....so now facebook is big enough to buy judges. And the reign of the corporate overlords continues. *yawn*
As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, in this case it sounds like this guy is a total scam artist. Facebook hired a linguistics expert to compare the E-mails Ceglia claims prove his case against known E-mails written by Zuckerberg during the same time period. The results are not encouraging for Ceglia, and are quite convincing. There's some significant differences in writing style, and there's well established research that writing styles are mostly fixed, people write the same way routinely unless deliberately trying to do otherwise. You'd have to believe that Zuckerberg deliberately wrote differently in the Ceglia E-mails, something which is very hard to buy into. After that his lawyers resigned on him, a very, very bad sign for him. Sounds like the judge concurs, he's not buying it either.
I happen to have witnessed personally that Firefox 5 cannot run the PDF Forge toolbar while 4 could. I just ran into that problem at my work for the few firefox users. So it is technically possible considering the huge coincidental timing of that.
If he had Firefox, and was using Windows (most likely) he also had Internet Explorer to fall back on. What are the chances that both browsers would stop working with the filing system on the same day? Not looking good is it? Why didn't he try using a colleague's PC instead? Odds are getting even lower here aren't they? There's just too many ways he could have gotten around this that it's very, very hard to believe. Plus, Righthaven's not exactly got a good track record of respect for the courts, which is why they were having to file this response in the first place. So, you'll have to forgive us if we fail to give them the benefit of the doubt, they've kinda lost all credibility a long time ago.
Righthaven wanted to do this stuff in bulk, un its own name, without crossing each T and dotting each I, and it doesn't work that way.
No, the newspaper group/company was involved in this highly and the real plan was that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to sue and try to get money the way Righthaven's been doing, but... they wanted to avoid any financial liability to themselves in the process. So they provided seed money to setup Righthaven, and then setup an agreement where they only gave Righthaven the right to sue for their copyrights. The newspaper company kept ownership of the copyrights, and if Righthaven's scheme failed, then the newspaper company couldn't be hit with sanctions and/or lawsuits because Righthaven did the suing, not them, honest!
But it's not working out that way for them. Righthaven seems to be run by lawyers who got their bar license from a Cracker Jack box who have committed numerous and serious mistakes. Failing to reveal that the newspaper company had a pecuniary interest in the lawsuits is getting them into major, major trouble, as is not actually owning the copyrights. And at least one person that Righthaven targeted has filed a counter-suit against both Righthaven AND the newspaper company. Personally I hope the counter-suit gets to go forward and that more of those targeted join in and go after the newspaper company too. This whole thing appears to have been their brainchild, not Righthaven's founder, and they were deliberately trying to game the courts.
Preventing people from downloading free versions of copyrighted material is not censorship. If I want to see Fast and Furious 5 (or whatever) I can go to the cinema, get it on DVD, watch it on Sky or whatever. I do not have a human right to be able to downloaded it for no cost at my convenience.
Not everything on Usenet (not even all the binary stuff) is illegal copies of copyrighted materials. There's plenty of legal stuff too. So yes, trying to make an ISP block an entire site is censorship. Especially since none of that material is actually available from Newzbin2. You can get NZB files from it, which you'll need to use with an actual Usenet provider to download anything illegal. Newzbin2 is basically an index, nothing more, it's not even quite equivalent to a torrent tracker because you can't connect directly to Usenet to get the stuff via the site. The NZB files just tell your Usenet client how to ask a Usenet server to find them for you.
How many of those 25k affiliates "forgot" to include their affiliate income?
Even if this is true, this is Amazon's problem how exactly? Perhaps if the goal is really to catch those lying on their taxes then a law requiring companies to report affiliate income paid to CA residents would be a more appropriate solution. Not that such a law would be without issues, as it attempts to impose a regulatory burden (compiling those reports isn't free) on a company that has no physical presence in California.
And frankly, I think you overestimate how big a problem this is. Most people running a website as a business are going to be honest with their taxes. It's just not worth the risk to lie or fail to report, and it's not like most of those affiliates are raking in huge amounts of money.
How many others were so insubstantial that no income tax was owing?
So... they made so little money that the state was owed nothing anyway and this is a problem how? Amazon's supposed to pay taxes that the affiliate wouldn't have owed anyway just to prop up California's government for the hell of it? Did you even think about what you're saying at all here? It makes no sense, this isn't an issue at all.
It's the same problem with ebay, and the crack-down is inevitable. Let them compete on an equal footing with the locals, and each will win their fair market share based on price, product, and service.
Instead, local business is indirectly subsidizing Amazon by carrying a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
Sounds more like you're expecting people to pay taxes they don't actually owe just because of some hand-waving. What tax burden? If they weren't making enough to owe taxes anyway the state's already declared that activity as not being a burden (or at least, not enough of one) to bother taxing the individual. If the person's lying on their taxes, the issue is with the person who's doing the lying, not Amazon/eBay/etc. This isn't a crack down, it's a money grab, pure and simple.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.
It's not my fault if a company decides to violate the law and be a spammer, even if it's accidental. I'm flagging something that is spam (no way to opt out) as spam. If this means the business' legit customers are hurt, it's the business' fault for doing things wrong, not mine. They need to learn to get their act together, and it's not my place to teach them, so I flag it as the spam that it is and go on with my life.
For what it's worth, I'd also be pissed at a business I was a legit customer of for handling their E-mail that way, simply because I know there's a good chance they're going to end up with their E-mails marked as spam.
If you have kids, then you have a right to talk. Otherwise, take your attitude and STFU.
So tell me, what is it about parenthood that makes you suddenly decide that everyone without children's opinions are worthless? Seriously, this little attitude you copped is very, VERY common with parents demanding that anything and everything be censored to protect their kids without any concern (or respect) for adults who disagree with their opinion. And of course, as you said yourself, if those adults don't have kids then they have "no right to talk", their opinions, rights, etc. are all totally irrelevant because they haven't bothered to reproduce (yet).
I tell you, frankly, is that's what parenthood does to you, then I don't freaking want to be a parent. I prefer keeping my sanity and my respect for others' opinions and rights. You, as a parent, have a right to your opinion. You have no right to demand things that will infringe on my rights in the name of protecting your kids. If you want them safe online it's YOUR responsibility.
As for someone having an attitude, yeah, well, what I quoted up there shows you're the one copping an attitude. Having reproduced doesn't make you special.
If you do and they are legitimate emails, then you'll be training your filter (or worse, everybody's filter, if you use a web-based client) to flag real emails.
When I get E-mails misdirected because some bozo used my E-mail address by mistake from a business and there's no "was this a mistake, click here to opt out" it gets flagged as spam. I don't give a damn if it's the business' mistake or the user's mistake in giving the address, but with 1. no confirmation of the address and 2. no opt-out, I consider it spam at that point. Legitimate businesses do at least one of the 2, most do both. Failure to do either means it's no longer my problem if all your E-mail starts getting spam-filtered at the provider. In fact, I hope it does, just to teach the business a lesson in proper E-mail mailing list etiquette. Besides, I'm pretty certain that not having an opt-out available violates the CAN-SPAM act, so they're not only morons, they're probably breaking the law. (I've never received misdirected E-mails from non-US businesses.)
If the business has done things properly and there's an opt-out I will take the time to opt-out. If it's an E-mail trying to confirm the address I delete it unless it's one of those "if you want to continue receiving messages from us do nothing", then I do whatever's necessary to prevent them from considering the address confirmed. Other than that, I tend to delete most of it. Some things I inform the sender just because I see potential problems if they continue to send stuff to me. (Like the teacher who was E-mailing me about someone's kid. I nipped that on in the bud ASAP before she inadvertently told me anything potentially confidential about the kid.)
Frankly, the Wikipedia link isn't a problem, the failure to link to anything but a PDF document besides that is. The entire article is basically the summary, which doesn't contain much information. (Basically just enough to allow someone to go Google to find out what the hell the whole thing is about.) Not criticizing you necessarily, but this really needs links to something explaining what in the hell is going on.
By the time our porcine "protectors" figure out that smashing up the instrument rarely destroys the recording, we'll all have real-time internet-connected video cameras.
Some have, then they try and charge citizens who videotape them with violating state wire-tapping laws. One recent link, from Carlos Miller's Photography is not a Crime blog (he covers this type of thing extensively, and the Slashdot article links to one of his posts) as well as the Anthony Graber case from last year that got a lot of attention. After all, if you can't stop the recording, you can always punish the citizen who dared to record you doing your job out in public. Oh, and if you only read one of those links, read the one from last year. That case is a standout example of the new kind of police harassment over videotaping them in public.
There are a lot, an awful lot judging by the news if you follow it, of police who have a major, MAJOR issue with being recorded. And most of the time it's for good reason, they were doing something wrong and don't want any record of it. Other police support them, and often the district attorney's office will back them up (unless it gets enough public outrage to suddenly become politically untenable, then they'll change their minds). In Anthony Graber's case it took a judge to put a stop to the shenanigans, ruling that police have no expectation of privacy in a public setting and throwing out the charges. But that was in September, 6 months after the police charged the guy, seized all his computers, etc. And I can't find any information about anything happening to the cop who pulled his gun on Graber (without identifying himself as police officer first, or even being in uniform and all over minor traffic violations), so the police still won in that case.
Though used as a punishment, it doesn't really feel like one for the student who gets time to sit at home and play computer games. It's used as a way to get rid of unruly students who disrupt the teaching or pose a risk of violence to others, and as a way to make sure the parent knows very well just how much trouble that pupil is in.
Some schools nowadays use in-school suspension. The student is sent to a different facility and has to spend the day studying. No gaming, no reading books for fun, it's actual punishment.
The summery says: "Created the videos in his own time, off-campus."
The video says: "This was done up back in November of 2010, for an economics course project."
So I don't think its as independent from school as this summary wants to make you believe.
That doesn't mean the school owns them however, so they have no right to threaten him with calling the police over the videos if he didn't take them down, which the same article tells you they did (emphasis added):
He said his teachers had no problem with the content – one even lent his voice to an animation – and he didn’t get in trouble until he uploaded the videos to YouTube. He was swiftly given a one-day suspension. A few days later, his principal laid out an ultimatum: Take the videos down or the police would be called. He refused to budge.
And since they didn't have an issue with them when he did them for the class project (and a teacher even participated in them), they're going to have serious trouble trying to get anyone to believe they only felt like they were a threat to the school's moral values after they were put on YouTube. If they were truly a threat they should have done something when he made them for the class project.
So that has no bearing on the case. All the signs are that something in one (or more) of the videos made fun of the school principal and he's got a burr up his ass over it and is punishing the kid for refusing to bow to his perceived authority. (And given all the circumstances, I seriously doubt the school's going to win here. Their not doing anything when he presented them for the class project is going to damage any case they might have had irreparably. The fact that a teacher participated actively in one video will destroy any remaining chance they might have had.)
This is a real problem when trying to design a curriculum. You can't expect the students to have been taught programming, because most schools don't have anyone who's competent to teach it. Some will have taught themselves stuff (and probably picked up some bad habits along the way), some will not. The ones who are self taught will be bored for at least some of the first year, since everyone else will be catching up. Worse, they often assume that the fact that they already know some of the material means that they already know all of it, and get a nasty shock at exam time.
The real solution is for schools to employ people who are competent to teach programming, and for universities to make this a prerequisite, but I doubt that will happen.
When I got my CS degree, the university I went to had a very nice solution to this. The introductory CS course was optional, and was also used by non-majors (even some business majors) who needed to learn programming basics. It was most definitely not a sink or swim class, and having non-CS majors in there helped keep it that way. But if you thought you had enough programming knowledge that you didn't need it, you could skip to the next class, which was harder and was for CS majors only. You didn't even have to test out of it, you just decided what you wanted to do.
This worked just fine, so why don't other universities do something similar? The class wasn't required for the degree even, but it served to teach programming to those who didn't already know it prior to getting into the regular CS track courses. So it can definitely be done, even without it being a prerequisite, it's just that some universities (or at least their CS departments) don't want to bother.
Now as to employing people competent to teach programming, there's a serious problem with universities and teaching competency across the board, in every class, in every department. The focus is on research and publishing for professors, knowing how to teach (at all, much less well) is more or less ignored. This is something that desperately needs to be changed across the board, perhaps universities should require some training in teaching for all professors.
They didn't buy Ericsson. Sony Ericsson is a separate company, jointly owned by Sony and by Ericsson. And fortunately apparently not much infused with the Sony corporate misculture.
Doesn't matter, for many of us the sheer fact that Sony is in the company's name, along with Sony's past behavior, is enough to make us steer way, way clear of anything to do with the company. Besides, Sony obviously has some kind of stake in the company (given the name), so who's to say they wouldn't buy out Ericsson's stake in the future and take it over? Pretty much nothing, it's easily doable if Sony decides it wants to, and they're obviously interested in the venture or they wouldn't have a stake in it. So those of us that don't trust Sony at all will continue to avoid Sony Ericsson as well.
The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
That's not quite it, many of these people are perfectly capable of distinguishing the truth from fiction. It's just that they don't want to, because they don't like the truth for whatever reasons.
Do you honestly think that candidates are not thoroughly vetted for eligibility by the relevant government authorities?
One of the requirements for getting on the ballot in every state is proving your eligibility for the position. Obama had to do that in every state, so he's proven he's a citizen multiple times to the government. I'm sure the birthers will ignore that as well however.
Why is it that I have to present multiple forms of ID, my social security number, large amounts of contact info, and admit to any felonies just to get a job bagging groceries, but the person running for the highest office of one of the most powerful countries in the world does not have to produce a birth certificate to prove that they fulfill two of the basic requirements of holding the position (natural born citizenship and at least 35 years old)?
You have to release all that to the world at large to get a job bagging groceries? Wow, you really should go find somewhere else to get a job.
More seriously, that's the difference. You have to prove you're a citizen to get the job, but you only have to prove it the store hiring you. The general public (and the law) assumes that the store has done this so you're not questioned. And they have no right to demand that information from you directly just because they don't think you're qualified to be working there. Obama had to prove his citizenship at least 50 times to get on the ballot in all the states. That's a requirement by law in every state, along with other requirements. So he did prove he was a citizen, long before the question was even raised. And he did release his short firm birth certificate, which is legal proof of birth in every state in the union. He also didn't have to do that, but he did. And now he's released the long form too. Add in the fact that his birth was announced in the local newspaper in Hawaii (and is in the archives), and dozens, if not hundreds, or investigations by various media outlets all concluded the same damn thing (namely that he's most definitely a citizen and was born in Hawaii) and there's absolutely no reason to even suggest he's not a citizen any longer, and hasn't been for a looooooong time.
Those continuing to insist he isn't obviously have a reason for refusing to believe all this. Suggesting it's racism is fair game at this point. This has never happened for any other president, and the main difference with Obama is that he's African-American, and all the others were white. If they don't like being accused of racism, well, maybe they should stop ignoring all the evidence that's been out there for years.
My qualified guess is that the recent security breaches aren't in any way exceptions: Most likely Sony/SOE have had security problems for several months now and have tried to keep a lid on it. But as said, that's just my guess.
More likely they've been compromised for several months and either didn't know it, or refused to believe the reports of hacked accounts/etc. were anything other than customers being stupid.
I'm sure no one believes that this is not an example of vigilante justice being played out against Sony. This is deeply concerning.
I don't believe it is. This is too big, and too deep an intrusion to simply be people trying to get back at Sony for being royal assholes. This has all the makings of a large-scale criminal hack with the intention of obtaining lots of information on Sony's customers and (at least hopefully) their credit card information. And there have been reports from people that claim that the credit cards they used with PSN have been seeing unauthorized charges, so it's possible that those responsible for the break-in were successful. That the intrusion was apparently deeper than Sony originally suspected, and also impacted SOE's services puts Sony's assurances that the credit card data was encrypted and unlikely to have been obtained into question. What if the hackers managed to obtain the encryption keys? It's starting to sound like Sony's entire network may have been compromised so that's a definite possibility. And if you believe the security researcher Kevin Stevens, they absolutely were successful and have been trying to sell the credit card database.
So no, this isn't likely to be vigilante justice. It's most likely it was done for profit, and any ideas of screwing Sony over were a secondary objective, if any objective at all. Now I will buy that the hackers who did this may have been attracted by the PS3's root key being lost, but that would have been a case of "if their security is that bad in the PS3, maybe their network security sucks too and they're an easy target" kind of thing, not a vigilante attack idea.
Why would he be involved? Holtz is becoming a useless keyword to generate 'news'.
Stop pulling these stories off the hose just because there's nothing else interesting.
Lots of people have been blaming this on Hotz, either directly or indirectly. I've seen numerous people commenting to that effect on the stories Ars Technica has posted about the PSN being down. So I don't blame him for publicly stating he's not involved, and I don't blame/. for posting it. He deserves to clear his name.
If they win this round they will be back for more and more.
If history is any indication, even if they lose this round they'll be back with more and more FUD and anti-competitive behavior anyway. It's not like multiple anti-trust findings against them has stopped them yet, so why would losing this round?
B&N seems to be trying to claim that enforcing ones patents is an anti-trust violation, but patents are government sanctioned monopolies so that's a ridiculous argument. They seem to be throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
Actually, it's not that simple. They basically flat-out say, in addition to all that other stuff, that the Nook and Nook Color do not violate any of the patents that Microsoft is claiming they do. But they also point out that MS has a larger scheme and is doing things that are quite likely illegal in anti-trust law, plus they've done things that should invalidate one of the patents (deliberately withholding prior art). And they use MS's own claims against them, pointing out that MS claims their patents give them complete control over Android, and once you add up Android's market share in the mobile market + MS's own share + Nokia's (because of the MS/Nokia agreement) you'll reach.... 65% of the mobile market OS. Thus, anti-trust comes into play.
So it's a lot more subtle than what you're trying to claim, they're basically saying "we don't infringe on any of these patents at all; Microsoft is trying to abuse a monopoly position (by their own claims) to force competing OS's off the market; and oh yeah, they've been doing stuff that invalidates one of their patents too." It's more of a "we're pissed off and we're going to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at MS in retaliation for being assholes" than just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. They seem to have their defense covered very, very thoroughly.
Gotta say though, Microsoft's attempts to try to muddy the waters about a NDA was rather childish. B&N's lawyer even had to call them out on it and tell them to stop trying to muddy the record about a NDA. And they still tried again after that to claim something they sent was covered under the very narrowly crafted NDA from the December meeting (when it was obviously outside the scope of that agreement even to a non-lawyer). It's quite obvious MS doesn't want the truth to be known here, which is not the mark of someone with a legit complaint.
People are resistant to change. As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere. Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.
Yes, innovation needs to happen in user interfaces too, but the ribbon isn't it. It's also not an innovation, it's been around for a while now and still is one of the most hated/reviled features of MS Office. When your "innovation" in user interface design is near universally reviled by everyone who uses it, it's not an innovation, it's a failure. Continuing to try and force users to use it just pisses them off and actually holds back progress.
And how much people hate (and are confused by) the ribbon is underrated. My father, who's very much a computer neophyte and never complains about things like the user interface (he probably doesn't fully understand what the user interface is) has only complained to me about one UI feature: the ribbon in MS Office. I had to find him an old version of Office so he could have a version without it as he simply couldn't figure out how to do anything with the ribbon interface. He handled the switch from XP to Vista without any problems, but he can't cope with the ribbon at all. That's a serious UI failure.
AFAIK, there is no evidence that the tower data is being transmitted anywhere, so it is reasonable for Apple to say that they don't track anyone. They made a device that privately stores this data. I don't think anyone thinks that the way this data is being stored is the right way to do it, but just because the device stores that data, that doesn't mean that Apple is "tracking" you.
I think it's more the fact that the tracking data is preserved whenever you migrate to a new device that makes everyone think Apple potentially is using it. At the very least it suggests that Apple's going to extra lengths to make sure the data is retained across the life of the user, not the device, which certainly sounds like something done to track users.
So it's not just that the data exists that's causing concern, its the lengths Apple's gone to to make sure the data persists that's so worrying.
Interesting claim. In what form does "radiation" get released from a leaking fission power reactor that is not "contamination"? Like, bursts of pure gamma rays or something?
Chernobyl managed to eject into the environment many radioisotopes that have never been released before or since, stuff that normally stays as part of the fuel rods, even if they melt (it stays part of the corium formed when the rods melt). It also managed to aerosolize things like Plutonium which are very difficult to turn into an aerosol, and of course ejected that into the atmosphere. There's very little chance of that happening at Fukushima, one of the reactors would have to explode and complete vaporize its pressure shell and secondary containment shell in full to make it possible. The stuff leaking out in the water, while nasty, just isn't on the same level.
Everything I've read suggests that what has been released from Fukushima, and is still being released, is radioactive isotopes that can't help but be contamination. The land area over which the contamination is spread is smaller than Chernobyl owing to there being no graphite fire - but on the other hand, contaminated water is also leaking into the sea, with all that that implies for the fishing industry, which wasn't an issue for Chernobyl.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but the fact it's the ocean it's leaking into helps a lot because it'll end up highly diluted in fairly short order. The currents around Japan actually help with this. But they are focusing on trying to find and stop the leaks into the ocean and making doing so a priority so they're not ignoring the possibility. Also the contamination being limited to a small area makes a huge difference. It's easier to cleanup, or failing that, contain by limiting access to the contaminated area. Far easier than having to block off huge areas like the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
And while there's been talk about entombing the reactors, they'll probably be able to decommission them eventually. They decommissioned Three Mile Island and it had a partial core meltdown as well. It certainly makes the decommissioning process more difficult, but not impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
....so now facebook is big enough to buy judges. And the reign of the corporate overlords continues. *yawn*
As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, in this case it sounds like this guy is a total scam artist. Facebook hired a linguistics expert to compare the E-mails Ceglia claims prove his case against known E-mails written by Zuckerberg during the same time period. The results are not encouraging for Ceglia, and are quite convincing. There's some significant differences in writing style, and there's well established research that writing styles are mostly fixed, people write the same way routinely unless deliberately trying to do otherwise. You'd have to believe that Zuckerberg deliberately wrote differently in the Ceglia E-mails, something which is very hard to buy into. After that his lawyers resigned on him, a very, very bad sign for him. Sounds like the judge concurs, he's not buying it either.
I happen to have witnessed personally that Firefox 5 cannot run the PDF Forge toolbar while 4 could. I just ran into that problem at my work for the few firefox users. So it is technically possible considering the huge coincidental timing of that.
If he had Firefox, and was using Windows (most likely) he also had Internet Explorer to fall back on. What are the chances that both browsers would stop working with the filing system on the same day? Not looking good is it? Why didn't he try using a colleague's PC instead? Odds are getting even lower here aren't they? There's just too many ways he could have gotten around this that it's very, very hard to believe. Plus, Righthaven's not exactly got a good track record of respect for the courts, which is why they were having to file this response in the first place. So, you'll have to forgive us if we fail to give them the benefit of the doubt, they've kinda lost all credibility a long time ago.
Righthaven wanted to do this stuff in bulk, un its own name, without crossing each T and dotting each I, and it doesn't work that way.
No, the newspaper group/company was involved in this highly and the real plan was that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to sue and try to get money the way Righthaven's been doing, but... they wanted to avoid any financial liability to themselves in the process. So they provided seed money to setup Righthaven, and then setup an agreement where they only gave Righthaven the right to sue for their copyrights. The newspaper company kept ownership of the copyrights, and if Righthaven's scheme failed, then the newspaper company couldn't be hit with sanctions and/or lawsuits because Righthaven did the suing, not them, honest!
But it's not working out that way for them. Righthaven seems to be run by lawyers who got their bar license from a Cracker Jack box who have committed numerous and serious mistakes. Failing to reveal that the newspaper company had a pecuniary interest in the lawsuits is getting them into major, major trouble, as is not actually owning the copyrights. And at least one person that Righthaven targeted has filed a counter-suit against both Righthaven AND the newspaper company. Personally I hope the counter-suit gets to go forward and that more of those targeted join in and go after the newspaper company too. This whole thing appears to have been their brainchild, not Righthaven's founder, and they were deliberately trying to game the courts.
Preventing people from downloading free versions of copyrighted material is not censorship. If I want to see Fast and Furious 5 (or whatever) I can go to the cinema, get it on DVD, watch it on Sky or whatever. I do not have a human right to be able to downloaded it for no cost at my convenience.
Not everything on Usenet (not even all the binary stuff) is illegal copies of copyrighted materials. There's plenty of legal stuff too. So yes, trying to make an ISP block an entire site is censorship. Especially since none of that material is actually available from Newzbin2. You can get NZB files from it, which you'll need to use with an actual Usenet provider to download anything illegal. Newzbin2 is basically an index, nothing more, it's not even quite equivalent to a torrent tracker because you can't connect directly to Usenet to get the stuff via the site. The NZB files just tell your Usenet client how to ask a Usenet server to find them for you.
How many of those 25k affiliates "forgot" to include their affiliate income?
Even if this is true, this is Amazon's problem how exactly? Perhaps if the goal is really to catch those lying on their taxes then a law requiring companies to report affiliate income paid to CA residents would be a more appropriate solution. Not that such a law would be without issues, as it attempts to impose a regulatory burden (compiling those reports isn't free) on a company that has no physical presence in California.
And frankly, I think you overestimate how big a problem this is. Most people running a website as a business are going to be honest with their taxes. It's just not worth the risk to lie or fail to report, and it's not like most of those affiliates are raking in huge amounts of money.
How many others were so insubstantial that no income tax was owing?
So... they made so little money that the state was owed nothing anyway and this is a problem how? Amazon's supposed to pay taxes that the affiliate wouldn't have owed anyway just to prop up California's government for the hell of it? Did you even think about what you're saying at all here? It makes no sense, this isn't an issue at all.
It's the same problem with ebay, and the crack-down is inevitable. Let them compete on an equal footing with the locals, and each will win their fair market share based on price, product, and service.
Instead, local business is indirectly subsidizing Amazon by carrying a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
Sounds more like you're expecting people to pay taxes they don't actually owe just because of some hand-waving. What tax burden? If they weren't making enough to owe taxes anyway the state's already declared that activity as not being a burden (or at least, not enough of one) to bother taxing the individual. If the person's lying on their taxes, the issue is with the person who's doing the lying, not Amazon/eBay/etc. This isn't a crack down, it's a money grab, pure and simple.
You seem to be using the spam button to somehow punish the business in question.
No, I'm flagging businesses that have E-mail behavior that is spam, even if that business is supposedly a legit one. Like I said, not having an opt-out method is a violation of the CAN-SPAM act, see here: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.
It's not my fault if a company decides to violate the law and be a spammer, even if it's accidental. I'm flagging something that is spam (no way to opt out) as spam. If this means the business' legit customers are hurt, it's the business' fault for doing things wrong, not mine. They need to learn to get their act together, and it's not my place to teach them, so I flag it as the spam that it is and go on with my life.
For what it's worth, I'd also be pissed at a business I was a legit customer of for handling their E-mail that way, simply because I know there's a good chance they're going to end up with their E-mails marked as spam.
If you have kids, then you have a right to talk. Otherwise, take your attitude and STFU.
So tell me, what is it about parenthood that makes you suddenly decide that everyone without children's opinions are worthless? Seriously, this little attitude you copped is very, VERY common with parents demanding that anything and everything be censored to protect their kids without any concern (or respect) for adults who disagree with their opinion. And of course, as you said yourself, if those adults don't have kids then they have "no right to talk", their opinions, rights, etc. are all totally irrelevant because they haven't bothered to reproduce (yet).
I tell you, frankly, is that's what parenthood does to you, then I don't freaking want to be a parent. I prefer keeping my sanity and my respect for others' opinions and rights. You, as a parent, have a right to your opinion. You have no right to demand things that will infringe on my rights in the name of protecting your kids. If you want them safe online it's YOUR responsibility.
As for someone having an attitude, yeah, well, what I quoted up there shows you're the one copping an attitude. Having reproduced doesn't make you special.
Don't mark them as spam.
If you do and they are legitimate emails, then you'll be training your filter (or worse, everybody's filter, if you use a web-based client) to flag real emails.
When I get E-mails misdirected because some bozo used my E-mail address by mistake from a business and there's no "was this a mistake, click here to opt out" it gets flagged as spam. I don't give a damn if it's the business' mistake or the user's mistake in giving the address, but with 1. no confirmation of the address and 2. no opt-out, I consider it spam at that point. Legitimate businesses do at least one of the 2, most do both. Failure to do either means it's no longer my problem if all your E-mail starts getting spam-filtered at the provider. In fact, I hope it does, just to teach the business a lesson in proper E-mail mailing list etiquette. Besides, I'm pretty certain that not having an opt-out available violates the CAN-SPAM act, so they're not only morons, they're probably breaking the law. (I've never received misdirected E-mails from non-US businesses.)
If the business has done things properly and there's an opt-out I will take the time to opt-out. If it's an E-mail trying to confirm the address I delete it unless it's one of those "if you want to continue receiving messages from us do nothing", then I do whatever's necessary to prevent them from considering the address confirmed. Other than that, I tend to delete most of it. Some things I inform the sender just because I see potential problems if they continue to send stuff to me. (Like the teacher who was E-mailing me about someone's kid. I nipped that on in the bud ASAP before she inadvertently told me anything potentially confidential about the kid.)
Frankly, the Wikipedia link isn't a problem, the failure to link to anything but a PDF document besides that is. The entire article is basically the summary, which doesn't contain much information. (Basically just enough to allow someone to go Google to find out what the hell the whole thing is about.) Not criticizing you necessarily, but this really needs links to something explaining what in the hell is going on.
By the time our porcine "protectors" figure out that smashing up the instrument rarely destroys the recording, we'll all have real-time internet-connected video cameras.
Some have, then they try and charge citizens who videotape them with violating state wire-tapping laws. One recent link, from Carlos Miller's Photography is not a Crime blog (he covers this type of thing extensively, and the Slashdot article links to one of his posts) as well as the Anthony Graber case from last year that got a lot of attention. After all, if you can't stop the recording, you can always punish the citizen who dared to record you doing your job out in public. Oh, and if you only read one of those links, read the one from last year. That case is a standout example of the new kind of police harassment over videotaping them in public.
There are a lot, an awful lot judging by the news if you follow it, of police who have a major, MAJOR issue with being recorded. And most of the time it's for good reason, they were doing something wrong and don't want any record of it. Other police support them, and often the district attorney's office will back them up (unless it gets enough public outrage to suddenly become politically untenable, then they'll change their minds). In Anthony Graber's case it took a judge to put a stop to the shenanigans, ruling that police have no expectation of privacy in a public setting and throwing out the charges. But that was in September, 6 months after the police charged the guy, seized all his computers, etc. And I can't find any information about anything happening to the cop who pulled his gun on Graber (without identifying himself as police officer first, or even being in uniform and all over minor traffic violations), so the police still won in that case.
Though used as a punishment, it doesn't really feel like one for the student who gets time to sit at home and play computer games. It's used as a way to get rid of unruly students who disrupt the teaching or pose a risk of violence to others, and as a way to make sure the parent knows very well just how much trouble that pupil is in.
Some schools nowadays use in-school suspension. The student is sent to a different facility and has to spend the day studying. No gaming, no reading books for fun, it's actual punishment.
The summery says: "Created the videos in his own time, off-campus."
The video says: "This was done up back in November of 2010, for an economics course project."
So I don't think its as independent from school as this summary wants to make you believe.
That doesn't mean the school owns them however, so they have no right to threaten him with calling the police over the videos if he didn't take them down, which the same article tells you they did (emphasis added):
He said his teachers had no problem with the content – one even lent his voice to an animation – and he didn’t get in trouble until he uploaded the videos to YouTube. He was swiftly given a one-day suspension. A few days later, his principal laid out an ultimatum: Take the videos down or the police would be called. He refused to budge.
And since they didn't have an issue with them when he did them for the class project (and a teacher even participated in them), they're going to have serious trouble trying to get anyone to believe they only felt like they were a threat to the school's moral values after they were put on YouTube. If they were truly a threat they should have done something when he made them for the class project.
So that has no bearing on the case. All the signs are that something in one (or more) of the videos made fun of the school principal and he's got a burr up his ass over it and is punishing the kid for refusing to bow to his perceived authority. (And given all the circumstances, I seriously doubt the school's going to win here. Their not doing anything when he presented them for the class project is going to damage any case they might have had irreparably. The fact that a teacher participated actively in one video will destroy any remaining chance they might have had.)
This is a real problem when trying to design a curriculum. You can't expect the students to have been taught programming, because most schools don't have anyone who's competent to teach it. Some will have taught themselves stuff (and probably picked up some bad habits along the way), some will not. The ones who are self taught will be bored for at least some of the first year, since everyone else will be catching up. Worse, they often assume that the fact that they already know some of the material means that they already know all of it, and get a nasty shock at exam time.
The real solution is for schools to employ people who are competent to teach programming, and for universities to make this a prerequisite, but I doubt that will happen.
When I got my CS degree, the university I went to had a very nice solution to this. The introductory CS course was optional, and was also used by non-majors (even some business majors) who needed to learn programming basics. It was most definitely not a sink or swim class, and having non-CS majors in there helped keep it that way. But if you thought you had enough programming knowledge that you didn't need it, you could skip to the next class, which was harder and was for CS majors only. You didn't even have to test out of it, you just decided what you wanted to do.
This worked just fine, so why don't other universities do something similar? The class wasn't required for the degree even, but it served to teach programming to those who didn't already know it prior to getting into the regular CS track courses. So it can definitely be done, even without it being a prerequisite, it's just that some universities (or at least their CS departments) don't want to bother.
Now as to employing people competent to teach programming, there's a serious problem with universities and teaching competency across the board, in every class, in every department. The focus is on research and publishing for professors, knowing how to teach (at all, much less well) is more or less ignored. This is something that desperately needs to be changed across the board, perhaps universities should require some training in teaching for all professors.
They didn't buy Ericsson. Sony Ericsson is a separate company, jointly owned by Sony and by Ericsson. And fortunately apparently not much infused with the Sony corporate misculture.
Doesn't matter, for many of us the sheer fact that Sony is in the company's name, along with Sony's past behavior, is enough to make us steer way, way clear of anything to do with the company. Besides, Sony obviously has some kind of stake in the company (given the name), so who's to say they wouldn't buy out Ericsson's stake in the future and take it over? Pretty much nothing, it's easily doable if Sony decides it wants to, and they're obviously interested in the venture or they wouldn't have a stake in it. So those of us that don't trust Sony at all will continue to avoid Sony Ericsson as well.
The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
That's not quite it, many of these people are perfectly capable of distinguishing the truth from fiction. It's just that they don't want to, because they don't like the truth for whatever reasons.
Do you honestly think that candidates are not thoroughly vetted for eligibility by the relevant government authorities?
One of the requirements for getting on the ballot in every state is proving your eligibility for the position. Obama had to do that in every state, so he's proven he's a citizen multiple times to the government. I'm sure the birthers will ignore that as well however.
Why is it that I have to present multiple forms of ID, my social security number, large amounts of contact info, and admit to any felonies just to get a job bagging groceries, but the person running for the highest office of one of the most powerful countries in the world does not have to produce a birth certificate to prove that they fulfill two of the basic requirements of holding the position (natural born citizenship and at least 35 years old)?
You have to release all that to the world at large to get a job bagging groceries? Wow, you really should go find somewhere else to get a job.
More seriously, that's the difference. You have to prove you're a citizen to get the job, but you only have to prove it the store hiring you. The general public (and the law) assumes that the store has done this so you're not questioned. And they have no right to demand that information from you directly just because they don't think you're qualified to be working there. Obama had to prove his citizenship at least 50 times to get on the ballot in all the states. That's a requirement by law in every state, along with other requirements. So he did prove he was a citizen, long before the question was even raised. And he did release his short firm birth certificate, which is legal proof of birth in every state in the union. He also didn't have to do that, but he did. And now he's released the long form too. Add in the fact that his birth was announced in the local newspaper in Hawaii (and is in the archives), and dozens, if not hundreds, or investigations by various media outlets all concluded the same damn thing (namely that he's most definitely a citizen and was born in Hawaii) and there's absolutely no reason to even suggest he's not a citizen any longer, and hasn't been for a looooooong time.
Those continuing to insist he isn't obviously have a reason for refusing to believe all this. Suggesting it's racism is fair game at this point. This has never happened for any other president, and the main difference with Obama is that he's African-American, and all the others were white. If they don't like being accused of racism, well, maybe they should stop ignoring all the evidence that's been out there for years.
My qualified guess is that the recent security breaches aren't in any way exceptions: Most likely Sony/SOE have had security problems for several months now and have tried to keep a lid on it. But as said, that's just my guess.
More likely they've been compromised for several months and either didn't know it, or refused to believe the reports of hacked accounts/etc. were anything other than customers being stupid.
I'm sure no one believes that this is not an example of vigilante justice being played out against Sony. This is deeply concerning.
I don't believe it is. This is too big, and too deep an intrusion to simply be people trying to get back at Sony for being royal assholes. This has all the makings of a large-scale criminal hack with the intention of obtaining lots of information on Sony's customers and (at least hopefully) their credit card information. And there have been reports from people that claim that the credit cards they used with PSN have been seeing unauthorized charges, so it's possible that those responsible for the break-in were successful. That the intrusion was apparently deeper than Sony originally suspected, and also impacted SOE's services puts Sony's assurances that the credit card data was encrypted and unlikely to have been obtained into question. What if the hackers managed to obtain the encryption keys? It's starting to sound like Sony's entire network may have been compromised so that's a definite possibility. And if you believe the security researcher Kevin Stevens, they absolutely were successful and have been trying to sell the credit card database.
So no, this isn't likely to be vigilante justice. It's most likely it was done for profit, and any ideas of screwing Sony over were a secondary objective, if any objective at all. Now I will buy that the hackers who did this may have been attracted by the PS3's root key being lost, but that would have been a case of "if their security is that bad in the PS3, maybe their network security sucks too and they're an easy target" kind of thing, not a vigilante attack idea.
Why would he be involved? Holtz is becoming a useless keyword to generate 'news'.
Stop pulling these stories off the hose just because there's nothing else interesting.
Lots of people have been blaming this on Hotz, either directly or indirectly. I've seen numerous people commenting to that effect on the stories Ars Technica has posted about the PSN being down. So I don't blame him for publicly stating he's not involved, and I don't blame /. for posting it. He deserves to clear his name.
If they win this round they will be back for more and more.
If history is any indication, even if they lose this round they'll be back with more and more FUD and anti-competitive behavior anyway. It's not like multiple anti-trust findings against them has stopped them yet, so why would losing this round?
B&N seems to be trying to claim that enforcing ones patents is an anti-trust violation, but patents are government sanctioned monopolies so that's a ridiculous argument. They seem to be throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
Actually, it's not that simple. They basically flat-out say, in addition to all that other stuff, that the Nook and Nook Color do not violate any of the patents that Microsoft is claiming they do. But they also point out that MS has a larger scheme and is doing things that are quite likely illegal in anti-trust law, plus they've done things that should invalidate one of the patents (deliberately withholding prior art). And they use MS's own claims against them, pointing out that MS claims their patents give them complete control over Android, and once you add up Android's market share in the mobile market + MS's own share + Nokia's (because of the MS/Nokia agreement) you'll reach.... 65% of the mobile market OS. Thus, anti-trust comes into play.
So it's a lot more subtle than what you're trying to claim, they're basically saying "we don't infringe on any of these patents at all; Microsoft is trying to abuse a monopoly position (by their own claims) to force competing OS's off the market; and oh yeah, they've been doing stuff that invalidates one of their patents too." It's more of a "we're pissed off and we're going to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at MS in retaliation for being assholes" than just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. They seem to have their defense covered very, very thoroughly.
Gotta say though, Microsoft's attempts to try to muddy the waters about a NDA was rather childish. B&N's lawyer even had to call them out on it and tell them to stop trying to muddy the record about a NDA. And they still tried again after that to claim something they sent was covered under the very narrowly crafted NDA from the December meeting (when it was obviously outside the scope of that agreement even to a non-lawyer). It's quite obvious MS doesn't want the truth to be known here, which is not the mark of someone with a legit complaint.
People are resistant to change. As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere. Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.
Yes, innovation needs to happen in user interfaces too, but the ribbon isn't it. It's also not an innovation, it's been around for a while now and still is one of the most hated/reviled features of MS Office. When your "innovation" in user interface design is near universally reviled by everyone who uses it, it's not an innovation, it's a failure. Continuing to try and force users to use it just pisses them off and actually holds back progress.
And how much people hate (and are confused by) the ribbon is underrated. My father, who's very much a computer neophyte and never complains about things like the user interface (he probably doesn't fully understand what the user interface is) has only complained to me about one UI feature: the ribbon in MS Office. I had to find him an old version of Office so he could have a version without it as he simply couldn't figure out how to do anything with the ribbon interface. He handled the switch from XP to Vista without any problems, but he can't cope with the ribbon at all. That's a serious UI failure.
AFAIK, there is no evidence that the tower data is being transmitted anywhere, so it is reasonable for Apple to say that they don't track anyone. They made a device that privately stores this data. I don't think anyone thinks that the way this data is being stored is the right way to do it, but just because the device stores that data, that doesn't mean that Apple is "tracking" you.
I think it's more the fact that the tracking data is preserved whenever you migrate to a new device that makes everyone think Apple potentially is using it. At the very least it suggests that Apple's going to extra lengths to make sure the data is retained across the life of the user, not the device, which certainly sounds like something done to track users.
So it's not just that the data exists that's causing concern, its the lengths Apple's gone to to make sure the data persists that's so worrying.
Interesting claim. In what form does "radiation" get released from a leaking fission power reactor that is not "contamination"? Like, bursts of pure gamma rays or something?
Chernobyl managed to eject into the environment many radioisotopes that have never been released before or since, stuff that normally stays as part of the fuel rods, even if they melt (it stays part of the corium formed when the rods melt). It also managed to aerosolize things like Plutonium which are very difficult to turn into an aerosol, and of course ejected that into the atmosphere. There's very little chance of that happening at Fukushima, one of the reactors would have to explode and complete vaporize its pressure shell and secondary containment shell in full to make it possible. The stuff leaking out in the water, while nasty, just isn't on the same level.
Everything I've read suggests that what has been released from Fukushima, and is still being released, is radioactive isotopes that can't help but be contamination. The land area over which the contamination is spread is smaller than Chernobyl owing to there being no graphite fire - but on the other hand, contaminated water is also leaking into the sea, with all that that implies for the fishing industry, which wasn't an issue for Chernobyl.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but the fact it's the ocean it's leaking into helps a lot because it'll end up highly diluted in fairly short order. The currents around Japan actually help with this. But they are focusing on trying to find and stop the leaks into the ocean and making doing so a priority so they're not ignoring the possibility. Also the contamination being limited to a small area makes a huge difference. It's easier to cleanup, or failing that, contain by limiting access to the contaminated area. Far easier than having to block off huge areas like the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
And while there's been talk about entombing the reactors, they'll probably be able to decommission them eventually. They decommissioned Three Mile Island and it had a partial core meltdown as well. It certainly makes the decommissioning process more difficult, but not impossible.