure Processing Facility..
Except that details of how to build a nuke have been available for years now, if you look hard enough you can find it. The hard part isn't how to build one, it's how to get the bits to build one without raising suspicion.
"Let's face it-- even if those documents contain information about state-of-the-art (at the time) US aircraft, it's somewhat unlikely that there's still a reason to keep them under wraps."
Unless, the documents don't contain information about state of the art US aircraft and the US has no real idea what the hell it was. That would be a damn good reason to keep it locked up - and quite frankly, I'd agree with them.
Slashdot Mirror
www.microsoft.com runs Linux? Up to a point ...
Why bother with the solemly dignified?!
"Who is it who decides that bread and tortilla products are unrelated?"
The whole concept behind store layout is to ensure that the average customer has to pass as much of the shelf space in the shop as possible. The theory is that, in doing this, impulse buying rates are increased. This is also the reason that shops rearrange the products on a regular basis, so that shoppers are forces to pay attention to the products on the shelves rather than go directly towards those they actually want to buy.
They tried it on RIAA officials and it didn't work. Of course, the flaw in their theory was that RIAA officials are humans.
Or, more seriously, they probably tried using it on human cell cultures to see what happened. Maybe.
They'll create a load of manufactured universettes, each humming almost the same thing, and hype each one into oblivion before throwing them away.
Makes perfect sense to me, as long as the "technology wave that till define the digital decade" is "the same as before, only 20% more bugs!".
Nobody says it has to be a good wave...
Of course, I imagine someday soon MS will wake up and go "Waitaminute, if that crazy GPL is invalid, that means all that 'You buy it but not really, you're just renting it' part of our EULA might not be valid either. Crap!"
They already think that, that's what UCITA is intended to fix.
"1. every major journalist worth his/her salt would be all over it within hours."
Don't be naive. How long do you think that any mainstream journalist who made a story of this would have a job for? The answer - not long. The US media in particular, although the UK is getting as bad, is little more than a relay system for government propaganda and real, detailed, complete examination of government behaviour, with equal air time to truly dissenting opinions (how many times has Chomsky been on CNN in the past 4 months?) is out of the question. What the government does is Good and Right and Should Not Be Questioned.
Media by the elite, serving the elite.
It isn't a troll, but perhaps you're asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking why picking a commercial solution when no open one exist is remarkable, ask why it is remarkable that the NSA have selected a commercial solution instead of developing their own version of it.
" I have to take about five steps to access the CD drive; this problem could be solved by buying an external drive,"
;)
Sounds to me like a perfect excuse to build a robot CD changer
It can be - one explanation I've heard is that tinitus is a manifestation or damage to the delicte hairs in the cochlea, which could be caused loud noise. However, I've also read that it could be degenerative damage in the vestibular or acoustic nerves or areas of the auditory cortex.
Probably there's lots of different causes and it is located in different places in different people.
"Or is he the same person that came up with the design at 12ghosts.de?"
My German is a bit rusty, but AFAICT Philip Ahrens is behind the ideas on 12ghosts, Carsten Frank Buschmann is acknowledging Ahrens' patents which, as he says, Ahrens has allowed to be used for private use (probably just a "not for commercial exploitation without a license from me" restriction).
If not ncessarily spelling ability...
Theoretically, I agree. But put yourself in the place of AOL - they start asking people whether they want Messenger Service disabled and the first thign they'll see is a massive increase in the number of people phoning the technical support line asking why their computer is asking them this question, then they'll find (as anothe rposter suggested) that many of them will get confused and refuse it and then they'll have yet more people on the phone complaining that something has gone wrong "because fo that fix you did" (when it is likely to be just psychological, or somethign the user has done). Trust me, I've done tech support, the very LAST thing you want to do is ask the average, bearly computer literate user, questions about technical issues on their machines.
While the ethics are questionable, IMO AOL is aimed at people who are not and have no intention of becoming technically literate, and as such they are dangerous - to themselves and the net - when a known exploit exists on their machines. In exactly this situation, I have no problem with the action. Ys, I'd be annoyed if anyone tried it on my machines, but I'm with an ISP that expects some technical ability.
Actually, only later Amiga programmers used timer.device, the earlier ones just grabbed the system clock from the hardware directly - less overhead.
Mind you, on pentiums and later you can use (IIRC) the RDTSC instruction, which gives you the number of clock cycles since the last reset as a 64bit number.
While I'd agree about being better than most current games, I wouldn't call it really good - a couple of pegs up from Unreal 2's predictable, cliche-ridden doggrel but not exactly good.
Argue it in front of a judge? Hardly, as I said IANAL, but it meets both requirements - it is unrequested, as you asked for the page not any additional junk (you'll note that in the UK we have a law that requires you to notify users of cookies, what they are needed for and allow them to be refused - sending people stuff for no good reason is covered by this) and as for modifying the computer, how is opening a window, chaning the contents of memort and the display not a modification fo the contents of a computer?
As for the rest, the definition of hinders does not include "isn't considered hindering if you can press a few buttons" - ANY unauthorised modification or manipulation of the computer is covered by the CMA. Sure, I'm stretching it as something of an academic exercise and this is IMO not "as a legal expert" but if I had the money spare it'd be an interesting test.
And as for being a fool.. sure, maybe. Maybe not.
At least I'm not a coward.
If you miss content on a site, you can disable the Mozilla popup blocker on a site specific basis. Best of both worlds.
IANAL, but at least in the UK...
Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) section 3 covers things like "A person is guilty of an offence if he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer;" (opening unrequested popup advertisements.. well, they are modification of the contents of the computer that are unauthorised, so got them there). Now, subsection 2 gives the requirements for intent as given in subsection 1, and "to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer" sounds very much like popunders to me: they are hindering you seeing the contents of the popup by placing the main window in the way. Subsections 3, 4 and 5 are even nastier for them.
IMO popunders are a blantant violation of the UK's computer misuse act, unrequested popups probably are as well as they hinder the use of the main browser and are unauthorised and unrequested.
I did not say the plans for the Manhattan Project had been released, I said "details of how to build a nuke have been available for years now". Unless I underestimate American arrogance, you must admit that more than one country on the planet has developed nuclear weapons, and that there is a significant amount of information available on how to build one, if you look hard enough.
"but obviously those very clever people in government have some evidince to the suggest this is possible."
p
h ttp://www.amta.org.au/?Page=174e shop.org/safety/banned.htm
. pd f&e=7413
Nope, it's largely a combination of more-or-less urban myth and arse covering.
http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.as
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/8885.shtml
http://www.mobil
This statement issued by Motorola:
http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,,423,00
Haven't we all learned about the DMCA by now?
"The only way to stop spam is to stop the spammers. The only way to stop the spammers is to stop those that pay them or otherwise make money trough the spam."
Actually, I can think of several inventive and above all painful (for spammers and friends) methods to stop them. Permanently. The problem is that it requires you to catch the spammers and transfer them to a Secure Processing Facility..
Except that details of how to build a nuke have been available for years now, if you look hard enough you can find it. The hard part isn't how to build one, it's how to get the bits to build one without raising suspicion.
"Let's face it-- even if those documents contain information about state-of-the-art (at the time) US aircraft, it's somewhat unlikely that there's still a reason to keep them under wraps."
Unless, the documents don't contain information about state of the art US aircraft and the US has no real idea what the hell it was. That would be a damn good reason to keep it locked up - and quite frankly, I'd agree with them.