Should anyone care whether or not a corporation "supports" a bill? (especially a publically traded corporation).
Isn't it more important to know what the citizens support?
Corporations (especially publically traded ones) will "support" whatever appears to benefit their bottom line. What does that say about a law's merit?
Corporations dont even care about the economy in general.
If a law was to increase the GDP by an additional 2% (beyond its expected growth under the status quo) but result in an additional 20% re-distribution of all wealth more equally you can bet most corporations would oppose it (especially the largest ones).
"Probably because physical property laws have a grounding in nature (there's only a finite amount of stuff and if you've got a big enough stick, you can protect your pile of stuff - property law is merely an extension of that principle, with the government holding the stick on your behalf)."
Would a libertarian agree that a compulsion to do something against your will on the threat of violence by either the state or another individual amounts to tyranny or oppression?
And if so,then private property law amounts to tyranny and oppression.
However the libertarian position would seem to be, (from your words) that oppression or tyranny which is grounded in nature is ok.
In this case the "natural" law you cite appears to be the right of military power to attack others with a big stick.
My question then is this:
Why wouldn't military right and the threat of violent retaliation be able to enforce Intellectual property just as naturally as physical property.
If I catch you infringing my IP right, I can hit you with a stick just as well as if I catch you trespassing on my property.
It seems that the enforcement of IP is just as "natural" as the enforcement of private property.
And therefore should not libertarians wanting to avoid being properly labelled as hypocrits uphold IP rights just as much as private property rights (or otherwise abandon both)?
I also note that you did not oppose my claim that IP law and private property are equally oppressive.
One other question. Is it your position, that natural law states that if I kill you, I get to own your land?
"So, unless everybody wants to agree to my kooky libertarian ideal of abolishing copyright entirely (and we all know that such a thing will never happen), then we need a big hammer to enforce the law as it exists."
Why do libertarians support private property law and oppose intellectual property law?
Ultimately, this is all a bunch of legal poppycock. It's a proposal, and I'd argue that it's a damn stupid, untenable proposal. We need to let the Canadian government know that its a stupid proposal, but I have a feeling that they'll see it for what it is. After all, they've ruled positively in downloading cases before - what with our tariff on blank media.
The Canadian Government does not make rulings. It passes laws.
Courts or tribunals make ruling.
The government on the other hand, merely votes and passes a law. The government is essentially free to completely ignore reality if it chooses to, and put anything a majority of MP's would support into law.
What the government puts into law has nothing to do with any kind of "ruling". It is just politics.
It is illegal to lobby the courts in Canada. (at least in any way the court would notice your lobbying).
This makes sense, because to lobby the court, suggests that the court's ruling would be based on external factors beyond the "law" and the "facts" of the case at hand. It is insulting to the Court to suggest that sign waving and yelling has any relevence to the case. If you have anything RELEVENT to say, you would be permitted to testify under oath just like all the other witnesses.
So, unless you want to get slapped with a contempt of court charge, I would restrict your act of "let the Canadian government know" to the actual Government. Which does not make rulings.
Sounds like they're afraid of people using rest-stop connections for drive-by kiddie-porn downloads/uploads. That's the only real use for this filtering that I could see.... because no one wants to see porn involving only adults to be outlawed.
I imagine some people will immedietly object to a law based on some practical issue of unenforcibility.
I dont think this is really a relevant issue on whether or not certain activity should be unlawful.
Provided you can strictly define exactly what is being made illegal. The fact that you may never catch anyone breaking that law, doesn't mean the law should not be there.
Some borderline ethical business people consider anything legal to be ethical and will not cross that line. They would happily kill people provided it was legal. But they would not sell a drink to a 20 year old (in the US).
Simply making spyway illegal is likely to deter those people who abide by that business ethic, such as it is.
Provided the definition of criminal spyware is narrow enough to not capture innocent software, I dont see why there is a problem making it a crime.
You're right: a majority of people are so content being apathetic, they don't make the effort to even look away from their TVs. But there's nothing that I can do about it. I've tried screaming and I've tried waxing philosophical. It doesn't help. Why should I try to help these people "see the light" when they don't even want to listen?
This radical change in my ideology has been rather recent. I just got tired of being pissed at things that I couldn't change. You and me (and a lot of slashdotters) are among the minority that "get it". We only have finite amount of energy and time on this planet. I feel that those resources are better utilized trying to directly better my situation rather than trying to improve it by proxy of helping everyone else.
If you can't beat 'em then join 'em?
The purpose of trying to create a fair and just society is NOT to better your own situation by proxy.
It is to better the lives of the billions of human beings who are living in abject poverty and under constant threat of violence, disease, starvation, oppression.
You can lie to yourself and pretend it isn't happening. Or die trying to fix it.
I can appreciate your frustration, but the fact that you are wasting your time even posting and expressing these frustrations tells me that you haven't given up, and you are eventually gonna go and scream and wax philosophical in an attempt to help people see the light. And if in the course of running a small business, you hire employees, you may even indulge yourself in preaching to a captive audience. But you aren't going to give in.
Taking pictures of cameras taking pictures of you is not keeping a record of your own actions.
Yes. It is. A record of anything which you are interacting, including your entire environment, is a record of your actions, which is MATERIAL record of your actions insofar as it will shed light on your intentions and motivations for doing those actions. Most people do things because of what is going on around them, rather than in isolation.
Further, unless he's alleging that video will be doctored, the record that is kept of him, privacy issues aside, is just that.
And why shouldn't it be doctored?
Criminals (and in that catagory I include white collar criminals as well as corrupt government officials) are willing to steal, kill, cheat, lie, maim.
Is doctoring video some kind of line which criminals wont cross?
You don't have to be SPECIAL to be a victim.
But then they jump from the likes of the GAP in a mall to government (???), and apparently liken a lowly employee in the mechanics of either someone who should themselves have to give up personal information for simply asking for identification for whatever purpose (again, the extent that it is appropriate is beside the point).
Corporations are a special arm of the government. They only exist because they were created by the authority of the STATE. When a corporation oppresses people, it is by the authority of the state that it does so.
Going from the GAP to the government is not a stretch, because the GAP is a creation of government.
And then the state allows the gap to perform secret and non-transparent video taping and monitoring of the citizens. The state then invokes the PATRIOT act and makes all of those records accesible to the state at any time.
How exactly is this any different than if the FBI or CIA simply had everyone under surveilance at all times?
As for the lowly employee: "just following orders" is not a justification for an immoral act.
To say nothing of the fact that almost all malls are private property.
And your point is?
Why should a random private mall employee have a philosophical privacy and surveillance discussion with some self-righteous, cynical privacy advocate. Who, by the way, expects exactly what happened, i.e., worthless responses, to happen?
If you are attempting to violate another persons rights, you have a moral obligation to know WHY you are doing it.
Just because he expected the mall security to lack morality, does not mean we should not be shocked and offended.
If the GAP simply told security to kill anyone carrying a video camera, and security followed that order, would that also be acceptable to you?
Um..... I hate to point it out to you, but if the government gave those cards out "free" the people would be PAYING for them in taxes.
businesses also pay taxes.
And a user-fee which is mandatory for every citizen amounts to an tax, which is paid disproportionately by those who have less wealth. This is traditionally considered unfair. But hey. We are living in a neoliberal world.
And what happens to citizens who can't afford to pay for their identity card? Do they get put in jail?
The right of first sale means that you can sell your copy of Star Wars to someone else.
Agreed. When I said 'copies', what I meant was, new copies made without permission of the copyright holders. i.e. unauthorized copies.
However, I believe there is even a limitation to that. I don't believe I can buy 10000 legit copies of Star Wars in bulk, as a single sale, and but then resell them individually to many different consumers. I think that would be considered a "distribution" which requires authorization. I am speculating here, but I think in order to rely on the right of first sale, and avoid copyright, I may need to resell the whole lot of 10000 copies together as a single unit.
Program complexity has meant that all but the most trivial programs cannot be 'proven'.
This statement is false in the general case. You are claiming that there is a set of "most trivial" computer programs which can be proven, but are impossible to make more complex by any amount without resulting in undefined behavior.
For any given provable computer program, I can make a more complex version which is also provable.
And I can further complicate that more complex version, also without introducing undefined behavior.
This new program is NOT one of the "most trivial", because there is a more trivial program from which it is derived.
What you are saying may be true in a a practical sense in regards to software developed for the sake of usage by human beings. (as people are not willing to invest the ridiculous amounts of money that proven software would cost).
People are not even willing to invest the money to develop correct specifications let alone correct software.
Without specifications, it is scientifically pointless to talk about software correctness. Because correctness without specifications is undefined.
Your statement should be reworded:
Specification AMBIGUITY has meant that all but the most trivial programs cannot be 'proven'. And where specifications are defined only after the fact, most non-trivial programs are found to be INCORRECT.
Phones are computers nowadays. The phone manufacturers simply cannot use bluetooth being left on as an excuse.
You dont need to turn off bluetooth. Turn off "bluetooth visibility".
With bluetooth visibility off, then anyone who wants to bluetooth to your phone must ALREADY KNOW THE BLUETOOTH NAME. That is to say, they must already have had access to your phone.
With bluetooth visibility is off, you can still use wireless headsets or whatever else you like. The only difference is that you will not receive unsolicited communication from others because they cant communicate with your phone without knowing the bluetooth name.
And if you want to leave bluetooth visibility on then:
DONT ACCEPT FILES BEING TRANSMITTED TO YOUR PHONE IF YOU DONT WHO THEY ARE FROM.
And moreover:
DON"T INSTALL PROGRAMS ON YOUR PHONE IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE.
The problem is not Symbian. The problem is user gullibility, ignorance and naivety.
Bluetooth is OFF by default. If you turn it on, then RTFM!
I know we aren't the only large software company doing that. We don't, of course, ever use source code in publically released software, but we do when for nearly all private, multi-$000 sales.
A "private sale" is a distribution under copyright law. You must either license the software to the recipient under the GPL and give them source code, or obtain permission from the original copyright holders to distribute their software outside the GPL.
You can't give modified versions of someone elses copyrighted work to anyone without license; even in a so called "private sale".
The GPL only allows distribution when you transfer full license (and source code of binaries) to the recipient.
I am not allowed to "privately sell" copies of the latest Star Wars movie without permission from the copyright holder. The fact that Star Wars is not GPLed makes no difference. Because when you do something outside the GPL, you are doing it as if there was no GPL.
BTW: How is a private sale more private than a normal sale?
In WWII, Nazi's required jews to wear armbands distinctly identifying themselves as jewish at a distance.
This system worked very well. It insured that second class citizens could properly receive the proper treatment as such. i.e.: forced to walk in the gutter, rather than a side walk etc. Attend at labour and death camps etc.
Now the american government wants americans to only travel abroad on the condition that they effectively wear electronic armbands identifying them as "AMERICAN" to anyone with a simple detector.
America is at war, and the American government wants its citizens to be required to advertize their status to all possible enemies.
At least the NAZI's were fairly transparent about their desire to oppress and harm jews.
How is electronically broadcasting american citizenship for all to see, going to help americans be safer.
Why not just make a law requiring all american citizens to wear armbands with the Star of David.
Would that be obvious enough for the morons in the whitehouse to wake the fuck up!
If they want to kill you, they will, and pick up your passport from your body later as a souvenir, whether it has RFID or not.
They only want to kill you if you are american. Your RFID passport is a dead giveaway (at a distance).
With a remote readable passport, someone could design a smart motar shell which specifically homes in on american passports. The motar shell only needs to broadcast that it is a passport scanner and detect the replies from american passports. Sensing the existence of an RFID can be done at a greater range than the range necessary to actually make sense of the data.
Or a roadside bomb can wait for an American to pass by.
Terrorists are not all morons. They don't actually try to target random victims. They try to target their "enemy". If you give them tools to increase the accuracy of their attacks they will take advantage of them.
I understand the privacy people don't like it but identity is becoming increasingly important and a "peice of paper" just isn't going to cut it for much longer.
In what way is identity more important today than it was 20 years ago?
Despite what they tell you, these erasure programs do not work on drives using journalled filesystems (ie almost every drive there is these days... including you Windows users with NTFS, and Linux users with Reiser, Ext3, XFS, etc).
This is not entirely correct.
Journaled file systems by default only use the write ahead log or "journal" for metadata changes, and not for data itself.
This means, when you overwrite the file 35 times in place, the journal is not involved in this operation.
When the secure delete program, then issues a DELETE, that operation is logged. Some time shortly thereafter the directory structure is updated to reflect that deletion. However, the data would have been overwritten 35 times (using the defaults in the eraser program) notwithstanding that the delete may be deferred.
As long as the filing system allows software to bypass the write-behind disk cache this works.
If your disk controller hardware has its own cache this may very well interfere.
a journaling filing system makes it more difficult to hide the fact that a deleted file ever existed, but it typically will not interfere with writing data into that file.
Additionally the article expresses concern that a journaling system may move a file to a new location on a write.
You will want to confirm for your specific filing system, but typically this would be very very inefficient on a hard disk.
AFAIK ext3, reiser, NTFS, BeFS (the only journaled filing systems I have much experience with) do not move files around on the partitian simply because the data within the file is modified.
Since hard drives support random access, on a hard drive there is very little likelyhood that a superior location to store that file will be found than the original location chosen (and there is no reason to NOT use the original location). Hard drives fill up over time. The overhead in choosing a better location in very expensive.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
In fact, (with those FSs that I mentioned) unless you defragment or something, files are left in the original locations they were allocated, and any modifications occur on the same disk locations.
Another factor to consider. The journal is typically implemented as a fixed size circular buffer, and it is overwritten frequently.
If you want to help insure this happens soon perform the following operation.
1: create a directoy X. create a 0 byte file Y inside inside directory X. 2: open Y. append 1 byte. close Y. move Y to the parent directory of X. open Y. append 1 byte. move Y back inside X. rename Y to some random name. rename directory X to some random name. touch X touch Y copy Y to a new file Y! delete Y let Y! now be the new Y (for future iterations) 3: repeat all steps from 2: until 3: a hundred thousand times or so.
Do that with your disk cache turned off (or a sync operation between every step) and that will probably irradicate whatever is in the journal.
This loop causes a ton of meta data changes which must be written into a write ahead log. Moving and renaming the file may or may not be considered a metadata change depending on the FS, it may simply be a data change to data in a directory (I believe this is the case in ext3; but if I recall, in BeFS file renaming and moving is a metadata change.
Finally.. since the journal doesn't track data itself, the only thing it may contain are filenames, paths and perhaps filesizes. Your data is not there.
in any event, while there is merit to the concerns expressed in the article, they are somewhat overstated.
If you ask me, we should all be encyrpting our data partitions by now!
I agree with you there. Storing plain text is absurd.
When the write head of a HDD applies a magnetic charge to a portion of the disk, it has just enough strength to change the surface polarity to the intended bit value. If it uses too much, it'll spill over onto adjacent portions; not enough, and the polarity of the magnetically sensitive material beneath it will interfere with the intended bit value.
What you are saying is true. If you only overwrite the data a single time, it is easy to determine what the previous value was.
However secure erase tools will overwrite data up to 35 times with random data.
This makes it much more difficult to recover the data and have confidence in what you are recovering.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the original data was also only written barely strongly enough to record the intended bit. It isn't like the original data was burned in with a laser and only the subsequent overwrites are faint. every pass is just strong enough to record the desired bit.
The point is that you have no right to tell me how to pursue my happiness as long as my pursuit doesn't cause you harm, and that my owning a machine gun and committing no crimes with it whatsoever does you no harm
Pointing a gun at me endangers my life. That is harm. In its most trivial sense, it is an infringement of my right to pursue happiness.
The infringement is heightened in the case of an automatic weapon which would imperil me even more.
There is almost no possible direction you can safely point a gun that is guaranteed NOT to endanger anyone.
The right to pursue happiness does not mean that everyone elses rights to pursue happiness, as well as life and liberty are waived.
An automatic weapon has the additional danger in that, it can fire multiple rounds and kill multiple targets without any direct intent by a user.
Would you be in favour of removing the prohibition on possession of nuclear weapons?
there are virtually no cases of legally-owned machine guns being used in crimes
There have been no cases of nuclear weapons used in the commission of a crime either.
Not all harm must be the result of intentional human misconduct. You can harm by accident. (and many accidental gun deaths have occured.)
As for your anecdote: Why would anyone use a machine gun to commit a crime, when lighter automatic weapons such as a submachine gun, or assault rifle is far more suited to the task.
forgive me for exceeding my area of expertise but AFAIK: Machine guns are intended to be vehicle mounted, or fired from fixed emplacements. AFAIK: Machine guns are not mobile enough to be practical for profitable criminal enterprise.
In any event, light automatic weapons, lighter than machine guns are often used in crime as well as in accidental human injury and death.
I am not trying to prove that guns should be illegal. I am only trying to argue that guns endanger third parties, even when in the hands of law abiding citizens.
I don't tell you what you can do for fun in the privacy of your own property. What's wrong with asking for the same respect in return?
If your guns were truly within the privacy of your own property, and kept far enough away from neighboring property to remove any threat, and you didn't have any minors or unwitting guests on your property then in that circumstance I would agree that your right to pursue happiness and possess guns should not be disturbed. The same goes in any other circumstance where the only people endangered by the guns are consenting adults.
I am concerned about accidental gun harm. I do believe the people have a right to be trusted not to intentionally do harm.
However, while you may personally be in favour of permitting gun ownership in the privacy of a persons own private property, you probably take a different stance with child pornography and drugs, so I dont know how far you can honestly take that argument without some kind of qualification.
PSP is not a DVD player.
on
Inside the PSP
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If it cuts into the handheld DVD market then it will be a genre redefiner.
Considering the PSP can't play DVD's this will be difficult.
I don't know how many people are going to repurchase all of their DVD movies again in some proprietary format with inferior picture quality just to watch them on a PSP.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft can't even vote.
Should anyone care whether or not a corporation "supports" a bill? (especially a publically traded corporation).
Isn't it more important to know what the citizens support?
Corporations (especially publically traded ones) will "support" whatever appears to benefit their bottom line. What does that say about a law's merit?
Corporations dont even care about the economy in general.
If a law was to increase the GDP by an additional 2% (beyond its expected growth under the status quo) but result in an additional 20% re-distribution of all wealth more equally you can bet most corporations would oppose it (especially the largest ones).
"Probably because physical property laws have a grounding in nature (there's only a finite amount of stuff and if you've got a big enough stick, you can protect your pile of stuff - property law is merely an extension of that principle, with the government holding the stick on your behalf)."
Would a libertarian agree that a compulsion to do something against your will on the threat of violence by either the state or another individual amounts to tyranny or oppression?
And if so,then private property law amounts to tyranny and oppression.
However the libertarian position would seem to be, (from your words) that oppression or tyranny which is grounded in nature is ok.
In this case the "natural" law you cite appears to be the right of military power to attack others with a big stick.
My question then is this:
Why wouldn't military right and the threat of violent retaliation be able to enforce Intellectual property just as naturally as physical property.
If I catch you infringing my IP right, I can hit you with a stick just as well as if I catch you trespassing on my property.
It seems that the enforcement of IP is just as "natural" as the enforcement of private property.
And therefore should not libertarians wanting to avoid being properly labelled as hypocrits uphold IP rights just as much as private property rights (or otherwise abandon both)?
I also note that you did not oppose my claim that IP law and private property are equally oppressive.
One other question. Is it your position, that natural law states that if I kill you, I get to own your land?
replying to a AC is probably pointless, however.
Your conclusion that I am opposed to private property based on my question about libertarians is non-sequiter.
"So, unless everybody wants to agree to my kooky libertarian ideal of abolishing copyright entirely (and we all know that such a thing will never happen), then we need a big hammer to enforce the law as it exists."
Why do libertarians support private property law and oppose intellectual property law?
Both are equally draconian.
Ultimately, this is all a bunch of legal poppycock. It's a proposal, and I'd argue that it's a damn stupid, untenable proposal. We need to let the Canadian government know that its a stupid proposal, but I have a feeling that they'll see it for what it is. After all, they've ruled positively in downloading cases before - what with our tariff on blank media.
The Canadian Government does not make rulings. It passes laws.
Courts or tribunals make ruling.
The government on the other hand, merely votes and passes a law. The government is essentially free to completely ignore reality if it chooses to, and put anything a majority of MP's would support into law.
What the government puts into law has nothing to do with any kind of "ruling". It is just politics.
It is illegal to lobby the courts in Canada. (at least in any way the court would notice your lobbying).
This makes sense, because to lobby the court, suggests that the court's ruling would be based on external factors beyond the "law" and the "facts" of the case at hand. It is insulting to the Court to suggest that sign waving and yelling has any relevence to the case. If you have anything RELEVENT to say, you would be permitted to testify under oath just like all the other witnesses.
So, unless you want to get slapped with a contempt of court charge, I would restrict your act of "let the Canadian government know" to the actual Government. Which does not make rulings.
Sounds like they're afraid of people using rest-stop connections for drive-by kiddie-porn downloads/uploads. That's the only real use for this filtering that I could see. ... because no one wants to see porn involving only adults to be outlawed.
I imagine some people will immedietly object to a law based on some practical issue of unenforcibility.
I dont think this is really a relevant issue on whether or not certain activity should be unlawful.
Provided you can strictly define exactly what is being made illegal. The fact that you may never catch anyone breaking that law, doesn't mean the law should not be there.
Some borderline ethical business people consider anything legal to be ethical and will not cross that line. They would happily kill people provided it was legal. But they would not sell a drink to a 20 year old (in the US).
Simply making spyway illegal is likely to deter those people who abide by that business ethic, such as it is.
Provided the definition of criminal spyware is narrow enough to not capture innocent software, I dont see why there is a problem making it a crime.
You're right: a majority of people are so content being apathetic, they don't make the effort to even look away from their TVs. But there's nothing that I can do about it. I've tried screaming and I've tried waxing philosophical. It doesn't help. Why should I try to help these people "see the light" when they don't even want to listen?
This radical change in my ideology has been rather recent. I just got tired of being pissed at things that I couldn't change. You and me (and a lot of slashdotters) are among the minority that "get it". We only have finite amount of energy and time on this planet. I feel that those resources are better utilized trying to directly better my situation rather than trying to improve it by proxy of helping everyone else.
If you can't beat 'em then join 'em?
The purpose of trying to create a fair and just society is NOT to better your own situation by proxy.
It is to better the lives of the billions of human beings who are living in abject poverty and under constant threat of violence, disease, starvation, oppression.
You can lie to yourself and pretend it isn't happening. Or die trying to fix it.
I can appreciate your frustration, but the fact that you are wasting your time even posting and expressing these frustrations tells me that you haven't given up, and you are eventually gonna go and scream and wax philosophical in an attempt to help people see the light. And if in the course of running a small business, you hire employees, you may even indulge yourself in preaching to a captive audience. But you aren't going to give in.
I wish you well in your efforts.
Taking pictures of cameras taking pictures of you is not keeping a record of your own actions.
Yes. It is. A record of anything which you are interacting, including your entire environment, is a record of your actions, which is MATERIAL record of your actions insofar as it will shed light on your intentions and motivations for doing those actions. Most people do things because of what is going on around them, rather than in isolation.
Further, unless he's alleging that video will be doctored, the record that is kept of him, privacy issues aside, is just that.
And why shouldn't it be doctored?
Criminals (and in that catagory I include white collar criminals as well as corrupt government officials) are willing to steal, kill, cheat, lie, maim.
Is doctoring video some kind of line which criminals wont cross?
You don't have to be SPECIAL to be a victim.
But then they jump from the likes of the GAP in a mall to government (???), and apparently liken a lowly employee in the mechanics of either someone who should themselves have to give up personal information for simply asking for identification for whatever purpose (again, the extent that it is appropriate is beside the point).
Corporations are a special arm of the government. They only exist because they were created by the authority of the STATE. When a corporation oppresses people, it is by the authority of the state that it does so.
Going from the GAP to the government is not a stretch, because the GAP is a creation of government.
And then the state allows the gap to perform secret and non-transparent video taping and monitoring of the citizens. The state then invokes the PATRIOT act and makes all of those records accesible to the state at any time.
How exactly is this any different than if the FBI or CIA simply had everyone under surveilance at all times?
As for the lowly employee: "just following orders" is not a justification for an immoral act.
To say nothing of the fact that almost all malls are private property.
And your point is?
Why should a random private mall employee have a philosophical privacy and surveillance discussion with some self-righteous, cynical privacy advocate. Who, by the way, expects exactly what happened, i.e., worthless responses, to happen?
If you are attempting to violate another persons rights, you have a moral obligation to know WHY you are doing it.
Just because he expected the mall security to lack morality, does not mean we should not be shocked and offended.
If the GAP simply told security to kill anyone carrying a video camera, and security followed that order, would that also be acceptable to you?
It is private property afterall.
Addresses are public information.
Since when is an address public information?
Where is this information?
Why so many people think extra biometric data is more abusive than the current biometric data stored on passports?
It is easy to plant fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene and frame an innocent person.
Using a photograph to frame someone is more difficult.
when providing your fingerprints to someone for comparison. How can you be certain they are not stealing your fingerprints for use in commiting crime?
When showing a photograph for comparison, no photograph is made. The comparison is performed by the human eye.
Um..... I hate to point it out to you, but if the government gave those cards out "free" the people would be PAYING for them in taxes.
businesses also pay taxes.
And a user-fee which is mandatory for every citizen amounts to an tax, which is paid disproportionately by those who have less wealth.
This is traditionally considered unfair. But hey. We are living in a neoliberal world.
And what happens to citizens who can't afford to pay for their identity card? Do they get put in jail?
The right of first sale means that you can sell your copy of Star Wars to someone else.
Agreed. When I said 'copies', what I meant was, new copies made without permission of the copyright holders. i.e. unauthorized copies.
However, I believe there is even a limitation to that. I don't believe I can buy 10000 legit copies of Star Wars in bulk, as a single sale, and but then resell them individually to many different consumers. I think that would be considered a "distribution" which requires authorization. I am speculating here, but I think in order to rely on the right of first sale, and avoid copyright, I may need to resell the whole lot of 10000 copies together as a single unit.
Program complexity has meant that all but the most trivial programs cannot be 'proven'.
This statement is false in the general case. You are claiming that there is a set of "most trivial" computer programs which can be proven, but are impossible to make more complex by any amount without resulting in undefined behavior.
For any given provable computer program, I can make a more complex version which is also provable.
And I can further complicate that more complex version, also without introducing undefined behavior.
This new program is NOT one of the "most trivial", because there is a more trivial program from which it is derived.
What you are saying may be true in a a practical sense in regards to software developed for the sake of usage by human beings. (as people are not willing to invest the ridiculous amounts of money that proven software would cost).
People are not even willing to invest the money to develop correct specifications let alone correct software.
Without specifications, it is scientifically pointless to talk about software correctness. Because correctness without specifications is undefined.
Your statement should be reworded:
Specification AMBIGUITY has meant that all but the most trivial programs cannot be 'proven'. And where specifications are defined only after the fact, most non-trivial programs are found to be INCORRECT.
Phones are computers nowadays. The phone manufacturers simply cannot use bluetooth being left on as an excuse.
You dont need to turn off bluetooth. Turn off "bluetooth visibility".
With bluetooth visibility off, then anyone who wants to bluetooth to your phone must ALREADY KNOW THE BLUETOOTH NAME. That is to say, they must already have had access to your phone.
With bluetooth visibility is off, you can still use wireless headsets or whatever else you like. The only difference is that you will not receive unsolicited communication from others because they cant communicate with your phone without knowing the bluetooth name.
And if you want to leave bluetooth visibility on then:
DONT ACCEPT FILES BEING TRANSMITTED TO YOUR PHONE IF YOU DONT WHO THEY ARE FROM.
And moreover:
DON"T INSTALL PROGRAMS ON YOUR PHONE IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE.
The problem is not Symbian. The problem is user gullibility, ignorance and naivety.
Bluetooth is OFF by default. If you turn it on, then RTFM!
I know we aren't the only large software company doing that. We don't, of course, ever use source code in publically released software, but we do when for nearly all private, multi-$000 sales.
A "private sale" is a distribution under copyright law. You must either license the software to the recipient under the GPL and give them source code, or obtain permission from the original copyright holders to distribute their software outside the GPL.
You can't give modified versions of someone elses copyrighted work to anyone without license; even in a so called "private sale".
The GPL only allows distribution when you transfer full license (and source code of binaries) to the recipient.
I am not allowed to "privately sell" copies of the latest Star Wars movie without permission from the copyright holder. The fact that Star Wars is not GPLed makes no difference. Because when you do something outside the GPL, you are doing it as if there was no GPL.
BTW: How is a private sale more private than a normal sale?
In Canada for most crimes the defence has the right to elect to have a trial by judge alone.
Juries are only mandatory for certain offences, I believe murder and attempted murder are examples of those.
AFAIK: For any offence with a max sentence less than 5 years you aren't even entitled to a jury trial.
I was going to make the same observations.
I really think most people dont bother even reading the article around here.
The astounding thing is that 5% of IT departments have PERFECT TRACK RECORDS!!
If I had mod points I would give them to you.
In WWII, Nazi's required jews to wear armbands distinctly identifying themselves as jewish at a distance.
This system worked very well. It insured that second class citizens could properly receive the proper treatment as such. i.e.: forced to walk in the gutter, rather than a side walk etc. Attend at labour and death camps etc.
Now the american government wants americans to only travel abroad on the condition that they effectively wear electronic armbands identifying them as "AMERICAN" to anyone with a simple detector.
America is at war, and the American government wants its citizens to be required to advertize their status to all possible enemies.
At least the NAZI's were fairly transparent about their desire to oppress and harm jews.
How is electronically broadcasting american citizenship for all to see, going to help americans be safer.
Why not just make a law requiring all american citizens to wear armbands with the Star of David.
Would that be obvious enough for the morons in the whitehouse to wake the fuck up!
If they want to kill you, they will, and pick up your passport from your body later as a souvenir, whether it has RFID or not.
They only want to kill you if you are american.
Your RFID passport is a dead giveaway (at a distance).
With a remote readable passport, someone could design a smart motar shell which specifically homes in on american passports. The motar shell only needs to broadcast that it is a passport scanner and detect the replies from american passports.
Sensing the existence of an RFID can be done at a greater range than the range necessary to actually make sense of the data.
Or a roadside bomb can wait for an American to pass by.
Terrorists are not all morons. They don't actually try to target random victims. They try to target their "enemy". If you give them tools to increase the accuracy of their attacks they will take advantage of them.
I understand the privacy people don't like it but identity is becoming increasingly important and a "peice of paper" just isn't going to cut it for much longer.
In what way is identity more important today than it was 20 years ago?
Despite what they tell you, these erasure programs do not work on drives using journalled filesystems (ie almost every drive there is these days... including you Windows users with NTFS, and Linux users with Reiser, Ext3, XFS, etc).
This is not entirely correct.
Journaled file systems by default only use the write ahead log or "journal" for metadata changes, and not for data itself.
This means, when you overwrite the file 35 times in place, the journal is not involved in this operation.
When the secure delete program, then issues a DELETE, that operation is logged. Some time shortly thereafter the directory structure is updated to reflect that deletion. However, the data would have been overwritten 35 times (using the defaults in the eraser program) notwithstanding that the delete may be deferred.
As long as the filing system allows software to bypass the write-behind disk cache this works.
If your disk controller hardware has its own cache this may very well interfere.
a journaling filing system makes it more difficult to hide the fact that a deleted file ever existed, but it typically will not interfere with writing data into that file.
Additionally the article expresses concern that a journaling system may move a file to a new location on a write.
You will want to confirm for your specific filing system, but typically this would be very very inefficient on a hard disk.
AFAIK ext3, reiser, NTFS, BeFS (the only journaled filing systems I have much experience with) do not move files around on the partitian simply because the data within the file is modified.
Since hard drives support random access, on a hard drive there is very little likelyhood that a superior location to store that file will be found than the original location chosen (and there is no reason to NOT use the original location). Hard drives fill up over time. The overhead in choosing a better location in very expensive.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
In fact, (with those FSs that I mentioned) unless you defragment or something, files are left in the original locations they were allocated, and any modifications occur on the same disk locations.
Another factor to consider. The journal is typically implemented as a fixed size circular buffer, and it is overwritten frequently.
If you want to help insure this happens soon perform the following operation.
1: create a directoy X.
create a 0 byte file Y inside inside directory X.
2:
open Y. append 1 byte.
close Y.
move Y to the parent directory of X.
open Y. append 1 byte.
move Y back inside X.
rename Y to some random name.
rename directory X to some random name.
touch X
touch Y
copy Y to a new file Y!
delete Y
let Y! now be the new Y (for future iterations)
3: repeat all steps from 2: until 3: a hundred thousand times or so.
Do that with your disk cache turned off (or a sync operation between every step) and that will probably irradicate whatever is in the journal.
This loop causes a ton of meta data changes which must be written into a write ahead log. Moving and renaming the file may or may not be considered a metadata change depending on the FS, it may simply be a data change to data in a directory (I believe this is the case in ext3; but if I recall, in BeFS file renaming and moving is a metadata change.
Finally.. since the journal doesn't track data itself, the only thing it may contain are filenames, paths and perhaps filesizes. Your data is not there.
in any event, while there is merit to the concerns expressed in the article, they are somewhat overstated.
If you ask me, we should all be encyrpting our data partitions by now!
I agree with you there.
Storing plain text is absurd.
When the write head of a HDD applies a magnetic charge to a portion of the disk, it has just enough strength to change the surface polarity to the intended bit value. If it uses too much, it'll spill over onto adjacent portions; not enough, and the polarity of the magnetically sensitive material beneath it will interfere with the intended bit value.
What you are saying is true. If you only overwrite the data a single time, it is easy to determine what the previous value was.
However secure erase tools will overwrite data up to 35 times with random data.
This makes it much more difficult to recover the data and have confidence in what you are recovering.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the original data was also only written barely strongly enough to record the intended bit. It isn't like the original data was burned in with a laser and only the subsequent overwrites are faint. every pass is just strong enough to record the desired bit.
The point is that you have no right to tell me how to pursue my happiness as long as my pursuit doesn't cause you harm, and that my owning a machine gun and committing no crimes with it whatsoever does you no harm
Pointing a gun at me endangers my life. That is harm. In its most trivial sense, it is an infringement of my right to pursue happiness.
The infringement is heightened in the case of an automatic weapon which would imperil me even more.
There is almost no possible direction you can safely point a gun that is guaranteed NOT to endanger anyone.
The right to pursue happiness does not mean that everyone elses rights to pursue happiness, as well as life and liberty are waived.
An automatic weapon has the additional danger in that, it can fire multiple rounds and kill multiple targets without any direct intent by a user.
Would you be in favour of removing the prohibition on possession of nuclear weapons?
there are virtually no cases of legally-owned machine guns being used in crimes
There have been no cases of nuclear weapons used in the commission of a crime either.
Not all harm must be the result of intentional human misconduct. You can harm by accident. (and many accidental gun deaths have occured.)
As for your anecdote: Why would anyone use a machine gun to commit a crime, when lighter automatic weapons such as a submachine gun, or assault rifle is far more suited to the task.
forgive me for exceeding my area of expertise but AFAIK: Machine guns are intended to be vehicle mounted, or fired from fixed emplacements. AFAIK: Machine guns are not mobile enough to be practical for profitable criminal enterprise.
In any event, light automatic weapons, lighter than machine guns are often used in crime as well as in accidental human injury and death.
I am not trying to prove that guns should be illegal. I am only trying to argue that guns endanger third parties, even when in the hands of law abiding citizens.
I don't tell you what you can do for fun in the privacy of your own property. What's wrong with asking for the same respect in return?
If your guns were truly within the privacy of your own property, and kept far enough away from neighboring property to remove any threat, and you didn't have any minors or unwitting guests on your property then in that circumstance I would agree that your right to pursue happiness and possess guns should not be disturbed. The same goes in any other circumstance where the only people endangered by the guns are consenting adults.
I am concerned about accidental gun harm. I do believe the people have a right to be trusted not to intentionally do harm.
However, while you may personally be in favour of permitting gun ownership in the privacy of a persons own private property, you probably take a different stance with child pornography and drugs, so I dont know how far you can honestly take that argument without some kind of qualification.
If it cuts into the handheld DVD market then it will be a genre redefiner.
Considering the PSP can't play DVD's this will be difficult.
I don't know how many people are going to repurchase all of their DVD movies again in some proprietary format with inferior picture quality just to watch them on a PSP.