Is there an FOIA equivalent for private companies holding data on people, along with an obligation for speedy correction -- including a good-faith attempt at propagating corrections to other data-holding companies if the misinformation was propagated?
Some of these may be from this year, but since they're from smaller companies don't get that much publicity they're easy to overlook.
Malfador's Space Empires IV (Gold version due in February or so, but the original is darn good), published by Shrapnel. It's a 4X space game, and focuses very heavily on depth and customizability versus flash. Want to replace the tech tree wholesale? Customize your race to be lousy at combat, but rake in the resources and trade? Create a system type featuring unusually powerful black holes? You can, if you like. It's been out for a while, but the publisher and developer are still supporting it.
Illwinter's "Dominions" is a fantasy 4X, that some have compared to Master of Magic. Ritual magic, combat spells, item construction, combat formations, god customization, 14 very different (not mirror-image...) races to choose from... Also still in active development -- e.g. I've gotten helpful responses regarding bugs and questions sent via e-mail, and they're still patching to fix bugs and add features.
Battlefront's "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord" is fairly old -- "CM: Barbarossa to Berlin" might be out sometime next year -- but still very good for 3D WWII tactical (up to Battalion-sized, say) warfare, with a nice WEGO system. It's very, very detailed, although you don't really have to memorize armor slopes... CMBO is not in active development anymore since they've been busy on the sequel, but the forum community is still active.
All three of the above support both solo- and multiple players (CMBO only two at a time, Dominions 14, SE4 not sure what the limit is if there is one).
There's also A-Sharp's "King of Dragon Pass", which seems intriguing. I can't comment on this too much since I've only seen the demo, but a (the?) dev has been spotted on USENET answering questions about it occasionally. It might be of interest to Runequest/Glorantha fans in particular.
The demo reminded me vaguely of the old Hammurabi decision-making game, if for some reason anybody remembers that (e.g. "101 BASIC Computer Games"). Of course, this one is FAR more complicated...
I suspect that a search warrant plus expert witness (programmer) would shoot that down pretty quickly.
Plus, it doesn't have to be 100% proof, even in a criminal case (civil will have a LOWER burden of proof) -- only "reasonable doubt". And humans are pretty darn good at pattern matching, so if it looks like there's an intentional pattern behind "accidental" deletions, you're opening yourself up to perjury (lying to the court for gain) and perhaps fraud/false advertising (if that's the excuse you give to your forum's patrons).
It's not so much a freedom-of-speech issue as a liability issue; by removing some posts, is the site operator implicitly condoning the others, and does that mean that he bears responsibility for it? After all, removing posts, even if it's automatically done, is basically taking an active role...
In particular, I'd worry about, say, harrassment law (maintaining a "hostile environment" -- remember that if an employer fails to act on the idiotic actions of his employees, the employer itself may be held liable).
Convince a band that there is a sufficient market to justify not signing exclusive contracts, and that it can handle distribution online. Artists are well within their rights to sign away distribution rights to just about anybody they damn well choose, as long as they don't sign mutually exclusive contracts... or to insist on autonomy and run a small e-commerce site where they can provide all the.mp3s they want under whatever terms they care for (well, other than stuff that won't hold like demanding seven years of indentured servitude from your next child).
Commerce is based on consent, after all. What you're asking for is simply a childish "Me! Me! MEEEEE!" system where you should get everything that you want, all the time.
Think "intent" and primary use. Designing a system whose primary usage or purpose is to commit a crime tends to be a Bad Thing in the eyes of the courts, whereas cars and guns don't have that as a primary usage (Yes, that goes for firearms, too. Given how many there are in the USA, if that was their *primary* usage we'd probably wipe out tens of thousands of people every day in urban bloodbaths, but we don't). With cars and guns, the responsibility lies with the user, because they generally *are* used responsibily (well, if you overlook the ubiquitous speeding on highways); but the writers and maintainers of Napster-clones know exactly what they're doing, and have pretty much demonstrated a complete lack of concern -- they intend to facilitate it, actually.
(_None_ of these systems, AFAIK, operate on an opt-in basis wrt authors. So, apparently, it's OK to insist that spammers get an opt-in from the user, but not OK to even bother to ask for consent from a content creator. Hrm.)
Incidentally, under certain laws, even *marketing* a system as primarily aimed at violations is illegal (the DMCA, for instance, has this provision).
- There's no heroin cartel trying to legally dominate the market.
- Information alone won't let you purify or manufacture drugs -- you need quite a bit of lab gear, I'd think.
Information alone CAN be all that's needed to circumvent IP access controls -- e.g. source code is, effectively, the tool itself, whereas a full document describing in detail the manufacture of a W-88 nuclear warhead isn't sufficient to actually build one.
Apple's licensing agreement gives you rights, because accepting it is an implicit part of the contract of buying the software -- and if they don't agree to a contract, you get the default rights for using software that doesn't belong to you (namely, zero rights at all).
That's what judges do -- interpret the laws. Many, many laws are open to interpretation.
At some point, heck, you have to, because reality isn't readily reduceable to nice, neat mathematical axioms and definitions. Sooner or later there's a judgement call involved.
How many people actually give those messages any credibility, given that they're usually a) reasonably anonymous barring court order, b) coming from people whose knowledge, cluefulness and motivations you don't know, c) potentially involve considerable amounts of money (a rather glaring motive for deception)?
You need to differentiate mere not particularly meaningful opinion ("Ford cars are lousy automobiles" -- really, no semantic content) from claims of fact ("Driving a Ford car is always reckless endangerment", say).
Hardly. C, used properly, is a safe language. Perl, programmed sloppily, can turn into syntactic hell where your program looks like unmaintainable line noise. Sloppy programmers aren't that useful in *any* language.
Couldn't the Agency simply ask its allies to provide them with information about U.S. persons?
We have been prohibited by executive order since 1978 from having any person or government agency, whether foreign or U.S., conduct any activity on our behalf that we are prohibited from conducting ourselves. Therefore, NSA/CSS does not ask its allies to conduct such activities on its behalf nor does NSA/CSS do so on behalf of its allies.
China isn't even close to Marxist/Maoist anymore, ever since Deng Xiaoping declared that it was perfectly reasonable to make money. They're simply now pragmatic totalitarians trying to pursue economic reforms while maintaining political and military power.
Because the voters in the US, who are free to make broadcasted nudity and FCC policies a campaign issue -- are generally fine with disallowing it. Remember that many content-blocking campaigns are started by local groups opposed to what they see as indecency, rather than imposed from above on an unwilling populace.
MSFT has the money and time to go hunting down resellers of OSes (plus, MSFT Windows CDs aren't required to be in the CD drive for some perverse SafeDisc check -- meaning that people can install, copy if they figure on ever reinstalling, sell, and probably get away with it).
Only for relocatable packages, which isn't that many AFAICT -- many packages, after all, have compile-time-only settings for configuration and data files. So unless you're going to --rebuild them as well, you're out of luck.
Re:wireless battery power the heart ?
on
Inventions of 2001
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· Score: 1
If I remember a _Newsweek_ article correctly (and assuming _that's_ accurate), yes, it's wireless.
I don't remember how they do it, 'tho -- maybe an induction coil?
Interesting. I'd forwarded some to them, 'tho I'd thought that was only for the FTC's information gathering.
Relevant to some might be the US Postal Inspectors Service, at fraud@uspis.gov -- to which I resend pretty much every pyramid scheme I get that involves a US postal address, which is pretty much all of them; the enforcement branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement@sec.gov, to which I resend probable attempts at securities manipulation; and netpiracy@spa.org, for people who appear to be advertising for pirated software (plus I resend such to relevant specific companies that are likely large enough to have anti-piracy people, such as Microsoft).
Not only that, but it's not to be used for an ongoing prosecution, either.
The objective appears to be detecting those who, through a lawyer serving as intermediary, maintain operational control or influence with accomplices in terrorism (apparently it's specific to this particular area), et al, on the outside. In such a case, additional information could lead to an investigation and a prosecution on new charges of conspiracy, et al.
Hm, it'd probably also result in sanctions against the lawyer, as well. I seem to remember that some Mafia lawyers were prosecuted for being active accessories, not just uninvolved defense attornies.
Just like credit reports and medical information are never handed over today? I could see insurance companies requiring access as a condition of even processing your application, for instance.
Oh, and you'd need to be sure that the system is reliable, including the people involved -- the potential payoff for a bribe could be enormous. Likewise, if anybody with update access has a personal vendetta, or even bad typing skills... *shrug*
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Is there an FOIA equivalent for private companies holding data on people, along with an obligation for speedy correction -- including a good-faith attempt at propagating corrections to other data-holding companies if the misinformation was propagated?
If not, perhaps there should be.
Some of these may be from this year, but since they're from smaller companies don't get that much publicity they're easy to overlook.
Malfador's Space Empires IV (Gold version due in February or so, but the original is darn good), published by Shrapnel. It's a 4X space game, and focuses very heavily on depth and customizability versus flash. Want to replace the tech tree wholesale? Customize your race to be lousy at combat, but rake in the resources and trade? Create a system type featuring unusually powerful black holes? You can, if you like. It's been out for a while, but the publisher and developer are still supporting it.
Illwinter's "Dominions" is a fantasy 4X, that some have compared to Master of Magic. Ritual magic, combat spells, item construction, combat formations, god customization, 14 very different (not mirror-image...) races to choose from... Also still in active development -- e.g. I've gotten helpful responses regarding bugs and questions sent via e-mail, and they're still patching to fix bugs and add features.
Battlefront's "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord" is fairly old -- "CM: Barbarossa to Berlin" might be out sometime next year -- but still very good for 3D WWII tactical (up to Battalion-sized, say) warfare, with a nice WEGO system. It's very, very detailed, although you don't really have to memorize armor slopes... CMBO is not in active development anymore since they've been busy on the sequel, but the forum community is still active.
All three of the above support both solo- and multiple players (CMBO only two at a time, Dominions 14, SE4 not sure what the limit is if there is one).
There's also A-Sharp's "King of Dragon Pass", which seems intriguing. I can't comment on this too much since I've only seen the demo, but a (the?) dev has been spotted on USENET answering questions about it occasionally. It might be of interest to Runequest/Glorantha fans in particular.
The demo reminded me vaguely of the old Hammurabi decision-making game, if for some reason anybody remembers that (e.g. "101 BASIC Computer Games"). Of course, this one is FAR more complicated...
...and does absolutely nothing against random spewers like the HipCrime generators.
I suspect that a search warrant plus expert witness (programmer) would shoot that down pretty quickly.
Plus, it doesn't have to be 100% proof, even in a criminal case (civil will have a LOWER burden of proof) -- only "reasonable doubt". And humans are pretty darn good at pattern matching, so if it looks like there's an intentional pattern behind "accidental" deletions, you're opening yourself up to perjury (lying to the court for gain) and perhaps fraud/false advertising (if that's the excuse you give to your forum's patrons).
Where is the beauty in a flooding attack?
It's not so much a freedom-of-speech issue as a liability issue; by removing some posts, is the site operator implicitly condoning the others, and does that mean that he bears responsibility for it? After all, removing posts, even if it's automatically done, is basically taking an active role...
In particular, I'd worry about, say, harrassment law (maintaining a "hostile environment" -- remember that if an employer fails to act on the idiotic actions of his employees, the employer itself may be held liable).
Sure there's a legal alternative.
.mp3s they want under whatever terms they care for (well, other than stuff that won't hold like demanding seven years of indentured servitude from your next child).
Convince a band that there is a sufficient market to justify not signing exclusive contracts, and that it can handle distribution online. Artists are well within their rights to sign away distribution rights to just about anybody they damn well choose, as long as they don't sign mutually exclusive contracts... or to insist on autonomy and run a small e-commerce site where they can provide all the
Commerce is based on consent, after all. What you're asking for is simply a childish "Me! Me! MEEEEE!" system where you should get everything that you want, all the time.
Think "intent" and primary use. Designing a system whose primary usage or purpose is to commit a crime tends to be a Bad Thing in the eyes of the courts, whereas cars and guns don't have that as a primary usage (Yes, that goes for firearms, too. Given how many there are in the USA, if that was their *primary* usage we'd probably wipe out tens of thousands of people every day in urban bloodbaths, but we don't). With cars and guns, the responsibility lies with the user, because they generally *are* used responsibily (well, if you overlook the ubiquitous speeding on highways); but the writers and maintainers of Napster-clones know exactly what they're doing, and have pretty much demonstrated a complete lack of concern -- they intend to facilitate it, actually.
(_None_ of these systems, AFAIK, operate on an opt-in basis wrt authors. So, apparently, it's OK to insist that spammers get an opt-in from the user, but not OK to even bother to ask for consent from a content creator. Hrm.)
Incidentally, under certain laws, even *marketing* a system as primarily aimed at violations is illegal (the DMCA, for instance, has this provision).
Probably because
- There's no heroin cartel trying to legally dominate the market.
- Information alone won't let you purify or manufacture drugs -- you need quite a bit of lab gear, I'd think.
Information alone CAN be all that's needed to circumvent IP access controls -- e.g. source code is, effectively, the tool itself, whereas a full document describing in detail the manufacture of a W-88 nuclear warhead isn't sufficient to actually build one.
Apple's licensing agreement gives you rights, because accepting it is an implicit part of the contract of buying the software -- and if they don't agree to a contract, you get the default rights for using software that doesn't belong to you (namely, zero rights at all).
That's what judges do -- interpret the laws. Many, many laws are open to interpretation.
At some point, heck, you have to, because reality isn't readily reduceable to nice, neat mathematical axioms and definitions. Sooner or later there's a judgement call involved.
*blink*
How many people actually give those messages any credibility, given that they're usually a) reasonably anonymous barring court order, b) coming from people whose knowledge, cluefulness and motivations you don't know, c) potentially involve considerable amounts of money (a rather glaring motive for deception)?
You need to differentiate mere not particularly meaningful opinion ("Ford cars are lousy automobiles" -- really, no semantic content) from claims of fact ("Driving a Ford car is always reckless endangerment", say).
Hardly. C, used properly, is a safe language. Perl, programmed sloppily, can turn into syntactic hell where your program looks like unmaintainable line noise. Sloppy programmers aren't that useful in *any* language.
From the NSA site:
Couldn't the Agency simply ask its allies to provide them with information about U.S. persons?
We have been prohibited by executive order since 1978 from having any person or government agency, whether foreign or U.S., conduct any activity on our behalf that we are prohibited from conducting ourselves. Therefore, NSA/CSS does not ask its allies to conduct such activities on its behalf nor does NSA/CSS do so on behalf of its allies.
*shrug*
China isn't even close to Marxist/Maoist anymore, ever since Deng Xiaoping declared that it was perfectly reasonable to make money. They're simply now pragmatic totalitarians trying to pursue economic reforms while maintaining political and military power.
Because the voters in the US, who are free to make broadcasted nudity and FCC policies a campaign issue -- are generally fine with disallowing it. Remember that many content-blocking campaigns are started by local groups opposed to what they see as indecency, rather than imposed from above on an unwilling populace.
MSFT has the money and time to go hunting down resellers of OSes (plus, MSFT Windows CDs aren't required to be in the CD drive for some perverse SafeDisc check -- meaning that people can install, copy if they figure on ever reinstalling, sell, and probably get away with it).
Only for relocatable packages, which isn't that many AFAICT -- many packages, after all, have compile-time-only settings for configuration and data files. So unless you're going to --rebuild them as well, you're out of luck.
If I remember a _Newsweek_ article correctly (and assuming _that's_ accurate), yes, it's wireless.
I don't remember how they do it, 'tho -- maybe an induction coil?
Interesting. I'd forwarded some to them, 'tho I'd thought that was only for the FTC's information gathering.
Relevant to some might be the US Postal Inspectors Service, at fraud@uspis.gov -- to which I resend pretty much every pyramid scheme I get that involves a US postal address, which is pretty much all of them; the enforcement branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement@sec.gov, to which I resend probable attempts at securities manipulation; and netpiracy@spa.org, for people who appear to be advertising for pirated software (plus I resend such to relevant specific companies that are likely large enough to have anti-piracy people, such as Microsoft).
Er, they can't donate anonymously. Donations are regulated, 'specially "hard" money (money sent to aid a specific candidate), which is quite limited.
Interested? See opensecrets.org.
In any event, as somebody noted -- it's not so much that money means winning, it's that winning means money.
Tabletop dungeon crawls generally don't depend on how fast you can roll the dice, and done well, involve actual tactical skill.
Not only that, but it's not to be used for an ongoing prosecution, either.
The objective appears to be detecting those who, through a lawyer serving as intermediary, maintain operational control or influence with accomplices in terrorism (apparently it's specific to this particular area), et al, on the outside. In such a case, additional information could lead to an investigation and a prosecution on new charges of conspiracy, et al.
Hm, it'd probably also result in sanctions against the lawyer, as well. I seem to remember that some Mafia lawyers were prosecuted for being active accessories, not just uninvolved defense attornies.
Just like credit reports and medical information are never handed over today? I could see insurance companies requiring access as a condition of even processing your application, for instance.
Oh, and you'd need to be sure that the system is reliable, including the people involved -- the potential payoff for a bribe could be enormous. Likewise, if anybody with update access has a personal vendetta, or even bad typing skills... *shrug*