I have been using Opera for quite some time, and the speed and feature set is very good. What I do wish for, more than extensions, is to have each tab have it's own thread in a similar fashion as Chrome. I have experienced some crashes on my Mac because of plugins, and it would be good to only have one tab crash, not the whole browser.
Sweden's stringent whistleblower laws are protecting the anonymity of sources that have been feeding the controversial Wikileaks website with sensitive government and corporate information, according to Swedish political sources.
I thought their process of submitting leaks to Wikileaks provided the source with anonymity anyway, so that even if they were forced to give up their sources they would not have the information at all.
Something like this could even happen by accident. God forbid someone rummage through your cache after you spend an hour browsing/b/. Do you know what was in all of those thumbnails that you scrolled past? Do you even WANT to know?;)
In my socialist utopia country Norway, there was actually a court ruling that found a man who had child pornography in his browser cache not guilty. The reason was that he did not download them (but he did in fact confess to have purchased them intentionally) and that regular people should not be expected to know that the browser caches images from the web. In effect, the ruling actually means it is legal to surf child pornography in Norway. I don't have any English links about this, but any norwegians reading this post can check out this DB article: http://www.dagbladet.no/dinside/2003/07/05/372987.html
What I figured with these huge capacity drives, is that it takes so long to fill them that if they crash, it is a real nuisance almost no matter what is on them. Let's say you fill them with movies you downloaded from bittorrent. If you don't have a decent connection it can take months to download the same movies. And even if you can do a steady 5MB/s, you still have to account for all the time it takes to find back whatever you had previously from public or private trackers.
All I am saying, is that because of these huge capacity drives, I tend to go for at least raid 1. The time spent working to earn enough to purchase an extra drive (or two+ for raid 5), pretty much makes up for the time to acquire the same material if I only had one drive and it failed.
While there are some very clear benefits of using DNA as evidence in some cases, it can also be deliberately misused to purposefully frame people. Leaving false DNA evidence is much easier than copying someones fingerprints. A couple of kilos of cocaine planted in someones apartment, with a piece of hair, can in some jurisdictions land people in jail for a long time. It is somewhat the same dillemma with electronic evidence. Some real criminals are caught using historic location data or credit card date. At the same time, if you are well aware that this sort of evidence is taken seriously, you can also use it to create your own alibis which can make investigators rule you out as a suspect in the first place.
This is just a concern regarding the part about "He says it would help to both solve crimes and clear people who were wrongly convicted.", because I think someone might be wrongly convicted BECAUSE of the new use of DNA evidence. I don't really like the idea that you should collect DNA because of small crime in the first place, and even though there might be some benefits, this certainly weighs against (even though some might be found innocent).
In Norway, the tax department actually have people employed to surf the popular sites like Finn and QXL (auction/trading sites), and even blogs, to try to uncover tax evasion. One of the most popular bloggers in our country, which is a 14 year old girl nicknamed Voe, probably has to pay taxes because she recieves so many free products from vendors (who hope to get get free advertising).
If you say anonymous communications, I agree that drugs would not be the top reason. This is anonymous prepaid cellphones we are talking about, and I was referring to the situation in my own country, where neither being a witness to a crime nor a wistleblower would require a anonymous prepaid phone card. Perhaps thats what you get in a country that is percieved as very little corrupt, with a government that is (for now) considered friendly at most levels.
A few years back, you could buy prepaid phones in Norway without any ID, but then they made a law so that all prepaid cards had to be registered with social security number. It is now harder for most mindless criminals to call anonymously, so they use their own names and get caught easily. The more clever ones simply use other peoples social security numbers when they want anonymous (for them) prepaid numbers. Because of the latter, I am concerned about the consequences. Maybe they should legalize drugs and get rid of the top reason why people would want a anonymous phone in the first place, but I can only dream.
In my head that translates into "it is not lethal, so there is less of a barrier before it gets used" (and from what I can hear these electroshock weapons are pretty dangerous after all anyway).
There, fixed my own post with corrent quotes.
Another thing is that civilian ownership of such devices is not allowed here in Norway. I know that many people from other countries have another view on the right to defend themselves, but coming from this cold country with only five million inhabitants, I'd say "defend yourself from what?" We probably have some of the worlds highest rates of civilian firearm ownership, but having a police force that generally don't carry guns send a strong signal to the population that their government does not condone violence. Oh, and the life sentence here is 21 years, and you get parole after 16. This is why the police can even arrest murderers (most murders here are affection murders (in lack of a good translation), with a 98-99% rate of getting solved) without using weapons.
Although I think the technology is a bit interesting, I shrug every time I hear about these so-called non lethal weapons. In my head that translates into it is not lethal, so there is less of a barrier before it gets used (and from what I can hear these electroshock weapons are pretty dangerous after all anyway). I know culture is different in the USA, where the police carry guns. I live in Norway though, where law enforcement officers generally don't carry guns (!), except when they move out on criminals that are known to be armed. In the rare cases where they do use pepper spray, it sparks up debate in the newspapers. If they shoot someone, that definitily gets some attention. Electroshock weapons are not used here. The net result seems to be a non-violent society, where people feel they can walk amongst law enorcement officers without feeling alienated because they carry weapons of some sort.
With the current system they seem only too happy to let you speed as long as they can get money out of you for it.
Imagine if you will a state where theft were punished only with a fine and then instead of trying to prevent thefts the police concentrated purely on issuing fines.
You hit the nail on the head here, and speed cameras is a technical "solution" to a human problem. I live in Norway where speed cameras are common as well as other measures to try to prevent people from doing something not desirable. You can't purchase beer after 20:00 in weekdays and 18:00 on Saturdays in food stores for instance. The thing is, in the example with the beer, it reduces drinking because alcohol is less available. The problem as I see it though, is that you still have a rotten society full of heavy drinkers, it is just that they didn't make it to the store in time that particular day. The same goes for the speed cameras, if a electronic gadget is what keeping (some) people from speeding, what does it say about us as a society? What we need is driving education that actually teaches people a thing or two about the actual dangers of speeding, and do something about the roads that have an unproportionally high rate of accidents. Also, make sure the roads are safe enough for what most people consider a sensible speed limit for that road.
I would seriously like a serious opinion from other people. Are apple's machines, in particluar their notebooks overpriced?
Depends on how you are looking at it. If you do comparisons based on hardware alone, you can always find a cheaper PC from Acer or other brands. I write for a local computer magazine, and review a good amount of laptops every year. My conclusion is that Apple is pretty much top of the line when it comes to construction and finish. Magnetic cord for the charger, very thin design (even for 15 and 17 inch), not particularily noisy, a multitouch trackpad that actually works without being a nuisance, resumes almost instantly and a unibody chassis (the aluminium one is really great, it really does not wear down in the same way that other laptops tend to do). There are of course some flaws as well (like not having SD reader on the MacBook 13), but they are generally worth the extra $$$ for the extra quality on the build. If you are just after the fastest hardware for your money, you can always find something from a manufacturer that does have the same priority list.
Yes, after a second look at the issue I must agree. What I was originally thinking about in the first post was basically how it turned out: You have a fair share that uses their own social security number, because they don't have other peoples info for some reason. Then you have the other gang that uses other peoples info. Luckily, the police tend to do legwork enough to know wether the number they have matches the registered owners. Police in Norway is usually unarmed, except in cases where they suspect firearms. And even if they come armed, people/police rarely get shot. To be under telephone surveillance, it requires a crime that has a ten year penalty or more here. By Norwegian standards that is a pretty harsh sentence.
This is was not unique for Norway at the time, but I remember what happened: Many criminals started using other peoples social security numbers... Let's say you want to register with certain operators, all you need to do is get a prepaid package with a new number, then send a text message with "REG firstname surname socialsecuritynumber". Nothing but automatic verification. I don't know what is worse, let criminals have anonymous phones or have them use other peoples ID.
The best solution to all this madness would be to disallow Microsoft to have lock-in technologies in their bundled browser, media player and so on. Bundle Windows Media Player all you want, as long as all Microsoft format it plays are open... Then anyone can create a competing player knowing they also can implement the same formats. Same logic goes for IE8.
I have had a Windows XP Professional running in VMware on my MacBook and my Vista 64-bit desktop from the beginning. It solves a lot of problems with some quirky legacy apps I have to run.
And thanks to the USB support, I can also use:
1) Very old USB scanner with XP 32-bit drivers. I use it a few times a year for digitalizing reciepts etc., and I really don't want to pay for a new one.
2) Random gadgets with stupid software and buggy drivers.
Getting this free with Windows 7 would really rock.
I know this might be a long shot, but if people really believe all they see when they google your name on google, how about taking advantage of that?
After I had googled my own name, I realised how lucky I am because what you find is basically tech reviews done by me and some old karate scoreboards with me even winning some medals. Putting some effort in it, I could probably make it look like I am also doing third wold humanitarian work, help the poor, fight cancer etc. That would probably fly well with all nosy employers and possible future employers that like to google people. And if someoene asks, you could either stick with the story or dismiss it as a coincidence because someone shares your name. For the record, I do have a name that is most likely unique.
Sentences like this sort of nails it: "It's all snake oil. I'm amazed at what true junk is out there when you're clicking through on e-mail."
It tells a sad tale about the people these spam messages are targeted at. You really don't have to be computer literate to figure out that all this is pure crap. Judging by the dumploads of messages that hits my spam filter every day there must be too many fools with computers and internet access waiting to be parted from their money. Some times I wonder if I should start spamming, we really don't have harsh sentences in Norway...
On a slightly offtopic note, she looks kinda M.I.L.F.!
After many years of cases like this, why are people still basing their services in the US? I live in Norway, and due to some legal precedents set in this country, I would not ever have my torrent trackers or ed2k indexers hosted here. In fact, I would not even have my name associated with that service because I would be paying anonymously to a host in a country were the laws are more suitable.
What I could not figure out from the article was: What happens now to his ebay account? If it was pulled, I hope ebay restores it. Bugs me that ebay, google, youtube etc. always gets away for enforcing bogus claims.
I did RTFA, but please enlighten me if I have missed something.
You are still getting a lot of bang for the buck by going 8800GT or 8800GTS instead. 9800GX2 performs much better, but I mean, the price seriously does not justify it this time. Heck, even the 9600GT will give you decent gaming performance these days, and that is a card almost anyone can afford.
In the perfect world, maybe. But some of us live in the real world, with real jobs, and really ambitious IT staff that are keen to migrate. Plus, Vista has a lot of good things too, and it is a damn shame to loose out on that just because some well advised feature is bugging you. Besides, UAC can be turned off.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been using Opera for quite some time, and the speed and feature set is very good. What I do wish for, more than extensions, is to have each tab have it's own thread in a similar fashion as Chrome. I have experienced some crashes on my Mac because of plugins, and it would be good to only have one tab crash, not the whole browser.
Sweden's stringent whistleblower laws are protecting the anonymity of sources that have been feeding the controversial Wikileaks website with sensitive government and corporate information, according to Swedish political sources.
I thought their process of submitting leaks to Wikileaks provided the source with anonymity anyway, so that even if they were forced to give up their sources they would not have the information at all.
Something like this could even happen by accident. God forbid someone rummage through your cache after you spend an hour browsing /b/. Do you know what was in all of those thumbnails that you scrolled past? Do you even WANT to know? ;)
In my socialist utopia country Norway, there was actually a court ruling that found a man who had child pornography in his browser cache not guilty. The reason was that he did not download them (but he did in fact confess to have purchased them intentionally) and that regular people should not be expected to know that the browser caches images from the web. In effect, the ruling actually means it is legal to surf child pornography in Norway. I don't have any English links about this, but any norwegians reading this post can check out this DB article: http://www.dagbladet.no/dinside/2003/07/05/372987.html
What I figured with these huge capacity drives, is that it takes so long to fill them that if they crash, it is a real nuisance almost no matter what is on them. Let's say you fill them with movies you downloaded from bittorrent. If you don't have a decent connection it can take months to download the same movies. And even if you can do a steady 5MB/s, you still have to account for all the time it takes to find back whatever you had previously from public or private trackers.
All I am saying, is that because of these huge capacity drives, I tend to go for at least raid 1. The time spent working to earn enough to purchase an extra drive (or two+ for raid 5), pretty much makes up for the time to acquire the same material if I only had one drive and it failed.
While there are some very clear benefits of using DNA as evidence in some cases, it can also be deliberately misused to purposefully frame people. Leaving false DNA evidence is much easier than copying someones fingerprints. A couple of kilos of cocaine planted in someones apartment, with a piece of hair, can in some jurisdictions land people in jail for a long time. It is somewhat the same dillemma with electronic evidence. Some real criminals are caught using historic location data or credit card date. At the same time, if you are well aware that this sort of evidence is taken seriously, you can also use it to create your own alibis which can make investigators rule you out as a suspect in the first place.
This is just a concern regarding the part about "He says it would help to both solve crimes and clear people who were wrongly convicted.", because I think someone might be wrongly convicted BECAUSE of the new use of DNA evidence. I don't really like the idea that you should collect DNA because of small crime in the first place, and even though there might be some benefits, this certainly weighs against (even though some might be found innocent).
In Norway, the tax department actually have people employed to surf the popular sites like Finn and QXL (auction/trading sites), and even blogs, to try to uncover tax evasion. One of the most popular bloggers in our country, which is a 14 year old girl nicknamed Voe, probably has to pay taxes because she recieves so many free products from vendors (who hope to get get free advertising).
If you say anonymous communications, I agree that drugs would not be the top reason. This is anonymous prepaid cellphones we are talking about, and I was referring to the situation in my own country, where neither being a witness to a crime nor a wistleblower would require a anonymous prepaid phone card. Perhaps thats what you get in a country that is percieved as very little corrupt, with a government that is (for now) considered friendly at most levels.
A few years back, you could buy prepaid phones in Norway without any ID, but then they made a law so that all prepaid cards had to be registered with social security number. It is now harder for most mindless criminals to call anonymously, so they use their own names and get caught easily. The more clever ones simply use other peoples social security numbers when they want anonymous (for them) prepaid numbers.
Because of the latter, I am concerned about the consequences. Maybe they should legalize drugs and get rid of the top reason why people would want a anonymous phone in the first place, but I can only dream.
In my head that translates into "it is not lethal, so there is less of a barrier before it gets used" (and from what I can hear these electroshock weapons are pretty dangerous after all anyway).
There, fixed my own post with corrent quotes.
Another thing is that civilian ownership of such devices is not allowed here in Norway. I know that many people from other countries have another view on the right to defend themselves, but coming from this cold country with only five million inhabitants, I'd say "defend yourself from what?" We probably have some of the worlds highest rates of civilian firearm ownership, but having a police force that generally don't carry guns send a strong signal to the population that their government does not condone violence. Oh, and the life sentence here is 21 years, and you get parole after 16. This is why the police can even arrest murderers (most murders here are affection murders (in lack of a good translation), with a 98-99% rate of getting solved) without using weapons.
Although I think the technology is a bit interesting, I shrug every time I hear about these so-called non lethal weapons. In my head that translates into it is not lethal, so there is less of a barrier before it gets used (and from what I can hear these electroshock weapons are pretty dangerous after all anyway). I know culture is different in the USA, where the police carry guns. I live in Norway though, where law enforcement officers generally don't carry guns (!), except when they move out on criminals that are known to be armed. In the rare cases where they do use pepper spray, it sparks up debate in the newspapers. If they shoot someone, that definitily gets some attention. Electroshock weapons are not used here. The net result seems to be a non-violent society, where people feel they can walk amongst law enorcement officers without feeling alienated because they carry weapons of some sort.
With the current system they seem only too happy to let you speed as long as they can get money out of you for it.
Imagine if you will a state where theft were punished only with a fine and then instead of trying to prevent thefts the police concentrated purely on issuing fines.
You hit the nail on the head here, and speed cameras is a technical "solution" to a human problem. I live in Norway where speed cameras are common as well as other measures to try to prevent people from doing something not desirable. You can't purchase beer after 20:00 in weekdays and 18:00 on Saturdays in food stores for instance. The thing is, in the example with the beer, it reduces drinking because alcohol is less available. The problem as I see it though, is that you still have a rotten society full of heavy drinkers, it is just that they didn't make it to the store in time that particular day. The same goes for the speed cameras, if a electronic gadget is what keeping (some) people from speeding, what does it say about us as a society? What we need is driving education that actually teaches people a thing or two about the actual dangers of speeding, and do something about the roads that have an unproportionally high rate of accidents. Also, make sure the roads are safe enough for what most people consider a sensible speed limit for that road.
I would seriously like a serious opinion from other people. Are apple's machines, in particluar their notebooks overpriced?
Depends on how you are looking at it. If you do comparisons based on hardware alone, you can always find a cheaper PC from Acer or other brands. I write for a local computer magazine, and review a good amount of laptops every year. My conclusion is that Apple is pretty much top of the line when it comes to construction and finish. Magnetic cord for the charger, very thin design (even for 15 and 17 inch), not particularily noisy, a multitouch trackpad that actually works without being a nuisance, resumes almost instantly and a unibody chassis (the aluminium one is really great, it really does not wear down in the same way that other laptops tend to do). There are of course some flaws as well (like not having SD reader on the MacBook 13), but they are generally worth the extra $$$ for the extra quality on the build. If you are just after the fastest hardware for your money, you can always find something from a manufacturer that does have the same priority list.
Yes, after a second look at the issue I must agree. What I was originally thinking about in the first post was basically how it turned out: You have a fair share that uses their own social security number, because they don't have other peoples info for some reason. Then you have the other gang that uses other peoples info. Luckily, the police tend to do legwork enough to know wether the number they have matches the registered owners. Police in Norway is usually unarmed, except in cases where they suspect firearms. And even if they come armed, people/police rarely get shot. To be under telephone surveillance, it requires a crime that has a ten year penalty or more here. By Norwegian standards that is a pretty harsh sentence.
This is was not unique for Norway at the time, but I remember what happened: Many criminals started using other peoples social security numbers... Let's say you want to register with certain operators, all you need to do is get a prepaid package with a new number, then send a text message with "REG firstname surname socialsecuritynumber". Nothing but automatic verification. I don't know what is worse, let criminals have anonymous phones or have them use other peoples ID.
Install Windows in VMware Workstation, and tell it to pass your webcam to the virtual machine. Problem solved :>
I hope this comes in a version that works on all flashcarts, not just the iPlayer.
The best solution to all this madness would be to disallow Microsoft to have lock-in technologies in their bundled browser, media player and so on. Bundle Windows Media Player all you want, as long as all Microsoft format it plays are open... Then anyone can create a competing player knowing they also can implement the same formats. Same logic goes for IE8.
I have had a Windows XP Professional running in VMware on my MacBook and my Vista 64-bit desktop from the beginning. It solves a lot of problems with some quirky legacy apps I have to run.
And thanks to the USB support, I can also use:
1) Very old USB scanner with XP 32-bit drivers. I use it a few times a year for digitalizing reciepts etc., and I really don't want to pay for a new one.
2) Random gadgets with stupid software and buggy drivers.
Getting this free with Windows 7 would really rock.
I know this might be a long shot, but if people really believe all they see when they google your name on google, how about taking advantage of that? After I had googled my own name, I realised how lucky I am because what you find is basically tech reviews done by me and some old karate scoreboards with me even winning some medals. Putting some effort in it, I could probably make it look like I am also doing third wold humanitarian work, help the poor, fight cancer etc. That would probably fly well with all nosy employers and possible future employers that like to google people. And if someoene asks, you could either stick with the story or dismiss it as a coincidence because someone shares your name. For the record, I do have a name that is most likely unique.
Sentences like this sort of nails it: "It's all snake oil. I'm amazed at what true junk is out there when you're clicking through on e-mail."
It tells a sad tale about the people these spam messages are targeted at. You really don't have to be computer literate to figure out that all this is pure crap. Judging by the dumploads of messages that hits my spam filter every day there must be too many fools with computers and internet access waiting to be parted from their money. Some times I wonder if I should start spamming, we really don't have harsh sentences in Norway...
On a slightly offtopic note, she looks kinda M.I.L.F.!
After many years of cases like this, why are people still basing their services in the US? I live in Norway, and due to some legal precedents set in this country, I would not ever have my torrent trackers or ed2k indexers hosted here. In fact, I would not even have my name associated with that service because I would be paying anonymously to a host in a country were the laws are more suitable.
What I could not figure out from the article was: What happens now to his ebay account? If it was pulled, I hope ebay restores it. Bugs me that ebay, google, youtube etc. always gets away for enforcing bogus claims. I did RTFA, but please enlighten me if I have missed something.
Spamming these e-mail-addresses is probably very inefficient. They are trying to avoid advertisement after all.
You are still getting a lot of bang for the buck by going 8800GT or 8800GTS instead. 9800GX2 performs much better, but I mean, the price seriously does not justify it this time. Heck, even the 9600GT will give you decent gaming performance these days, and that is a card almost anyone can afford.
In the perfect world, maybe. But some of us live in the real world, with real jobs, and really ambitious IT staff that are keen to migrate. Plus, Vista has a lot of good things too, and it is a damn shame to loose out on that just because some well advised feature is bugging you. Besides, UAC can be turned off.