If there's a difference it's this: The first time round, the Howard government passed the law banning porn on the internet in exchange for getting independant Senator Brian Harradine's support for the partial privatization of Telstra (Govt owned Telco). So what happened was they spent a couple of million on setting up an agency to do it, then never enforced the laws.
The difference this time is that it comes from within the government itself, which means that we'd likely get more than just the laws this time, they may actually try to enforce them (and just because they can't get rid of net porn doesn't mean they can screw things up trying).
I would agree they will be better off switching, but having applications available on Windows as well helps make switching possible.
If you can get people using free software on windows, then suggest changing to Linux and being able to keep using the same software, changing over is a much smoother process (and a lot easier to make the case for).
I'm currently working on moving as much as possible of our systems to use free or at least cross platform alternatives.
The long term plan is to switch to Linux, but we don't have the resources and not all the applications I plan to use are mature enough to make the change immediately, but I plan to be ready to go once the approach a stable level.
Is it the PostgreSQL team who have decided to port to Netware or Novell? When I read the description I was under the impression that Novell decided that they needed a new database now that Oracle is ignoring them, and so I thought they were the ones doing it.
The Novell annoucement is pretty brief and doesn't really say much about how this came about.
I couldn't imagine old harware becoming illegal, all that will happen is that every piece of software written by microsoft and probably others will refuse to run unless it can utilise the DRM features.
Your old hardware will work fine as long as you never want any new commmercial software for it.
For the most part the A-G will still have similar powers under the revised proposal, but can be overruled by parliament (although since parliament is dominated by his party that's going to be pretty unlikely).
The other major change, and probably just as important was the reversal of the burden of proof for those accused of "terrorism". Under the original proposal the assumption of innocence was reversed.
Sorry, don't think I understood clearly or expressed myself clearly the first time.
To make sure I understand what you're saying: someone would send you an email, which would arrive at your inbox at your ISP. You would then connect to it with your email client and it would send you just the headers(which would include additional identification information about the user who sent it, say name, maybe their address, and some key generated when they created the account). You could then (delete/blacklist/allow/whitelist) based on this info.
I think the problem is that spammers will enter the required identification information (but probably not their own details). For example if I tell an ISP my name is Steve Williams (it's not) and I live at 405 Murray Hill Parkway NJ 07073 (I don't) and they use these details to create my account and generate a key. What will you do if a msg comes in saying that this person at this address with this ident key(and any other identification that I have lied about) has sent you an email?
Most ISP's will cancel the account for spamming, so they create a new account, with new details, get a new ID key and go again.
I would think that most of the emails coming in without the identification fields filled in would not really be the spammers, but people who were with an ISP that didn't care enough about spam to upgrade their systems(although ISP's like that tend to be the spammers favourites).
It would cut some of the bandwidth being used, since not every spam would be so hard to pick out, you'd be able to delete all the horny teens and penis enlargement, but others you may not be so sure about and will want to look at to make sure, and it still means that you are dealing with each msg even if you don't have to download them.
Problem is that spammer won't fill it in with related info. Look at how many spam msgs you get with a subject line that pretends they are replying to a message that you sent etc.
Basically the only people who will put in anything that would help would be the ones you don't need to block.
The first time I encountered this was while developing a website and other applications for a company, we were asked to also provide ways to promote themselves online and find new customers. The sales manager of the company thought the best way to do it was (loosely targetted) spam to newsgroups and email. I explained to them that not only do I find the idea of spamming people personally offensive, but that it would also harm their company's reputation. It's probably also important to mention that they were trying to market a technology, which despite excellent, scientifically repeatable, was still in its infancy and many in the industry were yet to fully trust. I explained that actions like mass spamming were likely to do more than just irritate people who didn't want their messages, but could quite likely leave the impression that they were fly by nighters who would be take their money and disappear leaving them holding worthless equipment. At best it would make them look unprofessional.
The sales manager insisted that just putting a few ads in magazines and online and being on search engines were not enough. He told me that at his previous business how he had purchased lists of emails submitted to websites and what great success he had with it. My response was to try to explain that not only was his target audience different (probably a mistake since most people don't like being told how to do their jobs, but he was comparing selling $100 items to clueless users to selling million dollar equipment to experienced engineers) but as spam was becoming more prevalent people would be paying less attention to it (He admitted he had left the previous place in 96).
He was unconvinced and demanded that I help him develop his databases and operate these services for him. I offered to continue developing the website and other applications but refused to assist him with any spamming or other objectional activities (there were quite a few other ideas he had but they were so hare-brained I didn't pay enough attention to them to be able to remember them now). They said I could do it or resign, so I resigned.
About June last year I found out that they company had folded and most the directors were trying to either sue each other or make complaints to authorities to try and get the others arrested. I found that most of the people who don't see a problem with spamming or spyware aren't very nice people to work for.
There are two basic problems with chemical castration. Firstly is can be counteracted by other chemical agents (unless your going to have someone follow them around 24x7 to check what other drugs the person is taking).
The other real problem is it doesn't deal with the real issue which is that this person thinks it is ok to molest children. Until you do something about that, everything else is a temporary measure.
As others have pointed out, if there is non-restricted hardware then the consumer still has a choice. It also means that if you find a way to circumvent the system then you aren't breaking any law by doing so (you might be breaking some other law by using you circumvention method for certain activities)
If it become law that all devices must have DRM and attempting to circumvent the DRM system is illegal, then you can be breaking the law before you even try playing copyrighted material.
And what you will have produced is a computer that can't do what users want, and so many of them will decide not to spend $N on a computer.
Not that the MPAA/RIAA care but I am sure most hardware vendors do and would probably explain why they have held off before.
I wonder what Jack thinks should happen to existing computers that don't have any DRM systems? Should they be declared a circumvention device and banned?
One thing that I have always been curious about with EULA's has been how they can be considered binding if your agreement to the conditions comes after the completion of the contract (when you pay at the register). I don't know about US law, but I did study Australian contract law, and I seem to remember quite clearly that conditions added to the contract after the acceptance of an offer have no legal force.
I also remember cases we studied where taking something from a shelf to the cash register and paying for it is considered acceptance of the contract. If you can't read and accept the conditions of the contract before you accept the offer (ie pay the purchase price) then you shouldn't be bound to those conditions.
It's pretty clear why they aren't going after Sony,Microsoft or EA, that being relative resources. Do you want to get into a court battle with Microsoft and see who can afford it better?
First they target someone small, and assuming they get a judgement in their favour they then go waving it in front of other courts as precedent when similar cases rise.
I suppose I should mention IANAL but would anyone actually be stupid enough to base a case on legal advice from/.?
Amongst the people I know who have been marking
student papers, after seeing 350 odd papers, any two papers that are even vaguely similar will be noticed. It's not necessary to compare each paper against every other.
Asking them to explain their code usually works. So does having a couple of people in the class who get p155ed of when someone who knows nothing gets the same mark they do. (especially by final year when they are imagining this person going out into industry claiming to have a degree from X, then finding that employers don't look favourably on degrees from X because they let too many through with little idea what they are doing)
Slashdot Mirror
If there's a difference it's this:
The first time round, the Howard government passed the law banning porn on the internet in exchange for getting independant Senator Brian Harradine's support for the partial privatization of Telstra (Govt owned Telco). So what happened was they spent a couple of million on setting up an agency to do it, then never enforced the laws.
The difference this time is that it comes from within the government itself, which means that we'd likely get more than just the laws this time, they may actually try to enforce them (and just because they can't get rid of net porn doesn't mean they can screw things up trying).
I would agree they will be better off switching, but having applications available
on Windows as well helps make switching possible.
If you can get people using free software on windows, then suggest changing to
Linux and being able to keep using the same software, changing over is a much
smoother process (and a lot easier to make the case for).
I'm currently working on moving as much as possible of our systems to use free
or at least cross platform alternatives.
The long term plan is to switch to Linux, but we don't have the resources and
not all the applications I plan to use are mature enough to make the change
immediately, but I plan to be ready to go once the approach a stable level.
Is it the PostgreSQL team who have decided to port
to Netware or Novell? When I read the description I
was under the impression that Novell decided that
they needed a new database now that Oracle is ignoring
them, and so I thought they were the ones doing it.
The Novell annoucement is pretty brief and doesn't really
say much about how this came about.
I couldn't imagine old harware becoming illegal, all that will happen is that every piece of software written by microsoft and probably others will refuse to run unless it can utilise the DRM features.
Your old hardware will work fine as long as you never want any new commmercial software for it.
The other major change, and probably just as important was the reversal of the burden of proof for those accused of "terrorism". Under the original proposal the assumption of innocence was reversed.
Don't laugh the exchange rate for the AU$ has been around the 50c US for quite a while.
I still remember when it was 1-1
So suck down that data while you still can
To make sure I understand what you're saying:
someone would send you an email, which would arrive at your inbox at your ISP. You would then connect to it with your email client and it would send you just the headers(which would include additional identification information about the user who sent it, say name, maybe their address, and some key generated when they created the account). You could then (delete/blacklist/allow/whitelist) based on this info.
I think the problem is that spammers will enter the required identification information (but probably not their own details). For example if I tell an ISP my name is Steve Williams (it's not) and I live at 405 Murray Hill Parkway NJ 07073 (I don't) and they use these details to create my account and generate a key. What will you do if a msg comes in saying that this person at this address with this ident key(and any other identification that I have lied about) has sent you an email?
Most ISP's will cancel the account for spamming, so they create a new account, with new details, get a new ID key and go again.
I would think that most of the emails coming in without the identification fields filled in would not really be the spammers, but people who were with an ISP that didn't care enough about spam to upgrade their systems(although ISP's like that tend to be the spammers favourites).
It would cut some of the bandwidth being used, since not every spam would be so hard to pick out, you'd be able to delete all the horny teens and penis enlargement, but others you may not be so sure about and will want to look at to make sure, and it still means that you are dealing with each msg even if you don't have to download them.
Basically the only people who will put in anything that would help would be the ones you don't need to block.
crap, hit submit instead of preview, sorry for the lack of editting
The first time I encountered this was while developing a website and other applications for a company, we were asked to also provide ways to promote themselves online and find new customers. The sales manager of the company thought the best way to do it was (loosely targetted) spam to newsgroups and email.
I explained to them that not only do I find the idea of spamming people personally offensive, but that it would also harm their company's reputation. It's probably also important to mention that they were trying to market a technology, which despite excellent, scientifically repeatable, was still in its infancy and many in the industry were yet to fully trust. I explained that actions like mass spamming were likely to do more than just irritate people who didn't want their messages, but could quite likely leave the impression that they were fly by nighters who would be take their money and disappear leaving them holding worthless equipment. At best it would make them look unprofessional.
The sales manager insisted that just putting a few ads in magazines and online and being on search engines were not enough. He told me that at his previous business how he had purchased lists of emails submitted to websites and what great success he had with it. My response was to try to explain that not only was his target audience different (probably a mistake since most people don't like being told how to do their jobs, but he was comparing selling $100 items to clueless users to selling million dollar equipment to experienced engineers) but as spam was becoming more prevalent people would be paying less attention to it (He admitted he had left the previous place in 96).
He was unconvinced and demanded that I help him develop his databases and operate these services for him. I offered to continue developing the website and other applications but refused to assist him with any spamming or other objectional activities (there were quite a few other ideas he had but they were so hare-brained I didn't pay enough attention to them to be able to remember them now). They said I could do it or resign, so I resigned.
About June last year I found out that they company had folded and most the directors were trying to either sue each other or make complaints to authorities to try and get the others arrested. I found that most of the people who don't see a problem with spamming or spyware aren't very nice people to work for.
There are two basic problems with chemical castration. Firstly is can be counteracted by other chemical agents (unless your going to have someone follow them around 24x7 to check what other drugs the person is taking).
The other real problem is it doesn't deal with the real issue which is that this person thinks it is ok to molest children. Until you do something about that, everything else is a temporary measure.
Would your lunch be 2% of your weight?
And Hollywood's directing isn't stiff and unimaginative???
As others have pointed out, if there is non-restricted hardware then the consumer still has a choice. It also means that if you find a way to circumvent the system then you aren't breaking any law by doing so (you might be breaking some other law by using you circumvention method for certain activities)
If it become law that all devices must have DRM and attempting to circumvent the DRM system is illegal, then you can be breaking the law before you even try playing copyrighted material.
And what you will have produced is a computer that can't do what users want, and so many of them will decide not to spend $N on a computer.
Not that the MPAA/RIAA care but I am sure most hardware vendors do and would probably explain why they have held off before.
I wonder what Jack thinks should happen to existing computers that don't have any DRM systems? Should they be declared a circumvention device and banned?
One thing that I have always been curious about with EULA's has been how they can be considered binding if your agreement to the conditions comes after the completion of the contract (when you pay at the register). I don't know about US law, but I did study Australian contract law, and I seem to remember quite clearly that conditions added to the contract after the acceptance of an offer have no legal force.
I also remember cases we studied where taking something from a shelf to the cash register and paying for it is considered acceptance of the contract. If you can't read and accept the conditions of the contract before you accept the offer (ie pay the purchase price) then you shouldn't be bound to those conditions.
It's pretty clear why they aren't going after Sony,Microsoft or EA, that being relative resources. Do you want to get into a court battle with Microsoft and see who can afford it better?
/.?
First they target someone small, and assuming they get a judgement in their favour they then go waving it in front of other courts as precedent when similar cases rise.
I suppose I should mention IANAL but would anyone actually be stupid enough to base a case on legal advice from
Amongst the people I know who have been marking
student papers, after seeing 350 odd papers, any two papers that are even vaguely similar will be noticed. It's not necessary to compare each paper against every other.
Asking them to explain their code usually works. So does having a couple of people in the class who get p155ed of when someone who knows nothing gets the same mark they do. (especially by final year when they are imagining this person going out into industry claiming to have a degree from X, then finding that employers don't look favourably on degrees from X because they let too many through with little idea what they are doing)
Slashdot Friend/Foe System
Sorry, this is not an option.
Can't make your self your own friend or foe