And that is exactly why "she is suing", and why we aren't reading about the Texas Attorney General bringing a case before the grand jury to indict Blockbuster's board for breaking the law.
It's also why Harris' class-action suit won't be heard. The class is defined as a group among those who have waived their rights. Nobody in the class is entitled to damages, so they cannot prevail.
>IANAL, but I believe that you can install OS X on anything you want (as long as you buy it).
Ok, wrong. Apple reserves all rights under copyright, that are not expressly granted by the software license. The license is very specific, and in its very first specific clause:
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.
You either agree to this license, or you have no right to install the software. Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringement:-)
This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.
5. Become the target of a fraud investigation by several credit card companies, you know, the ones who have litigation budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.
>How the hell do you "consider" something to be illegal? It either is, or isn't.
There are plenty of things that can be acceptable in some context, but can be actionable for civil damages in some other context.
There are also different things that are illegal in very different ways. For example, walking across a street against the light, is illegal. Walking across the street against the light with a pound of heroin in your knapsack is also illegal. Shooting somebody in the crosswalk is illegal.
The idea that all these "illegal" things are equivalent or even comparable, is a problem from the start.
The question is not "is it illegal for you to use my wi-fi router?" The question is, "if you do some tangible damage to me while using my wi-fi router, does the law preclude me from seeking compensation for those damages?"
>Hardly.. > >Which of the following would you be most willing to do without in your home? > > * Fridge > * Oven/microwave > * Washing machine > * Computer > >I know my answer...
Um, the only one that I would actually literally kill in order to protect from theft, is the computer. The only one I would consider taking in a fire. The only one that I could not replace easily. The one that cost twice what the other three put together cost.
Military ID's don't indicate MOS anymore? I suppose that's a good thing. I always use my passport. When a Federal Agent claims that a US Passport is not valid identification, I'll find a way to parlay that into revenue of some sort.
Mine's pretty good, but I actually prefer and use the previous generation TI-89. If you obsess on things like having an antique calculator, you might have attention issues that are incompatible with engineering school.
I love my RPN, stack based calculators - I have quite a collection. I also recognize the fairly amazing power of my TI-89, considering its battery usage and its cost.
You just had to throw a current political issue in, as your #1 reason no less. Do you expect us to believe you are (a.) in a hiring authority position and (b.) even one of your new hires has made this an issue for you?
>Windows doesn't have to bother to make it easily installable/easy to work with (somewhat because it already is) since it already has the market it >needs,
I argue that Linux also already has "the market it needs".
>In short, it's one-stop identity-theft. It's everything anyone would need to get a passport with your name on it.
You're thinking in terms of "Joe Blow's" passport. You're not thinking like an assassin, and you're not considering the difference between travel records of Joe Blow and travel records of someone who has diplomatic credentials (and who has a reasonable apprehension of being a target of assassinaion.)
All three of these individuals have 24 hour Secret Service protection for a reason.
Passport record is one of the things you don't want a potential assassin to have access to. And that, not the risk of identity theft, is the problem in this State Department investigation. It potentially put these people at increased risk of assassination.
Passport records, not the passport itself, contain much more than you cited.
In some cases, where a passport was not routinely given, there may be far more information. All of the passport records in question here, are for people who travel with diplomatic credentials, and all of them have a reasonable apprehension of being targeted for assassination. A great deal of information about the passport holder, and about his family members, can be found in these records, as well as records of how much money they travel with, specific dates and times of travel, and other information that may seem useless to you but could be extremely valuable to an assassin.
>Actually, the private information is guarded against inappropriate access.
Yes, as you said, the fact that we know about it indicates that a safeguard worked. It might turn out to be amusing to learn that the people snooping didn't know about the guard. That would be interesting because it would mean there was a clever system in place. That is, it wasn't obvious to the perps that they were being recorded.
>What do you need to do, exactly, to be "high-profile?"
Earn a hundred million a year? Run for office on a multimillion dollar campaign? Be at sufficiently high risk as an assassination target to warrant 24/7 Secret Service protection?
>OK. What's your name, address, social security number, and mother's maiden name?
There is far more than that in a passport record, and for a passport record with diplomatic credentials, assuredly more than a regular citizen passport.
>If anything, this article illustrates how insignificant peoples privacy is
If you make over a hundred million a year, please give me your full name, date of birth, social security number, spouse's and former spouses' full names, dates of birth, and social security numbers, full address information for current and previous residences, places of employment and dates and phone numbers, parent's full and maiden names and social security numbers and addresses, and then remind us about how insignificant a passport record is.
While you're at it, please tell us for every time you have left the country, what airline or ship you were on, how much your ticket cost, exact travel date timestamped to the minute, and the amount of money you took into and out of the country. That information is also in these records.
Insignificant? At the very least, it's a perfect field for identity theft, and at worst it could be useful for an assassin.
>They have to present this passport to government officials upon arrival in every country they visit. >Why should they expect privacy in this matter?
There is more information in the State Department's passport file than what is on the passport. In particular, it lists the amount of money you have taken into and out of the country, and there is information specific to people who travel with diplomatic credentials. The passport itself may have visa stamps, but it does not contain transcripts of interviews with the agents at points of entry, and so forth.
On a more mundane level, your passport also does not have your address (check it!), does not have your last 3 addresses, your mother's maiden name, your social security number, both your parents addresses and social security numbers, those of your spouse, or really very much of the information at all that was provided for the application. Take this to the level of a person getting a passport that indicates diplomatic credentials, and there is much, much more data.
It's a pretty serious incident being swept under the rug.
>I am absolutely serious. Stealing is stealing. Stealing is illegal.
And? You cannot provide a legally meaningful definition of "stealing" that includes use of a wireless access point. So you have made your assertion about "stealing", which nobody can reasonably argue with, and remain at square zero.
>This law eliminates the usefulness of my and others altruism to remedy a "problem"
A more effective argument would rely not on the idea that you should be allowed to practice altruism or that there is a "problem", but rather you should point out that it protects the rights of individuals differently, even though those individuals are engaging in the same practice. The challenge you are looking for is "equal protection muster". In order to enforce this proposed law, the rights of some people would have to be elevated over the rights of others, because the same activity is legal in some cases, illegal in some arbitrarily different cases. It may not be discriminatory, but it certainly fails to protect all people who engage in the same activity.
Slashdot Mirror
And that is exactly why "she is suing", and why we aren't reading about the Texas Attorney General bringing a case before the grand jury to indict Blockbuster's board for breaking the law.
It's also why Harris' class-action suit won't be heard. The class is defined as a group among those who have waived their rights. Nobody in the class is entitled to damages, so they cannot prevail.
>IANAL, but I believe that you can install OS X on anything you want (as long as you buy it).
:-)
Ok, wrong. Apple reserves all rights under copyright, that are not expressly granted by the software license.
The license is very specific, and in its very first specific clause:
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.
You either agree to this license, or you have no right to install the software. Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringement
This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.
>3. Charge the cards.
>4. Vanish.
5. Become the target of a fraud investigation by several credit card companies,
you know, the ones who have litigation budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.
6. Write letters from prison.
>If a car is parked on the street. You will not be arrested for sitting on it.
If you're sitting on my car I'm going to ask you very urgently to stop.
If you do NOT stop, in my locality, I can shoot you dead.
>How the hell do you "consider" something to be illegal? It either is, or isn't.
There are plenty of things that can be acceptable in some context, but can be actionable for civil damages in some other context.
There are also different things that are illegal in very different ways. For example, walking across a street against the light, is illegal. Walking across the street against the light with a pound of heroin in your knapsack is also illegal. Shooting somebody in the crosswalk is illegal.
The idea that all these "illegal" things are equivalent or even comparable, is a problem from the start.
The question is not "is it illegal for you to use my wi-fi router?" The question is, "if you do some tangible damage to me while using my wi-fi router, does the law preclude me from seeking compensation for those damages?"
>Everyone started out as a newbie.
But aptitude seems to follow a bell curve.
Because for many of us the social interaction element of guild play is the most important component, and we can just *ignore* players who use bots.
Most of them are alliance dweebs anyway, who have to ask their parents for permission to play in the first place... so who cares?
>Hardly..
>
>Which of the following would you be most willing to do without in your home?
>
> * Fridge
> * Oven/microwave
> * Washing machine
> * Computer
>
>I know my answer...
Um, the only one that I would actually literally kill in order to protect from theft, is the computer.
The only one I would consider taking in a fire. The only one that I could not replace easily. The one
that cost twice what the other three put together cost.
And did you forget this is slashdot??
>XP is not going anywhere.
Microsoft can decide otherwise, just by disabling activation.
Military ID's don't indicate MOS anymore? I suppose that's a good thing.
I always use my passport. When a Federal Agent claims that a US Passport
is not valid identification, I'll find a way to parlay that into revenue
of some sort.
>Seems to me, that any law that prevents you from entering a court to defend yourself would violate your right to due process.
It would, but it would have to actually happen to you before you had standing to use it either as a defense argument or as
cause to sue for damages.
Good luck; your scenario is simply not going to happen.
Can you actually buy a vehicle that is NOT CA-legal?
>A Ti Silver Edition is not a real calculator.
Mine's pretty good, but I actually prefer and use the previous generation TI-89.
If you obsess on things like having an antique calculator, you might have attention
issues that are incompatible with engineering school.
I love my RPN, stack based calculators - I have quite a collection. I also recognize
the fairly amazing power of my TI-89, considering its battery usage and its cost.
You just had to throw a current political issue in, as your #1 reason no less.
Do you expect us to believe you are (a.) in a hiring authority position and
(b.) even one of your new hires has made this an issue for you?
>Windows doesn't have to bother to make it easily installable/easy to work with (somewhat because it already is) since it already has the market it
>needs,
I argue that Linux also already has "the market it needs".
>This is not a science article.
It's anthropology, and like it or not, anthropology is science.
>In short, it's one-stop identity-theft. It's everything anyone would need to get a passport with your name on it.
You're thinking in terms of "Joe Blow's" passport. You're not thinking like an assassin, and you're not considering
the difference between travel records of Joe Blow and travel records of someone who has diplomatic credentials (and who
has a reasonable apprehension of being a target of assassinaion.)
All three of these individuals have 24 hour Secret Service protection for a reason.
Passport record is one of the things you don't want a potential assassin to have access to. And that, not the risk of identity theft,
is the problem in this State Department investigation. It potentially put these people at increased risk of assassination.
>What's private about passport records?
Passport records, not the passport itself, contain much more than you cited.
In some cases, where a passport was not routinely given, there may be far more information.
All of the passport records in question here, are for people who travel with diplomatic credentials,
and all of them have a reasonable apprehension of being targeted for assassination. A great deal of
information about the passport holder, and about his family members, can be found in these records,
as well as records of how much money they travel with, specific dates and times of travel, and other
information that may seem useless to you but could be extremely valuable to an assassin.
>Actually, the private information is guarded against inappropriate access.
Yes, as you said, the fact that we know about it indicates that a safeguard worked.
It might turn out to be amusing to learn that the people snooping didn't know about
the guard. That would be interesting because it would mean there was a clever system
in place. That is, it wasn't obvious to the perps that they were being recorded.
>What do you need to do, exactly, to be "high-profile?"
Earn a hundred million a year? Run for office on a multimillion dollar campaign?
Be at sufficiently high risk as an assassination target to warrant 24/7 Secret Service
protection?
>OK. What's your name, address, social security number, and mother's maiden name?
There is far more than that in a passport record, and for a passport record with
diplomatic credentials, assuredly more than a regular citizen passport.
>If anything, this article illustrates how insignificant peoples privacy is
If you make over a hundred million a year,
please give me your full name, date of birth, social security number, spouse's and former spouses' full names, dates of birth, and social security numbers, full address information for current and previous residences, places of employment and dates and phone numbers, parent's full and maiden names and social security numbers and addresses, and then remind us about how insignificant a passport record is.
While you're at it, please tell us for every time you have left the country, what airline or ship you were on, how much your ticket cost, exact travel date timestamped to the minute, and the amount of money you took into and out of the country. That information is also in these records.
Insignificant? At the very least, it's a perfect field for identity theft, and at worst it could be useful for an assassin.
>They have to present this passport to government officials upon arrival in every country they visit.
>Why should they expect privacy in this matter?
There is more information in the State Department's passport file than what is on the passport.
In particular, it lists the amount of money you have taken into and out of the country, and there
is information specific to people who travel with diplomatic credentials. The passport itself may
have visa stamps, but it does not contain transcripts of interviews with the agents at points of
entry, and so forth.
On a more mundane level, your passport also does not have your address (check it!), does not have your
last 3 addresses, your mother's maiden name, your social security number, both your parents addresses
and social security numbers, those of your spouse, or really very much of the information at all that
was provided for the application. Take this to the level of a person getting a passport that indicates
diplomatic credentials, and there is much, much more data.
It's a pretty serious incident being swept under the rug.
>I am absolutely serious. Stealing is stealing. Stealing is illegal.
And? You cannot provide a legally meaningful definition of "stealing" that
includes use of a wireless access point. So you have made your assertion about
"stealing", which nobody can reasonably argue with, and remain at square zero.
>This law eliminates the usefulness of my and others altruism to remedy a "problem"
A more effective argument would rely not on the idea that you should be allowed to practice altruism
or that there is a "problem", but rather you should point out that it protects the rights of individuals
differently, even though those individuals are engaging in the same practice. The challenge you are looking
for is "equal protection muster". In order to enforce this proposed law, the rights of some people would have
to be elevated over the rights of others, because the same activity is legal in some cases, illegal in some arbitrarily different cases. It may not be discriminatory, but it certainly fails to protect all people who engage in the same activity.