This has nothing to do with warranty, and everything to do with liability.
In the grand old tradition, let's imagine a car. You've just bought it new, with a two year warranty. After three years, the alternator fails. Does your warranty cover that? Of course not, even though an alternator should last a lot longer.
But that's not the situation here. Imagine that, after those three years, you take your car back to the dealership for maintenance. Shortly thereafter, the alternator fails because the maintenance was done improperly.
Is the dealership obligated to fix it at their expense now? You better believe they are. Regardless of "warranty" or not, they caused the damage and are therefore responsible to repair it.
And if they tried to include on their standard repair form "Not responsible for any damage occurring during repairs", they'd find out just how little such a "disclaimer" means. That is true especially if Sony continued to offer the defective firmware after receiving quite a few reports of it being defective, which it seems they did.
Unfortunately, this does seem like a novel concept: If you can't use it properly, and are unwilling to take the time to learn, don't use it at all!
Of course, it's a bit disturbing that the head of a major law enforcement agency can be scammed that easily. I know plenty of people (who aren't in any type of computer/tech field) who know very well that you never, under any circumstances, ever, go to a sensitive website from an email link, and you most certainly never enter any login details unless you've gone directly there. That's pretty common knowledge anymore, and this is a guy you'd expect to know better. Leads you to wonder what other simple concepts he can't get straight.
Having looked at the two logos, they're easily distinguishable. Apple's logo is solid, the "W" is made of two overlapping loops. Apple's logo has the "bite", the W has no similar feature. Apple's logo is silver, the "W" is green. And on from there...
The article goes on to say that Apple is also trying to prevent someone else from using a logo of an apple with a devil, and all manner of things. That seems a misuse of trademark law. Trademark law is intended to prevent confusing similarities—something like making an MP3 player with a logo of an apple with the bite out of the opposite side, and calling it the "Appel miPod". It's not intended to prevent use of a common fruit in any type of logo anywhere, or to prohibit something with a vague, passing similarity in geometric shape but an obvious difference in any other way.
In fact, I seem to remember Apple making similar arguments themselves, when sued by a certain Apple Records...
Explain to me again why a "digital library" that functions like Netflix needs any DRM? Functioning like Netflix would mean they mail you a physical copy of the book, you read it and mail it back, and they send you the next one that's in stock on your wish list.
I actually can see that potentially working, but I'm not sure what exact type of DRM you'd be using.
I think if anyone tries to enforce a "trademark" on the term "USB", they might learn what a genericized trademark is. "USB" is the commonplace designation for that type of port, and is the recognized way of referring to-well, a USB port. I strongly doubt they'd have any luck arguing that it's a trademark rather than a generic word.
What I find surprising here is that you buy something that is advertised as unlimited, and then are not surprised when it turns out to be limited.
Of course, that's not to say they can't offer a limited plan. They certainly can. What they can't do is tell you you're paying a flat rate for unlimited data, and then turn around and place a limit.
They can't have it both ways. Either stop telling users the plan is unlimited, or allow unlimited (as in, I can have it running all day and night for a month) use. To advertise that something is unlimited when it is in fact limited is false advertising.
If the voice plan they offer me is that I will have 900 minutes a month and be charged for using more, that's fine! I know up front that's what I'm getting. On the other hand, if they offer me unlimited minutes, that means I can be on the phone from daybreak to midnight every day if I want to, whether or not they actually expected me to do that.
If you're going to advertise an all you can eat buffet, you'd better be ready for the big guy that can chow through four plates like they're not even there. If you're going to cut people off after two plates, you can't call it all you can eat. The bone of contention here is the dishonesty. It's not that everyone in the world should be banned from offering a limited plan, it's that they should advertise it as what it is if they do.
And, of course, since we're already into "thought crime" territory here, how long until they make it illegal to even talk about what happened (since you obviously must be thinking about the video in some way to comment on it, you sick pervert!) At some point soon, this will have to be stopped.
On the other hand, some of us consider lives and due process more important than your (or my) stuff. I would be among those. I don't want to see the police appointed judge, jury, and executioner. That's why we have judges and juries.
Also, keep in mind that if they're advertising a "continuous" speed of 20 Mb/s download, that's only true if they have no bandwidth cap. Otherwise, that's a burst speed.
If you have a cap of 50 GB per month, then 50 GB/month is your maximum continuous rate. That already is a speed (amount of transfer over time), so we just have to do simple dimensional adjustments to convert that to more familiar terms. 50 GB = 400 Gb, so there's our starting rate: 400 Gb/month. If we presume a 30-day month, that's ~13.33 Gb per day, ~.5555 Gb per hour, ~.00925 Gb per minute, or.000154 Gb (.154 Mb, or 154 Kb) per second. At that rate, you can transfer maybe 3 times more data in a month through this "broadband" plan than you could with an all-you-can-eat dialup (56K) plan. Reduce the cap to 10 GB/month, and you're transferring -less- than you could with dialup!
Now, it's certainly true you get faster burst speed than with dialup, but that's what anything on a capped plan is aside from the above-a burst speed. Your maximum sustainable speed is the maximum speed you could sustainably have running. If they have a bandwidth cap, that bandwidth cap determines the max sustainable speed. It's false advertising to advertise "8 Mb/s CONTINUOUS speed with bursts up to 12!", when their own policies prohibit using that speed continuously. In the above case, 12 is usable for short bursts and 8 for longer ones, but neither can be used "continuously" on a capped plan.
No, case not closed. Firstly, the assertion of the ones behind cyanogen are that it distributes them only to devices already licensed to use them. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if that makes any difference, but I doubt you are or know either. Google's granted a lot of "blanket" licensing for these applications.
That being said, even if he's technically not licensed, I think the question is more "Is this a smart move on Google's part, even if they're technically legally correct?" One of the main reasons I've been considering an Android phone has been Apple's behavior with the iPhone, and the comparative openness of the Android platform. This gives me pause on doing it at all.
But, all that being said, a lot better can be done than to complain here. If you think the decision sucks, tell Google.
Even if you are opposed to copyright, using "copyrights" to weaken copyright (by making it impossible for someone else to close the source) is not incompatible with that goal. Further, most here aren't against any form of copyright, but do believe that it has grown far out of control in scope, term, and enforcement. I don't think we'd be having this conversation, or that you'd even have any need to trot out this same old troll you do every time an open source license comes up, if copyright were a 5-10 year term, commercial-use-only type thing.
When you start suing people for hundreds of thousands of dollars because they downloaded songs that would have cost a few bucks, yes, people are going to see the punishment as grossly disproportionate to the crime and react appropriately. Most people consider downloading songs or software much like speeding-technically illegal, but not really particularly bad, and certainly widely done. You'd see the same reaction if they started charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for a speeding ticket.
Your position is, ultimately, a very simplistic one on a very complex subject. Copyright exists (at least in the US) to "promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts". That is its only purpose. It is not to ensure that anyone gets a paycheck, it is not to establish a property right (which is one reason I'm against the term "intellectual property", copyrights, patents, and trademarks are a limited exclusive-use right, not a property right. This is aside from the fact that they're also totally different things and lumping them together is confusing as to what actual aspect of "intellectual property" you're even talking about). It is in no way intended to "reward creative professionals". It's there to give them enough incentive to keep doing what they're doing, and not a bit more. I totally eliminating copyrights and patents would likely result in more creative output than any other way, the Constitution would not only allow but require that they be eliminated, as at this point they would be hindering the progress of science and art.
As far as your question on theft, you can't steal it. That has nothing to do with whether or not a physical act is involved. I can steal money by cracking into your bank account electronically, and that most certainly is theft. The reason it's impossible for "theft" to apply here is because the thing purportedly being "stolen" is a nonrival good.
The money in your bank account is a rival good, just like a steak in a grocery store or a car in a parking lot. If I take it, you don't have it anymore. If I took it without authorization, and it wasn't mine, I stole it. I could not, however, steal it by simply looking at it, even if you didn't like the idea of me looking at it. You still have it. So, no, you cannot "steal" a song or movie or program simply by looking at it when someone doesn't want you to, any more than you stole someone's tangible object by looking at it when there's a sign asking you not to.
I think one can argue that the current system is well beyond what's needed for that purpose, and may in fact be actively working against that purpose by keeping things locked up too long. Within 10 years, most creative works either have made a profit or never will. We don't need copyrights that can last over a century to provide an incentive, 10 years would be plenty.
Then, we get into the area of registration. People who want to make money from their work tend to register it or at least bother to put a copyright mark on it. Automatically copyrighting everything needlessly locks up content the author couldn't care less about, and creates tons upon tons of orphan works where you couldn't contact the copyright holder to ask permission even if you wanted to. Requiring at least placing a copyright notice, and offering registration for additional protection, is a good balance that would still do quite enough to provide an incentive-it just requires those who want that incentive to do a minimal amount of work to actually
While I can't quote you an exact figure offhand (and doubt anyone can), I will bet you the rent that the number is nonzero. Why take the risk? If it does happen, you're stuck with a double whammy-an inferior, ill-fitting product, and newly hired admins who don't know your company to try and run it. Even if they don't leave, you're still stuck with an inferior, ill-fitting product with your well-trained admins to run it.
On the other hand, the more autonomy you let people have, the more likely they are to stick around. (This is well known enough I hope you don't need proof, and that's really all this comes down to anyway.) And since they're the experts on IT equipment (that IS why you hired them, right?), now you have the best equipment for the job and your well-trained, seasoned admins to run it. Why would you want something else?
It would be similar to common-carrier telephone rules. Telephone providers are not allowed, for example, to prevent or degrade calls their customers make to the phone number of a competing telephone provider or a telephone consumer complaint hotline. They must give all calls the same prioritization and quality of service (with a few exceptions, such as a call to an emergency number).
Nothing in common-carrier law, however, means that the person at the other end must accept your call or do what you ask if they do. The server is the person receiving the phone call in our scenario, not the phone company. It is not required to accept your connection or do anything in particular with it if it does, and it may determine authorization to use any given service by any (otherwise legal) criteria. Its owner may choose to serve the public at large, it may choose to serve only those who pay, it may choose to serve only those who concurrently subscribe to a different service like a magazine or pay TV provider, or it may serve only residents of a certain country. These restrictions can generally be sidestepped, of course, but it doesn't violate net neutrality for them to attempt to implement them, any more than it violates common carrier law for me not to answer unexpected calls from 800 numbers.
All net neutrality ensures is that if that computer at the other end does wish to accept your connection, your ISP (the telephone company, in our analogy), cannot interfere with them doing so based upon whose server it is or misuse network restrictions to favor one person's data over another's.
Hello. I'm actually the chief of the Austin police force, and I want to tell you that all of you here are next! And you'd better watch it, you don't want to have some "evidence" mysteriously appear in your trunk! You keep your mouths shut!
Would any reasonable person actually believe what I just said?
You'll also find that, in America, there also isn't a "presumption of innocence", as libel and slander are generally not criminal matters requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt. The standard in a civil case, however, is "preponderance of evidence". If you can show credible evidence that I knew or should have known what I said was false, you will likely win your lawsuit. If, on the other hand, I can show there's a reasonably good chance that it's true, I will probably win. (If I can show without doubt that it is true, I will always win, truth is an absolute defense to libel or slander.)
I am not a lawyer, and all of the standard disclaimers, and someone who is could probably explain it better and with more detail. However, the main difference with the British system is that you must fully prove what you said, not simply show that it's likely. Since it's very difficult to "prove" anything (especially most things that are interesting) absolutely, that makes it difficult. In the US system, the overwhelming scientific consensus against homeopathy, or healing-by-prayer, or any similar type of junk medicine/science, gives you a very good preponderance of evidence that calling it quackery and nonsense is true. In Britain, though, since you can't technically "prove" that, you could be sued.
Generally speaking, employees shouldn't be able to delete email or other communication period. They should be able to remove it from their personal inbox, to prevent clutter, but SOX retention should be getting handled at the server level. Employees shouldn't be handling their own data retention at all.
According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the state public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." The only e-mails that can be deleted are those containing completely inconsequential information, such as spam or questions about lunch orders.
I'd more like to see the right of first sale applied uniformly, and PC games be as free to resell (at your garage sale or your local GameStop) as anything else. Used games, if anything, keep the price of new games lower, by serving as perfectly legal competition for them. When people ask themselves "Should I buy this new for $X now, or wait and get it used for $Y in a month or two?", $X can only go up to a certain point before people will start waiting instead. Go higher than that even, and now no one's buying at all, and your game's a flop altogether.
I don't believe I agree. First, seeing keystrokes as they're typed is significantly harder than seeing the actual plaintext, especially for those who type quickly and use both hands. Second, if one has a friend or coworker nearby while typing the password, masking provides a reasonable level of security without putting one in the awkward position of either asking them to leave the room or displaying the password for them to read.
But, really, that just reinforces the point that no security is perfect. All it can do is make it more difficult for someone. I know the lock on my front door is not perfect security against an intruder, but I still lock it. It's enough to deter a casual intruder and possibly slow down a more determined one long enough for me to know someone is trying and react appropriately.
Only an idiot would claim that servers being compromised because admins choose to send passwords over the internet in plain text proves anything about how secure the software running on those servers is.
Ah.....OK, I expect LOTS of such claims.
Realistically, that depends. Part of secure design is accounting for potential user errors. That's why it's a good practice to have the password, when typed, appear as "********" rather than "heythisismypasswordanyonewatching". A good designer would know many users aren't going to look around for someone casually shoulder surfing while typing a password, so they take a step to prevent it.
Of course, no software developer can fully account for a malfunctioning behind keyboard processing unit. Idiots are even more persistent than crackers in finding new ways to circumvent security measures. However, it can to some degree mitigate its effects, through making things as secure as possible and warning the user if (s)he is about to do something that might compromise it.
The yellow star has the issue of marking someone for discrimination.
The police search is an invasion of privacy in that someone else gets to look at my stuff and how I live.
The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong.
There are big differences.
And if your "wrongdoing" is printing something that is perfectly legal, but that the government (or someone else who figures out how to trace those patterns) dislikes?
Anonymity is a major component to privacy. That was true well before the computer age-look at the anonymous publications during the Revolutionary War era, for example. One should have the right to speak without being monitored, unless a court has specifically granted a warrant allowing the monitoring because there is probable cause to believe a crime is being planned or committed.
Communications monitoring, be that of phone conversations, Internet activity, or printed documents, is every bit as invasive as a cop searching your house. Sometimes it will be necessary, but as with any such measure, a judge should first need to determine if there really is good reason to believe it's warranted.
I use apt-get myself, but have generally found it to work fine. Were you trying to combine custom-compiled stuff with automated installs?
I've not had an issue with an automatic/package-managed install since 2007, and even that was an IRC daemon, which is not the type of thing a non-tech inclined user is going to be installing at all.
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This has nothing to do with warranty, and everything to do with liability.
In the grand old tradition, let's imagine a car. You've just bought it new, with a two year warranty. After three years, the alternator fails. Does your warranty cover that? Of course not, even though an alternator should last a lot longer.
But that's not the situation here. Imagine that, after those three years, you take your car back to the dealership for maintenance. Shortly thereafter, the alternator fails because the maintenance was done improperly.
Is the dealership obligated to fix it at their expense now? You better believe they are. Regardless of "warranty" or not, they caused the damage and are therefore responsible to repair it.
And if they tried to include on their standard repair form "Not responsible for any damage occurring during repairs", they'd find out just how little such a "disclaimer" means. That is true especially if Sony continued to offer the defective firmware after receiving quite a few reports of it being defective, which it seems they did.
Unfortunately, this does seem like a novel concept: If you can't use it properly, and are unwilling to take the time to learn, don't use it at all!
Of course, it's a bit disturbing that the head of a major law enforcement agency can be scammed that easily. I know plenty of people (who aren't in any type of computer/tech field) who know very well that you never, under any circumstances, ever, go to a sensitive website from an email link, and you most certainly never enter any login details unless you've gone directly there. That's pretty common knowledge anymore, and this is a guy you'd expect to know better. Leads you to wonder what other simple concepts he can't get straight.
Having looked at the two logos, they're easily distinguishable. Apple's logo is solid, the "W" is made of two overlapping loops. Apple's logo has the "bite", the W has no similar feature. Apple's logo is silver, the "W" is green. And on from there...
The article goes on to say that Apple is also trying to prevent someone else from using a logo of an apple with a devil, and all manner of things. That seems a misuse of trademark law. Trademark law is intended to prevent confusing similarities—something like making an MP3 player with a logo of an apple with the bite out of the opposite side, and calling it the "Appel miPod". It's not intended to prevent use of a common fruit in any type of logo anywhere, or to prohibit something with a vague, passing similarity in geometric shape but an obvious difference in any other way.
In fact, I seem to remember Apple making similar arguments themselves, when sued by a certain Apple Records...
Explain to me again why a "digital library" that functions like Netflix needs any DRM? Functioning like Netflix would mean they mail you a physical copy of the book, you read it and mail it back, and they send you the next one that's in stock on your wish list.
I actually can see that potentially working, but I'm not sure what exact type of DRM you'd be using.
I think if anyone tries to enforce a "trademark" on the term "USB", they might learn what a genericized trademark is. "USB" is the commonplace designation for that type of port, and is the recognized way of referring to-well, a USB port. I strongly doubt they'd have any luck arguing that it's a trademark rather than a generic word.
"Unsurprisingly"?
What I find surprising here is that you buy something that is advertised as unlimited, and then are not surprised when it turns out to be limited.
Of course, that's not to say they can't offer a limited plan. They certainly can. What they can't do is tell you you're paying a flat rate for unlimited data, and then turn around and place a limit.
They can't have it both ways. Either stop telling users the plan is unlimited, or allow unlimited (as in, I can have it running all day and night for a month) use. To advertise that something is unlimited when it is in fact limited is false advertising.
If the voice plan they offer me is that I will have 900 minutes a month and be charged for using more, that's fine! I know up front that's what I'm getting. On the other hand, if they offer me unlimited minutes, that means I can be on the phone from daybreak to midnight every day if I want to, whether or not they actually expected me to do that.
If you're going to advertise an all you can eat buffet, you'd better be ready for the big guy that can chow through four plates like they're not even there. If you're going to cut people off after two plates, you can't call it all you can eat. The bone of contention here is the dishonesty. It's not that everyone in the world should be banned from offering a limited plan, it's that they should advertise it as what it is if they do.
And, of course, since we're already into "thought crime" territory here, how long until they make it illegal to even talk about what happened (since you obviously must be thinking about the video in some way to comment on it, you sick pervert!) At some point soon, this will have to be stopped.
On the other hand, some of us consider lives and due process more important than your (or my) stuff. I would be among those. I don't want to see the police appointed judge, jury, and executioner. That's why we have judges and juries.
I'd much rather lose my stuff than my rights.
Also, keep in mind that if they're advertising a "continuous" speed of 20 Mb/s download, that's only true if they have no bandwidth cap. Otherwise, that's a burst speed.
If you have a cap of 50 GB per month, then 50 GB/month is your maximum continuous rate. That already is a speed (amount of transfer over time), so we just have to do simple dimensional adjustments to convert that to more familiar terms. 50 GB = 400 Gb, so there's our starting rate: 400 Gb/month. If we presume a 30-day month, that's ~13.33 Gb per day, ~.5555 Gb per hour, ~.00925 Gb per minute, or .000154 Gb (.154 Mb, or 154 Kb) per second. At that rate, you can transfer maybe 3 times more data in a month through this "broadband" plan than you could with an all-you-can-eat dialup (56K) plan. Reduce the cap to 10 GB/month, and you're transferring -less- than you could with dialup!
Now, it's certainly true you get faster burst speed than with dialup, but that's what anything on a capped plan is aside from the above-a burst speed. Your maximum sustainable speed is the maximum speed you could sustainably have running. If they have a bandwidth cap, that bandwidth cap determines the max sustainable speed. It's false advertising to advertise "8 Mb/s CONTINUOUS speed with bursts up to 12!", when their own policies prohibit using that speed continuously. In the above case, 12 is usable for short bursts and 8 for longer ones, but neither can be used "continuously" on a capped plan.
No, case not closed. Firstly, the assertion of the ones behind cyanogen are that it distributes them only to devices already licensed to use them. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if that makes any difference, but I doubt you are or know either. Google's granted a lot of "blanket" licensing for these applications.
That being said, even if he's technically not licensed, I think the question is more "Is this a smart move on Google's part, even if they're technically legally correct?" One of the main reasons I've been considering an Android phone has been Apple's behavior with the iPhone, and the comparative openness of the Android platform. This gives me pause on doing it at all.
But, all that being said, a lot better can be done than to complain here. If you think the decision sucks, tell Google.
Even if you are opposed to copyright, using "copyrights" to weaken copyright (by making it impossible for someone else to close the source) is not incompatible with that goal. Further, most here aren't against any form of copyright, but do believe that it has grown far out of control in scope, term, and enforcement. I don't think we'd be having this conversation, or that you'd even have any need to trot out this same old troll you do every time an open source license comes up, if copyright were a 5-10 year term, commercial-use-only type thing.
When you start suing people for hundreds of thousands of dollars because they downloaded songs that would have cost a few bucks, yes, people are going to see the punishment as grossly disproportionate to the crime and react appropriately. Most people consider downloading songs or software much like speeding-technically illegal, but not really particularly bad, and certainly widely done. You'd see the same reaction if they started charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for a speeding ticket.
Your position is, ultimately, a very simplistic one on a very complex subject. Copyright exists (at least in the US) to "promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts". That is its only purpose. It is not to ensure that anyone gets a paycheck, it is not to establish a property right (which is one reason I'm against the term "intellectual property", copyrights, patents, and trademarks are a limited exclusive-use right, not a property right. This is aside from the fact that they're also totally different things and lumping them together is confusing as to what actual aspect of "intellectual property" you're even talking about). It is in no way intended to "reward creative professionals". It's there to give them enough incentive to keep doing what they're doing, and not a bit more. I totally eliminating copyrights and patents would likely result in more creative output than any other way, the Constitution would not only allow but require that they be eliminated, as at this point they would be hindering the progress of science and art.
As far as your question on theft, you can't steal it. That has nothing to do with whether or not a physical act is involved. I can steal money by cracking into your bank account electronically, and that most certainly is theft. The reason it's impossible for "theft" to apply here is because the thing purportedly being "stolen" is a nonrival good.
The money in your bank account is a rival good, just like a steak in a grocery store or a car in a parking lot. If I take it, you don't have it anymore. If I took it without authorization, and it wasn't mine, I stole it. I could not, however, steal it by simply looking at it, even if you didn't like the idea of me looking at it. You still have it. So, no, you cannot "steal" a song or movie or program simply by looking at it when someone doesn't want you to, any more than you stole someone's tangible object by looking at it when there's a sign asking you not to.
I think one can argue that the current system is well beyond what's needed for that purpose, and may in fact be actively working against that purpose by keeping things locked up too long. Within 10 years, most creative works either have made a profit or never will. We don't need copyrights that can last over a century to provide an incentive, 10 years would be plenty.
Then, we get into the area of registration. People who want to make money from their work tend to register it or at least bother to put a copyright mark on it. Automatically copyrighting everything needlessly locks up content the author couldn't care less about, and creates tons upon tons of orphan works where you couldn't contact the copyright holder to ask permission even if you wanted to. Requiring at least placing a copyright notice, and offering registration for additional protection, is a good balance that would still do quite enough to provide an incentive-it just requires those who want that incentive to do a minimal amount of work to actually
While I can't quote you an exact figure offhand (and doubt anyone can), I will bet you the rent that the number is nonzero. Why take the risk? If it does happen, you're stuck with a double whammy-an inferior, ill-fitting product, and newly hired admins who don't know your company to try and run it. Even if they don't leave, you're still stuck with an inferior, ill-fitting product with your well-trained admins to run it.
On the other hand, the more autonomy you let people have, the more likely they are to stick around. (This is well known enough I hope you don't need proof, and that's really all this comes down to anyway.) And since they're the experts on IT equipment (that IS why you hired them, right?), now you have the best equipment for the job and your well-trained, seasoned admins to run it. Why would you want something else?
No, it would mean nothing like that at all.
It would be similar to common-carrier telephone rules. Telephone providers are not allowed, for example, to prevent or degrade calls their customers make to the phone number of a competing telephone provider or a telephone consumer complaint hotline. They must give all calls the same prioritization and quality of service (with a few exceptions, such as a call to an emergency number).
Nothing in common-carrier law, however, means that the person at the other end must accept your call or do what you ask if they do. The server is the person receiving the phone call in our scenario, not the phone company. It is not required to accept your connection or do anything in particular with it if it does, and it may determine authorization to use any given service by any (otherwise legal) criteria. Its owner may choose to serve the public at large, it may choose to serve only those who pay, it may choose to serve only those who concurrently subscribe to a different service like a magazine or pay TV provider, or it may serve only residents of a certain country. These restrictions can generally be sidestepped, of course, but it doesn't violate net neutrality for them to attempt to implement them, any more than it violates common carrier law for me not to answer unexpected calls from 800 numbers.
All net neutrality ensures is that if that computer at the other end does wish to accept your connection, your ISP (the telephone company, in our analogy), cannot interfere with them doing so based upon whose server it is or misuse network restrictions to favor one person's data over another's.
Hello. I'm actually the chief of the Austin police force, and I want to tell you that all of you here are next! And you'd better watch it, you don't want to have some "evidence" mysteriously appear in your trunk! You keep your mouths shut!
Would any reasonable person actually believe what I just said?
You'll also find that, in America, there also isn't a "presumption of innocence", as libel and slander are generally not criminal matters requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt. The standard in a civil case, however, is "preponderance of evidence". If you can show credible evidence that I knew or should have known what I said was false, you will likely win your lawsuit. If, on the other hand, I can show there's a reasonably good chance that it's true, I will probably win. (If I can show without doubt that it is true, I will always win, truth is an absolute defense to libel or slander.)
I am not a lawyer, and all of the standard disclaimers, and someone who is could probably explain it better and with more detail. However, the main difference with the British system is that you must fully prove what you said, not simply show that it's likely. Since it's very difficult to "prove" anything (especially most things that are interesting) absolutely, that makes it difficult. In the US system, the overwhelming scientific consensus against homeopathy, or healing-by-prayer, or any similar type of junk medicine/science, gives you a very good preponderance of evidence that calling it quackery and nonsense is true. In Britain, though, since you can't technically "prove" that, you could be sued.
Generally speaking, employees shouldn't be able to delete email or other communication period. They should be able to remove it from their personal inbox, to prevent clutter, but SOX retention should be getting handled at the server level. Employees shouldn't be handling their own data retention at all.
Yes, I know where I am, but if you'd RTFA:
I'd more like to see the right of first sale applied uniformly, and PC games be as free to resell (at your garage sale or your local GameStop) as anything else. Used games, if anything, keep the price of new games lower, by serving as perfectly legal competition for them. When people ask themselves "Should I buy this new for $X now, or wait and get it used for $Y in a month or two?", $X can only go up to a certain point before people will start waiting instead. Go higher than that even, and now no one's buying at all, and your game's a flop altogether.
I don't believe I agree. First, seeing keystrokes as they're typed is significantly harder than seeing the actual plaintext, especially for those who type quickly and use both hands. Second, if one has a friend or coworker nearby while typing the password, masking provides a reasonable level of security without putting one in the awkward position of either asking them to leave the room or displaying the password for them to read.
But, really, that just reinforces the point that no security is perfect. All it can do is make it more difficult for someone. I know the lock on my front door is not perfect security against an intruder, but I still lock it. It's enough to deter a casual intruder and possibly slow down a more determined one long enough for me to know someone is trying and react appropriately.
Only an idiot would claim that servers being compromised because admins choose to send passwords over the internet in plain text proves anything about how secure the software running on those servers is.
Ah.....OK, I expect LOTS of such claims.
Realistically, that depends. Part of secure design is accounting for potential user errors. That's why it's a good practice to have the password, when typed, appear as "********" rather than "heythisismypasswordanyonewatching". A good designer would know many users aren't going to look around for someone casually shoulder surfing while typing a password, so they take a step to prevent it.
Of course, no software developer can fully account for a malfunctioning behind keyboard processing unit. Idiots are even more persistent than crackers in finding new ways to circumvent security measures. However, it can to some degree mitigate its effects, through making things as secure as possible and warning the user if (s)he is about to do something that might compromise it.
The yellow star has the issue of marking someone for discrimination.
The police search is an invasion of privacy in that someone else gets to look at my stuff and how I live.
The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong.
There are big differences.
And if your "wrongdoing" is printing something that is perfectly legal, but that the government (or someone else who figures out how to trace those patterns) dislikes?
Anonymity is a major component to privacy. That was true well before the computer age-look at the anonymous publications during the Revolutionary War era, for example. One should have the right to speak without being monitored, unless a court has specifically granted a warrant allowing the monitoring because there is probable cause to believe a crime is being planned or committed.
Communications monitoring, be that of phone conversations, Internet activity, or printed documents, is every bit as invasive as a cop searching your house. Sometimes it will be necessary, but as with any such measure, a judge should first need to determine if there really is good reason to believe it's warranted.
That "whoosh" sound you hear is the sound of that Google query, by the way.
I use apt-get myself, but have generally found it to work fine. Were you trying to combine custom-compiled stuff with automated installs?
I've not had an issue with an automatic/package-managed install since 2007, and even that was an IRC daemon, which is not the type of thing a non-tech inclined user is going to be installing at all.
Ah, you mean if there were something like this in it, it would be absolutely brilliant?
Oh, wait, that's been in it for years.
Thanks, my internet is down, I was unable to google that myself.
So how are you posting this?
He's got the page saved offline. Duh. Geeze, don't some people think about what they're saying?