The BBC has actually done this at least once in the past. A while ago, they released recordings of the BBC Orchestra playing Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 6-9 in MP3 format, for free on their website. I jumped at the chance and downloaded them, and still listen to those recordings occasionally.
You may not have noticed the terms of service for downloading those recordings. They were online for a short period of time (10 days?). After they were no longer available online, you were supposed to destroy any local copies, too.
I'm not saying listening to the tracks now is wrong, but it is against the TOS. Some might argue that this demonstrates a need for DRM.
"Whether you're connected to a torrent or not is the only truly reliable metric that there can be."
If you read the article, you would know that trackers are HTTP servers. Any correctly formed GET request could get you added to the tracker. If I posted this tag: <img src="http://tracker.com:12345/announce?info_hash=5 79CC43E4D66D35AE22312985EA04275939AB477&peer_id=as dfasdfadfasdf&amp;port=12434&compact=1"/> on a web page, anyone who viewed that page would be added to that tracker. It doesn't matter if you even know what BitTorrent is, you would still be flagged.
An IP address on a tracker means that that IP connected to the tracker at least once. That's all the tracker knows. It is suspicious, but not illegal.
"they can't tell how much you've uploaded or downloaded"
Sure they can. If BayTSP actually tried to download from you and you uploaded content to them, then BayTSP would know definitively that you are distributing content. It is not hard to prove, but BayTSP does not appear do this.
When BayTSP contacts my ISP and says "jd0g85 is in violation of copyright law", the burden of proof should be on them. Rather than shut down my connection or give up my name, my ISP should at least ask BayTSP for proof.
This article makes no judgment on the ethics of file sharing. It only points out that BayTSP issues notices before it has any proof.
I don't know who moderated the parent "insightful" when it is clearly flaimbait, but I'll bite.
Those who realize how foolish it is aren't in any position to do anything about it. This adversarial tactic does no one any good. Target gets heat if they actually point out how many blind people use their website (I'm guessing less than a small fraction of 1%). The blind people get heat when they complain about an inherently visual medium not being accessable (sic) enough. And, of course, no matter the outcome, laywers (sic) get heat for participating in this stupidity.
There is a lot here that I can pick at, but I'll focus on two points: 1) less than a small faction of 1%, and 2) inherently visual medium.
1) The percentage of disabled persons visiting a place of business is irrelevant. This is the reason we need disability laws in the first place. Prior to laws, business recognized that disabled persons did not make up enough of a customer base to justify the cost of special facilities. Disability laws forced a change.
2) Are books "an inherently visual medium"? I'm sure that the editors spent some time laying out the text in a visually pleasing format, but at the core, they are not. Even if there are some pictures among the text, the content doesn't change. Also, look at stores around you. They have a certain visual element that is supposed to encourage particular shopping behaviors, but they are still accessible to the blind (although maybe an employee will need to help them).
The reasonable tactic would have been to approach Target and offer to work with them to find a solution. Not only would it be cheaper for all sides in the short and long terms, but the positive light it would cast all parties in would bring everyone more money--more than enough to offset the costs of at least a partial site rebuild. In this case, the cheaper solution is the one that lets everyone win. Sadly, this fight is not about what's best for everyone. It's about sticking it to Target. That is how I think most people will see it.
As other people have pointed out, the Plaintiffs did contact Target through other channels. I agree, it would have been cheaper for all sides (except the lawyers) if they came to an agreement, but that didn't happen. We do have a legal system for a reason.
You won't lose your money if you invest in tabacco companies.
Just stay away from MoonMist Cigarettes. The AMA has determined that Moonmist Cigarettes are the principal cause of sterility in both sexes wherever they are sold.
The scientist who study stemcells (sic) are much in the same position, they are not in the decision chain when a woman gets an abortion.
The primary source of embryos for stem cells are FERTILITY clinics (not abortions). After a successful pregnancy, the remaining embryos (usually hundreds are created) are released by the parents to be discarded or to be collected for research. (Usually parents elect to leave them on ice in case they decided to go for another child.)
That eye-patch treatment started a downward spiral in both eyes which has me with:
1. a bad perscription in both eyes
2. loss of color definition in my left (good) eye
3. inability to wear contacts for extended periods
What evidence, if any, does the parent have that the eye-patch treatment caused this? My two favorites (continued):
4. occasional eye twitches in lazy eye when overused
A muscle becomes fatigued when overused? Go figure!
5. inability to use right eye in viewfinders, sights, etc. (have to shoot rifles left handed)
When shooting, which hand to hold the rifle with is more often based on "eye dominance" rather than "handedness". Sure, it is convienient when the two coincide, but that's not always the case. (I am fortunately both right eye and right hand dominate.)
Does anyone care to link to some medical evidence against the patch-treatment?
Why would I buy Dell again? One feature: "Complete Care"
Yes, they're idiots (even the ones inside the US). I may have to spend a while convincing them that I actually know what's wrong, but eventually they'll replace the compenent for me. For $150 in coverage I replaced far more than that: keyboard, case, CD-RW/DVD, media keypad, and *drum roll* the motherboard. All this without ever sending in my laptop or paying for shipping.
The technical support reps might be incompetent, but that's not what I paid for.
"I am fascinated by all this stuff, but I am not a biologist, so I don't understand most of these terms and names for things...can anybody here possibly supply an analogy or put things in laymans terms? Or possibly link to some good "beginners" material on this subject?"
I don't know about the layman, but here's a nerd explaination:
OK, lets say you've got your source code. In your source code you've got comments. Comments contribute no information to the parser and are effectively wasted space (ok, it's an analogy, it's not perfect). Now lets say that your language parser is fast but isn't very good and comments tend to screw it up. Assume you had another program in your toolkit that could preparse the source code removing all of the comments. That would fix your troubles right?
Yes, but this preparser is very slow. In order for the whole thing to work reliably, your comment remover needs to have a chance to finish before your language parser gets started. You need something thing in place to prevent your language parser for starting to early. Solution: files that need preparsing should reside in a different folder from the files that have been preparsed. Because this is a biological system, your parser and preparser both run constantly as cron jobs. This physical division between the two types of files prevents the parser starting to soon.
What these researchers are suggesting is that it was the rapid increase in the number of introns (comments) by the mitochondria (let's just say a new manager was added to your project!) that made nucleus-cytosol compartmentalization (the folder system) necessary.
Before there were so many introns, the mRNA splicing (preparsing) just happened to work well enough. As the number of introns increased, the compartmentalization became advantagous it prevented the translation (lanuguage parsing) from occuring on unfinished files.
Try reading the abstract again:
"The origin of the eukaryotic nucleus marked a seminal evolutionary transition. We propose that the nuclear envelope's incipient function was to allow mRNA splicing, which is slow, to go to completion so that translation, which is fast, would occur only on mRNA with intact reading frames. The rapid, fortuitous spread of introns following the origin of mitochondria is adduced as the selective pressure that forged nucleus-cytosol compartmentalization."
Hope this helps!
If someone breaks into my house and steals one of my guns am I liable for what they do with it?
Depends on whether or not you report it to the authorities within a reasonable timeframe.
Also note, however, that if your child or wife (is a family member like an employee?) misused your gun, yes, you are liable.
Stepping back for a momment, the reason you must report the theft of a gun is so that it may be recovered. In the case of IP or personal data, however, it is impossible to "recover" the information once it has been duplicated. This property of data makes it difficult to place the blame soley on those who are responsible for abusing it. I have never seen an analogy that acknowledges that data can be copied.
I'm not even going to get started on the issue of who owns your personal information.
Google's QOTD happens to be related to the topic at hand:
"Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing."
- Randy K. Milholland
Mozilla (and Firefox) gives you direct access to sockets. I don't know if UDP is supported. This is great because, in theory, you could implement whatever protocol you wanted to in some clientside javascript.
Should work with unprivileged (ie from a website) javascript. (Opening a listening socket requires privileged code, eg a Firefox extension.)
I must say, the best computer learning game I ever used was Swamp Gas (and Swamp Gas Europe). I memorized random facts about the states (or the european countries) so that I could 'beat' the game. This would then unlock a few relatively fun arcade games. After I ran out of lives, it was back to the learning so I could get back into the arcade.
Would you think it would be outrageous if a student ran around a University Quad screaming every racial epithet known to civil society and a Dean kicked them right out of school?
No. In that case, clearly the speech had little purpose other than being vulgar, something that is not protected under the first amendment.
In this case, however, the student was freely expressing himself. This is protected.
The FCC allowed uncensored broadcast of Saving Private Ryan. Why? Because blood and profanity are part of war (and it's patriotic). The FCC certainly wouldn't allow any old R rated film to be shown uncut on air.
Slashdot Mirror
The BBC has actually done this at least once in the past. A while ago, they released recordings of the BBC Orchestra playing Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 6-9 in MP3 format, for free on their website. I jumped at the chance and downloaded them, and still listen to those recordings occasionally.
You may not have noticed the terms of service for downloading those recordings. They were online for a short period of time (10 days?). After they were no longer available online, you were supposed to destroy any local copies, too.
I'm not saying listening to the tracks now is wrong, but it is against the TOS. Some might argue that this demonstrates a need for DRM.
"Whether you're connected to a torrent or not is the only truly reliable metric that there can be."
5 79CC43E4D66D35AE22312985EA04275939AB477&peer_id=as dfasdfadfasdf&amp;port=12434&compact=1" />
If you read the article, you would know that trackers are HTTP servers. Any correctly formed GET request could get you added to the tracker. If I posted this tag:
<img src="http://tracker.com:12345/announce?info_hash=
on a web page, anyone who viewed that page would be added to that tracker. It doesn't matter if you even know what BitTorrent is, you would still be flagged.
An IP address on a tracker means that that IP connected to the tracker at least once. That's all the tracker knows. It is suspicious, but not illegal.
"they can't tell how much you've uploaded or downloaded"
Sure they can. If BayTSP actually tried to download from you and you uploaded content to them, then BayTSP would know definitively that you are distributing content. It is not hard to prove, but BayTSP does not appear do this.
When BayTSP contacts my ISP and says "jd0g85 is in violation of copyright law", the burden of proof should be on them. Rather than shut down my connection or give up my name, my ISP should at least ask BayTSP for proof.
This article makes no judgment on the ethics of file sharing. It only points out that BayTSP issues notices before it has any proof.
I don't know who moderated the parent "insightful" when it is clearly flaimbait, but I'll bite.
Those who realize how foolish it is aren't in any position to do anything about it. This adversarial tactic does no one any good. Target gets heat if they actually point out how many blind people use their website (I'm guessing less than a small fraction of 1%). The blind people get heat when they complain about an inherently visual medium not being accessable (sic) enough. And, of course, no matter the outcome, laywers (sic) get heat for participating in this stupidity.
There is a lot here that I can pick at, but I'll focus on two points: 1) less than a small faction of 1%, and 2) inherently visual medium.
1) The percentage of disabled persons visiting a place of business is irrelevant. This is the reason we need disability laws in the first place. Prior to laws, business recognized that disabled persons did not make up enough of a customer base to justify the cost of special facilities. Disability laws forced a change.
2) Are books "an inherently visual medium"? I'm sure that the editors spent some time laying out the text in a visually pleasing format, but at the core, they are not. Even if there are some pictures among the text, the content doesn't change. Also, look at stores around you. They have a certain visual element that is supposed to encourage particular shopping behaviors, but they are still accessible to the blind (although maybe an employee will need to help them).
The reasonable tactic would have been to approach Target and offer to work with them to find a solution. Not only would it be cheaper for all sides in the short and long terms, but the positive light it would cast all parties in would bring everyone more money--more than enough to offset the costs of at least a partial site rebuild. In this case, the cheaper solution is the one that lets everyone win. Sadly, this fight is not about what's best for everyone. It's about sticking it to Target. That is how I think most people will see it.
As other people have pointed out, the Plaintiffs did contact Target through other channels. I agree, it would have been cheaper for all sides (except the lawyers) if they came to an agreement, but that didn't happen. We do have a legal system for a reason.
You missed the jokes about "green" energy.
The question they seem to failed (sic) to examine, is whether or not a word is not significant enough in the collective consciousness of society...
Wouldn't a search engine (eg Google) be more apt to tell you how common a word is?
"No, creating laws which paint people into a corner and then hand them the brush suck."
But don't you see, they have handed you a brush. The creativity of artists has been preserved. </sarcasm>
You won't lose your money if you invest in tabacco companies.
Just stay away from MoonMist Cigarettes. The AMA has determined that Moonmist Cigarettes are the principal cause of sterility in both sexes wherever they are sold.
Perhaps the old naming scheme would be cleaner:
iMacBook = consumer-class notebook
Power MacBook = professional-class notebook
The primary source of embryos for stem cells are FERTILITY clinics (not abortions). After a successful pregnancy, the remaining embryos (usually hundreds are created) are released by the parents to be discarded or to be collected for research. (Usually parents elect to leave them on ice in case they decided to go for another child.)
Gordon Freeman... oh wait... *Film* Scientist. Nevermind
Better yet, just hit mute!
What evidence, if any, does the parent have that the eye-patch treatment caused this? My two favorites (continued):
A muscle becomes fatigued when overused? Go figure!
When shooting, which hand to hold the rifle with is more often based on "eye dominance" rather than "handedness". Sure, it is convienient when the two coincide, but that's not always the case. (I am fortunately both right eye and right hand dominate.)
Does anyone care to link to some medical evidence against the patch-treatment?
Why would I buy Dell again? One feature: "Complete Care"
Yes, they're idiots (even the ones inside the US). I may have to spend a while convincing them that I actually know what's wrong, but eventually they'll replace the compenent for me. For $150 in coverage I replaced far more than that: keyboard, case, CD-RW/DVD, media keypad, and *drum roll* the motherboard. All this without ever sending in my laptop or paying for shipping.
The technical support reps might be incompetent, but that's not what I paid for.
(My next laptop will probably be a Mac anyway.)
"I am fascinated by all this stuff, but I am not a biologist, so I don't understand most of these terms and names for things...can anybody here possibly supply an analogy or put things in laymans terms? Or possibly link to some good "beginners" material on this subject?" I don't know about the layman, but here's a nerd explaination: OK, lets say you've got your source code. In your source code you've got comments. Comments contribute no information to the parser and are effectively wasted space (ok, it's an analogy, it's not perfect). Now lets say that your language parser is fast but isn't very good and comments tend to screw it up. Assume you had another program in your toolkit that could preparse the source code removing all of the comments. That would fix your troubles right? Yes, but this preparser is very slow. In order for the whole thing to work reliably, your comment remover needs to have a chance to finish before your language parser gets started. You need something thing in place to prevent your language parser for starting to early. Solution: files that need preparsing should reside in a different folder from the files that have been preparsed. Because this is a biological system, your parser and preparser both run constantly as cron jobs. This physical division between the two types of files prevents the parser starting to soon. What these researchers are suggesting is that it was the rapid increase in the number of introns (comments) by the mitochondria (let's just say a new manager was added to your project!) that made nucleus-cytosol compartmentalization (the folder system) necessary. Before there were so many introns, the mRNA splicing (preparsing) just happened to work well enough. As the number of introns increased, the compartmentalization became advantagous it prevented the translation (lanuguage parsing) from occuring on unfinished files. Try reading the abstract again: "The origin of the eukaryotic nucleus marked a seminal evolutionary transition. We propose that the nuclear envelope's incipient function was to allow mRNA splicing, which is slow, to go to completion so that translation, which is fast, would occur only on mRNA with intact reading frames. The rapid, fortuitous spread of introns following the origin of mitochondria is adduced as the selective pressure that forged nucleus-cytosol compartmentalization." Hope this helps!
Depends on whether or not you report it to the authorities within a reasonable timeframe.
Also note, however, that if your child or wife (is a family member like an employee?) misused your gun, yes, you are liable.
Stepping back for a momment, the reason you must report the theft of a gun is so that it may be recovered. In the case of IP or personal data, however, it is impossible to "recover" the information once it has been duplicated. This property of data makes it difficult to place the blame soley on those who are responsible for abusing it. I have never seen an analogy that acknowledges that data can be copied.
I'm not even going to get started on the issue of who owns your personal information.
Google's QOTD happens to be related to the topic at hand:
was going to post a rebuttal to this article, but I think I'll have a nap first.
That would suggest that /. posts are important decisions.
I dunno, but where can I sign up for the study?
What ever happened to the "semi-protection" scheme? It seems that this is just the kind of thing it was supposed to provent.
Consider looking here: http://xulplanet.com/tutorials/mozsdk/sockets.php
Mozilla (and Firefox) gives you direct access to sockets. I don't know if UDP is supported. This is great because, in theory, you could implement whatever protocol you wanted to in some clientside javascript.
Should work with unprivileged (ie from a website) javascript. (Opening a listening socket requires privileged code, eg a Firefox extension.)
Requiring a reboot after every update is not my idea of "seamless"
I must say, the best computer learning game I ever used was Swamp Gas (and Swamp Gas Europe). I memorized random facts about the states (or the european countries) so that I could 'beat' the game. This would then unlock a few relatively fun arcade games. After I ran out of lives, it was back to the learning so I could get back into the arcade.
Oh ya, Oregon Trail was fun too. Stupid Buffalo.
No. In that case, clearly the speech had little purpose other than being vulgar, something that is not protected under the first amendment.
In this case, however, the student was freely expressing himself. This is protected.
The FCC allowed uncensored broadcast of Saving Private Ryan. Why? Because blood and profanity are part of war (and it's patriotic). The FCC certainly wouldn't allow any old R rated film to be shown uncut on air.
Doesn't a cycle of stimulants in the morning and depressants in the evening lead to depression? Maybe someone should go ask Elvis...
You did? Gee Whiz. You seem logged in to me!