....I believe the easiest option for Amazon would be to simply...
ignore that law and let NY prove in federal court (if the can) that it is a valid law. What right does NY have to enforce one of their laws on someone from another state? Is this not a Federal issue, since the parties are in different states? Does NY law apply in Washington or any other state?
....If you or I got lost, we'd never rate a million dollar search effort...
Maybe where you live they operate that way. In the winter before last, a family from San Francisco took a wrong turn in our Southern Oregon mountains and go stuck in the snow, high on a mountain back road. There was a massive, expensive search effort, both by the sheriff and other public entities and many private volunteers.
The family stayed with the car, while the father attempted for go for help on foot. The car was spotted and the family rescued, but the father's body was found later, frozen in the snow. They were regular folks, far from home. They were not sent a bill, because we are a civilized community with compassion.
Our county is one the poorest in the state, especially now that the environmentalists have stopped all timber harvests that brought revenue into the county coffers.
....You destroy evidence, it's Obstruction of Justice. You don't hand over passwords, it is also....
No, there is a distinction there. Not giving evidence is not the same as destroying it. There are court ruling on this. In the US, you do NOT have to give them the password. They have the evidence, all of it, in the encrypted files. If they cannot read the evidence, that's their problem. It would be the same as if you put papers into an impregnable safe, that could not be opened, not mater how hard they tried. They could not force you to give them the combination. However, if the safe turned out not to be impregnable and they did get it open, they could use any evidence inside against you.
...What, you don't want to hand over your encryption keys? That's obstruction of justice....
No, he courts have ruled that the 5th amendment applies here in the USA. The government cannot force you to testify. Even if they know you have some incriminating evidence, they cannot make you give it to them.
That's why, if you have deep dark secrets, you make sure only you have physical access to it. A tiny USB chip, only plugged into the computer when working with the secret stuff, is easy to unplug quickly and made to disappear into a secret spot.
....If I were hiding incriminating information....
I would put it onto a USB drive that could be instantly unplugged and "disappeared", if it was even in use at the time. Cutting the power to the computer is also quickly done.
When the USB is not in use, it would be kept in a safe place where the likelihood of it being found is remote. They could then plug their device in and boot up the computer and search to their heart's content. As it is, I don't have any deep dark secrets so this is purely academic.
Apple may just wait until enough clueless buyers throw away their money on a pile of S**T like that and prevent the computer from booting after the next update or installation of a new version of iTunes, Safari or other "free" program from Apple. It's cheaper than lawyers and MUCH faster. A proper CYA warning may be in order though.
....Well, I'd say that the % of people who care about their fan noise is less than that, much less...
Anybody who wishes to use their computer as a video player in the living room would care very much if it added noise of its own to the soundtrack of the show.
...Except that there are no tuner cards for Mac...
If you TV doesn't have a tuner, there are some on the market. We just got a new 47" monitor/TV with two tuners, which we don't use because we have a satellite receiver. This TV also with fine with an old G4 Mac mini.
....but like most Mac fanatics, you're trying to go with the argument that something so incredibly simple and mainstream is a niche market...
It would interesting to see a survey of ordinary mom and pop users, not/. nerds, who ever even have cracked the case on their computer. You are not the target customer Apple is making their products for. Most people want a computer that "just works" at every day tasks, such as email, surfing the web, showing picture and movies, ripping and playing CD's and working with the iPod or iPhone. Even our old obsolete G4 mini still does all that without the slightest hiccups. It works fabulously well at full 1920x1080 resolution with our new 47 in LCD monitor/TV.
....are applying it to home theater sorts of applications...
We recently bought a 47" LCD Monitor/TV which among other things has a VGA connection. We connected a G4 based mini to that monitor. The mini will display the full 1920x1080 resolution of that screen and works great with DVDs. The TV boasts a special interpolation chip, which boosts the full screen DVD picture to fill the screen.
At first I used screen sharing to a laptop Mac to start the movie, but now I have a USB based wireless keyboard and mouse. The G4 mini also plays my shared iTunes library over the network. I've also done slide shows with music, using iPhoto. I can sit in the living room and surf the Internet on a BIG, super sharp monitor.
The Mac mini, hidden in the cabinet the monitor stands on makes that TV/monitor more useful than we ever imagined. The itself TV has 2 built in tuners for broadcasts, but we have satellite receiver which feeds video to the TV and audio to the stereo.
What would be more impressive, is if Apple would make a capable little brother of the Macpro and price it in the mid iMac range. I don't think Apple will EVER enter the rock bottom computer market. There little profit in that.
....When Apple's lawyers are done with Psystar?...
It would probably better, faster and cheaper for Apple to come out with a little Macpro brother for about the price of a mid-range iMac for those who want an expandable Mac computer. Many such potential users already have a serviceable monitor, mouse and keyboard. Lawyers are expensive and the legal system is slow.
A mini with an external firewire or USB drive is smaller and much quieter than some big, noisy clone box.
Maybe Apple will come out with a smaller less capable brother to the Macpro as a response to this buzzing clone fly. It would probably be cheaper and much faster for them than paying an army of lawyers to use the slow as molasses legal system to put these upstarts out of business.
Would that not require a huge data set to determine who was allowed to connect to whom? Such a router would have to determine where a given packet should go as today, but also WHETHER it should go at all. Would that not require to have information on the permission on every possible end node on the Internet? Would the permission data not be orders of magnitude greater than the mere delivery data?
A craft can be very seaworthy and not have a sail, rudder or propeller if all it has to do is stay afloat.
If you would read the story yourself, and pay careful attention to the details given, rather than speculate, you would not make the comments you did.
We read that Noah did not close the door to the ark, but God did and Noah was locked in there for a whole WEEK before the flood actually began. This flood was not a gentle rain and rain was not the major source of the water. Also, the ark was built miles from the ocean and any possible other boats and fishermen. By the time the ark floated, the sea coasts were already well under water. There may have been other boats floating on the water, but the people in these boats were miles from the ark and soon died.
(..for feeding and watering the billions of creatures on board...)
Again if you would actually read the account for yourself, you learn that Noah was instructed to bring only two of each air breathing creatures. You would also learn that Noah did not have to hunt these up, but that they came on their own to Noah. Once God gets involved in a situation, nothing is impossible, even if you and others think so.
....because XP should be slowed down by running in a translated environment...
It may be true that there is a little overhead, but it is not a translated environment any longer, since Apple adopted the Intel x86 CPU. Parallels allows running a Windows boot partition either in virtual mode under OSX or direct bare metal booting. The latter would only give a clear advantage in CPU intensive tasks, such as games. For most work, you would not notice the difference between the two modes, native or VM under OSX.
(..Apple doesn't sell functionality..)
I don't know exactly what you mean by this, but Apple makes a WHOLE computer, with better software-hardware integration. Anything whole, by definition is better than anything partial and piecemeal. All other computer makers only make half a computer. The other half is always made by MS in the case of Windows or some nebulous group of programers in the case of Linux.
...Any program I run has +rw access to ~ (can start itself from.profile,...
In order for a program to run, does it not also need execute permission? If none of the users space has execute permissions, the virus can't run the first time. If all the users normal programs are in a read only program folder, how will a nasty program the user may have downloaded into his user space run the first time?
Anti-malware programs are more like a very strong padlock on a flimsy Windows OS door. The padlock may be tough, but the door is easy to kick in or simply take off the hinges. The only one who can make it hard to get into the computer (house) is the maker of the OS (door). OSX and Linux have a stronger door and a good lock. Hanging on a stronger padlock won't give much extra protection against burglars and the padlock sellers know that.
They had a lock picking contest recently, where the owner of the OSX house had to co-operate with a simulated burglar, who then was able to pick the lock and get in. However the basic strength of the OSX and Linux doors is very similar, since they both are based on UNIX, a true, conceived from the ground up as a secure, multi-user system. Windows always was and still is a PERSONAL computer OS where multi-user and security was added on later. If Apple would have pasted security on their old OS9 base, they would have been in the same boat that MS still is.
....saying that 4 is defined as the same as 2+2 is....
Is that a human definition or is it true outside of any human frame of reference? Is that math definition or human convention the same we have here in the US agreed to drive on the right and stop for a red light etc, rather than something else. Is 2+2=4 independent? Can we by a decree make it 5 or can we by decree make the value of pi 3 so as to make the arithmetic easier? Would or could aliens of another world discover the value of pi in whatever number system they used? If the conversion factor between their number system and ours were taken into account, I believe the value of their pi and ours would be identical since the VALUE of pi is independent, no matter what symbols or number systems are used.
I think many things are intrinsically true, apart from human recognizing such truths. Gravity worked long before Newton came on the scene. Truth in math and physics is there, regardless of whether we recognize or understand it, standing entirely and independently on its own. The very reason that we can even do science, is because there are certain laws and ratios in the Universe, that are outside of human control. If humans had a say-so over the laws of physics or math, repeatable science observations and experiments would not be possible.
By the same token of moral laws were no also equally out of human control, civilization, as we have it also would not be possible, or at least very hard. Animals are mostly governed by instinct programmed into ROM, but people have very little ROM. Most behavior must be programmed (learned) into RAM.
The VALUE of the sum of 2+2=4 is always the same, whether decimal, octal hex, binary or whatever is used and no matter what symbols are used. In short then, number systems and the symbology used to represent these numbers are invented, but the underlying mathematical truth is discovered.
...The OS is less responsive than any competition...
BS. I run XP under OSX in a VM. The response it about the same for both. If I use Safari under OSX or IE under XP, there is no difference anyone would notice.
It is instructive, that in spite of your claim of higher prices for Apple hardware, Apple Macs are selling rather well these days and Apple is making a higher percentage profit that any commodity hardware maker and even MS itself. Apparently there are plenty of people that appreciate the superior quality of design of the hardware, as well as not having to hassle viruses, worms, spyware and other computer vermin that plagues Windows. They also appreciate the included iLife software that comes with every new Mac. The equivalents of this software included with Windows, or even available with Linux is a sorry, second rate imitation.
Giving the inevitable/. car analogy, there are plenty of drivers who appreciate the performance of a BMW or comfort and luxury of a Mercedes. They keep the makers of these vehicles innovative and profitable. A Hyundai will get you from A to B, if that's all you care about. A cheap DELL or thrown together white box PC with also let you surf the Internet, if thats all you want to do with a computer.
If I were an avid gamer. I'd buy a Windows XP PC, just to run the many games available for it. It would have no permanent network connection, minimize malware.
...you actually own the software, you don't just license it...
What difference does that make since every computer comes with an OS anyway, either OSX or Windows. If you have a Mac, also get some other very useable software and you can also run many free UNIX flavor programs. If you want you can any flavor of Window, or Linux all running in a VM under OSX.
...When it is discovered, it is physics. When it is invented, it is computer science....
So is 1+1=2 discovered or invented? An invention is an arbitrary thing. Someone could "invent" an N-sided wheel. Can someone invent 1+1=5? Such a wheel would be a subjective thing, depending on N, but 1+1 makes an objective sum of only 2 and nothing else.
Mathematics is used to describe physical reality, but does it DEPEND on physical things or is it a construct of what we have labeled mind or intelligence?
Slashdot Mirror
....I believe the easiest option for Amazon would be to simply...
ignore that law and let NY prove in federal court (if the can) that it is a valid law. What right does NY have to enforce one of their laws on someone from another state? Is this not a Federal issue, since the parties are in different states? Does NY law apply in Washington or any other state?
....If you or I got lost, we'd never rate a million dollar search effort...
Maybe where you live they operate that way. In the winter before last, a family from San Francisco took a wrong turn in our Southern Oregon mountains and go stuck in the snow, high on a mountain back road. There was a massive, expensive search effort, both by the sheriff and other public entities and many private volunteers.
The family stayed with the car, while the father attempted for go for help on foot. The car was spotted and the family rescued, but the father's body was found later, frozen in the snow. They were regular folks, far from home. They were not sent a bill, because we are a civilized community with compassion.
Our county is one the poorest in the state, especially now that the environmentalists have stopped all timber harvests that brought revenue into the county coffers.
....You destroy evidence, it's Obstruction of Justice. You don't hand over passwords, it is also....
No, there is a distinction there. Not giving evidence is not the same as destroying it. There are court ruling on this. In the US, you do NOT have to give them the password. They have the evidence, all of it, in the encrypted files. If they cannot read the evidence, that's their problem. It would be the same as if you put papers into an impregnable safe, that could not be opened, not mater how hard they tried. They could not force you to give them the combination. However, if the safe turned out not to be impregnable and they did get it open, they could use any evidence inside against you.
...What, you don't want to hand over your encryption keys? That's obstruction of justice....
No, he courts have ruled that the 5th amendment applies here in the USA. The government cannot force you to testify. Even if they know you have some incriminating evidence, they cannot make you give it to them.
...you gain physical access to the machine...
That's why, if you have deep dark secrets, you make sure only you have physical access to it. A tiny USB chip, only plugged into the computer when working with the secret stuff, is easy to unplug quickly and made to disappear into a secret spot.
....If I were hiding incriminating information....
I would put it onto a USB drive that could be instantly unplugged and "disappeared", if it was even in use at the time. Cutting the power to the computer is also quickly done.
When the USB is not in use, it would be kept in a safe place where the likelihood of it being found is remote. They could then plug their device in and boot up the computer and search to their heart's content. As it is, I don't have any deep dark secrets so this is purely academic.
...Define "bad people", please...
Anyone who does to others or says things about others, what wouldn't like it if it were done to them. They don't obey "The Golden Rule".
...to really sue them big...
Apple may just wait until enough clueless buyers throw away their money on a pile of S**T like that and prevent the computer from booting after the next update or installation of a new version of iTunes, Safari or other "free" program from Apple. It's cheaper than lawyers and MUCH faster. A proper CYA warning may be in order though.
....Well, I'd say that the % of people who care about their fan noise is less than that, much less...
Anybody who wishes to use their computer as a video player in the living room would care very much if it added noise of its own to the soundtrack of the show.
...Except that there are no tuner cards for Mac...
If you TV doesn't have a tuner, there are some on the market. We just got a new 47" monitor/TV with two tuners, which we don't use because we have a satellite receiver. This TV also with fine with an old G4 Mac mini.
....but like most Mac fanatics, you're trying to go with the argument that something so incredibly simple and mainstream is a niche market...
/. nerds, who ever even have cracked the case on their computer. You are not the target customer Apple is making their products for. Most people want a computer that "just works" at every day tasks, such as email, surfing the web, showing picture and movies, ripping and playing CD's and working with the iPod or iPhone. Even our old obsolete G4 mini still does all that without the slightest hiccups. It works fabulously well at full 1920x1080 resolution with our new 47 in LCD monitor/TV.
It would interesting to see a survey of ordinary mom and pop users, not
....are applying it to home theater sorts of applications...
We recently bought a 47" LCD Monitor/TV which among other things has a VGA connection. We connected a G4 based mini to that monitor. The mini will display the full 1920x1080 resolution of that screen and works great with DVDs. The TV boasts a special interpolation chip, which boosts the full screen DVD picture to fill the screen.
At first I used screen sharing to a laptop Mac to start the movie, but now I have a USB based wireless keyboard and mouse. The G4 mini also plays my shared iTunes library over the network. I've also done slide shows with music, using iPhoto. I can sit in the living room and surf the Internet on a BIG, super sharp monitor.
The Mac mini, hidden in the cabinet the monitor stands on makes that TV/monitor more useful than we ever imagined. The itself TV has 2 built in tuners for broadcasts, but we have satellite receiver which feeds video to the TV and audio to the stereo.
...That would actually be more impressive...
What would be more impressive, is if Apple would make a capable little brother of the Macpro and price it in the mid iMac range. I don't think Apple will EVER enter the rock bottom computer market. There little profit in that.
....When Apple's lawyers are done with Psystar?...
It would probably better, faster and cheaper for Apple to come out with a little Macpro brother for about the price of a mid-range iMac for those who want an expandable Mac computer. Many such potential users already have a serviceable monitor, mouse and keyboard. Lawyers are expensive and the legal system is slow.
....who just wants a second internal hdd....
A mini with an external firewire or USB drive is smaller and much quieter than some big, noisy clone box.
Maybe Apple will come out with a smaller less capable brother to the Macpro as a response to this buzzing clone fly. It would probably be cheaper and much faster for them than paying an army of lawyers to use the slow as molasses legal system to put these upstarts out of business.
...By reading the packet headers...
Would that not require a huge data set to determine who was allowed to connect to whom? Such a router would have to determine where a given packet should go as today, but also WHETHER it should go at all. Would that not require to have information on the permission on every possible end node on the Internet? Would the permission data not be orders of magnitude greater than the mere delivery data?
...ark doesn't have to be at all seaworthy...
A craft can be very seaworthy and not have a sail, rudder or propeller if all it has to do is stay afloat.
If you would read the story yourself, and pay careful attention to the details given, rather than speculate, you would not make the comments you did.
We read that Noah did not close the door to the ark, but God did and Noah was locked in there for a whole WEEK before the flood actually began. This flood was not a gentle rain and rain was not the major source of the water. Also, the ark was built miles from the ocean and any possible other boats and fishermen. By the time the ark floated, the sea coasts were already well under water. There may have been other boats floating on the water, but the people in these boats were miles from the ark and soon died.
(..for feeding and watering the billions of creatures on board...)
Again if you would actually read the account for yourself, you learn that Noah was instructed to bring only two of each air breathing creatures. You would also learn that Noah did not have to hunt these up, but that they came on their own to Noah. Once God gets involved in a situation, nothing is impossible, even if you and others think so.
....because XP should be slowed down by running in a translated environment...
It may be true that there is a little overhead, but it is not a translated environment any longer, since Apple adopted the Intel x86 CPU. Parallels allows running a Windows boot partition either in virtual mode under OSX or direct bare metal booting. The latter would only give a clear advantage in CPU intensive tasks, such as games. For most work, you would not notice the difference between the two modes, native or VM under OSX.
(..Apple doesn't sell functionality..)
I don't know exactly what you mean by this, but Apple makes a WHOLE computer, with better software-hardware integration. Anything whole, by definition is better than anything partial and piecemeal. All other computer makers only make half a computer. The other half is always made by MS in the case of Windows or some nebulous group of programers in the case of Linux.
...Any program I run has +rw access to ~ (can start itself from .profile,...
In order for a program to run, does it not also need execute permission? If none of the users space has execute permissions, the virus can't run the first time. If all the users normal programs are in a read only program folder, how will a nasty program the user may have downloaded into his user space run the first time?
....is confidence of unpenetrable shield....
Anti-malware programs are more like a very strong padlock on a flimsy Windows OS door. The padlock may be tough, but the door is easy to kick in or simply take off the hinges. The only one who can make it hard to get into the computer (house) is the maker of the OS (door). OSX and Linux have a stronger door and a good lock. Hanging on a stronger padlock won't give much extra protection against burglars and the padlock sellers know that.
They had a lock picking contest recently, where the owner of the OSX house had to co-operate with a simulated burglar, who then was able to pick the lock and get in. However the basic strength of the OSX and Linux doors is very similar, since they both are based on UNIX, a true, conceived from the ground up as a secure, multi-user system. Windows always was and still is a PERSONAL computer OS where multi-user and security was added on later. If Apple would have pasted security on their old OS9 base, they would have been in the same boat that MS still is.
....saying that 4 is defined as the same as 2+2 is....
Is that a human definition or is it true outside of any human frame of reference? Is that math definition or human convention the same we have here in the US agreed to drive on the right and stop for a red light etc, rather than something else. Is 2+2=4 independent? Can we by a decree make it 5 or can we by decree make the value of pi 3 so as to make the arithmetic easier? Would or could aliens of another world discover the value of pi in whatever number system they used? If the conversion factor between their number system and ours were taken into account, I believe the value of their pi and ours would be identical since the VALUE of pi is independent, no matter what symbols or number systems are used.
I think many things are intrinsically true, apart from human recognizing such truths. Gravity worked long before Newton came on the scene. Truth in math and physics is there, regardless of whether we recognize or understand it, standing entirely and independently on its own. The very reason that we can even do science, is because there are certain laws and ratios in the Universe, that are outside of human control. If humans had a say-so over the laws of physics or math, repeatable science observations and experiments would not be possible.
By the same token of moral laws were no also equally out of human control, civilization, as we have it also would not be possible, or at least very hard. Animals are mostly governed by instinct programmed into ROM, but people have very little ROM. Most behavior must be programmed (learned) into RAM.
The VALUE of the sum of 2+2=4 is always the same, whether decimal, octal hex, binary or whatever is used and no matter what symbols are used. In short then, number systems and the symbology used to represent these numbers are invented, but the underlying mathematical truth is discovered.
...The OS is less responsive than any competition...
/. car analogy, there are plenty of drivers who appreciate the performance of a BMW or comfort and luxury of a Mercedes. They keep the makers of these vehicles innovative and profitable. A Hyundai will get you from A to B, if that's all you care about. A cheap DELL or thrown together white box PC with also let you surf the Internet, if thats all you want to do with a computer.
BS. I run XP under OSX in a VM. The response it about the same for both. If I use Safari under OSX or IE under XP, there is no difference anyone would notice.
It is instructive, that in spite of your claim of higher prices for Apple hardware, Apple Macs are selling rather well these days and Apple is making a higher percentage profit that any commodity hardware maker and even MS itself. Apparently there are plenty of people that appreciate the superior quality of design of the hardware, as well as not having to hassle viruses, worms, spyware and other computer vermin that plagues Windows. They also appreciate the included iLife software that comes with every new Mac. The equivalents of this software included with Windows, or even available with Linux is a sorry, second rate imitation.
Giving the inevitable
If I were an avid gamer. I'd buy a Windows XP PC, just to run the many games available for it. It would have no permanent network connection, minimize malware.
...you actually own the software, you don't just license it...
What difference does that make since every computer comes with an OS anyway, either OSX or Windows. If you have a Mac, also get some other very useable software and you can also run many free UNIX flavor programs. If you want you can any flavor of Window, or Linux all running in a VM under OSX.
....That's next year...
That's right, the year of Linux is ALWAYS next year in the same way the fusion power plants are always twenty years in the future.
...When it is discovered, it is physics. When it is invented, it is computer science. ...
So is 1+1=2 discovered or invented? An invention is an arbitrary thing. Someone could "invent" an N-sided wheel. Can someone invent 1+1=5? Such a wheel would be a subjective thing, depending on N, but 1+1 makes an objective sum of only 2 and nothing else.
Mathematics is used to describe physical reality, but does it DEPEND on physical things or is it a construct of what we have labeled mind or intelligence?