... there's SmartJury. I worked at a client site where they were considering this software/service that would allow an attorney to assess how jurors might vote on a case from within the courtroom. This not only helps attorneys guess how the case is going to go, but whether or not they ought to use one of their "free strikes" against a given juror based on any criteria they choose, including race, economic stratum, political affiliation, you name it!
Unfortunately, we can moan all we want, it's a fact of life. About the best we can do is convince judges to prohibit use of the Internet from within the courtroom.
You're right about that. Several years ago, I started writing "Please ask for photo ID" above my signature on my charge cards. A long time went by before someone asked to see an ID. I'm sure it was funny to watch my expression. I had forgotten about it, and I used to be ticked off by requests for ID. Luckily, before I said anything, I remembered, and I was able to thank the clerk for taking the time to check the signature, so I didn't make [more of] an ass of myself.
As it is, I am only asked for ID once or twice a year. Still, I would refuse a contactless card unless it only worked with a PIN. PINs and signatures are poor authenticators, but they're all I've got to protect my interest between the time a card goes missing and my reporting it to the bank.
Maybe not. I think the coating they're talking about is an infrared filter coating. I read somewhere (probably led there by/.) that the CCD arrays in digital cameras are receptive to infrared, and that some early digital cameras produced "see-through" pictures because of the warmth of human subjects. The article I read said it was possible to hack some model of digital camera to restore that capability by opening it up and removing an IR filter inside it. It may be that manufacturers have found they can put the IR filter on the front of the lens instead. If that's the case, it would be easy to defeat this technology by manufacturing cameras with the IR filter behind the shutter. The filter would be undetected until the shutter was open, which might be too late to send the beam. Yes, this would need to be done by a manufacturer, but there may already be cameras like that, and the papparazzi (sp?) would certainly make a good market if there aren't such cameras.
Another thought is that maybe the device detects the IR ranging mechanisms used for auto-focus. Of course, this could impact PDAs, and I don't know what else.
I couldn't fit typing class into my high school schedule, so I begged a 1920's vintage Underwood from my dad's office supplies shop and covered the keys with masking tape, one row at a time.
Now THOSE were the good old days, when "pounding the keyboard" was an accurate description, and there was none of this ^H business, it was white-out or an eraser on corrasable bond!
Nothing like a good accusation to get people stirred up.
Anything is possible, but an accusation is ceratinly easy to cook up.
Yes, I agree. Especially with sources like
this,
this, and this.
The first one I turned up in a Google search, and the other two came up in a Yahoo search for "shi tao" and "yahoo". Kind of ironic, eh?
The FAs I read on the Yahoo sites said the "state secret" he was convicted of disseminating was a notice sent by the Chinese gov't to Chinese newspapers. Duh!
But the last one brings to mind a stupid question: How is it that one repressive, corrupt government that jails its citizens for speaking out is a favored trade nation of the U.S., while another (to pick from a long list) is not?
Other questions:
Isn't this the logical conclusion of the Patriot Act?
Doesn't/. have a section, "Your Ethics Online"? All of us may face choices like these someday.
When the/. headline said "spam", I thought they meant text messages, not junk telemarketing calls.
FWIW, Verizon does offer some minimal protection against unwanted text messages. It is possible for the subscriber to list email addresses that are not allowed to send text messages. Unfortunately, they do not offer what is really needed, a list of senders who are allowed to send messages. (Not that this would be a perfect solution, but it would be one helluva lot better.)
...from using workers with the same lousy, virus-prone operating system. If they had a heterogeneous network of employees -- say monkeys, baboons, and orangutans interspersed among the humans -- they wouldn't be as affected by the outbreak.
Also, getting away from the use of books can reduce the opportunity for serendipitous finds in the stacks, like the time I found an 18th century encyclopedia in my university's library simply because it was on the way to the section of the stacks where I was doing research. Sure, it's not cutting-edge research, but it was a great way to understand the world view of George Washington's day.
I guess we can engage in a big urination contest over who is more correct about whether UDP is TCP/IP, but when I was configuring NTP on my Linux box, my firewall wouldn't let the clocks sync until I told it to allow UDP in and out on that IP port.
Anyone up for starting a flame war on whether "Ethernet" means IEEE 802.3, Ethernet II, etc.? Then we can move on to other exciting issues like whether 10-base T is UTP and whether 120 volts AC includes 110 or 115 volts AC.
That's pretty much what I did, except I substituted a bag of weed under the driver's seat for the body in the trunk. If I'm stupid enough to take my car in for service without ensuring I removed the evidence from crimes committed, and another citizen happens to see it & call the cops, I deserve to be thrown in jail.
This is not to say I think the gov't has any right to engage contractors to go around looking into my car (computer) to see if there's anything illegal there.
I'll give the EFF half a loaf for this one, but they're half out to lunch on the other half.
Fedex should simply have terminated Avila's Fedex shipping account if he is violating their terms of use.
Maybe we can make a movie out this and add it as a special feature to a new DVD edition of Castaway, the movie starring Tom Hanks that Fedex participated in because of the positive corporate image it showed.
(I read the fine article.) I don't think it matters so much how the workers might interpret the rule as how the management might interpret the rule. If it's sufficiently broad, as this one is, management could treat a gathering of workers to discuss grievances and possibly organize as "fraternization". Besides, I think there is potentially a lot of gray between people socializing and organizing. If I am really unhappy about conditions at my job and I think the is environment repressive, am I going to trust you with my grievances when I don't know you well enough to feel you won't rat me out to the management?
On a lighter note, I don't understand why dating ought to be called "fraternization" (from Latin "fratus" -- "brother". When I was dating, I had several objectives in mind, none of which I would consider engaging in with my brother. I think this is true of most people who "date" -- at least in the U.S.
It makes me wonder who is more barbaric: Sadam for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians or Bush for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
I'm no fan of Bush or his policies, but I don't think he's into the tens of thousands yet, nor mass graves and poisonous gas. Don't give him more discredit than he's due.
(note to the grammer/spelling nazis: while I'm a student of science, I abhor anything related to those 'English' classes that test on spelling, so tough:-P)
I'd probably have ignored the spelling and grammar errors in your post but for your disclaimer notice, which seems to say you don't care about whether you're understood. That's sad, especially for a student of science. Many technical articles revolve around concepts that are difficult enough to understand without having to decipher careless writing. I can understand if you don't care about proofing your posts to Slashdot, but if you carry the same disregard into your professional life, people will think you're ignernt (sic).
I was trying to think of an appropriate cliche, "flies on s***", etc., and all I could think of was the situation of the family cat, who has found this summer that he can't go out either the front door or the back door during daylight without having a mockingbird on his case. As you probably know, mockingbirds are pretty aggressive and don't leave off with scolding. They are more than willing to go mano-a-mano (or maybe pico-a-garra) with creatures many times their weight -- including humans on occasion.
It appears the union website is hosted on a server in Miami, FL. Network Solutions' whois doesn't list the IP address as being in a block assigned to Telus. The employee photos I saw on the site were all union employees picketing -- which would be intimidating only if they were on an anti-union website.
If this were happening in the U.S., I would expect the ACLU to be all over them like mockingbirds on a cat.
But, even then their site history was really only incidently linked to their contact info because we never correlated the data together.
That's the issue for me. I don't mind a company keeping track of whether I come back to their site and whether I buy stuff from them, nor do I mind them attempting to count unique visitors. The problem is that there are too many companies that do correlate information, and they share it with other companies. Not knowing whom to trust, I periodically delete all my cookies and block the domains (such as Doubleclick) that assist them in correlating the information.
I see a crying need for a browser plug-in that allows one to mess with marketers. Maybe like peer-to-peer sharing of unique cookie IDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, we can moan all we want, it's a fact of life. About the best we can do is convince judges to prohibit use of the Internet from within the courtroom.
As it is, I am only asked for ID once or twice a year. Still, I would refuse a contactless card unless it only worked with a PIN. PINs and signatures are poor authenticators, but they're all I've got to protect my interest between the time a card goes missing and my reporting it to the bank.
Another thought is that maybe the device detects the IR ranging mechanisms used for auto-focus. Of course, this could impact PDAs, and I don't know what else.
Now THOSE were the good old days, when "pounding the keyboard" was an accurate description, and there was none of this ^H business, it was white-out or an eraser on corrasable bond!
Anything is possible, but an accusation is ceratinly easy to cook up.
Yes, I agree. Especially with sources like this, this, and this. The first one I turned up in a Google search, and the other two came up in a Yahoo search for "shi tao" and "yahoo". Kind of ironic, eh?
The FAs I read on the Yahoo sites said the "state secret" he was convicted of disseminating was a notice sent by the Chinese gov't to Chinese newspapers. Duh!
But the last one brings to mind a stupid question: How is it that one repressive, corrupt government that jails its citizens for speaking out is a favored trade nation of the U.S., while another (to pick from a long list) is not?
Other questions:
FWIW, Verizon does offer some minimal protection against unwanted text messages. It is possible for the subscriber to list email addresses that are not allowed to send text messages. Unfortunately, they do not offer what is really needed, a list of senders who are allowed to send messages. (Not that this would be a perfect solution, but it would be one helluva lot better.)
Most of the other articles listed on the magazine's web page are restricted to paying subscribers.
The software might be a little better, too.
If we were smarter than women, we'd be smart enough not to let on that we knew.
Also, getting away from the use of books can reduce the opportunity for serendipitous finds in the stacks, like the time I found an 18th century encyclopedia in my university's library simply because it was on the way to the section of the stacks where I was doing research. Sure, it's not cutting-edge research, but it was a great way to understand the world view of George Washington's day.
Anyone up for starting a flame war on whether "Ethernet" means IEEE 802.3, Ethernet II, etc.? Then we can move on to other exciting issues like whether 10-base T is UTP and whether 120 volts AC includes 110 or 115 volts AC.
...to be used in conjunction with their 17th century biology texts.
This is not to say I think the gov't has any right to engage contractors to go around looking into my car (computer) to see if there's anything illegal there.
I'll give the EFF half a loaf for this one, but they're half out to lunch on the other half.
Fedex should simply have terminated Avila's Fedex shipping account if he is violating their terms of use.
Maybe we can make a movie out this and add it as a special feature to a new DVD edition of Castaway, the movie starring Tom Hanks that Fedex participated in because of the positive corporate image it showed.
On a lighter note, I don't understand why dating ought to be called "fraternization" (from Latin "fratus" -- "brother". When I was dating, I had several objectives in mind, none of which I would consider engaging in with my brother. I think this is true of most people who "date" -- at least in the U.S.
I thought it was their business model. (I probably deserve to be modded down for taking such an obvious jab.)
It doesn't logically follow that just because the FBI doesn't arrest you, you are out of the woods. Ask Steven Hatfill.
- Don't accept candy from strangers.
- Don't accept Linux distros from Microsoft.
Seriously, wouldn't that be on par with accepting free software from Gator?I'm no fan of Bush or his policies, but I don't think he's into the tens of thousands yet, nor mass graves and poisonous gas. Don't give him more discredit than he's due.
I'd probably have ignored the spelling and grammar errors in your post but for your disclaimer notice, which seems to say you don't care about whether you're understood. That's sad, especially for a student of science. Many technical articles revolve around concepts that are difficult enough to understand without having to decipher careless writing. I can understand if you don't care about proofing your posts to Slashdot, but if you carry the same disregard into your professional life, people will think you're ignernt (sic).
Where is this $14.95/mo. DSL TFA talks about?
Maybe I could patent a vulnerability, then sell the patent to SCO.
I was trying to think of an appropriate cliche, "flies on s***", etc., and all I could think of was the situation of the family cat, who has found this summer that he can't go out either the front door or the back door during daylight without having a mockingbird on his case. As you probably know, mockingbirds are pretty aggressive and don't leave off with scolding. They are more than willing to go mano-a-mano (or maybe pico-a-garra) with creatures many times their weight -- including humans on occasion.
If this were happening in the U.S., I would expect the ACLU to be all over them like mockingbirds on a cat.
That's the issue for me. I don't mind a company keeping track of whether I come back to their site and whether I buy stuff from them, nor do I mind them attempting to count unique visitors. The problem is that there are too many companies that do correlate information, and they share it with other companies. Not knowing whom to trust, I periodically delete all my cookies and block the domains (such as Doubleclick) that assist them in correlating the information.
I see a crying need for a browser plug-in that allows one to mess with marketers. Maybe like peer-to-peer sharing of unique cookie IDs.