I'm an australian looking to make a move to the UK or US in a couple of years. I haven't started googlizing yet, so forgive me if there are some obvious stuff I should have found there. I'd be interested to hear about people's experiences moving TO the US. Job finding and Post Graduate Education are my particular points of interest.
There was a similar article several months ago with a run down on the various floppy / cd based systems. It is probably well worth your while to check out that previous thread. I've seen a couple of good CD based ones around, especially the ones arranged such that they fit on a business card sized CD-R and hence provide you with the ability of a nice in wallet rescue disk. Checkout linuxcare's offering
IANAL but I just had a look at the regs on the MGC's website (http://www.mgc.state.ms.us/), and I couldn't find mention of a regulation that all software sold has to be licenced. There is however a condition that any accounting system implemented has to fulfil certain criteria. When the bingo hall got its licence it had to submit details about what sort of accounting system it intended to implement. Note this is not neccessarily a computing system, but system in the broader sense of the word. The problem is that if they decide to IMPLEMENT (not purchase) a new accounting method they have to modify their gaming licence. Thus in reality you should not be the one responsible for costs of licencing your software, but the bingo hall may be.
I have played a bit in the past with this issue, and come to the conclusion of mingw (Minimalist GNU for Windows) and the dos/windows version of VIM. With this approach you sidestep the issue of cygwin.dll being GPL rather than LGPL, and thus can release proprietry programs if you choose. The windows version of GVIM (Graphical VIM) has the ability to use the commons windows hotkeys and so on, as well as the normal vim shortcuts, so users comfortable with either should feel at home. Another advantage MinGW has is the size of generated executables, by default they are so much smaller than cygwin and MSVC executables.
If I had mod points I would mod this up, though I'm sure that it would be modded as a troll by others. This post is one of the most clearly written that I have ever read on slashdot. Most of the points that he raises are true, however some are without merit. You are right that slashdot is not a great medium of original source material. However this is not it's intended purpose. I read this site daily as a digest (whether it be links to other sites or whatever) of the latest news that I am interested in. I am a 20 year old computer engineering student. I am a Nerd. I am slashdot's intended audience. I do not have the time each and every day to read The New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, New Scientist; watch CNN; peruse Intel's, AMD's, and Sourceforge's websites to name a few. In a world where there is so much information created and distributed each day, there is only so much that I can be made aware of each day. It is my belief that slashdot makes me aware of these things much faster than if I were to find the information myself. A case in point, not being an american, and not happening to be watching TV at 1 or 2am on September 12 (Local Time) the first mention of the events of that day I had was from Slashdot.
In summary I think you are right that Taco, Roblimo, Timothy, et al. all have a lot to learn if they wish to become serious journalists, however I applaud them all for providing the service which they set out to: 'News for Nerds'.
A. note as stated above prices in Aussie $ and are guestimates
B. I was thinking strictly in terms of monetary value.
C. I think that CD backups would be feasable assuming that you are doing incremental backups. I cant see myself changing more than 700MB per day on a home machine and hence even at 1 cd a day this is no problem. Then one cd = 2-3 mins on a 32x burner per day.
Been there done that, I failed one class at uni and almost failed another due to being up all night playing utopia instead of
a) doing my assignments
and
b) spending time with my gf
On occaisions I got so addicted to it that I would spend from friday afternoon until monday morning about 3am playing it (neglecting sleep or getting very little and setting my alarm to wake up at exactly the right time to get various bonuses etc.)
for those that can't be bothered reading the pdf, ie. most of/. some of the funnier and most interesting quotes that sum up the responses of the senators can be found at http://student.canberra.edu.au/~u102787
My favourite is the fact that they seem to think that a trillion is 3000 million.
hehe people, this was just meant as a semi-troll first post, but I missed it by one. It is in the spirit of slashdot to voice opinions that are of this nature. The views portrayed in the previous article were definitely not ones that I actually hold to be my own.
isn't there some sort of law that you must be informed of it though, like where I live, there are cameras in a bus interchange, and there are signs up saying that cameras may be monitoring you.
The only thing you have here is that you cannot be charged with assault if the person you attack does not percieve the attack before it happens, but you would still be charged with (at least in australia) one or more of unlawful wounding, gbh, batterey, unlawful killing, or murder. So you still have a bit of a problem.
I do not believe that you could legally refuse to give the court your password in america even due to the 5th amemndment, as you are not testifying against yourself in that instance. I am not an american, and I do not know american law in the least though. This would be more like the court making you hand over a key to a safe deposit box or a combination to a locked safe, rather than testifying against yourself.
The new offenses that are proposed by the bill are:
477.1 Unauthorised access, modification or impairment with intent to commit a serious offence
477.2 Unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment
477.3 Unauthorised impairment of electronic communication
478.1 Unauthorised access to, or modification of, restricted data
478.2 Unauthorised impairment of data held on a computer disk etc.
478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer offence
478.4 Producing, supplying or obtaining data with intent to commit a computer offence
They are further defined in the actual bill; the url of which is posted earlier.
I do not believe in my mind that port scanning directly offends against any of the 477 crimes, the only one it could possibly apply to is 478.4, and then there is probably not enough evidence to prove intent.
Interesting fact I just learnt from the senate's website is that senator As\lston does not sit on the blah blah blah and Information Technology committee, in fact he does not sit on any committees at all. Go figure.
The problem with that is that the arresting constable must have a reasonable suspicion in order to make a legal arrest. The quality and quantity of cops that actually know anything about what they are doing in relation to computers is extremely negligible. A reasonable defence would be to say that the cop did not understand the software and thus was unable to form a resonable suspicion as to your intentions.
IAJALS (Just A Law Student), but no we do not have a bill of rights in australia, about the only right that we do have that is written into the constitution is the right to receive fair compensation if the government wishes to appropriate our land. We have an implied right of free speech, but no actual written document detailing our rights AFAIK. Australia however does adhere to the international idea of Legimate expectations, in that we can expect certain things such as a fair prompt trial, can expect that a contract will have effect...
I believe your query is in reference to this part of the law which clearly states that there is an intent element to the offence. Encryption is not illegal and is not really anything to do with this bill, except for the surrendering of keys part (with a court order though)
478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer 3
offence 4
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if: 5
(a) the person has possession or control of data; and 6
(b) the person has that possession or control with the intention 7
that the data be used, by the person or another person, in: 8
(i) committing an offence against Division 477; or 9
(ii) facilitating the commission of such an offence. 10
Penalty: 3 years imprisonment. 11
(2) A person may be found guilty of an offence against this section 12
even if committing the offence against Division 477 is impossible. 13
No offence of attempt 14
(3) It is not an offence to attempt to commit an offence against this 15
section. 16
Meaning of possession or control of data 17
(4) In this section, a reference to a person having possession or control 18
of data includes a reference to the person: 19
(a) having possession of a computer or data storage device that 20
holds or contains the data; or 21
(b) having possession of a document in which the data is 22
recorded; or 23
(c) having control of data held in a computer that is in the 24
possession of another person (whether inside or outside 25
Australia). 26
from the bill: (ie. the article refers wrongly to ASIO and should be referreing to ASIS, which from this excerpt would imply you are probably right about the no Aussie jurisdiction thing for ASIS.
476.5 Liability for certain acts (1) A staff member or agent of ASIS or DSD (the agency) is not 6
subject to any civil or criminal liability for any computer-related 7
act done outside Australia if the act is done in the proper 8
performance of a function of the agency. 9
(2) A person is not subject to any civil or criminal liability for any act 10
done inside Australia if: 11
(a) the act ( the ancillary act) is preparatory to, in support of, or 12
otherwise directly connected with, overseas activities of the 13
agency concerned; and 14
(b) the ancillary act: 15
(i) involves aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring or 16
otherwise planning or attempting to carry out; or 17
(ii) is otherwise directly connected with; 18
a computer-related act outside Australia that would amount 19
to an offence against a law of the Commonwealth, a State or 20
a Territory if that computer-related act were committed in 21
Australia; and 22
(c) the ancillary act is done in the proper performance of a 23
function of the agency. 24
(3) In this section: 25
ASIS means the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. 26
civil or criminal liability means any civil or criminal liability 27
(whether under this Part, under another law or otherwise). 28
computer-related act means an act or omission involving: 29
(a) the reliability, security or operation of a computer; or 30
(b) access to, or modification of, data held in a computer or on a 31
data storage device; or 32
(c) electronic communication to or from a computer; or 33
(d) the reliability, security or operation of any data held in or on 1
a computer, computer disk, credit card, or other device used 2
to store data by electronic means; or 3
(e) possession or control of data held in a computer or on a data 4
storage device; or 5
(f) producing, supplying or obtaining data held in a computer or 6
on a data storage device. 7
DSD means that part of the Department of Defence known as the 8
Defence Signals Directorate. 9
staff member means: 10
(a) in relation to ASIS--the Director-General of ASIS or a 11
member of the staff of ASIS (whether an employee of ASIS, 12
a consultant to ASIS, or a person who is made available by 13
another Commonwealth or State authority or other person to 14
perform services for ASIS); and 15
(b) in relation to DSD--the Director of DSD or a member of the 16
staff of DSD (whether an employee of DSD, a consultant to 17
DSD, or a person who is made available by another 18
Commonwealth or State authority or other person to perform 19
services for DSD). 20
The very fact that credit card companies in Australia now legally do not have to pay any bills that an online gambling company sends them should pretty much make it safe to bet that online gambling sites will self regulate themselves on this matter. So the government does not need to regulate the overseas gambling, as they have realized a way of ensuring that the companies will do it themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an australian looking to make a move to the UK or US in a couple of years. I haven't started googlizing yet, so forgive me if there are some obvious stuff I should have found there. I'd be interested to hear about people's experiences moving TO the US. Job finding and Post Graduate Education are my particular points of interest.
There was a similar article several months ago with a run down on the various floppy / cd based systems. It is probably well worth your while to check out that previous thread. I've seen a couple of good CD based ones around, especially the ones arranged such that they fit on a business card sized CD-R and hence provide you with the ability of a nice in wallet rescue disk. Checkout linuxcare's offering
Aint it great how in 1996 the aussie government withdrew all funds from a asteroid mapping program.
This pretty much leaves noone gaurding the southern skies.
There was a story on this on 60 minutes (aussie version) 3 days ago. A transcript of it can be found at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/20 02_03_17/story_531.asp
IANAL but I just had a look at the regs on the MGC's website (http://www.mgc.state.ms.us/), and I couldn't find mention of a regulation that all software sold has to be licenced. There is however a condition that any accounting system implemented has to fulfil certain criteria. When the bingo hall got its licence it had to submit details about what sort of accounting system it intended to implement. Note this is not neccessarily a computing system, but system in the broader sense of the word. The problem is that if they decide to IMPLEMENT (not purchase) a new accounting method they have to modify their gaming licence. Thus in reality you should not be the one responsible for costs of licencing your software, but the bingo hall may be.
Oh great, so now we can have a shocked monkey playing the "Shock the monkey to win $20" game.
I have played a bit in the past with this issue, and come to the conclusion of mingw (Minimalist GNU for Windows) and the dos/windows version of VIM. With this approach you sidestep the issue of cygwin.dll being GPL rather than LGPL, and thus can release proprietry programs if you choose. The windows version of GVIM (Graphical VIM) has the ability to use the commons windows hotkeys and so on, as well as the normal vim shortcuts, so users comfortable with either should feel at home. Another advantage MinGW has is the size of generated executables, by default they are so much smaller than cygwin and MSVC executables.
If I had mod points I would mod this up, though I'm sure that it would be modded as a troll by others. This post is one of the most clearly written that I have ever read on slashdot. Most of the points that he raises are true, however some are without merit. You are right that slashdot is not a great medium of original source material. However this is not it's intended purpose. I read this site daily as a digest (whether it be links to other sites or whatever) of the latest news that I am interested in. I am a 20 year old computer engineering student. I am a Nerd. I am slashdot's intended audience. I do not have the time each and every day to read The New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, New Scientist; watch CNN; peruse Intel's, AMD's, and Sourceforge's websites to name a few. In a world where there is so much information created and distributed each day, there is only so much that I can be made aware of each day. It is my belief that slashdot makes me aware of these things much faster than if I were to find the information myself. A case in point, not being an american, and not happening to be watching TV at 1 or 2am on September 12 (Local Time) the first mention of the events of that day I had was from Slashdot.
In summary I think you are right that Taco, Roblimo, Timothy, et al. all have a lot to learn if they wish to become serious journalists, however I applaud them all for providing the service which they set out to: 'News for Nerds'.
A. note as stated above prices in Aussie $ and are guestimates
B. I was thinking strictly in terms of monetary value.
C. I think that CD backups would be feasable assuming that you are doing incremental backups. I cant see myself changing more than 700MB per day on a home machine and hence even at 1 cd a day this is no problem. Then one cd = 2-3 mins on a 32x burner per day.
I think not: (prices in Aussie $ and are guestimates)
100GB HD - $500 (real rough guess, however I saw a 80G for $449 the other day)
-------
$5/GB ongoing
Burner - $150 -> $300 (depends on the quality)
100G of CDs - 156 cds * $1 = 156 (prolly cheaper in bulk)
-------
max outlay $300
$1.56/GB ongoing
The strange thing is that I was thinking about this the other day when contemplating buying a new HD and how I was going to back it up.
Been there done that, I failed one class at uni and almost failed another due to being up all night playing utopia instead of
a) doing my assignments
and
b) spending time with my gf
On occaisions I got so addicted to it that I would spend from friday afternoon until monday morning about 3am playing it (neglecting sleep or getting very little and setting my alarm to wake up at exactly the right time to get various bonuses etc.)
I had a beowulf clu . . . er well anyway
for those that can't be bothered reading the pdf, ie. most of /. some of the funnier and most interesting quotes that sum up the responses of the senators can be found at http://student.canberra.edu.au/~u102787
My favourite is the fact that they seem to think that a trillion is 3000 million.
hehe people, this was just meant as a semi-troll first post, but I missed it by one. It is in the spirit of slashdot to voice opinions that are of this nature. The views portrayed in the previous article were definitely not ones that I actually hold to be my own.
isn't there some sort of law that you must be informed of it though, like where I live, there are cameras in a bus interchange, and there are signs up saying that cameras may be monitoring you.
I don't quite understand how this is really news for nerds...
The only thing you have here is that you cannot be charged with assault if the person you attack does not percieve the attack before it happens, but you would still be charged with (at least in australia) one or more of unlawful wounding, gbh, batterey, unlawful killing, or murder. So you still have a bit of a problem.
I do not believe that you could legally refuse to give the court your password in america even due to the 5th amemndment, as you are not testifying against yourself in that instance. I am not an american, and I do not know american law in the least though. This would be more like the court making you hand over a key to a safe deposit box or a combination to a locked safe, rather than testifying against yourself.
The new offenses that are proposed by the bill are:
477.1 Unauthorised access, modification or impairment with intent to commit a serious offence
477.2 Unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment
477.3 Unauthorised impairment of electronic communication
478.1 Unauthorised access to, or modification of, restricted data
478.2 Unauthorised impairment of data held on a computer disk etc.
478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer offence
478.4 Producing, supplying or obtaining data with intent to commit a computer offence
They are further defined in the actual bill; the url of which is posted earlier.
I do not believe in my mind that port scanning directly offends against any of the 477 crimes, the only one it could possibly apply to is 478.4, and then there is probably not enough evidence to prove intent.
Interesting fact I just learnt from the senate's website is that senator As\lston does not sit on the blah blah blah and Information Technology committee, in fact he does not sit on any committees at all. Go figure.
The problem with that is that the arresting constable must have a reasonable suspicion in order to make a legal arrest. The quality and quantity of cops that actually know anything about what they are doing in relation to computers is extremely negligible. A reasonable defence would be to say that the cop did not understand the software and thus was unable to form a resonable suspicion as to your intentions.
Another one that didnt read the bill. You need to prove intent for it to be an offence to have such software.
IAJALS (Just A Law Student), but no we do not have a bill of rights in australia, about the only right that we do have that is written into the constitution is the right to receive fair compensation if the government wishes to appropriate our land. We have an implied right of free speech, but no actual written document detailing our rights AFAIK. Australia however does adhere to the international idea of Legimate expectations, in that we can expect certain things such as a fair prompt trial, can expect that a contract will have effect...
I believe your query is in reference to this part of the law which clearly states that there is an intent element to the offence. Encryption is not illegal and is not really anything to do with this bill, except for the surrendering of keys part (with a court order though)
478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer 3
offence 4
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if: 5
(a) the person has possession or control of data; and 6
(b) the person has that possession or control with the intention 7
that the data be used, by the person or another person, in: 8
(i) committing an offence against Division 477; or 9
(ii) facilitating the commission of such an offence. 10
Penalty: 3 years imprisonment. 11
(2) A person may be found guilty of an offence against this section 12
even if committing the offence against Division 477 is impossible. 13
No offence of attempt 14
(3) It is not an offence to attempt to commit an offence against this 15
section. 16
Meaning of possession or control of data 17
(4) In this section, a reference to a person having possession or control 18
of data includes a reference to the person: 19
(a) having possession of a computer or data storage device that 20
holds or contains the data; or 21
(b) having possession of a document in which the data is 22
recorded; or 23
(c) having control of data held in a computer that is in the 24
possession of another person (whether inside or outside 25
Australia). 26
from the bill: (ie. the article refers wrongly to ASIO and should be referreing to ASIS, which from this excerpt would imply you are probably right about the no Aussie jurisdiction thing for ASIS.
476.5 Liability for certain acts (1) A staff member or agent of ASIS or DSD (the agency) is not 6
subject to any civil or criminal liability for any computer-related 7
act done outside Australia if the act is done in the proper 8
performance of a function of the agency. 9
(2) A person is not subject to any civil or criminal liability for any act 10
done inside Australia if: 11
(a) the act ( the ancillary act) is preparatory to, in support of, or 12
otherwise directly connected with, overseas activities of the 13
agency concerned; and 14
(b) the ancillary act: 15
(i) involves aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring or 16
otherwise planning or attempting to carry out; or 17
(ii) is otherwise directly connected with; 18
a computer-related act outside Australia that would amount 19
to an offence against a law of the Commonwealth, a State or 20
a Territory if that computer-related act were committed in 21
Australia; and 22
(c) the ancillary act is done in the proper performance of a 23
function of the agency. 24
(3) In this section: 25
ASIS means the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. 26
civil or criminal liability means any civil or criminal liability 27
(whether under this Part, under another law or otherwise). 28
computer-related act means an act or omission involving: 29
(a) the reliability, security or operation of a computer; or 30
(b) access to, or modification of, data held in a computer or on a 31
data storage device; or 32
(c) electronic communication to or from a computer; or 33
(d) the reliability, security or operation of any data held in or on 1
a computer, computer disk, credit card, or other device used 2
to store data by electronic means; or 3
(e) possession or control of data held in a computer or on a data 4
storage device; or 5
(f) producing, supplying or obtaining data held in a computer or 6
on a data storage device. 7
DSD means that part of the Department of Defence known as the 8
Defence Signals Directorate. 9
staff member means: 10
(a) in relation to ASIS--the Director-General of ASIS or a 11
member of the staff of ASIS (whether an employee of ASIS, 12
a consultant to ASIS, or a person who is made available by 13
another Commonwealth or State authority or other person to 14
perform services for ASIS); and 15
(b) in relation to DSD--the Director of DSD or a member of the 16
staff of DSD (whether an employee of DSD, a consultant to 17
DSD, or a person who is made available by another 18
Commonwealth or State authority or other person to perform 19
services for DSD). 20
The very fact that credit card companies in Australia now legally do not have to pay any bills that an online gambling company sends them should pretty much make it safe to bet that online gambling sites will self regulate themselves on this matter. So the government does not need to regulate the overseas gambling, as they have realized a way of ensuring that the companies will do it themselves.