My question is...how exactly would this identify terrorists - who are, presumably, the people that a filter like this would be intended to identify? I can certainly understand that unprecedented financial behavior can, in a very small percentages of cases, indicate illegal behavior (drug dealing, primarily), but how is this within the scope of the jurisdiction of Homeland Security? Don't we have the DEA and IRS for things like that?
Their reasoning will be that terr-uh-rists will move large amounts of cash around through odd channels, and will attempt to launder money through them. Of course, I don't know how many of the essential Weapons of Mass Destruction you can actually buy using MasterCard, but the threat is there - they have to get their socks somewhere, and you need good stout walking boots to board the plane you intend crashing into a building.
Down Under, we've had the Cash Transactions Reporting Act for quite a number of years. In essence, anything over a certain dollar value ($10K AUD, IIRC) going into a bank or credit provider has to be reported in order to reduce the chance of money laundering. I wouldn't consider reporting large transactions to the IRS any less proper than the reporting of large transactions to equivalent Australian authorities. I would, however, consider reporting them to ASIO or the Australian Federal Police on the whim of some employee of an organisation with a vested interest in keeping people in debt to be grossly inappropriate - even if legally required - and that appears to be exactly what's happened in this.
Of course, I could be wrong and such data could already be collated over here by such agencies... I just hope they've got it all, so they'll also see that the logical source of that recent large credit card payment was from refinancing my home loan and the money was used to pay for furniture, fences and other house-related costs. But that's probably too much to hope for...
I don't want to play the "Nazi Card"... hell, no. I'm trying desperately to avoid it. I don't think the USA is anywhere near that kind of unspeakable and unaccountable totalitarian nightmare. Not yet... but they're probably somewhere in deepest darkest 1932. And the more I look at it, the more Australia appears to be tagging along behind the greater power, just like Italy did.
Although the process is not particularly efficient at present, it could be of significant benefit anyway.
How?
Well, although we probably have really nifty technologies now and coming up for producing energy from solar, geothermal, tidal, wind, hydro, ocean thermal gradients and even new safer nuclear reactors, we don't really have any effective way of making that energy portable, easily storable or able to be distributed through existing infrastructure. If we can get really cheap and really clean electricity, and use that to produce oil products from purpose-grown organic matter (like algae ponds) and/or organic waste (raw sewage, agricultural waste, cannery waste etc) we might be on a winner. Provided we don't start grinding up coal to make crude oil this way, the whole process should be carbon-neutral and a convenient
way of storing energy in a portable liquid form that we already know how to store, ship and use.
And doing it where other people passing by, women and children for instance, that's very, very wrong. There has been a trend of people driving around with porn running on LCD's in their SUV's with the intention of other drivers seeing their porn shows. KIDS are seeing this stuff too.. The police in some cities are pulling these people over and ticketing them but I think they should be arrested, same as a flasher would be.
Hell, forget getting the police involved... if it's visible outside the vehicle it could be considered public performance of copyrighted material, so try to get the MPAA involved. What would be nastier - ending up on a sex offender registry, or ending up in the MPAA's sights?
And since the porn in the library problem isn't being handled I think they should simply remove the computers from the library. Let people go buy their own, they're cheap now.
And what then of the homeless, the working poor, the otherwise disenfranchised? A teenager from a repressive family background wanting to get real information on some subject that's taboo at home and wanting to supplement their dead-tree search for information with access to on-line resourses? Add to that the fact that an increasing number of library resources are delivered via the web, and I believe it's neither desirable nor practicable to remove computers from public libraries.
What's next - taking the art history books off the shelves because some pervert might have a wank while looking at those paintings of luscious Rubenesque beauties? (oooh...drool...) Removing anthropology books because someone might consider photos of naked villagers to be child pornography?
No, I suspect the problem isn't so much what people are able to view as the lack of respect or consideration some of them have for other library occupants - including the young and the cleaners. How, without prying unduly into a particular library user's privacy, are you to know whether they're surfing porn for a quick thrill or as research into the seedier side of e-commerce? For that matter, how can you tell whether they're looking at "terr-uh-rist" or hate group sites because they're terrorists or neo-nazis or concerned citizens wanting to know more about the groups they've been told are evil? You can't - but the user of the library machines can respect the sensibilities of other users by making use of the privacy screens. Hell, if I was using a computer in a public library and privacy screens were available I'd request one on principle - not because I'd be surfing porn, but because it might make someone else feel comfortable asking for one and expanding their horizons and their minds.
Okay... they're using an aluminum roofing nail, and a copper water pipe.
I think there's quite a lot of prior art here, but while we're looking at such stupid ideas let's consider my forthcoming patent for a similar idea using similar electrodes and McDonalds Cheeseburgers. Or potatoes. Let's use copper and aluminum or zinc electrodes and potatoes! They're a renewable resource!
These stupid bastards haven't realised that they're simply getting back the energy that went into refining the metals used for the electrodes. Or perhaps they have, but hope that their investors won't.
I had a plastic learning device called a "Speak & Spell." Some of you may have heard of it.
Some educational toys are just plain useless. TI were actually surpassed in the areas of stupidity by some of the Hong Kong manufacturers, as they were in so many others.
I used to work for one of the.AUian retail electronics chains, and in the late 80's one of the more stupid - and thus my most favourite - products we carried was My Friend Ribbit on the Learning Pond.
This consisted of a plastic frog on a plastic base, and disks with plastic tabs with a barcodes on them were inserted into a reader in the base - the tab had a plastic circle with a picture on it on one end.
The big problem with the whole thing was that the animated plastic frog caused some interesting cabinet resonances, making much of what the device said unintelligible. For example...
"How do you spell gnyuch?"
"What the... where's the repeat button..."
"How do you spell gnyuch?"
"I give up... I don't know how you spell gnyuch... where's the answer button..."
"B - U - S , gnyuch."
Other things that made it mostly useless were the fact that kids couldn't resist touching the waggling goggly eyes or sticking things in the flapping mouth instead of learning, and the slot for the barcoded tabs caused kids and grandparents to confuse it with a money box.
You're missing the fundamental point of the article, which is OOH SHINY!
Sorry, the point of the article is "We've got to sell papers by scaring you, and this is going to get your attention for the thirty seconds we've conditioned you to spend on a newspaper article that can't possibly do justice to the topic at hand."
On a serious note, ration access to the things. "Interactive" is not necessarily a good thing. You thought TV was bad for attention spans? You thought old-style video games were bad? Heh... use the right things at the right time, and in the right proportions. The problem is, many parents who wouldn't dream of letting their kids veg out in front of the television simply substitute one electronic babysitter for another.
Read to your kids, encourage them to read, let them play interactive titles like the Broderbund stuff assessed, and let them watch TV and DVDs. They all complement each other.
Reading to kids exposes them to material they wouldn't be able to access themselves because of the reading level required, but which they may well be able to understand - kids can generally listen and speak several years ahead of their reading level, and if they gain knowledge that there's all this interesting stuff in books and see adults reading they'll get interested in gaining the skills needed to read it themselves.
Interactive stuff makes for good reading-drills - it gets their attention and gets them practicing the skill, and they don't even know that they're doing it. Just don't expect them to be able to absorb a whole story in a single sitting. They're just not designed that way. They're frequently either non-linear, or have an overall linear progression that allows diversions along the way - that's deliberate, and is meant to enhance the long-term playability and make it easier to get the kids to repeat the practice reading exercises hidden as sets of directions or comments on objects or people. They're good for picking up related facts, but picking a narrative out of them could be difficult because the reader/player partially directs how things unfold rather than passively following a narrative that already exists. If they're related to other dead-tree materials, like the Little Monster title is, it could be a good way to get an interest in the related books too.
TV, videos and DVDs also allow some complex ideas to be presented if done right, and can encourage imagination and thought. I'm not talking about reruns of Magilla Gorilla... I think we all know what kind of crap has been on television... but there is a lot of stuff out there that can stretch the imagination, get kids thinking about moral and behavioural issues at an early age etc. Care Bears, good targetted kids sci-fi of the kind that our national broadcaster seems to show from time to time, kiddy documentary-style series and the like can help provide an interest in what's right and wrong and an interest in people and the world. We don't sit around reading the bible and Pears Cyclopedia to the family by gaslight any more, so the old "do unto others" and "things are interesting out there" messages aren't quite so common in everyday family activities these days - education is in some ways all about programming your kids to be the best people they can be, and their flexible and absorbent little minds will be shaped by what you expose them to, so look at this as an opportunity to expose them to new, interesting and challenging material rather than a way to keep them out of your hair while you watch the news.
As for purely entertaining interactive titles, like video games, they're not necessarily bad either. Reasoning, imagination, memory skills, attention to detail, cause-and-effect and the like are all things that their gameplay can rely on. They're all important life skills too.
Just because kids couldn't remember what they saw in the program the previous day is no reason to assume the technology is evil
So, does anyone know where there is a published policy of how such money does supposedly get allocated to artists?
My understanding of it was that they pulled figures out of their arses, based loosely on music sales - the assumption being that most of what's being copied is what the kids are listening to, like the latest PedoBait Pop Princess or Wanky Boyband-Wannabes. I seem to recall reading that's how such levies are divided up in places where they exist.
Personally, I'd like to see an option to file a fair-use CD-copying return that would obligate the leeches to track down and send a portion of the levy to the holder of the copyrights associated with a specific disc burn. I like this for several reasons.
Firstly, by including a few bars of my own composition "ARIA are parasites" on each data disk I burn, I ought to be able to claim back most of the levy - minus whatever the mandated ARIA handling-fee is, of course, as they're there to protect my interests as a musician and composer.
Secondly, by ensuring that I regularly file for out-of-copyright works that I transcribe from 78 to CD, I'll make their little heads explode and maybe just waste their resources sending cheques for miniscule amounts to the last-known copyright holder for such gems as "It aint the meat, it's the motion".
Thirdly - and this is my favourite - if enough people do it for every out-of-print obscure title they have in their record collection, or even just for stuff they don't want to have to buy again to listen to in the car, it will show how skewed whatever arse-plucked formula they use is and will force a re-think of the whole issue. Is it personal-use of material for which you have already purchased a licence to listen in the form of a large black or small silver disk? If that's the case, what exactly are you depriving the copyright holder of by using an MP3 player instead of a portable CD player? Is the levy to compensate copyright holders for copying and distribution? If that's the case, then it ought to be legal to buy a CD, burn a hundred copies and give them away.
I am not opposed to the idea of a fair return for effort, or giving money to musicians. Not at all. What I am opposed to are the notions that every CD-R or MP3 player will be used for illegally-obtained music, and that figures from ARIA or the RIAA or other similar bodies are anywhere near what's actually happening in the real world. Okay, maybe I'm wrong and maybe people are stupid enough to actually be copying the stuff the music industry says they're buying most of. But if we're forced to cough up for a levy to pay for the right to transcribe music we've purchased to media we can leave in the car on a hot day without worrying unduly, I DEMAND the right to have the money go to the Grimthorpe Colliery Band instead of Sony/BMG.
Also, I have heard that flash has a limited write life cycle which means it can't be used as swap. How can they offer a lifetime warranty if that's the case?
Exactly the same way floppy disk manufacturers did/do, would be my guess. In a nutshell, something like:
For as long as you own this item, and as long as it exists, we warrant that it will be free from defects in materials or manufacture. You drop it in hot coffee, rub it with steel wool, break it accidentally, wear it out, or change its ownership or lose your proof of purchase and we don't owe you a cracker. We're reasonably confident that if our product fails, it will be outside the statutory warranty period in your location. We're also reasonably certain that by the time it fails for reasons that might be covered by this warranty, you'll have (a) scratched it up pretty badly and will think it's probably your fault, and (b) you can't be bothered organising an RMA and posting your dinky little one gig stick back to us when McDonalds are handing out Terabyte sticks with every Transformers cartoon ever made on them in Happy Meals.
In short, it's probably not worth very much to anyone... apart from the fact that it means that the manufacturer is confident that very few people will take them up on the offer. That in itself is possibly a reasonable indicator that they're not using the cheapest crap to build them, as you don't make promises like that unless you're reasonably confident that it won't cost you a bundle when the things start dropping like flies. Hell, Iomega didn't make promises like that and it cost them a bundle anyway.
He should play them all backwards at the same time and see what kryptic messages he hears;)
"I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage.
Chewie, I don't think we're in Kansas any more..."
Remove smoking bans? Yeah, okay, if you also...
on
Safe Cigarettes?
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if this will have any impact on the no smoking bans we have seen in recent years?
I would support the removal of smoking bans if and only if the ban on me standing on the table and urinating on the hair and clothing of smokers was removed at the same time.
...And here are the assholes who have been doing the legal legwork to make this possible. Here is their argument in law, which draws heavily on the flawed, idiotic precedents established with software patents.
Okay... this is either going to burn karma like there's no tomorrow, or be a huge piece of whoring.
Good On 'Em!
Yeah, that's right, I'm cheering.
The law appears to allow it. The law is probably broken. Will anything be done about how broken the law is unless people realise it's broken? 'Course not, it never is... unless it's something that threatens your or my "national interests", but that's straying into "-1 Offtopic" and "-1 Flamebait" territory.
So, if things are broken, and they won't get fixed until someone is caught taking advantage of the situation, then let them try to take advantage of the situation and let the public know!
I've always thought those devices were 90% snake-oil, but after hearing those mouse recordings I guess they might work under some circumstances - they'd make it difficult to attract a mate, for example.
Mind you, if noisy environments where you can't hear yourself think are inherently repellent, I guess all the nightclubs should have gone out of business years ago...
I actually once answered the phone to be greeted with "You are currently on hold, this call will be answered as soon as an operator is free." It only took a second but I was just transfixed in shock. An operator answered and I just hung up on him.
My standard response is to wait until a human finally starts to speak, then cut them off with something like:
"I don't know who you are or who you represent, and frankly I don't care. If your organisation doesn't believe in treating those they call with courtesy and respect, then I don't particularly wish to deal with them until they do. Autodiallers are extremely rude. If this call is the result of a prior relationship with your organisation and you believe there are things someone supposedly at this number needs to know, please have your supervisor call in person to explain the situation. Goodbye."
Funnily enough, no recognisable follow-up calls have been received.
On a karma-burning tangent, are there any really cheap line interface cards available in Australia? With the various open-source PABX implementations available, it should be relatively straightforward to set up a "spam filter" for the phone. Possible features could include:
- Answering calls with caller-ID blocked after two rings, and feeding another thirty seconds of fake ring-tone noises back down the line before bothering to ring the internal phones... similar to a lengthy greetpause in Sendmail
- Routing calls from recognised call-centre outbound numbers directly to voicemail or an anti-callcentre message, in the event that they don't block caller-ID and you've had run-ins with them before. Before long the Phone Abuse Prevention System (TM) will appear, quickly followed by lawsuits and DDOS attacks from various Indian callcentre operators.
Of course, before long we'll end up with VOIP gateways in such implementations, with the outbound calls from your home being routed according to the lowest cost for the call or some quality criterion. About a week later, the Mumbai Mafia will discover how to zombie these machines and millions of phishing calls will come from such compromised voice boxes. At that point, we've all lost.
The list goes on and on. There is no trace of any intelligence whatsoever in our design, but there is a lot of traces of random changes, adaptation of body-parts to jobs they are not particularly well suited for etc. If there was someone behind the design of humans, he would fail Human Design 101. Bloody Stupid Johnson.
If we're all created in God's image, then I think we should all feel very sorry for Him.
I can see small companies with 100% outsourced IT possible trying this, but not too much else.
Considering how some of the point-and-drool "administrators" at some of those small companies look after their Exchange servers, I'm failing to see a down side...
Which body part should I cover with tinfoil to maximize its potential?
Whichever part you don't want to cook too fast. I'd suggest the hands and feet, for starters, but you may find that you'll need to cover other parts depending on your oven and which bits you like extra crispy.
Oh... you're talking mind control... sorry.
Remember, the real reason orgone boxes were outlawed was that they interfered with the mind control beams. Also, "shiny side out" is a piece of government misinformation, as that actually maximises the effects of the mind control beams. You need shiny side in to be properly protected.
There were times when we couldn't even begin to describe what we do, without using some kind of jargon or other. As we got better in the game, we narrowed down what terms we could use and , by the end of 3rd year, we weren't even using the term computer in our description.
"I sit in a chair, press small plastic rectangles with my fingers and look at millions of tiny coloured dots. Occasionally I swear profusely and break things."
... or maybe our ancestors tasted like pork to them, but they had a lower tolerance to some pathogen that gets transmitted through human flesh and developed a rampaging case of Mad Neanderthal Disease.
Nice troll, but those keyboards are available with and without the windows key
Of course they are, and if I found a compelling need for a windows key on a board I had to use regularly I'd buy one in a heartbeat or ask my employers to... but since I'm extremely unlikely to actually need a windows key, and I already have a stack of working model M's, why would I want to buy a new one before the ones I already have are worn out? Oh, I know... to save me having to clean the keytops? Maybe that's a fair reason to replace most keyboards - it's usually a sign that you've used them too much and something is about to break.
And the old Model M's are nice, but why get a decade old one, when for a reasonable price you can get a brand new one?
Jeez, I dunno... maybe it has something to do with having better things to do with my money than buy something substantially identical to gear I already own that works well and does exactly what I need it to do?
You can still buy a real keyboard. Those guys bought the design from IBM and still produce it in the USA.
Maybe I'll buy one if I ever want a Windows key, or when all the Model M's I've fished out of the garbage over the years stop working. I don't think either of those are likely to happen any time soon.
Remember, your kids won't be happy if you're able to go through their email without them having any way to keep at least some of their messages private. But I'm 15 so I am slightly biased in this area;)
If I knew half as much as I thought I did when I was fifteen...:-)
Seriously, though, I see the easy way of doing this being (at least for smaller sites):
- Capture at the MTA level. Look at some of the milter options available for processing messages. You'd need to capture envelope information too, so you can properly allocate BCC'd messages to certain recipients
- Database back-end, with proper access restrictions
- Interface is up to you, but web and IMAP (read-only) are obvious choices.
A casual glance at Freshmeat showed a few things that could form a useful jumping-off point. Search terms like "email archive" will help.
Slashdot Mirror
Down Under, we've had the Cash Transactions Reporting Act for quite a number of years. In essence, anything over a certain dollar value ($10K AUD, IIRC) going into a bank or credit provider has to be reported in order to reduce the chance of money laundering. I wouldn't consider reporting large transactions to the IRS any less proper than the reporting of large transactions to equivalent Australian authorities. I would, however, consider reporting them to ASIO or the Australian Federal Police on the whim of some employee of an organisation with a vested interest in keeping people in debt to be grossly inappropriate - even if legally required - and that appears to be exactly what's happened in this .
Of course, I could be wrong and such data could already be collated over here by such agencies... I just hope they've got it all, so they'll also see that the logical source of that recent large credit card payment was from refinancing my home loan and the money was used to pay for furniture, fences and other house-related costs. But that's probably too much to hope for...
I don't want to play the "Nazi Card"... hell, no. I'm trying desperately to avoid it. I don't think the USA is anywhere near that kind of unspeakable and unaccountable totalitarian nightmare. Not yet... but they're probably somewhere in deepest darkest 1932. And the more I look at it, the more Australia appears to be tagging along behind the greater power, just like Italy did.
How?
Well, although we probably have really nifty technologies now and coming up for producing energy from solar, geothermal, tidal, wind, hydro, ocean thermal gradients and even new safer nuclear reactors, we don't really have any effective way of making that energy portable, easily storable or able to be distributed through existing infrastructure. If we can get really cheap and really clean electricity, and use that to produce oil products from purpose-grown organic matter (like algae ponds) and/or organic waste (raw sewage, agricultural waste, cannery waste etc) we might be on a winner. Provided we don't start grinding up coal to make crude oil this way, the whole process should be carbon-neutral and a convenient way of storing energy in a portable liquid form that we already know how to store, ship and use.
What's next - taking the art history books off the shelves because some pervert might have a wank while looking at those paintings of luscious Rubenesque beauties? (oooh...drool...) Removing anthropology books because someone might consider photos of naked villagers to be child pornography?
No, I suspect the problem isn't so much what people are able to view as the lack of respect or consideration some of them have for other library occupants - including the young and the cleaners. How, without prying unduly into a particular library user's privacy, are you to know whether they're surfing porn for a quick thrill or as research into the seedier side of e-commerce? For that matter, how can you tell whether they're looking at "terr-uh-rist" or hate group sites because they're terrorists or neo-nazis or concerned citizens wanting to know more about the groups they've been told are evil? You can't - but the user of the library machines can respect the sensibilities of other users by making use of the privacy screens. Hell, if I was using a computer in a public library and privacy screens were available I'd request one on principle - not because I'd be surfing porn, but because it might make someone else feel comfortable asking for one and expanding their horizons and their minds.
I think there's quite a lot of prior art here, but while we're looking at such stupid ideas let's consider my forthcoming patent for a similar idea using similar electrodes and McDonalds Cheeseburgers. Or potatoes. Let's use copper and aluminum or zinc electrodes and potatoes! They're a renewable resource!
These stupid bastards haven't realised that they're simply getting back the energy that went into refining the metals used for the electrodes. Or perhaps they have, but hope that their investors won't.
I used to work for one of the .AUian retail electronics chains, and in the late 80's one of the more stupid - and thus my most favourite - products we carried was My Friend Ribbit on the Learning Pond.
This consisted of a plastic frog on a plastic base, and disks with plastic tabs with a barcodes on them were inserted into a reader in the base - the tab had a plastic circle with a picture on it on one end.
The big problem with the whole thing was that the animated plastic frog caused some interesting cabinet resonances, making much of what the device said unintelligible. For example...
Other things that made it mostly useless were the fact that kids couldn't resist touching the waggling goggly eyes or sticking things in the flapping mouth instead of learning, and the slot for the barcoded tabs caused kids and grandparents to confuse it with a money box.You're missing the fundamental point of the article, which is OOH SHINY!
Sorry, the point of the article is "We've got to sell papers by scaring you, and this is going to get your attention for the thirty seconds we've conditioned you to spend on a newspaper article that can't possibly do justice to the topic at hand."
On a serious note, ration access to the things. "Interactive" is not necessarily a good thing. You thought TV was bad for attention spans? You thought old-style video games were bad? Heh... use the right things at the right time, and in the right proportions. The problem is, many parents who wouldn't dream of letting their kids veg out in front of the television simply substitute one electronic babysitter for another.
Read to your kids, encourage them to read, let them play interactive titles like the Broderbund stuff assessed, and let them watch TV and DVDs. They all complement each other.
Reading to kids exposes them to material they wouldn't be able to access themselves because of the reading level required, but which they may well be able to understand - kids can generally listen and speak several years ahead of their reading level, and if they gain knowledge that there's all this interesting stuff in books and see adults reading they'll get interested in gaining the skills needed to read it themselves.
Interactive stuff makes for good reading-drills - it gets their attention and gets them practicing the skill, and they don't even know that they're doing it. Just don't expect them to be able to absorb a whole story in a single sitting. They're just not designed that way. They're frequently either non-linear, or have an overall linear progression that allows diversions along the way - that's deliberate, and is meant to enhance the long-term playability and make it easier to get the kids to repeat the practice reading exercises hidden as sets of directions or comments on objects or people. They're good for picking up related facts, but picking a narrative out of them could be difficult because the reader/player partially directs how things unfold rather than passively following a narrative that already exists. If they're related to other dead-tree materials, like the Little Monster title is, it could be a good way to get an interest in the related books too.
TV, videos and DVDs also allow some complex ideas to be presented if done right, and can encourage imagination and thought. I'm not talking about reruns of Magilla Gorilla... I think we all know what kind of crap has been on television... but there is a lot of stuff out there that can stretch the imagination, get kids thinking about moral and behavioural issues at an early age etc. Care Bears, good targetted kids sci-fi of the kind that our national broadcaster seems to show from time to time, kiddy documentary-style series and the like can help provide an interest in what's right and wrong and an interest in people and the world. We don't sit around reading the bible and Pears Cyclopedia to the family by gaslight any more, so the old "do unto others" and "things are interesting out there" messages aren't quite so common in everyday family activities these days - education is in some ways all about programming your kids to be the best people they can be, and their flexible and absorbent little minds will be shaped by what you expose them to, so look at this as an opportunity to expose them to new, interesting and challenging material rather than a way to keep them out of your hair while you watch the news.
As for purely entertaining interactive titles, like video games, they're not necessarily bad either. Reasoning, imagination, memory skills, attention to detail, cause-and-effect and the like are all things that their gameplay can rely on. They're all important life skills too.
Just because kids couldn't remember what they saw in the program the previous day is no reason to assume the technology is evil
Personally, I'd like to see an option to file a fair-use CD-copying return that would obligate the leeches to track down and send a portion of the levy to the holder of the copyrights associated with a specific disc burn. I like this for several reasons.
Firstly, by including a few bars of my own composition "ARIA are parasites" on each data disk I burn, I ought to be able to claim back most of the levy - minus whatever the mandated ARIA handling-fee is, of course, as they're there to protect my interests as a musician and composer.
Secondly, by ensuring that I regularly file for out-of-copyright works that I transcribe from 78 to CD, I'll make their little heads explode and maybe just waste their resources sending cheques for miniscule amounts to the last-known copyright holder for such gems as "It aint the meat, it's the motion".
Thirdly - and this is my favourite - if enough people do it for every out-of-print obscure title they have in their record collection, or even just for stuff they don't want to have to buy again to listen to in the car, it will show how skewed whatever arse-plucked formula they use is and will force a re-think of the whole issue. Is it personal-use of material for which you have already purchased a licence to listen in the form of a large black or small silver disk? If that's the case, what exactly are you depriving the copyright holder of by using an MP3 player instead of a portable CD player? Is the levy to compensate copyright holders for copying and distribution? If that's the case, then it ought to be legal to buy a CD, burn a hundred copies and give them away.
I am not opposed to the idea of a fair return for effort, or giving money to musicians. Not at all. What I am opposed to are the notions that every CD-R or MP3 player will be used for illegally-obtained music, and that figures from ARIA or the RIAA or other similar bodies are anywhere near what's actually happening in the real world. Okay, maybe I'm wrong and maybe people are stupid enough to actually be copying the stuff the music industry says they're buying most of. But if we're forced to cough up for a levy to pay for the right to transcribe music we've purchased to media we can leave in the car on a hot day without worrying unduly, I DEMAND the right to have the money go to the Grimthorpe Colliery Band instead of Sony/BMG.
Good On 'Em!
Yeah, that's right, I'm cheering.
The law appears to allow it. The law is probably broken. Will anything be done about how broken the law is unless people realise it's broken? 'Course not, it never is... unless it's something that threatens your or my "national interests", but that's straying into "-1 Offtopic" and "-1 Flamebait" territory.
So, if things are broken, and they won't get fixed until someone is caught taking advantage of the situation, then let them try to take advantage of the situation and let the public know!
Mind you, if noisy environments where you can't hear yourself think are inherently repellent, I guess all the nightclubs should have gone out of business years ago...
"I don't know who you are or who you represent, and frankly I don't care. If your organisation doesn't believe in treating those they call with courtesy and respect, then I don't particularly wish to deal with them until they do. Autodiallers are extremely rude. If this call is the result of a prior relationship with your organisation and you believe there are things someone supposedly at this number needs to know, please have your supervisor call in person to explain the situation. Goodbye."
Funnily enough, no recognisable follow-up calls have been received.
On a karma-burning tangent, are there any really cheap line interface cards available in Australia? With the various open-source PABX implementations available, it should be relatively straightforward to set up a "spam filter" for the phone. Possible features could include:
- Answering calls with caller-ID blocked after two rings, and feeding another thirty seconds of fake ring-tone noises back down the line before bothering to ring the internal phones... similar to a lengthy greetpause in Sendmail
- Routing calls from recognised call-centre outbound numbers directly to voicemail or an anti-callcentre message, in the event that they don't block caller-ID and you've had run-ins with them before. Before long the Phone Abuse Prevention System (TM) will appear, quickly followed by lawsuits and DDOS attacks from various Indian callcentre operators.
Of course, before long we'll end up with VOIP gateways in such implementations, with the outbound calls from your home being routed according to the lowest cost for the call or some quality criterion. About a week later, the Mumbai Mafia will discover how to zombie these machines and millions of phishing calls will come from such compromised voice boxes. At that point, we've all lost.
Window for Workgroups 3.11 was where they dropped standard mode support, and consequently required a minimum of a 386.
Oh... you're talking mind control... sorry.
Remember, the real reason orgone boxes were outlawed was that they interfered with the mind control beams. Also, "shiny side out" is a piece of government misinformation, as that actually maximises the effects of the mind control beams. You need shiny side in to be properly protected.
The optimal solution is to outsource your telephone answering service to Mumbai.
... or maybe our ancestors tasted like pork to them, but they had a lower tolerance to some pathogen that gets transmitted through human flesh and developed a rampaging case of Mad Neanderthal Disease.
Seriously, though, I see the easy way of doing this being (at least for smaller sites):
- Capture at the MTA level. Look at some of the milter options available for processing messages. You'd need to capture envelope information too, so you can properly allocate BCC'd messages to certain recipients
- Database back-end, with proper access restrictions
- Interface is up to you, but web and IMAP (read-only) are obvious choices.
A casual glance at Freshmeat showed a few things that could form a useful jumping-off point. Search terms like "email archive" will help.