we all know most of the people using programs like Decrypter are using them to make copies of movies they rent from their favorite dvd rental place (as my friend likes to call it PirateBuster).
Speak for yourself. I use it to make copies of my purchased DVDs so they no longer have restricted user actions. That way I can pop it in, hit menu when it starts showing the FBI warning and not have to sit through the FBI warning, the Company's logos, the Dolby or THX logo or whatever else crap they think I should be forced to watch on a DVD I bought. I don't even rent DVDs myself, if I like it I'll buy it, but I'm not going to watch their shit before the movie, that wasn't part of the deal.
So this is, in all honesty, not the real reason to be upset with the MPAA. They are just trying to protect their investments.
And what about my fair use rights? Do they get trumped by a business protecting their investments? They're not losing any money on my usage of the program, so what's their problem?
The issue isn't the MPAA trying to protect their investiments, it's about the MPAA _controlling_ when/where/how and on what you can play movies you _BUY_ from them.
This is crazy. Maybe I'm ignorant, but in order to be guilty of something there has to be an accusation at which point you should have access to a lawyer. How are they able to legally bypass your right to a lawyer prior to declaring guilt?
Extremely good question, I'm not entirely sure yet. I can probably dig the actual statute up with a bit more digging, but IANAL so I doubt I'll understand it all. I did find this little tidbit:
The Tennessee Implied Consent Statute (Tennessee Code Annotated 55-10-406) deems that any person who drives a motor vehicle in Tennessee has given consent to a chemical test (blood, breath or urine) to determine the drug or alcohol content of the person's blood. Such test may be requested if a law enforcement officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person is driving under the influence. A motorist does have a right to refuse to submit to a chemical test in most cases; however, such refusal normally results in the revocation of the person's driver's license. It is important to note that even if a person wins the DUI case, he or she may still lose the Implied Consent case, resulting in loss of license and, in some instances, mandatory jail time.
So I was told slightly wrong, they've made it a seperate law. It still doesn't seem like it'll hold up in the courts, but at least it's not as bad as I was originally told (FWIW, the instructor of the traffic safety class told us that the Implied Consent law meant that if you didn't submit to a breathalyzer test you would be found guilty of a DUI).
Pretty scary that you can go to jail just for refusing to take a breathalyzer/other test, even if you WIN the DUI case (in other words you weren't drunk in the first place). Looks like the _minimum_ penalty is to lose your license for one year (again even if you win the DUI case).
OK, it's not just my state, it's many of them and it's being encouraged by the Federal Government using grants and such, here's a bit of the info from this page. Some pretty scary stuff there, the courts routinely ignore 4th, 5th and 6th amendment arguments in DUI cases, so I was wrong about the law not holding up, seems the courts are ignoring constitutional issues in this area of the law.
Under an implied consent law, any person who operates a motor vehicle in the state is deemed to have consented to a DUI chemical test. The implied consent law serves as a means for gathering evidence against a DUI defendant. Although the implied consent law is legal, it fails to mask the law's foundational fallacy that a driver's presence on a state's highway indicates an agreement to submit to a chemical test for drugs or alcohol upon the lawful request of a police officer.
National DUI laws operate under the mistaken belief that revocation keeps DUI offenders from driving and thus is the most effective method of discouraging DUI offenders. This belief ignores the reality that revocation does not keep DUI offenders from driving. It only succeeds in taking the DUI offenders ability to drive legally.
Currently, the federal government funds grants to states that implement certain DUI prevention programs. As a direct result, many states have implemented summary driver's license suspension systems into their implied consent statutes for both failure of a chemical test and refusal to take a test. Under the guise of justice and public safety, states have managed to circumvent a suspected DUI offender's constitutional rights and legally discourage refusal of chemical testing.
Granted that page has a bias, but it's got some good points too. Please do read it yourself and make up your own mind. These kinds of things are hard to fight as if you do you get labeled as "supporting drunk driving and the killing of innocents". It's hard to have a sensible debate on the merits of a law when that happens.
his seems like a really weak defense and I'd be interested to know what the justifications the judges are using to make such a ruling. It seems analagous to DNA testing. Should a rape suspect be able to get off because he questioned how the DNA scanner works, and the court can't provide an answer?
Except the court can provide that answer, the methodology of how DNS testing is done, what alleles are matched, how many, etc. are all standard. The trade secret info comes into play as to how a company _builds_ their particular scanner. But the underlying methodology is the same, and more importantly it is
repeatable.
Another example that's more in line with the computer tech orientation here on/. When forensics are done on a hard drive there is a standard methodology. First of all you never work on the original drive, you clone it and it has to be a bit for bit copy, even the slack space must be copied. (Also you should get a drive of the same brand/make/model/size/etc. to clone to if at all possible.) Next you start the actual forensics. You must document every step you take, no matter how small. If you run forensics program X, you note that. If you search for something specific, say, "kill", you note that. Once you're done you have a complete document of every step taken to get the results you produce in court. Any lab can take a copy of that hard drive and reproduce those results and get the same answers. This allows the evidence to hold up in court.
Do note that hard drive forensics software companies have trade secrets too, but they don't impact the court case. The underlying methodologies (searching the entire hard drive, looking at the slack space to find deleted (aka unlinked) files or virtual memory fragments) is well understood. The trade secrets apply to how each company implements those functions. They may have an algorithm that more quickly searches the slack space, but that doesn't change what they're doing.
In this case the manufacturer is basically refusing to explain even how their devices can detect alcohol in the breath. That isn't a trade secret, it should be well understood and that's why the courts are letting these people go.
Frankly I don't understand why they don't find another manufacturer. This one seems to have something to hide. I wouldn't be surprised if their breathalyzers are far less accurate and/or produce high false-positives and they're trying to hide that info.
You are "asked" to take a breathalyzer test.
I understand why you put that in quotes but I wonder if everyone will. Some states, mine included, have "Implied Consent" laws. If you refuse to take a breathalyzer test you're charged with DUI. Yep, that's it, no proof, no questioning it, if you refuse you simply ARE guilty.
The only reason I know this is because I had to attend a traffic safety class a few months back. The law went into affect last year yet we never heard a peep about it from the newsmedia. I'm really disgusted about it myself, but also frightened. This is a major erosion of our rights yet it was somehow slipped under the radar and passed into law. Democracy my ass, and I actually do pay attention unlike a lot of people. Looks like to really know what crap your state (and probably federal too) congress is up to you need to read every single bill presented on your own, a task that's far too overwhelming for any individual who has a job/family/etc.
Old news for Nerds. Stuff that doesn't matter.
This is a rather universal sentiment nowadays, but the cliche that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it is quite often accurate. This applies to nerds as well, especially in technology. Looking at what was done with the Newton can help us understand why it failed and potentially help us to prevent similar problems from happening in future products.
"People assume that because it's open to everyone there'll be this mass movement of people making quality content that everyone can access, and I don't think that's true."
I don't think this is what anyone's assuming. The reality is that whatever content is out there that has an audience (or even just someone who wants to promote it) will end up showing up on Torrents. This is already happening, episodes of TV shows go up shortly after airing for instance.
So no we don't assume that quality content will be made just to put on BitTorrent, but was can already safely say that all quality content will end up there, whether it's legal or not. Smart content producers will try to tap into this, it's an enourmous audience after all. I expect we'll see more of the same from the MPAA though, instead of trying to adapt to the new technology they'll just continue to sue everyone instead. What a waste of money.
Dude, Kirk lived. Check out Amazon for Shatner written trek books. At least 2 of them take place AFTER the events of THE RETURN.
Ick, no thanks, I'll take your word for it. The first one was bad enough, I don't want to subject myself to more Shatner written novels.:)
The paper was published in 2003 and was cited twice in total - by themselves (I just checked Web of Science).
If there would be a real advancement behind this, many people would use it. Sad but true, but they sound like quacks.
A lot of real breakthroughs sound highly suspicious at first and scientists are just as human as the rest of us and not nearly as open-minded as we'd like to think. For example, the guys who were expousing for years that ulcers were caused by bacteria (
info here.) They were dismissed as quacks, but then years later enough research was finally done that they discovered that they were right.
So maybe they sound like quacks today, but a decade from now they may be heros. I'm inclined to keep an open mind, they're not saying this is a sure thing, only that the one human trial was successful and more research needs to be done before they can say if it's a breakthrough or not. Frankly I hope it works out, I watched an uncle die from cancer, no one should have to experience that. (Either the cancer or watching a loved one waste away in front of your eyes.)
Of course Shatner would write his own character back into the Star Trek universe. I call shennanegans!
Well to be fair he killed him back off in the end, but he took out the Borg in the process. Total deus-ex-machina and a really lousy novel. Hell, Tek War was better, by far!
Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun?
I can't remember which episode but I disctinctly remember the Enterprise having this and hiding in the corona of the sun. I remember someone in command (actually I think it was Beverly, what episodes did she get command in, can't be many?) asking about the status of "the metaphasic shielding". So it did make a reappearance at least once.
What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous?
Be fair here, for the remainder of that season we kept hearing about the warp speed restrictions. Important missions would include the proviso that they were authorized to exceed warp speed limits for the duration of the mission. For instance the episode where they were sent to retrieve the phased-cloak. Of course there's another thing we didn't hear about again, although since that was mid-7th season of TNG _AND_ it was against a treaty the Federation had made with the Romulans to research such things it probably didn't get developed any further. Oh yeah, one last bit on the warp drive damaging space/time, the Voyager had "green" warp engines developed to specifically address the problem and not cause any damage to the space/time continuum.
Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest.
I think it needs better leadership but could still be good. Sure it'll cause questions like yours for past stuff but they could just start out and say "OK, no using any of the omnipotent races, any technologies introduced have to be integrated into the show as it goes along and no particle of the week stories" and stick to it. Then we'd see better writing and a decent show. The Star Trek universe is full of really fascinating stuff after all, it just has been shoveled on screen without much thought a lot though.
but last time I checked the Patiot Act didn't pass with a narrow margin
No it didn't, but many congressmen (and women) have said afterward, repeatedly, that they were pressured into voting for it and given almost no time at all to review it. Many voted for it without having read more than a few pages. The pressure of 9/11 was used to force congress to pass the PATRIOT act without allowing them time to debate it. So yeah it was voted for near unaminously but even congress wasn't terribly happy about it. Try including all the facts instead of only the ones that paint the viewpoint you're shooting for.
and it doesn't look like it is going to pass with a narrow margin again this time.
Only portions of the act are up for renewal, very few in fact. The bulk of it is still intact and would take new legislation to remove it. Also it's by no means certain those portions up for renewal will pass, and even if they do it won't be so quick and easy. Numerous congresscritters have publically stated that they will _NOT_ be put in the same situation again and will be invesigating this fully before deciding this time. Multiple hearings have already been scheduled and many already completed.
So for all you liberal's out there that say my guy would never vote for this, and Bush is evil because he did. Check the vote records for this back in 2001. It's all posted on the Library of Congress website.
Exactly why do you assume it's only liberals who oppose the PATRIOT act? There's at least a couple of republican congresscritters who do. It's by no means a straight party line as to who supports and opposes it. When it's actually explained to someone, they generally don't support many of its provisions. Even idiots realize secret searchs without any oversight are dangerous.
You may say the article is biased, but frankly you're showing far more bias than it does. Also everything is biased, you have to realize this and learn to read the bias as well so you can make up your own mind. Personally I support some sections of the PATRIOT act and not others. If I had to chose between the whole thing going to get rid of the worst sections I'd err on the side of caution and say yes, it should be removed. As Benjamin Franklin said "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
And frankly, do you really feel more secure now than you did before the PATRIOT act was passed? I don't, at best I feel I have the same level of security, at worst I have a new enemy -- my own government who treats me like a criminal in the name of "fighting terrorism".
I'm so glad that the "keep-the-government-out-of-people's-lives" party is in power.
This is why I always hope for at least a divided congress (one house controlled by each party) or a congress controlled by the party opposite of the president's. It's a lot harder to railroad legislation through when everyone's determined to fight each other. Granted they still run some horrid stuff through but it takes them longer and they're distracted by petty political squabbles a lot.
if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?
My answer to that one always is "then why do you want to see my information?" It's a good question and can't be answered. If there's no reason to suspect me there's no reason to want to see my data.
Of course the feds conveniently ignore little annoying things like facts.
...that no one will want to live here anymore.
Not to be fatalistic but given the way things have been going the last 10 years or so does anyone really feel totally happy living here now? There's not really anywhere to go to escape much of the crap unfortunately (corporations are everywhere). This will all run its course, eventually someday the corporations will end up fighting each other because there's nothing left to milk out of the people. That's probably what WWIII will be -- megacorporations fielding their own private militaries and destroying the world.
It's about getting blackmail data on government officials to force them to do what the Administration wants.
I doubt it, most of the incriminating stuff probably occurs on the networks of the house & senate offices so the administration could come by it quite easy. Remember the controversy over an aide accessing data they weren't supposed to?
In the United States the law is so hopelessly complex, the enforcement so arbitrary, and adherence to the concept of checks and balances is such a farce that very few people are entirely sure of the legality of all their actions. Or what the consequences would be.
Actually it's getting easier to figure it out, all you have to ask is "Will this make some corporation mad?" if the answer is yes then it's probably against the law or soon will be. Also the consequences will be quite dire, you'd be better off murdering someone.
To live in the United States without having a law degree or the money to employ someone with one full-time is to be a second-class citizen.
Frankly I think we're below second-class, we're tolerated as necessary only because we buy the products the corporations make. If it wasn't for that we'd probably be in deep shit.
I have read of this before, but it is very strange that in a democracy (?) laws for the popluation can be discussed/made by not letting the population know about them.
Welcome to the US of the 21st century where controversial bills are passed as riders to defense spending bills and passed by voice vote (so there's no record of who voted for or against). This has been going on for some time, but it has increased dramtically under Bush's administration, and not all of it after 9/11/2001. After 9/11 almost anything goes of course. Torture's been determined legal, secret searches are fine, but hey at least we caught Bin Laden right? Oh wait we didn't...
Does'nt this seem *too* close to a dictatorship - not that the US is one, but it increasingly is seeming that certain aspects are going in that direction
It's not just certain aspects, our entire government seems to be happily heading towards either dictatorship or fascism controlled by the corporations. Many feel that the latter has already occurred and it's just a matter of time before the whole semblance of government by the people is dropped.
What do I think? All I know is that it certainly feels like whatever any corporation wants they get, but whatever I want (and others like me want), even when it's constitutional freedoms, I don't get it because it would inconvenience some corporation. So I'd have to say we're well down that road to control by corporations and I wouldn't be surprised to see congress and the courts dissolved and the presidency turned into a dictatorship in my lifetime.
I don't want to work with somebody that cuts corners and refuses to play by the rules - what happens when it's a big contract and they decide to "see if we won?" or decide to see if "x is really going to buy Y?"
Sorry, no, you have the wrong idea here. This would be akin to checking to see if the deposit from a contract had come through yet so that it could be used to do more work. This isn't like they were trying to obtain information they weren't entitled to know. It was them just seeing if they had been accepted or not. Most probably didn't realize they were doing anything wrong. Also knowing if this was wrong or not takes someone much more technically oriented than most business school applicants are going to be. They weren't trying to get into the CS or EE program after all. I don't expect managers to have a freaking clue about security unless they're over IT. Even then I don't really expect it, technical knowledge and management seem to be mutually exclusive things.
And, frankly, these "legitimate companies" should do more to prevent the use of their services for fraudulent purposes. Say, writing a script to search though the hosted material for the phrase "bank account" and flag any occurrences for human review.
Better yet set up some honeypots and feed addresses out there to monitor for phishing E-mails. I'm sure some of the groups doing honeypot research would be more than happy to let banks put up some E-mail addresses too. Then they can actually have a real (gasp!) human monitor the addresses for phishing attacks against their own site at least and act quickly when they see them come in. Granted they'd need to use non-bank domains for their addresses but that shouldn't be hard to arrange. Hell I'd happily set up some addresses for them under my own domains for free if it'd help them out! I suspect lots of others would as well.
What do you think those infinite number of monkeys are doing when not trying to bang out Shakespeare?
Flinging infinite amounts of their own feces? Hey, that would explain a lot of the movies that come out each year!
This is just a sense of entitlement, a lighting guy says he deserve $X, except that there are like 20 others who will accept less than $X, why should he get paid what he wants... just because he said so? Why should he even be able to make a good living in lighting just because that's the job he wanted? Work out of love for the job or work for money, if you can get both you're very lucky.
But if this is the case then it's the market of available people willing to do lighting work that decides what they are paid, and piracy of the final product doesn't come into play. By your logic the studios can't pay less than the minimum acceptable amount (which will be defined by the lowest amount that any one individual in this pool of lighting folks will accept) so piracy is irrelevant to what they get paid. Yet the movie industry claims differently. By the time a movie is completed and can be pirated all the "little folks" have been paid for their work. The piracy only cuts into the profits that the _studio_ and probably executives there get, not what the people doing the manual labor get.
Basically if downloading a movie costs anyone anything, it's the executives who are losing money. Of course that wouldn't have as much of an emotional reaction as claiming some poor lighting guy is losing out. The movie studios are great at marketing and spin, and this is a prime example.
I'm not saying the guy accused of the crime shouldn't produce keys, he obviously was doing something totally heinous by photographing a 9 year old in sexual position, and then those pictures destroyed. Predators of this nature are f-ing sick creatures that need some bad rehabilitation.
In the US I don't think you can be forced to hand over your encryption keys as the 5th amendment applies. So from a stance of what is and is not allowed by the US constitution, no he shouldn't (and likely can't) be made to turn over his encryption keys. The nature of the crime isn't important, the precedent would have horrid implications for all of us. Personally I'm not willing to give up my 5th amendment rights even if this guy did everything he's accused of. They'll just have to find another way to convict him that doesn't trample his rights.
I should note that I agree about people of this nature needing rehabilitation (and using the word predator is in bad form, you've already convicted him of the crime and are using an emotionally charged word to draw negative responses towards him, whether intentionally or not) but the US justice system has an extremely poor track record of rehabilitation for ALL criminals across all areas of crime. They're even worse when it comes to dangerous sex offenders (leaving out the statutory rape and mooning offenses here). The advent of Megan's Laws has made the situation worse -- requiring sex offenders to register is seen as a way of keeping them in check, whereas the reality is it just makes it a tad easier to find suspects when some child goes missing.
If we, as a society, really want to stop this type of stuff we need to invest in really working on rehabilitation and treatments. The current standard treatments are all positive and negative reinforcement routines and those require the active cooperation of the offender (so if they want to lie about what they're thinking the treatment will have no effect).
Personally, I've never heard of word of mouth (based on content) resulting in an institutional subscription.
How do you think the libraries at Universities decide what academic journals to subscribe to and not? They rely on the requests they get from professors (and to a smaller extent students, particularly graduate students doing research). So yes, word of mouth does decide subscriptions to academic journals as well. If the journal publishes useless stuff, word of mouth will lead to university libraries dropping it and replacing it with something they don't currently subscribe to but are getting lots of requests for.
Granted it works slightly different than the grandparent's post regarding how fiction spreads but it has the same net effect -- more sales for journals (or books) that are really good and useful (or great entertainment).
I do have some real insight into this, I served on the Dean of Libraries student advistory committee one year while I was in college. Doing so was quite enlightening, and you'd be surprised how much a small committee of students like that can get changed if the Dean of Libraries is really listening (which ours was, and in my experience most librarians listen to complaints/suggestions/etc. quite well as they feel their job is to provide the information needed by others.)
You can't build whatever just because it strikes your fancy if it brings down the value of other people's property.
I think the real question should be why does some strange contraption built next door on property that is not PART of the property in question cause the adjoining property to lose value because of it? I mean seriously, you can build a privacy fence so you don't have to see the eyesore. I can understand more about atrocities in the front yard, but the back yard out of view from the street shouldn't lower property values for the surrounding properties.
Perhaps the real problem is that we insist on defining property value not as the value of that actual property but that property along with surrounding property as well. This creates the situations where community organizations go nutzo and start requiring absolutely asinine things for the community members. (And I consider requiring all houses to be painted one of a small set of colors to be asinine. There are plenty of colors you can paint a house besides white, grey and brown and it still look quite nice.)
By the way, years ago I read an article somewhere that explained that metal springs in a bed could pick up RF energy and worse, resonate. In one rare case a local radio station antenna had provided enough energy that a resonant set of bedsprings apparently sparked and caused a fire. Admittedly a very rare situation. Sometimes when grounding in a building is incorrect or the connection corroded, wiring can pick up RF and strange things happen inside. So it's not so nutcase as you might think to be prudent about RF pollution.
In one apartment I lived in years ago I would get hit with sporadic high energy RF energy of some sort. It appeared to be related to Ham radio or perhaps the local emergency services radio channels as I could tell there were people speaking when this happened but it wouldn't last more than 5-10 seconds at a time so I never could make out more than a few words. When it happened though the signal was powerful enough to cause speakers in my apartment to play the sound back! This would happen with non-powered speakers connected to the stereo (which was turned off), and on the powered ones on my PC (both turned on and off). Once it actually caused my PC to interpret the signal as mouse movements including a right click on the desktop. Frankly I was (and still am) worried about it, anything with enough power to cause those types of activities couldn't be healthy. I'm just glad it wasn't continous.
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The issue isn't the MPAA trying to protect their investiments, it's about the MPAA _controlling_ when/where/how and on what you can play movies you _BUY_ from them.
So I was told slightly wrong, they've made it a seperate law. It still doesn't seem like it'll hold up in the courts, but at least it's not as bad as I was originally told (FWIW, the instructor of the traffic safety class told us that the Implied Consent law meant that if you didn't submit to a breathalyzer test you would be found guilty of a DUI).
Pretty scary that you can go to jail just for refusing to take a breathalyzer/other test, even if you WIN the DUI case (in other words you weren't drunk in the first place). Looks like the _minimum_ penalty is to lose your license for one year (again even if you win the DUI case).
OK, it's not just my state, it's many of them and it's being encouraged by the Federal Government using grants and such, here's a bit of the info from this page. Some pretty scary stuff there, the courts routinely ignore 4th, 5th and 6th amendment arguments in DUI cases, so I was wrong about the law not holding up, seems the courts are ignoring constitutional issues in this area of the law.
Under an implied consent law, any person who operates a motor vehicle in the state is deemed to have consented to a DUI chemical test. The implied consent law serves as a means for gathering evidence against a DUI defendant. Although the implied consent law is legal, it fails to mask the law's foundational fallacy that a driver's presence on a state's highway indicates an agreement to submit to a chemical test for drugs or alcohol upon the lawful request of a police officer.National DUI laws operate under the mistaken belief that revocation keeps DUI offenders from driving and thus is the most effective method of discouraging DUI offenders. This belief ignores the reality that revocation does not keep DUI offenders from driving. It only succeeds in taking the DUI offenders ability to drive legally.
Currently, the federal government funds grants to states that implement certain DUI prevention programs. As a direct result, many states have implemented summary driver's license suspension systems into their implied consent statutes for both failure of a chemical test and refusal to take a test. Under the guise of justice and public safety, states have managed to circumvent a suspected DUI offender's constitutional rights and legally discourage refusal of chemical testing.
Granted that page has a bias, but it's got some good points too. Please do read it yourself and make up your own mind. These kinds of things are hard to fight as if you do you get labeled as "supporting drunk driving and the killing of innocents". It's hard to have a sensible debate on the merits of a law when that happens.
Also I really do
Another example that's more in line with the computer tech orientation here on /. When forensics are done on a hard drive there is a standard methodology. First of all you never work on the original drive, you clone it and it has to be a bit for bit copy, even the slack space must be copied. (Also you should get a drive of the same brand/make/model/size/etc. to clone to if at all possible.) Next you start the actual forensics. You must document every step you take, no matter how small. If you run forensics program X, you note that. If you search for something specific, say, "kill", you note that. Once you're done you have a complete document of every step taken to get the results you produce in court. Any lab can take a copy of that hard drive and reproduce those results and get the same answers. This allows the evidence to hold up in court.
Do note that hard drive forensics software companies have trade secrets too, but they don't impact the court case. The underlying methodologies (searching the entire hard drive, looking at the slack space to find deleted (aka unlinked) files or virtual memory fragments) is well understood. The trade secrets apply to how each company implements those functions. They may have an algorithm that more quickly searches the slack space, but that doesn't change what they're doing.
In this case the manufacturer is basically refusing to explain even how their devices can detect alcohol in the breath. That isn't a trade secret, it should be well understood and that's why the courts are letting these people go.
Frankly I don't understand why they don't find another manufacturer. This one seems to have something to hide. I wouldn't be surprised if their breathalyzers are far less accurate and/or produce high false-positives and they're trying to hide that info.
The only reason I know this is because I had to attend a traffic safety class a few months back. The law went into affect last year yet we never heard a peep about it from the newsmedia. I'm really disgusted about it myself, but also frightened. This is a major erosion of our rights yet it was somehow slipped under the radar and passed into law. Democracy my ass, and I actually do pay attention unlike a lot of people. Looks like to really know what crap your state (and probably federal too) congress is up to you need to read every single bill presented on your own, a task that's far too overwhelming for any individual who has a job/family/etc.
Old news for Nerds. Stuff that doesn't matter. This is a rather universal sentiment nowadays, but the cliche that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it is quite often accurate. This applies to nerds as well, especially in technology. Looking at what was done with the Newton can help us understand why it failed and potentially help us to prevent similar problems from happening in future products.
So no we don't assume that quality content will be made just to put on BitTorrent, but was can already safely say that all quality content will end up there, whether it's legal or not. Smart content producers will try to tap into this, it's an enourmous audience after all. I expect we'll see more of the same from the MPAA though, instead of trying to adapt to the new technology they'll just continue to sue everyone instead. What a waste of money.
Dude, Kirk lived. Check out Amazon for Shatner written trek books. At least 2 of them take place AFTER the events of THE RETURN. Ick, no thanks, I'll take your word for it. The first one was bad enough, I don't want to subject myself to more Shatner written novels. :)
So maybe they sound like quacks today, but a decade from now they may be heros. I'm inclined to keep an open mind, they're not saying this is a sure thing, only that the one human trial was successful and more research needs to be done before they can say if it's a breakthrough or not. Frankly I hope it works out, I watched an uncle die from cancer, no one should have to experience that. (Either the cancer or watching a loved one waste away in front of your eyes.)
Of course Shatner would write his own character back into the Star Trek universe. I call shennanegans! Well to be fair he killed him back off in the end, but he took out the Borg in the process. Total deus-ex-machina and a really lousy novel. Hell, Tek War was better, by far!
Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun? I can't remember which episode but I disctinctly remember the Enterprise having this and hiding in the corona of the sun. I remember someone in command (actually I think it was Beverly, what episodes did she get command in, can't be many?) asking about the status of "the metaphasic shielding". So it did make a reappearance at least once. What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous? Be fair here, for the remainder of that season we kept hearing about the warp speed restrictions. Important missions would include the proviso that they were authorized to exceed warp speed limits for the duration of the mission. For instance the episode where they were sent to retrieve the phased-cloak. Of course there's another thing we didn't hear about again, although since that was mid-7th season of TNG _AND_ it was against a treaty the Federation had made with the Romulans to research such things it probably didn't get developed any further. Oh yeah, one last bit on the warp drive damaging space/time, the Voyager had "green" warp engines developed to specifically address the problem and not cause any damage to the space/time continuum. Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest. I think it needs better leadership but could still be good. Sure it'll cause questions like yours for past stuff but they could just start out and say "OK, no using any of the omnipotent races, any technologies introduced have to be integrated into the show as it goes along and no particle of the week stories" and stick to it. Then we'd see better writing and a decent show. The Star Trek universe is full of really fascinating stuff after all, it just has been shoveled on screen without much thought a lot though.
You may say the article is biased, but frankly you're showing far more bias than it does. Also everything is biased, you have to realize this and learn to read the bias as well so you can make up your own mind. Personally I support some sections of the PATRIOT act and not others. If I had to chose between the whole thing going to get rid of the worst sections I'd err on the side of caution and say yes, it should be removed. As Benjamin Franklin said "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
And frankly, do you really feel more secure now than you did before the PATRIOT act was passed? I don't, at best I feel I have the same level of security, at worst I have a new enemy -- my own government who treats me like a criminal in the name of "fighting terrorism".
I'm so glad that the "keep-the-government-out-of-people's-lives" party is in power. This is why I always hope for at least a divided congress (one house controlled by each party) or a congress controlled by the party opposite of the president's. It's a lot harder to railroad legislation through when everyone's determined to fight each other. Granted they still run some horrid stuff through but it takes them longer and they're distracted by petty political squabbles a lot.
Of course the feds conveniently ignore little annoying things like facts.
It's about getting blackmail data on government officials to force them to do what the Administration wants. I doubt it, most of the incriminating stuff probably occurs on the networks of the house & senate offices so the administration could come by it quite easy. Remember the controversy over an aide accessing data they weren't supposed to?
In the United States the law is so hopelessly complex, the enforcement so arbitrary, and adherence to the concept of checks and balances is such a farce that very few people are entirely sure of the legality of all their actions. Or what the consequences would be. Actually it's getting easier to figure it out, all you have to ask is "Will this make some corporation mad?" if the answer is yes then it's probably against the law or soon will be. Also the consequences will be quite dire, you'd be better off murdering someone. To live in the United States without having a law degree or the money to employ someone with one full-time is to be a second-class citizen. Frankly I think we're below second-class, we're tolerated as necessary only because we buy the products the corporations make. If it wasn't for that we'd probably be in deep shit.
What do I think? All I know is that it certainly feels like whatever any corporation wants they get, but whatever I want (and others like me want), even when it's constitutional freedoms, I don't get it because it would inconvenience some corporation. So I'd have to say we're well down that road to control by corporations and I wouldn't be surprised to see congress and the courts dissolved and the presidency turned into a dictatorship in my lifetime.
I don't want to work with somebody that cuts corners and refuses to play by the rules - what happens when it's a big contract and they decide to "see if we won?" or decide to see if "x is really going to buy Y?" Sorry, no, you have the wrong idea here. This would be akin to checking to see if the deposit from a contract had come through yet so that it could be used to do more work. This isn't like they were trying to obtain information they weren't entitled to know. It was them just seeing if they had been accepted or not. Most probably didn't realize they were doing anything wrong. Also knowing if this was wrong or not takes someone much more technically oriented than most business school applicants are going to be. They weren't trying to get into the CS or EE program after all. I don't expect managers to have a freaking clue about security unless they're over IT. Even then I don't really expect it, technical knowledge and management seem to be mutually exclusive things.
But that'd probably be too easy.
What do you think those infinite number of monkeys are doing when not trying to bang out Shakespeare? Flinging infinite amounts of their own feces? Hey, that would explain a lot of the movies that come out each year!
Basically if downloading a movie costs anyone anything, it's the executives who are losing money. Of course that wouldn't have as much of an emotional reaction as claiming some poor lighting guy is losing out. The movie studios are great at marketing and spin, and this is a prime example.
I should note that I agree about people of this nature needing rehabilitation (and using the word predator is in bad form, you've already convicted him of the crime and are using an emotionally charged word to draw negative responses towards him, whether intentionally or not) but the US justice system has an extremely poor track record of rehabilitation for ALL criminals across all areas of crime. They're even worse when it comes to dangerous sex offenders (leaving out the statutory rape and mooning offenses here). The advent of Megan's Laws has made the situation worse -- requiring sex offenders to register is seen as a way of keeping them in check, whereas the reality is it just makes it a tad easier to find suspects when some child goes missing.
If we, as a society, really want to stop this type of stuff we need to invest in really working on rehabilitation and treatments. The current standard treatments are all positive and negative reinforcement routines and those require the active cooperation of the offender (so if they want to lie about what they're thinking the treatment will have no effect).
Granted it works slightly different than the grandparent's post regarding how fiction spreads but it has the same net effect -- more sales for journals (or books) that are really good and useful (or great entertainment).
I do have some real insight into this, I served on the Dean of Libraries student advistory committee one year while I was in college. Doing so was quite enlightening, and you'd be surprised how much a small committee of students like that can get changed if the Dean of Libraries is really listening (which ours was, and in my experience most librarians listen to complaints/suggestions/etc. quite well as they feel their job is to provide the information needed by others.)
Perhaps the real problem is that we insist on defining property value not as the value of that actual property but that property along with surrounding property as well. This creates the situations where community organizations go nutzo and start requiring absolutely asinine things for the community members. (And I consider requiring all houses to be painted one of a small set of colors to be asinine. There are plenty of colors you can paint a house besides white, grey and brown and it still look quite nice.)
By the way, years ago I read an article somewhere that explained that metal springs in a bed could pick up RF energy and worse, resonate. In one rare case a local radio station antenna had provided enough energy that a resonant set of bedsprings apparently sparked and caused a fire. Admittedly a very rare situation. Sometimes when grounding in a building is incorrect or the connection corroded, wiring can pick up RF and strange things happen inside. So it's not so nutcase as you might think to be prudent about RF pollution. In one apartment I lived in years ago I would get hit with sporadic high energy RF energy of some sort. It appeared to be related to Ham radio or perhaps the local emergency services radio channels as I could tell there were people speaking when this happened but it wouldn't last more than 5-10 seconds at a time so I never could make out more than a few words. When it happened though the signal was powerful enough to cause speakers in my apartment to play the sound back! This would happen with non-powered speakers connected to the stereo (which was turned off), and on the powered ones on my PC (both turned on and off). Once it actually caused my PC to interpret the signal as mouse movements including a right click on the desktop. Frankly I was (and still am) worried about it, anything with enough power to cause those types of activities couldn't be healthy. I'm just glad it wasn't continous.