* A preliminary injunction is just that. It's not a ruling on guilt or innocence, and need not (IIRC) consider the evidence of the case. The intent would be to limit eventual damage in the case that wrongdoing is, indeed, found.
* Technically, it's not a 1st Amendment violation unless a Gov't is imposing it, albeit indirectly might count (state-funded).
* In the case of private use, it's voluntary. It acts at the VIEWER's end. Having its usage required at many sites, or actually downing or modifying the SOURCEs would be censorship. So the software itself isn't censorship, by itself, in the traditional sense.
The legal action itself does, but *threatening* a lawsuit (no matter how flimsy) is pretty much always permitted unless the person is an ex-lawyer who's been disbarred for numerous frivolous lawsuits, and even then I'm not sure.
* Now, if they promise that their categories are accurate, and for some demented reason their EULA doesn't say something to the effect that
"We reserve the right to do anything including revoke your usage of this product and you waive all your rights including suing us unless your state prevents that, in which case why did we sell it to you, but even if this makes your computer eat your dog and then explode we are not liable and in fact you'll have to pay us for making us look bad."
Then perhaps they're vulnerable for deliberately mislabelling site, and arguably NOT doing their job correctly. They'd have to have some incredibly careless lawyers for this to happen, however. Odds are, their software makes no legally binding guarantees...
One might be able to take severe precautions like not having external ports on the machines (or locking them well), and removing/locking drive bays so no removable media can be used... not doing bone-headed things like having CD-RWs be installed by default in trusted boxes, say.
I suppose a REALLY paranoid machine room design could include some heavy-duty magnetizing equipment at the door and all along the passageway to it, on the theory that it'd scramble disks. Not sure how effective it could be, however.
He should have made you DERIVE the formulae by hand, from its verbal definition and that of the mean. If you can reliably find it from first principles, then you probably understand what's going on...
Yes. In the real world, time being crucial and all...
You can't achieve deep understanding in a period of minutes. If you want to have a decent GUI utility in an afternoon, will you go to
* a person who has rudimentary C knowledge, and has never used any GUI toolkit -- but has their APIs on paper
or
* a person who has used XForms occasionally, but still stumbles frequently
or
* a person who has designed and implemented similar interfaces in several different languages with many different toolkits, and will mentally complete a correct system design within ten seconds?
Re:If I could have only cheated this way...
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 1
Prisoner's Dilemma from Hell? To hoard or to share?
I doubt that an entire class would collaborate like that -- or that if it did, that it would be productive and useful during the duration of an average test (1-2 hours or so). If they tried, probably a chap who dedicates his entire time to himself -- w/o distractions -- and has already bothered to understand everything involved will be able to come up with a MUCH more coherent, accurate response compared to the combination of misconceptions and errors that might plague the others.
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 2
Many students don't pay the full listed price when attending universities, due to grants, making up the gap with loans. This means that a fairly poor student may be able to attend a *nominally* expensive school with far less net expense than listed, leaving with a degree of student debt that's less than expected. However, such a student may not be able to afford the *additional* expense of a laptop.
The answer is, most likely, to give some (not all...) HARD questions that demand deep understanding of the concepts, and that will basically drain away all your time if you're busy searching for bits and pieces. This is, admittedly, demanding on the graders since this points to essay formats -- rather unusual in mathematics, I'd think. In addition, you have to create entirely new tests each time...
Re:Hmmm, but - how do they...?
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 1
Same way that folks handle take-home exams and homework.
Look 'em over and see if anything strikes you as overly similar 'tween exams, particularly similar mistakes...
They can set up a hotline for people to send in tips, and perhaps have some folks occasionally try the search engines and USENET. If these folks can't, after a bit of time, find a given MP3 site, then neither will most of the potential users...
Then, ban the site as it's found. If the first several pages' worth of links from, say, Lycos, Google and AltaVista all return 404s, then won't most users give up?
You have no human rights that insist on access to other people's creations.
You have no right to behave thusly, just because YOU believe your morality schema allows you to do so. Why? When your actions would infringe on the other's moreso than inaction in the case of dispute, then you must not act. Denying yourself, say, listening to whatever tripe passes for music these days is less of a wrong than seizing somebody else's creation against their intent.
Repeat after me: ---------------- There is no right to instant gratification.
There is no right to happiness. You may try, but absolutely nobody has to guarantee that you have a chance.
There is no right to other people's work. This is regardless of its nature. If they wish to GIVE it to you, then they may. But you may not force that decision for them.
Nope. Read the Act; Mr. Katz appears to be grossly and willfully misrepresenting it here.
Section 1201(2) should be of interest to you. Your CD player was not designed primarily for bypassing copyright protection; it has commercial value beyond such; and it was not distributed with that intent.
Now, if you feel that your brain's primary purpose is to join Mr. Katz's quest of free MP3s for all, that's your problem.
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me
on
Geographic Screening
·
· Score: 1
So you've nothing against, say, a t'baccy company conspiring to smuggle cigs into Canada to avoid Canadian trade regs? After all, if the company's a US company, they don't have to obey Canadian law, right?
'sides, if memory serves, ICraveTV.com has a business presence in Pittsburgh, PA. It's not entirely a Canadian operation.
If it's tied in with demanding merit-based pay for teachers -- and hiring more qualified ones in the first place -- sure.
As somebody whose state has been the national leader in teacher's strikes for quite some time, many of the disputes are *not* about supplies, but over issues like merit pay, charter schools (competition! gasp!), and work hours (how many periods they teach a day).
And it's not limited to U.S. students either; when I was there, somewhere around a third or a fourth of the participants were internationals.
For all those who haven't reached their senior year in high school (if memory serves, and things haven't changed, folks are eligible for the summer before their last year in HS), consider the program. If they accept you, they'll try to match you with a research lab in the area (in '93, most folks were placed in labs at MIT itself; some of us, such as m'self, were in external labs affiliated with the program, like MERL), a mentor, and a project. During most of the program, you'll be doing original research work in this arrangement. And for those that are eligible for the STS (e.g. NOT scions of Intel employees), RSI/CEE will help you through it.
So the eligible folks should seriously consider applying...
If she did it while at RSI, she almost certainly did a LARGE portion of the work. It's a research-oriented program (e.g. it's basically your full-time job for all but the first and last weeks, IIRC), not a part-time job where profs just need an assistant.
In addition, not all of it is just intercepting electronic communications. Human intelligence is another aspect of it.
Unless you can be SURE that not a single one of your employees is disgruntled, or EVER going to be disgruntled or otherwise corruptible, info can leak. A LOT of valuable information has, historically, been leaked by people with access to documents, a suitcase, and a weakness -- greed, vulnerability to blackmail (like, say, flying in to Moscow, and falling in with a dame who just *happened* to hit on you, and later finding out that the whole fling was orchestrated and being presented with photos), or so forth.
Kim Philby was thought pretty darn reliable at one point. Enough that, IIRC, he was considered in line to eventually head British Intelligence. The KGB must have considered Mitrokhin reliable, to let him be an archivist with so much access. And so forth.
Unlikely, at least if you're thinking international terrorists. Some of the domestic groups under suspicion would probably back down a tad, but you'll never simultaneously please those who would join the (defunct) Weathermen, Earth First!, Kach, or Aryan Nation.
International groups need a unifying factor. That tends to be a hatred of Israel and the US, at least partly fed by ages of bitterness, accompanied by fun disinformation. If memory serves, for instance, the KGB merrily propagated rumors that the CIA was responsible for creating the HIV virus in order to wreak genocide in Africa -- and this idea took hold in a decent number of suspicious minds, despite the fact that it's unclear how that would serve the CIA's interests.
Such ideas will take a LONG time to dislodge, no matter what happens. And if the country buttoned up and went isolationist, that'd just anger other nations in the bargain.
Then you can't do business in Europe with that attitude, or Asia, 'coz for all practical purposes, there are no major countries which don't do industrial espionage.
The ex-Director wasn't making things up about the French bugging airplances and riffling through briefcases. That French intelligence is VERY active in corporate espionage is well-documented. The SVR has inherited its predecessor's main directives, including industrial espionage (The KGB placed a HUGE emphasis on it. It saved them utterly insane amounts of money...).
Frankly, you're naive if you think any major nation DOESN'T spy on business travelers and business interests.
It's reminiscent of the time one SAT prep company -- might have been Kaplan -- bought a domain name that would, reasonably, better match up with a rival, which might have been the Princeton Review. They were forced to hand over the domain.
Here, we have a chap who apparently buys other domain names, that are basically unrelated to his business EXCEPT that the likely users of the others are also, most likely, failry net-savvy. These folks might be perhaps more likely to be interested in MP3's.
It would seem to be a pretty clear-cut case of squatting. Have any of the proposed anti-cybersquatting laws passed yet? I seem to recall some having provisions against registering names similar to trademarks in bad-faith...
We'd rather be a free people than not? I'm not so sure of that, at least in the absolute sense. I seem to recall that in the general populace, there *isn't* a lot of outrage when fundamental freedoms like those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are grossly infringed upon. We note, for instance, that the first amendment requires that the freedom of speech will not be abridged. This does not specify only *popular* speech. This does not specify only *friendly* speech. It means *all* speech. That includes bigots, radical Stalinists, fascists, the criminally insane, and what not. This includes hostile speech. This includes practically everything short of slander or speech that violates contractual agreements like oaths of secrecy, and certain immediate safety issues like pretending to hijack a plane, all of which tie into other offenses.
Is there outrage 'bout this, in general? Not really. We've got a climate where, apparently, encouraging sensitivity has precedence over freedom.
If memory serves, the President has been rather intellectually dishonest in blatantly exploiting the case of the Michigan juvenile shooting, calling for measures that, according to rational thought, would be irrelevant -- considering that the shooting was not an accident, and that the main actors were not exactly law-abiding citizens of the sort to, regardless of law, have proper keeping of their firearm(s). I've not seen a lot of outrage 'bout this, either.
If you, say, listen to Brokaw or Rather, then we might conclude that the plight of a river salmon, is worthier of a spotlight than anything that might in the slightest jar people out of their complacency regarding the Constitution.
THIS sort of behavior, by both media outlets and the Government, has earned at LOT of distrust over the years. When CNN downplays the possibility of new laws, while other sources consider the same data and spin it more cautiously, and given that it's an election year (thus leading naturally towards excess), expect some irritation and distrust.
Keep in mind that many of the more driven folks in a poor country might emigrate to places where they feel they'll be more highly rewarded for their skills. Not all of them; sure. But they will suffer from a drain of sorts. For instance, if your country's economy is so much in the tank that well-trained employees get paid in consumer goods like alcoholic beverages and toilet paper, then some percentage are going to get fed up and emigrate.
And o'er here, there are many folks who are homeless for rather common oversights -- like not preparing for their home to burn down, or not anticipating a major plant closing, or so forth. Having substantial debt followed by an emergency like that could really flatten one's savings.
The term "xerox" entered common usage, and Xerox failed to vigorously defend it in time. Generally this means that common usage is upheld; see the case involving Jim Henson Productions, Hormel, and a pig puppet named "Spa'am".
* On voice, witnesses to the conversation can be subpoenaed and compelled to testify (as long as they aren't forced to incriminate themselves in the process...). It might take an offer of immunity in certain cases, but it can be done. Well, 'k. There's the husband-wife exception and bits about national security and whatnot.
But if you speak to a coworker and diss the boss and talk 'bout how you're going to "get back" at a company if you're laid off while el PHB gets bonuses, and the coworker gets subpoenaed... same thing as if you'd sent him angry e-mail raging against the company.
* With e-mail, you KNOW that the other person now has a copy of what you sent; the other person KNOWS that you may have kept a copy; and both should be aware that mail servers and every machine along the path already has copies. With voice, OTOH, in most cases there is no certainty that everything's being recorded.
Both speech and mail, then, are allowed as evidence. Failure to produce such when explicitly subpoenaed and called upon to testify is not appreciated... but with e-mail, there can be verbatim copies substantiated by being in multiple places (and having left a trail in server logs), which could make a plaintiff or prosecutor even happier.
Slashdot Mirror
* A preliminary injunction is just that. It's
not a ruling on guilt or innocence, and need not
(IIRC) consider the evidence of the case. The
intent would be to limit eventual damage in
the case that wrongdoing is, indeed, found.
* Technically, it's not a 1st Amendment violation
unless a Gov't is imposing it, albeit
indirectly might count (state-funded).
* In the case of private use, it's voluntary. It
acts at the VIEWER's end. Having its usage
required at many sites, or actually downing or
modifying the SOURCEs would be censorship.
So the software itself isn't censorship, by
itself, in the traditional sense.
The legal action itself does, but *threatening*
a lawsuit (no matter how flimsy) is pretty much
always permitted unless the person is an
ex-lawyer who's been disbarred for numerous
frivolous lawsuits, and even then I'm not sure.
* Now, if they promise that their categories are
accurate, and for some demented reason their
EULA doesn't say something to the effect that
"We reserve the right to do anything including
revoke your usage of this product and you waive
all your rights including suing us unless your
state prevents that, in which case why did we
sell it to you, but even if this makes your
computer eat your dog and then explode we are
not liable and in fact you'll have to pay us
for making us look bad."
Then perhaps they're vulnerable for deliberately
mislabelling site, and arguably NOT doing their job correctly. They'd have to have some incredibly careless lawyers for this to happen, however. Odds are, their software makes no legally binding guarantees...
CIA guy in trouble? Was there a recent incident?
One might be able to take severe precautions like not having external ports on the machines (or locking them well), and removing/locking drive bays so no removable media can be used... not doing bone-headed things like having CD-RWs be installed by default in trusted boxes, say.
I suppose a REALLY paranoid machine room design could include some heavy-duty magnetizing equipment at the door and all along the passageway to it, on the theory that it'd scramble disks. Not sure how effective it could be, however.
He should have made you DERIVE the formulae by hand, from its verbal definition and that of the mean. If you can reliably find it from first principles, then you probably understand what's going on...
Yes. In the real world, time being crucial and all...
You can't achieve deep understanding in a period of minutes. If you want to have a decent GUI utility in an afternoon, will you go to
* a person who has rudimentary C knowledge, and
has never used any GUI toolkit -- but has their
APIs on paper
or
* a person who has used XForms occasionally, but
still stumbles frequently
or
* a person who has designed and implemented
similar interfaces in several different
languages with many different toolkits, and will
mentally complete a correct system design
within ten seconds?
Prisoner's Dilemma from Hell? To hoard or to share?
I doubt that an entire class would collaborate like that -- or that if it did, that it would be productive and useful during the duration of an average test (1-2 hours or so). If they tried, probably a chap who dedicates his entire time to himself -- w/o distractions -- and has already bothered to understand everything involved will be able to come up with a MUCH more coherent, accurate response compared to the combination of misconceptions and errors that might plague the others.
Many students don't pay the full listed price when attending universities, due to grants, making up the gap with loans. This means that a fairly poor student may be able to attend a *nominally* expensive school with far less net expense than listed, leaving with a degree of student debt that's less than expected. However, such a student may not be able to afford the *additional* expense of a laptop.
The answer is, most likely, to give some (not all...) HARD questions that demand deep understanding of the concepts, and that will basically drain away all your time if you're busy searching for bits and pieces. This is, admittedly, demanding on the graders since this points to essay formats -- rather unusual in mathematics, I'd think. In addition, you have to create entirely new tests each time...
Same way that folks handle take-home exams and homework.
Look 'em over and see if anything strikes you as overly similar 'tween exams, particularly similar mistakes...
Been playing too much Syndicate Wars? Heh.
Mmmm, satellite rain...
They can set up a hotline for people to send in tips, and perhaps have some folks occasionally try the search engines and USENET. If these folks can't, after a bit of time, find a given MP3 site, then neither will most of the potential users...
Then, ban the site as it's found. If the first several pages' worth of links from, say, Lycos, Google and AltaVista all return 404s, then won't most users give up?
You have no human rights that insist on access to other people's creations.
You have no right to behave thusly, just because YOU believe your morality schema allows you to do so. Why? When your actions would infringe on the other's moreso than inaction in the case of dispute, then you must not act. Denying yourself, say, listening to whatever tripe passes for music these days is less of a wrong than seizing somebody else's creation against their intent.
Repeat after me:
----------------
There is no right to instant gratification.
There is no right to happiness. You may try, but absolutely nobody has to guarantee that you have a chance.
There is no right to other people's work. This is regardless of its nature. If they wish to GIVE it to you, then they may. But you may not force that decision for them.
Nope. Read the Act; Mr. Katz appears to be grossly and willfully misrepresenting it here.
Section 1201(2) should be of interest to you. Your CD player was not designed primarily for bypassing copyright protection; it has commercial value beyond such; and it was not distributed with that intent.
Now, if you feel that your brain's primary purpose is to join Mr. Katz's quest of free MP3s for all, that's your problem.
So you've nothing against, say, a t'baccy company conspiring to smuggle cigs into Canada to avoid Canadian trade regs? After all, if the company's a US company, they don't have to obey Canadian law, right?
'sides, if memory serves, ICraveTV.com has a business presence in Pittsburgh, PA. It's not entirely a Canadian operation.
How 'bout another tack, like requiring a CC # with a Canadian billing address?
If it's tied in with demanding merit-based pay for teachers -- and hiring more qualified ones in the first place -- sure.
As somebody whose state has been the national leader in teacher's strikes for quite some time, many of the disputes are *not* about supplies, but over issues like merit pay, charter schools (competition! gasp!), and work hours (how many periods they teach a day).
And it's not limited to U.S. students either; when I was there, somewhere around a third or a fourth of the participants were internationals.
For all those who haven't reached their senior year in high school (if memory serves, and things haven't changed, folks are eligible for the summer before their last year in HS), consider the program. If they accept you, they'll try to match you with a research lab in the area (in '93, most folks were placed in labs at MIT itself; some of us, such as m'self, were in external labs affiliated with the program, like MERL), a mentor, and a project. During most of the program, you'll be doing original research work in this arrangement. And for those that are eligible for the STS (e.g. NOT scions of Intel employees), RSI/CEE will help you through it.
So the eligible folks should seriously consider applying...
If she did it while at RSI, she almost certainly did a LARGE portion of the work. It's a research-oriented program (e.g. it's basically your full-time job for all but the first and last weeks, IIRC), not a part-time job where profs just need an assistant.
*blinks*
Spying is pretty much constant.
In addition, not all of it is just intercepting electronic communications. Human intelligence is another aspect of it.
Unless you can be SURE that not a single one of your employees is disgruntled, or EVER going to be disgruntled or otherwise corruptible, info can leak. A LOT of valuable information has, historically, been leaked by people with access to documents, a suitcase, and a weakness -- greed, vulnerability to blackmail (like, say, flying in to Moscow, and falling in with a dame who just *happened* to hit on you, and later finding out that the whole fling was orchestrated and being presented with photos), or so forth.
Kim Philby was thought pretty darn reliable at one point. Enough that, IIRC, he was considered in line to eventually head British Intelligence. The KGB must have considered Mitrokhin reliable, to let him be an archivist with so much access. And so forth.
Unlikely, at least if you're thinking international terrorists. Some of the domestic groups under suspicion would probably back down a tad, but you'll never simultaneously please those who would join the (defunct) Weathermen, Earth First!, Kach, or Aryan Nation.
International groups need a unifying factor. That tends to be a hatred of Israel and the US, at least partly fed by ages of bitterness, accompanied by fun disinformation. If memory serves, for instance, the KGB merrily propagated rumors that the CIA was responsible for creating the HIV virus in order to wreak genocide in Africa -- and this idea took hold in a decent number of suspicious minds, despite the fact that it's unclear how that would serve the CIA's interests.
Such ideas will take a LONG time to dislodge, no matter what happens. And if the country buttoned up and went isolationist, that'd just anger other nations in the bargain.
Then you can't do business in Europe with that attitude, or Asia, 'coz for all practical purposes, there are no major countries which don't do industrial espionage.
The ex-Director wasn't making things up about the French bugging airplances and riffling through briefcases. That French intelligence is VERY active in corporate espionage is well-documented. The SVR has inherited its predecessor's main directives, including industrial espionage (The KGB placed a HUGE emphasis on it. It saved them utterly insane amounts of money...).
Frankly, you're naive if you think any major nation DOESN'T spy on business travelers and business interests.
It's reminiscent of the time one SAT prep company -- might have been Kaplan -- bought a domain name that would, reasonably, better match up with a rival, which might have been the Princeton Review. They were forced to hand over the domain.
Here, we have a chap who apparently buys other domain names, that are basically unrelated to his business EXCEPT that the likely users of the others are also, most likely, failry net-savvy. These folks might be perhaps more likely to be interested in MP3's.
It would seem to be a pretty clear-cut case of squatting. Have any of the proposed anti-cybersquatting laws passed yet? I seem to recall some having provisions against registering names similar to trademarks in bad-faith...
We'd rather be a free people than not? I'm not so sure of that, at least in the absolute sense. I seem to recall that in the general populace, there *isn't* a lot of outrage when fundamental freedoms like those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are grossly infringed upon. We note, for instance, that the first amendment requires that the freedom of speech will not be abridged. This does not specify only *popular* speech. This does not specify only *friendly* speech. It means *all* speech. That includes bigots, radical Stalinists, fascists, the criminally insane, and what not. This includes hostile speech. This includes practically everything short of slander or speech that violates contractual agreements like oaths of secrecy, and certain immediate safety issues like pretending to hijack a plane, all of which tie into other offenses.
Is there outrage 'bout this, in general? Not really. We've got a climate where, apparently, encouraging sensitivity has precedence over freedom.
If memory serves, the President has been rather intellectually dishonest in blatantly exploiting the case of the Michigan juvenile shooting, calling for measures that, according to rational thought, would be irrelevant -- considering that the shooting was not an accident, and that the main actors were not exactly law-abiding citizens of the sort to, regardless of law, have proper keeping of their firearm(s). I've not seen a lot of outrage 'bout this, either.
If you, say, listen to Brokaw or Rather, then we might conclude that the plight of a river salmon, is worthier of a spotlight than anything that might in the slightest jar people out of their complacency regarding the Constitution.
THIS sort of behavior, by both media outlets and the Government, has earned at LOT of distrust over the years. When CNN downplays the possibility of new laws, while other sources consider the same data and spin it more cautiously, and given that it's an election year (thus leading naturally towards excess), expect some irritation and distrust.
Keep in mind that many of the more driven folks in a poor country might emigrate to places where they feel they'll be more highly rewarded for their skills. Not all of them; sure. But they will suffer from a drain of sorts. For instance, if your country's economy is so much in the tank that well-trained employees get paid in consumer goods like alcoholic beverages and toilet paper, then some percentage are going to get fed up and emigrate.
And o'er here, there are many folks who are homeless for rather common oversights -- like not preparing for their home to burn down, or not anticipating a major plant closing, or so forth. Having substantial debt followed by an emergency like that could really flatten one's savings.
The term "xerox" entered common usage, and Xerox failed to vigorously defend it in time. Generally this means that common usage is upheld; see the case involving Jim Henson Productions, Hormel, and a pig puppet named "Spa'am".
* On voice, witnesses to the conversation can be
subpoenaed and compelled to testify (as long as
they aren't forced to incriminate themselves in
the process...). It might take an offer of
immunity in certain cases, but it can be done.
Well, 'k. There's the husband-wife exception
and bits about national security and whatnot.
But if you speak to a coworker and diss the
boss and talk 'bout how you're going to "get
back" at a company if you're laid off while
el PHB gets bonuses, and the coworker gets
subpoenaed... same thing as if you'd sent him
angry e-mail raging against the company.
* With e-mail, you KNOW that the other person now
has a copy of what you sent; the other person
KNOWS that you may have kept a copy; and both
should be aware that mail servers and every
machine along the path already has copies. With
voice, OTOH, in most cases there is no certainty
that everything's being recorded.
Both speech and mail, then, are allowed as evidence. Failure to produce such when explicitly subpoenaed and called upon to testify is not appreciated... but with e-mail, there can be verbatim copies substantiated by being in multiple places (and having left a trail in server logs), which could make a plaintiff or prosecutor even happier.