Well yeah, that should be ammended (or, y'know. YA COULD just stop cheating on your wife). The police having information so they can enforce the laws is one thing, my wife knowing I'm sleeping behind or back, or my insurance company knowing I'm drink-driving is quite another (okay, despite my sarcastic comments, yes I do think that anyone but the law enforcement agencies having access is bad).
The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.'
You'll still be able to exercise you're free will. You'll just be punished in accordance with the law whenever you do something that breaks it. There are no parantheses around crime. If the law says it's illegal, it's a crime.
The problem with law enforcement agencies becoming more efficient with enforcing laws, is up until now they haven't been able to get TOO efficient. So people haven't cared too much about things being illegal.
How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job (protect and serve the people by enforcing the laws their representatives enact on behalf of their constitutents), you work towards changing the laws? But then again, that's much more difficult. It's much easier to simply break the law, and hope you don't get caught.
Instead of posting rhetoric why don't you say what your problem with this system actually is? By the way, it sounds like you have a beef with the fact some things are illegal in your state (I'm going to hope the beef is with private gambling and NOT child molestation). Your problem shouldn't be with the laws being enforced, but the laws themselves.
Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.
And you care if the police know your location... why? Are they going to go to the newspapers and announce you visit brothels on a regular basis (which is acutally, illegal y'know)? Are you afraid because you entered a building the same as terrorist Bob that they'll think you're a terrorist now? If it's the latter, I think your problem is with their criteria on naming people terrorists. Not in them knowing where you were at 8:00 pm, Saturday 23rd of October, 2005.
there is no provision in place to prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order.
Okay, good point. The whole constitution thing, but let's ignore that for a second. So what if they're watching you? What're they going to do with that information? Prove you chopped up some chick? Well that's what you get for chopping her up.
If you don't break the law, chances are they won't even want to bother watching you. And if you do break the law, you can't really complain.
But yes, it is in the constitution that they can't do that, so it shouldn't be allowed. But that's the only reason against it. It's not like your wife can log into the satellites and find out you've got a gay lover. The only bad thing about it is, it's against the constitution. But... there really isn't anything bad about it other then that. Curbing free speech is bad for reasons other then it's part of the constitution. But the police finding out where you're driving, I can't think of any negative effects that could have.
And whose going to make them responsible? Me and my pro-bono lawyer? How will I prove it was their fault? From that day on any credit card fraud is their responsibility? Most people can't afford a good lawyer, and the lawyer they can afford, aint that good and is likely to sue successfully, and keep your money.
Which is crazy. You don't hear people say "oh you know. I haven't been broken into in the past 3 years. I think I can replace my deadbolt with a padlock I brought from K-mart." Why companies continue to short-change their data security (in what many people claim is the Information Age) while beefing up their physical security. And whilever they continue to do this, we'll continue to hear of times when credit cards are stolen. Oh, I just realised why they don't care about information being stolen. Because it's only customer information. And it's not being stolen like physical objects, it's being duplicated.
Until these companies are forced to care about their customer's data (and customers aint doing shit about it at the moment), they won't.
Why are they voluntarily blocking downloads? It's not like there's a Great Firewall of Australia to block them, and they're not based in Au
From Wikipedia: Consumer Empowerment responded by selling the Kazaa application to a complicated mesh of offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia
So actually, yes they are based in the AU. So yes, they kinda do have to follow rulings made by Australian courts.
Yes, you could make the car black to absorb more photons, or white to reflect more
Which was exactly my point. I added very little more, and I have no idea where you read "magical climate control" in my post. If photons are absorbed, the car will heat up a bit more then if they were reflected. I'm not saying this will be all that's needed for a nice temperature, merely that it can help.
What about the rest of the world? Just because the American government will continue to support the convicted monopoly doesn't mean the rest of the world will. IBM is marketting this mostly to developing nations (I'm assuming developing nations who have computers with internet access). To them, saving the money from paying for Microsoft licenses is more then reason enough to swap over. Throwing in support from a large corporation is merely gravy.
But what I'm a bit confused about, is the usefulness of having it work as a web portal. "Good" nations do have trouble with internet connections, I can only assume it's as bad if not worse in developing nations. So why create an online solution, instead of a scaled down simple offline solution? Wouldn't that fit their needs better?
Baby Bells have been doing this ever since they were 'forced' to open their local lines to competitors.
So there should be plenty of evidence to support the claim then.
We all know that the mainstream press is extremely selective in what it covers, and it's not even like this is breaking news.
Of course. When you post up complaints against companies like this, unless you offer proof your post is meaningless. I can make a post claiming to be an ex-employee of BellSouth and say how completely wrong, or completely right the poster was. But it's completely pointless to do so. And completely false.
While unsupported allegations against a company might be fun to read, they don't really add anything meaningful to the conversation.
That's a good point. I assumed it worked by sufficient lightrays hitting it, but it probably does work on heat, not light. Perhaps they could make the front part need a higher level of heat? But then it would look strange when not turned on.
This could be used to change the car to a color that attracts heat when it's cold, and repels heat when it's hot. It might help somewhat with the heat and cold, but would the particles add more heat so the heat repelling functions don't really work? I'm thinking no, as I believe it happens on a micro-level, but I could be wrong.
Enforcement of the law is up to the police, not some computer that may have buggy software
You know, I'm sure you say that merely because you know police can't be everywhere at once. And the buggy software is a bit of a red herring to be honest. I haven't seen any news articles where people were convicted because of buggy software.
We also have a cell network with almost 100% coverage.
In all fairness, Sweeden is a pretty small country (compared with say North America, Canada or Australia). So you can't really say "we're better then those big countries, because we have 100% coverage" (which you didn't say about the coverage, but did say about the contracts). Having said that, compared with other European countries of similar size, you probably are a lot better off.
Someone comes along and enters something illegal: how to be a sniper
It's illegal to disseminate information that doesn't infringe on someone's privacy, isn't untrue and doesn't break copyright laws? Wow. Talk about the land of the free.
slander or liber about a certain person,
I doubt many (if any) wiki's support sound so including slander really isn't possbile.
excerpts from a book against copyright,
I'm a bit confused what "against copyright" means, but copyright laws in America allow excerpts to be displayed.
"Change it yourself" is like saying "if skinheads painted Nazi slogans on your house wall, just repaint it".
A good enough analogy for the point you were making. I agree. I also never said "change it yourself."
Nobody should be pursued for this?
Not at all. The person who made the libelous changes should be persued. I said Wikipedia itself shouldn't be persued, unless it has been made aware of the content and has done nothing to change it.
Are we saying that a wiki is somehow above the laws and should be exonerated by default of any consequences, along with its administrators, host and everybody, except perhaps that malicious contributor who can't be tracked down anyway?
That I am. Although to say it is "above the law" is dishonest at best. It isn't above the law, the laws merely say it can't be held responsible unless it doesn't fulfill the requirements outlined in a cease and desist order, which by the way, wasn't necessary in this instance. I think it would be ridiculous to say all content hosts should be held responsible for any information I post on their website. If I said something libelous, I don't believe slashdot should be held responsible. Same thing with me going on live television. The television studio shouldn't be held responsible.
And the person can be tracked down. If the article writer had wished to persue the matter legally, then Bellsouth would have provided the information he asked for. However even if he couldn't be tracked down, to blame someone else merely because the the person can't be caught is ridiculous.
Because a wiki is not a discussion. It's supposed to be reference.
No, wiki software can be used for anything. Wikipedia is meant as a reference, not a discussion.
I can honestly say I don't know a single person that uses MSN or ICQ (I know a few who used to use ICQ a few years ago). But I know at least 30 people who use Skype almost every day.
Yes, but I'd hardly consider the slashdot userbase (or their friends) a good sample of the internet population. Many slashdotters (no idea if you're one) zealously hate Microsoft and all of it's products. So it wouldn't be surprising to see them not using msn. However I'd hardly say that's indicative of internet users at large.
The video phone has been around for some time now, although I don't know the price of it so that may have been responsible for it not being adopted, are video phones really wanted? They've never taken off for the normal phone, will they suddenly take off for VoIP?
I can't see it myself. Plenty of programs have supported webcams, but in my experience most people don't use them, only a very small minority. So why is everyone clamouring to add this? Is it merely to say "look. We've got a new widget!"? Or is there truly demand for this, that I'm just ignorant of?
I don't believe he made anyone aware of it, either,
Actually he called up Jimbo and it was changed (that's what happens when you RTFA;)). From my impression of the article, Jimbo was more then helpful and the writer appreciated it and didn't hold him personally responsible. However he does want to make Jimbo legally responsible in the future, which is quite odd considering how much of a positive response he got from him (I guess Bellsouth's response left a very sour taste in his mouth).
They also vary from state to state (at least in Australia). I agree with you that dealing with laws internationally is a nightmare and something the internet has made much, much harder. Although I fear America attempting to force everyone into accepting their libel and slander laws.
Actually, the Vanity rule (I believe) would stop him from editing his own article.
Also, he's only using Wikipedia as an example of the current legal status of online content providers and the protections private citizens have. It isn't really about Wikipedia at all.
Which is why he probably hasn't sued. I bet a couple of lawyers could duke out whether or not it truly meets the standard for libel.
In the article he mentions how terrible it is that any Tom, Dick or Harry can't call up an ISP and demand to know someone's details by providing their IP and time they were online. He does have legal recourse, but for whatever reason has decided not to persue it.
What if a gay porn webmaster rings up based on IPs and gets the name for many of the people who visited his website, and found out that a high-profile closet-case was surfing his site. He could then cause that person a lot of mental grief by going to the tabloids, or blackmail the person.
He claims by slashdot not being forced to screen the thousands of posts a day and by ISPs needing a court order to break my privacy, that congress has enabled people to be libel. All congress has done is protected my privacy and companies (which congress LOVES to do). Outside of legal matters (which can be undertaken, he even describes the process in the article), no-one should be contacting my ISP for my details.
Actually when the case is libel, he doesn't have to merely put up with it or change it. Having said that, I disagree with his claim that content hosts should be held responsible for what users (or customers) place on their content. If they're made aware of it, then I can see an argument being made, but to have to screen every single post/change/webpage would be infeasible.
Slashdot Mirror
Well yeah, that should be ammended (or, y'know. YA COULD just stop cheating on your wife). The police having information so they can enforce the laws is one thing, my wife knowing I'm sleeping behind or back, or my insurance company knowing I'm drink-driving is quite another (okay, despite my sarcastic comments, yes I do think that anyone but the law enforcement agencies having access is bad).
The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.'
You'll still be able to exercise you're free will. You'll just be punished in accordance with the law whenever you do something that breaks it. There are no parantheses around crime. If the law says it's illegal, it's a crime.
The problem with law enforcement agencies becoming more efficient with enforcing laws, is up until now they haven't been able to get TOO efficient. So people haven't cared too much about things being illegal.
How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job (protect and serve the people by enforcing the laws their representatives enact on behalf of their constitutents), you work towards changing the laws? But then again, that's much more difficult. It's much easier to simply break the law, and hope you don't get caught.
You say this as though if it was not in the Constitution, people would have no problem with it, but that is not the situation at all.
Well I can't think of anything bad about it.
they did mention the information being subpoenaed, which is quite possible and would have similar results.
What sort of civil matters can it be subponaed in?
Instead of posting rhetoric why don't you say what your problem with this system actually is? By the way, it sounds like you have a beef with the fact some things are illegal in your state (I'm going to hope the beef is with private gambling and NOT child molestation). Your problem shouldn't be with the laws being enforced, but the laws themselves.
Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.
And you care if the police know your location... why? Are they going to go to the newspapers and announce you visit brothels on a regular basis (which is acutally, illegal y'know)? Are you afraid because you entered a building the same as terrorist Bob that they'll think you're a terrorist now? If it's the latter, I think your problem is with their criteria on naming people terrorists. Not in them knowing where you were at 8:00 pm, Saturday 23rd of October, 2005.
there is no provision in place to prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order.
Okay, good point. The whole constitution thing, but let's ignore that for a second. So what if they're watching you? What're they going to do with that information? Prove you chopped up some chick? Well that's what you get for chopping her up.
If you don't break the law, chances are they won't even want to bother watching you. And if you do break the law, you can't really complain.
But yes, it is in the constitution that they can't do that, so it shouldn't be allowed. But that's the only reason against it. It's not like your wife can log into the satellites and find out you've got a gay lover. The only bad thing about it is, it's against the constitution. But... there really isn't anything bad about it other then that. Curbing free speech is bad for reasons other then it's part of the constitution. But the police finding out where you're driving, I can't think of any negative effects that could have.
And whose going to make them responsible? Me and my pro-bono lawyer? How will I prove it was their fault? From that day on any credit card fraud is their responsibility? Most people can't afford a good lawyer, and the lawyer they can afford, aint that good and is likely to sue successfully, and keep your money.
Which is crazy. You don't hear people say "oh you know. I haven't been broken into in the past 3 years. I think I can replace my deadbolt with a padlock I brought from K-mart." Why companies continue to short-change their data security (in what many people claim is the Information Age) while beefing up their physical security. And whilever they continue to do this, we'll continue to hear of times when credit cards are stolen. Oh, I just realised why they don't care about information being stolen. Because it's only customer information. And it's not being stolen like physical objects, it's being duplicated.
Until these companies are forced to care about their customer's data (and customers aint doing shit about it at the moment), they won't.
Why are they voluntarily blocking downloads? It's not like there's a Great Firewall of Australia to block them, and they're not based in Au
From Wikipedia:
Consumer Empowerment responded by selling the Kazaa application to a complicated mesh of offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia
So actually, yes they are based in the AU. So yes, they kinda do have to follow rulings made by Australian courts.
Yes, you could make the car black to absorb more photons, or white to reflect more
Which was exactly my point. I added very little more, and I have no idea where you read "magical climate control" in my post. If photons are absorbed, the car will heat up a bit more then if they were reflected. I'm not saying this will be all that's needed for a nice temperature, merely that it can help.
What about the rest of the world? Just because the American government will continue to support the convicted monopoly doesn't mean the rest of the world will. IBM is marketting this mostly to developing nations (I'm assuming developing nations who have computers with internet access). To them, saving the money from paying for Microsoft licenses is more then reason enough to swap over. Throwing in support from a large corporation is merely gravy.
But what I'm a bit confused about, is the usefulness of having it work as a web portal. "Good" nations do have trouble with internet connections, I can only assume it's as bad if not worse in developing nations. So why create an online solution, instead of a scaled down simple offline solution? Wouldn't that fit their needs better?
Baby Bells have been doing this ever since they were 'forced' to open their local lines to competitors.
So there should be plenty of evidence to support the claim then.
We all know that the mainstream press is extremely selective in what it covers, and it's not even like this is breaking news.
Of course. When you post up complaints against companies like this, unless you offer proof your post is meaningless. I can make a post claiming to be an ex-employee of BellSouth and say how completely wrong, or completely right the poster was. But it's completely pointless to do so. And completely false.
While unsupported allegations against a company might be fun to read, they don't really add anything meaningful to the conversation.
That's a good point. I assumed it worked by sufficient lightrays hitting it, but it probably does work on heat, not light. Perhaps they could make the front part need a higher level of heat? But then it would look strange when not turned on.
This could be used to change the car to a color that attracts heat when it's cold, and repels heat when it's hot. It might help somewhat with the heat and cold, but would the particles add more heat so the heat repelling functions don't really work? I'm thinking no, as I believe it happens on a micro-level, but I could be wrong.
Enforcement of the law is up to the police, not some computer that may have buggy software
You know, I'm sure you say that merely because you know police can't be everywhere at once. And the buggy software is a bit of a red herring to be honest. I haven't seen any news articles where people were convicted because of buggy software.
We also have a cell network with almost 100% coverage.
In all fairness, Sweeden is a pretty small country (compared with say North America, Canada or Australia). So you can't really say "we're better then those big countries, because we have 100% coverage" (which you didn't say about the coverage, but did say about the contracts). Having said that, compared with other European countries of similar size, you probably are a lot better off.
What the devil are you talking about? There's more pirates now, then ever before.
Someone comes along and enters something illegal: how to be a sniper
It's illegal to disseminate information that doesn't infringe on someone's privacy, isn't untrue and doesn't break copyright laws? Wow. Talk about the land of the free.
slander or liber about a certain person,
I doubt many (if any) wiki's support sound so including slander really isn't possbile.
excerpts from a book against copyright,
I'm a bit confused what "against copyright" means, but copyright laws in America allow excerpts to be displayed.
"Change it yourself" is like saying "if skinheads painted Nazi slogans on your house wall, just repaint it".
A good enough analogy for the point you were making. I agree. I also never said "change it yourself."
Nobody should be pursued for this?
Not at all. The person who made the libelous changes should be persued. I said Wikipedia itself shouldn't be persued, unless it has been made aware of the content and has done nothing to change it.
Are we saying that a wiki is somehow above the laws and should be exonerated by default of any consequences, along with its administrators, host and everybody, except perhaps that malicious contributor who can't be tracked down anyway?
That I am. Although to say it is "above the law" is dishonest at best. It isn't above the law, the laws merely say it can't be held responsible unless it doesn't fulfill the requirements outlined in a cease and desist order, which by the way, wasn't necessary in this instance. I think it would be ridiculous to say all content hosts should be held responsible for any information I post on their website. If I said something libelous, I don't believe slashdot should be held responsible. Same thing with me going on live television. The television studio shouldn't be held responsible.
And the person can be tracked down. If the article writer had wished to persue the matter legally, then Bellsouth would have provided the information he asked for. However even if he couldn't be tracked down, to blame someone else merely because the the person can't be caught is ridiculous.
Because a wiki is not a discussion. It's supposed to be reference.
No, wiki software can be used for anything. Wikipedia is meant as a reference, not a discussion.
I can honestly say I don't know a single person that uses MSN or ICQ (I know a few who used to use ICQ a few years ago). But I know at least 30 people who use Skype almost every day.
Yes, but I'd hardly consider the slashdot userbase (or their friends) a good sample of the internet population. Many slashdotters (no idea if you're one) zealously hate Microsoft and all of it's products. So it wouldn't be surprising to see them not using msn. However I'd hardly say that's indicative of internet users at large.
The video phone has been around for some time now, although I don't know the price of it so that may have been responsible for it not being adopted, are video phones really wanted? They've never taken off for the normal phone, will they suddenly take off for VoIP?
I can't see it myself. Plenty of programs have supported webcams, but in my experience most people don't use them, only a very small minority. So why is everyone clamouring to add this? Is it merely to say "look. We've got a new widget!"? Or is there truly demand for this, that I'm just ignorant of?
I don't believe he made anyone aware of it, either,
;)). From my impression of the article, Jimbo was more then helpful and the writer appreciated it and didn't hold him personally responsible. However he does want to make Jimbo legally responsible in the future, which is quite odd considering how much of a positive response he got from him (I guess Bellsouth's response left a very sour taste in his mouth).
Actually he called up Jimbo and it was changed (that's what happens when you RTFA
Laws vary from country to country.
They also vary from state to state (at least in Australia). I agree with you that dealing with laws internationally is a nightmare and something the internet has made much, much harder. Although I fear America attempting to force everyone into accepting their libel and slander laws.
Actually, the Vanity rule (I believe) would stop him from editing his own article.
Also, he's only using Wikipedia as an example of the current legal status of online content providers and the protections private citizens have. It isn't really about Wikipedia at all.
Which is why he probably hasn't sued. I bet a couple of lawyers could duke out whether or not it truly meets the standard for libel.
In the article he mentions how terrible it is that any Tom, Dick or Harry can't call up an ISP and demand to know someone's details by providing their IP and time they were online. He does have legal recourse, but for whatever reason has decided not to persue it.
What if a gay porn webmaster rings up based on IPs and gets the name for many of the people who visited his website, and found out that a high-profile closet-case was surfing his site. He could then cause that person a lot of mental grief by going to the tabloids, or blackmail the person.
He claims by slashdot not being forced to screen the thousands of posts a day and by ISPs needing a court order to break my privacy, that congress has enabled people to be libel. All congress has done is protected my privacy and companies (which congress LOVES to do). Outside of legal matters (which can be undertaken, he even describes the process in the article), no-one should be contacting my ISP for my details.
Actually when the case is libel, he doesn't have to merely put up with it or change it. Having said that, I disagree with his claim that content hosts should be held responsible for what users (or customers) place on their content. If they're made aware of it, then I can see an argument being made, but to have to screen every single post/change/webpage would be infeasible.