You're right that £329 is about $650 on xe.com etc today. However it's a bit misleading when it comes to product. In Blighty here we have always suffered in the transatlantic stakes - new kit is always significantly more expensive than the USD/GBP exchange rate would infer. This is frequently illustrated in the UK press as being indicative of 'Rip off Britain'. I very strongly suspect this holds in the reverse here too. Given how weak the dollar is, I seriously don't expect them to be charging $650 for it in the US - it'll be cheaper.
Don't confuse the reasonableness, or lack of it, with the issue of refusing to follow the instructions of a police officer several times in a row. Its the latter that is the issue and although the subject matter of his banner seems to me to be entirely reasonable, they will take into account his lack of compliance with a police order as contributing to public disorder.
Since the 15 year old boy is looking for advice, it should be noted that the case has been referred to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) whose job is to decide whether there is a viable case to answer here or whether to proceed 'is in the public interest' before committing it to court. My advice to him (and IAFL - oh dear there goes the karma) is to relax and work with Liberty who have lawyers on their staff. I *strongly* suspect the CPS will drop this given the description of Scientology as a cult by the judge the boy quoted. Only reason they wouldn't would be that he refused to take down the sign having been asked several times. GL!
What supports your point even more is that one doesn't even have to hypothesise about people copying Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself took almost all of the essential stories for his work from earlier pieces which was utterly prevelent at the time. You quote a hypothetical copying of Hamlet, well actually quite a lot of people think that Shakespeare copied an earlier piece http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Hamlet . What Shakespeare did do was often materially tweak the story (King Lear is a good example) to better construction and then of course add language that was unparalleled. Although he did lift a few lines verbatim as well from other plays. Bill Bryson's short book on Shakespeare gives a great overview.
Total bullshit to your "The point of being a musician, or another kind of artist, is to share the art, not to make a profit" as some A/B type of proposition. It's not like that for 99.9% of artists in such simplistic binary terms at all as evidenced be the fact that every single named musician, artist and actor you know takes a pay packet. They want to do *both*. The quantuum of pay to artistic value is much more complex question which many of those artists have a long and intense debate about, but the sort of blandishment you propose here is just not made out at all....
Well the genre has been around that long and much longer absolutely yes. But I wouldn't want any overly-detail-orientated Slashdotee's to embark on reading the whole of the Odyssey for 'that stuff'. Response at the end of 12,000 lines of the Odyssey is likely to be in the region of 'WHAT?!?! NOT A SINGLE FRICKIN DRAGON, ELF *OR* MIDGET?!?!?!?11'
(You do however get some marvellous Sirens, Giants, Cannibals, generally hopped up gods and a lot of bad wind):)
We use RSA two-factor ID key-fobs. My password is an 8+ didgit standard chain of numbers which I set to which you then add another 8 numbers generated by the key-fob which are changed every minute. Each fob is unique and about the length of a matchbox and one third of its width. http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=1156
Cryptonimicon is a good book. Hell it's probably even a great book. But a place to start with Stephenson? It's a magnum opus and it's more complicated than his other work. Its also pretty bigazz in size.
If you are 'buying into' an author you've never read before this is going to put more possible stumbling blocks in the way. Both Snowcrash and Diamond Age have cracking stories that I think would be a bit more accessible to Stephenson novices first time out. You're going to want to read all three (and the others) anyway so I'd start out simpler. Alternatively grab anything by him you fancy - I can't help with your Bad Impulse Control.
You are right that five physicists who actually know enough about the subject would be an awesome find. But since the poster is asking for guidance on what to see I suspect what would be even more awesome for them is a technically very able physicist who can translate their knowledge into plain english. If there is one thing that would spread the influence of science more than today, it is that rare ability to make it understandable to the general populace.
The comments here end up predictably incredibly one sided so let me take my karma in my hand and just try and boil this down to its basics.
Paul McGuiness is a 20% equal 1/5th member of U2 with the other members of the band since their earliest days when Bono couldn't even sing properly (pre 'Boy' single version of 'Twilight' anyone? Like someone dropping a ten ton weigh on a moose's foot - what a yelp!). The point of TFA is clear enough. He's a bit cack-handed in suggesting a particular commercial solution but he fully discloses it up front in the speech. (BTW Modding someone to +5 for pointing out something that someone has already disclosed in the speech????? That's the ultimate endorsement for not RTFA!!). But the point of discussion is the principle of what he's saying so lets move on.
U2 have more money than god. Easy to have a pop at them for being so rich. Whatever. No really because this argument also applies to a band with more debt than god on first album release too.
There is a distinction in law between theft and copying / breaching copyright, definitely. Emotive use of 'stealing' will always bring out those who want to make the correct distinction.
However, if you have ever been in a band on a deal releasing commercial product, like I have, then the stuff you put out is your shit which you sweated blood and tears over. If you understand that someone is copying it and not paying you (ultimately) for it, I can tell you it feels without doubt like someone is 'stealing' your shit even if that's not technically correct as a term. That's what it feels like. You can choose to promote, do radio play, give away cd's, play free shows, do whatever you want but if you've put something out for commercial sale it should be respected as such and paid for.
There isn't a games writer, app developer, music producer, fim director, visual artist, comic book artist, actor or writer who *if* they choose to release commercially doesn't want to get paid for their work. That's the definition of why you release something commercially. And they have a right to getting paid for it in civil law everywhere. For all the gloriousness of the interweb and getting hold of material you couldn't otherwise afford or find in a shop or whatever, copying and enjoying the produce of these people without paying when you know that was the basis on which they put it out there IS morally and legally WRONG. It would be really refreshing if a significant maj^H^H^inority of Slashdot readers could at least admit this basic point instead of getting into this mob-justification that somehow that is not the case.
F$*! the RIAA and all the brown-shirted jack-booted ways of enforcement that exist. I'm never up for that. But what the bloke is suggesting is trying to improve the ability of artists in the broadest possible sense to get paid for stuff they release commercially. And that's what those artists all want - they really do. Those that don't can opt out of releasing commercially - you can release for free, you can do all of that.
It would just be nice to see a bit of balance about this and to stick a hand up for reality. With that I shall watch my mod points fall through the floor. The partisan one-sidedness of the +5's on this issue undermine the quality of debate on this issue. I don't have to be 'right' (whatever that means) but its pretty bad when all the argument is one way....
Some of the god-squad's belief in divine inspiration is rather more pronounced than the way you put it. The Jewish tradition which underpins the belief in the divine inspiration of the bible is that god was directly involved in writing the content of the Torah (the first few books of the old testament). For this reason jewish scholars have sort for centuries to investigate supposed hidden codes in the Torah (and no this isn't just a Dan Browne plot). The idea is that god directly inspired *and controlled* the way the Torah was written. It doesn't really stand up if you say that god communicated it but then somehow, weirdly, humans screwed up it up. The end product wouldn't be something inspired by god. And god being god wouldn't let that stand and would sort the accuracy stuff out would he? So you've got a bit of a logic loop here. Your fundamental argument has to be with the idea that god was involved or not rather than to suggest human beings fallibly implemented it.
"Mind you, a few nukes in Saudi Arabia would solve the whole problem, since Iraq has nothing to do with 9-11. FYI, Pakistan is not our ally, no matter what they tell you."
How the hell did this get to +4 informative? I would have thought you were trolling or being sar-car-stic about the Saudia Arabia comment but then you go and say, factually, correctly, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 (which it didn't) and very simplistically that Pakistan is not our ally(sic). Lets be charitable and suggest you should have emoted to make this clear. Just in case (and I pray to god I've got this wrong) you meant that straight, it would show a breath-taking lack of understanding of the pro-American stance Saudi Arabia the nation takes (and for whom Bin Laden is a massive dissident) and a breath-taking lack of understanding of the same point in Pakistan. Do you think that Bhutto went back for non-democratic reasons or that those 140 people died because the people doing the bombing were not trying to fuck up the democratic imperative? These are complex countries with complex dynamics and the proportion of people in them who represent the extremists are very low.
'Joking' (great joke - are you here all week?) about dropping a nuke on anyone is just stupid. But you know that right because you were only kidding. Right? Right???!
Well to deal with two points here; i) Retroactive / retrospective legislation is a complete no no of any principled system. In this case IAAFL and I detest the occasional breaches of principle we see here. Quite incredible for anyone to suggest it should not be so. ii) Re taking care of the little guys - we need to. There's a size test in so many aspects of online coverage that has to be put in place. Once the drones get up to speed, we'll get there.....
Ok well here's talking yourself into the jaws of the lion on Slashdot and IANFRWW (I am no &*@!ing Right Wing Wan&#&!) but I struggle to see why this is inappropriate. The content of these stations is the music. The value of the station to advertisers is the number of people who are going to listen to it AND those stations use those stats to price their ads with the ad providers. Paying pay-per-track rather than pay-per-listener is clearly inequitable when the stations themselves earn money on a per listener basis.
Hopefully they could create a carve-out for amateurish for-fun operations but let's not bleat for full blown commercial operations - there's no inequity here./me puts on my flame-retardant helmet
"1. Someone investigating pedophiles will pick up a lot of child porn. Certainly police investigating a child porn ring will have to trade and download files to get in. That doesn't make his story less credible."
It does actually. In the UK, and I presume everywhere else, possession of indecent images of children is a crime in itself. There's no vigilante exemption for it.
"2. Even if he was a pedophile who chickened out and talked to the police, that means that he was unwilling to go through with his plan- i.e. he's less dangerous than the rest of them. Furthermore, by co-operating with the police he should get a reduced sentence.".
He didn't get credit for confessing it because the *jury* found his defence unconvincing. You don't know for instance how many pictures he had. With reference to co-operating on the facts, actually he did get credit for it on the sentence.
IIAL.
That's barmy. The subject of the article is the control and of course the control is only designed to address what it's errr designed to address. If you design a control to address issue X (convicted sex offenders) then what's the point of shouting "but it doesn't stop Y does it????". Of course it doesn't - it's not connected to that!
That wasn't the point of *this* reply which was to correct the parent's incorrect suggestion. (Parent scored 2, I scored 1 (despite being factually correct to his total supposition which had nothing to do with the realities of the case) and you score 2 for your fair-enough questioning my reply - how the *hell* does that work???).
However to your question, I posted this reply; http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=220896&cid=179 06514 which does answer it. Again it scores 1 when it actually is the first post that counters the topic poster on why this has some value. Dunno what I've done to piss off the moderators but this is just silly!
Several posters have fundamentally rather missed the point. The Sex Offenders Register creates an ongoing supervisory framework for convicted sex offenders for a number of years. No-one is suggesting this because they naively believe that registered sex offenders could not create alternative online ID's. The point is firstly that it will create an obligation on them which is testable by pulling ISP / IRC / Messenger / Whatever records to see if they have used ID's other than those declared *for any purpose whatsoever*. If they have and they are on notice of the stipulations, there is a justifiable presumption and a case in fact that they have broken the conditions of their parole and can be returned to jail.
This isn't supposed to be a magic lantern that will suddenly turn up sex offenders using declared ID's to do things they shouldn't (and which they are already prohibited from) - that would be incredibly stupid although it may happen occasionally. There is an element of uncontrollable compulsion in many sex offenders and this would give them another mental prompt everytime they log in with an ID that is registered that they are being watched, but more so that if they are thinking about creating an ID which is not declared, that they better think hard about doing so because the penalties are there. It is probably easier for some to be mentally warned off at this earlier point than to freely allow convicted sex offenders to keep on creating new ID's and possibly give in to compulsion that "they'll never find out this was me" when they've got into a conversation with someone which has progressed to a dangerous stage. Combine it with a keystroke logger and perhaps you'll be heading off *some* trouble.
This is about behavioural control more than anything and talking about aliaising and all that is really rather irrelevant. It's an incremental improvement, not a panacea, but it does have some value.
"What really bugs me is that of the three men they arrested, one of them, David Beavan, was a vigilante trying to stop child abuse who told the police about the plot. This man was also sentanced to 8 years for conspiracy to commit rape. I have no problem with them arresting him for some other charge- what he was doing was questionable, and I'm sure violates laws about entrapment, child porn distribution, etc. I think it's pretty clear, though, that he wasn't going to rape little girls like the others were planning to."
No that's not correct. That is what his defence was. However the police and jury didn't believe him, rather probably not least because as the judge said ""All three of you were found to be in possession of very many photographs of children, some of them... very shocking." i.e. Beavan had them on his home PC - not at all compatible with being a mere vigilante trying to set up others. For this reason, Beavan got ELEVEN years, and the others eight. He was a paedo who lost his nerve and went to the police. Best to RTFCT (Read The (ahem)*Factual* Court Transcript)......
Wow seriously people! Let the record show that I am not some do-good-namby-pampy-political-correctness-twonk. But seriously there's a total overload of call-centre and the perennially unfunny Indian vs Native Indian joke (so over so 300 yrs old) that makes this look bad. I mean for heavens sake could you possibly ditch the outsourcing prejudice and actually focus on the issue in hand?
Anyone who doesn't actually get that the two growth powerhouses of the next 20 years will be China and India and understand why investors pump money into *growth* prospects not doing-it-already economies needs to go back to fairly early high-school economics. The posters who say "I am here and the roads are shit so they'll never make it" are the sort of head-in-the-sand neo-colonialist observers that ever underestimated the ability of growth economies on the grounds of well, naivety.
Here's a clue - spot a single investment bank in the world (one of which is my paymaster for my sins) that isn't majoring on "Chindia". Wonder why that is? Or is your cod economic and cultural chalk-drawing more likely to be the case?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right that £329 is about $650 on xe.com etc today. However it's a bit misleading when it comes to product. In Blighty here we have always suffered in the transatlantic stakes - new kit is always significantly more expensive than the USD/GBP exchange rate would infer. This is frequently illustrated in the UK press as being indicative of 'Rip off Britain'. I very strongly suspect this holds in the reverse here too. Given how weak the dollar is, I seriously don't expect them to be charging $650 for it in the US - it'll be cheaper.
Don't confuse the reasonableness, or lack of it, with the issue of refusing to follow the instructions of a police officer several times in a row. Its the latter that is the issue and although the subject matter of his banner seems to me to be entirely reasonable, they will take into account his lack of compliance with a police order as contributing to public disorder.
Since the 15 year old boy is looking for advice, it should be noted that the case has been referred to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) whose job is to decide whether there is a viable case to answer here or whether to proceed 'is in the public interest' before committing it to court. My advice to him (and IAFL - oh dear there goes the karma) is to relax and work with Liberty who have lawyers on their staff. I *strongly* suspect the CPS will drop this given the description of Scientology as a cult by the judge the boy quoted. Only reason they wouldn't would be that he refused to take down the sign having been asked several times. GL!
What supports your point even more is that one doesn't even have to hypothesise about people copying Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself took almost all of the essential stories for his work from earlier pieces which was utterly prevelent at the time. You quote a hypothetical copying of Hamlet, well actually quite a lot of people think that Shakespeare copied an earlier piece http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Hamlet . What Shakespeare did do was often materially tweak the story (King Lear is a good example) to better construction and then of course add language that was unparalleled. Although he did lift a few lines verbatim as well from other plays. Bill Bryson's short book on Shakespeare gives a great overview.
Total bullshit to your "The point of being a musician, or another kind of artist, is to share the art, not to make a profit" as some A/B type of proposition. It's not like that for 99.9% of artists in such simplistic binary terms at all as evidenced be the fact that every single named musician, artist and actor you know takes a pay packet. They want to do *both*. The quantuum of pay to artistic value is much more complex question which many of those artists have a long and intense debate about, but the sort of blandishment you propose here is just not made out at all....
(You do however get some marvellous Sirens, Giants, Cannibals, generally hopped up gods and a lot of bad wind) :)
We use RSA two-factor ID key-fobs. My password is an 8+ didgit standard chain of numbers which I set to which you then add another 8 numbers generated by the key-fob which are changed every minute. Each fob is unique and about the length of a matchbox and one third of its width. http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=1156
If you are 'buying into' an author you've never read before this is going to put more possible stumbling blocks in the way. Both Snowcrash and Diamond Age have cracking stories that I think would be a bit more accessible to Stephenson novices first time out. You're going to want to read all three (and the others) anyway so I'd start out simpler. Alternatively grab anything by him you fancy - I can't help with your Bad Impulse Control.
You are right that five physicists who actually know enough about the subject would be an awesome find. But since the poster is asking for guidance on what to see I suspect what would be even more awesome for them is a technically very able physicist who can translate their knowledge into plain english. If there is one thing that would spread the influence of science more than today, it is that rare ability to make it understandable to the general populace.
'The phenomenon is called corona wind'.... Hell how's that news? Corona's been giving me wind for years.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(beer)
Not once your wife finds out about your girlfriend you won't be.... :)
Just to add to your bafflement I'm in the UK on a UK IP. It's personal!
Read your comment and then tried the link - it works. Must have been a temporary glitch.
Slashdot reader. Claims friday romping with 'GF' for 30 minutes. Clearly an excellling fantasist as well as a budding economist.....
Paul McGuiness is a 20% equal 1/5th member of U2 with the other members of the band since their earliest days when Bono couldn't even sing properly (pre 'Boy' single version of 'Twilight' anyone? Like someone dropping a ten ton weigh on a moose's foot - what a yelp!). The point of TFA is clear enough. He's a bit cack-handed in suggesting a particular commercial solution but he fully discloses it up front in the speech. (BTW Modding someone to +5 for pointing out something that someone has already disclosed in the speech????? That's the ultimate endorsement for not RTFA!!). But the point of discussion is the principle of what he's saying so lets move on.
U2 have more money than god. Easy to have a pop at them for being so rich. Whatever. No really because this argument also applies to a band with more debt than god on first album release too.
There is a distinction in law between theft and copying / breaching copyright, definitely. Emotive use of 'stealing' will always bring out those who want to make the correct distinction.
However, if you have ever been in a band on a deal releasing commercial product, like I have, then the stuff you put out is your shit which you sweated blood and tears over. If you understand that someone is copying it and not paying you (ultimately) for it, I can tell you it feels without doubt like someone is 'stealing' your shit even if that's not technically correct as a term. That's what it feels like. You can choose to promote, do radio play, give away cd's, play free shows, do whatever you want but if you've put something out for commercial sale it should be respected as such and paid for.
There isn't a games writer, app developer, music producer, fim director, visual artist, comic book artist, actor or writer who *if* they choose to release commercially doesn't want to get paid for their work. That's the definition of why you release something commercially. And they have a right to getting paid for it in civil law everywhere. For all the gloriousness of the interweb and getting hold of material you couldn't otherwise afford or find in a shop or whatever, copying and enjoying the produce of these people without paying when you know that was the basis on which they put it out there IS morally and legally WRONG. It would be really refreshing if a significant maj^H^H^inority of Slashdot readers could at least admit this basic point instead of getting into this mob-justification that somehow that is not the case.
F$*! the RIAA and all the brown-shirted jack-booted ways of enforcement that exist. I'm never up for that. But what the bloke is suggesting is trying to improve the ability of artists in the broadest possible sense to get paid for stuff they release commercially. And that's what those artists all want - they really do. Those that don't can opt out of releasing commercially - you can release for free, you can do all of that.
It would just be nice to see a bit of balance about this and to stick a hand up for reality. With that I shall watch my mod points fall through the floor. The partisan one-sidedness of the +5's on this issue undermine the quality of debate on this issue. I don't have to be 'right' (whatever that means) but its pretty bad when all the argument is one way....
Some of the god-squad's belief in divine inspiration is rather more pronounced than the way you put it. The Jewish tradition which underpins the belief in the divine inspiration of the bible is that god was directly involved in writing the content of the Torah (the first few books of the old testament). For this reason jewish scholars have sort for centuries to investigate supposed hidden codes in the Torah (and no this isn't just a Dan Browne plot). The idea is that god directly inspired *and controlled* the way the Torah was written. It doesn't really stand up if you say that god communicated it but then somehow, weirdly, humans screwed up it up. The end product wouldn't be something inspired by god. And god being god wouldn't let that stand and would sort the accuracy stuff out would he? So you've got a bit of a logic loop here. Your fundamental argument has to be with the idea that god was involved or not rather than to suggest human beings fallibly implemented it.
How the hell did this get to +4 informative? I would have thought you were trolling or being sar-car-stic about the Saudia Arabia comment but then you go and say, factually, correctly, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 (which it didn't) and very simplistically that Pakistan is not our ally(sic). Lets be charitable and suggest you should have emoted to make this clear. Just in case (and I pray to god I've got this wrong) you meant that straight, it would show a breath-taking lack of understanding of the pro-American stance Saudi Arabia the nation takes (and for whom Bin Laden is a massive dissident) and a breath-taking lack of understanding of the same point in Pakistan. Do you think that Bhutto went back for non-democratic reasons or that those 140 people died because the people doing the bombing were not trying to fuck up the democratic imperative? These are complex countries with complex dynamics and the proportion of people in them who represent the extremists are very low.
'Joking' (great joke - are you here all week?) about dropping a nuke on anyone is just stupid. But you know that right because you were only kidding. Right? Right???!
Well to deal with two points here; i) Retroactive / retrospective legislation is a complete no no of any principled system. In this case IAAFL and I detest the occasional breaches of principle we see here. Quite incredible for anyone to suggest it should not be so. ii) Re taking care of the little guys - we need to. There's a size test in so many aspects of online coverage that has to be put in place. Once the drones get up to speed, we'll get there.....
Ok well here's talking yourself into the jaws of the lion on Slashdot and IANFRWW (I am no &*@!ing Right Wing Wan&#&!) but I struggle to see why this is inappropriate. The content of these stations is the music. The value of the station to advertisers is the number of people who are going to listen to it AND those stations use those stats to price their ads with the ad providers. Paying pay-per-track rather than pay-per-listener is clearly inequitable when the stations themselves earn money on a per listener basis. Hopefully they could create a carve-out for amateurish for-fun operations but let's not bleat for full blown commercial operations - there's no inequity here. /me puts on my flame-retardant helmet
"1. Someone investigating pedophiles will pick up a lot of child porn. Certainly police investigating a child porn ring will have to trade and download files to get in. That doesn't make his story less credible."
It does actually. In the UK, and I presume everywhere else, possession of indecent images of children is a crime in itself. There's no vigilante exemption for it. "2. Even if he was a pedophile who chickened out and talked to the police, that means that he was unwilling to go through with his plan- i.e. he's less dangerous than the rest of them. Furthermore, by co-operating with the police he should get a reduced sentence.".
He didn't get credit for confessing it because the *jury* found his defence unconvincing. You don't know for instance how many pictures he had. With reference to co-operating on the facts, actually he did get credit for it on the sentence. IIAL.
That's barmy. The subject of the article is the control and of course the control is only designed to address what it's errr designed to address. If you design a control to address issue X (convicted sex offenders) then what's the point of shouting "but it doesn't stop Y does it????". Of course it doesn't - it's not connected to that!
That wasn't the point of *this* reply which was to correct the parent's incorrect suggestion. (Parent scored 2, I scored 1 (despite being factually correct to his total supposition which had nothing to do with the realities of the case) and you score 2 for your fair-enough questioning my reply - how the *hell* does that work???).
9 06514 which does answer it. Again it scores 1 when it actually is the first post that counters the topic poster on why this has some value. Dunno what I've done to piss off the moderators but this is just silly!
However to your question, I posted this reply; http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=220896&cid=17
Several posters have fundamentally rather missed the point. The Sex Offenders Register creates an ongoing supervisory framework for convicted sex offenders for a number of years. No-one is suggesting this because they naively believe that registered sex offenders could not create alternative online ID's. The point is firstly that it will create an obligation on them which is testable by pulling ISP / IRC / Messenger / Whatever records to see if they have used ID's other than those declared *for any purpose whatsoever*. If they have and they are on notice of the stipulations, there is a justifiable presumption and a case in fact that they have broken the conditions of their parole and can be returned to jail.
This isn't supposed to be a magic lantern that will suddenly turn up sex offenders using declared ID's to do things they shouldn't (and which they are already prohibited from) - that would be incredibly stupid although it may happen occasionally. There is an element of uncontrollable compulsion in many sex offenders and this would give them another mental prompt everytime they log in with an ID that is registered that they are being watched, but more so that if they are thinking about creating an ID which is not declared, that they better think hard about doing so because the penalties are there. It is probably easier for some to be mentally warned off at this earlier point than to freely allow convicted sex offenders to keep on creating new ID's and possibly give in to compulsion that "they'll never find out this was me" when they've got into a conversation with someone which has progressed to a dangerous stage. Combine it with a keystroke logger and perhaps you'll be heading off *some* trouble.
This is about behavioural control more than anything and talking about aliaising and all that is really rather irrelevant. It's an incremental improvement, not a panacea, but it does have some value.
"What really bugs me is that of the three men they arrested, one of them, David Beavan, was a vigilante trying to stop child abuse who told the police about the plot. This man was also sentanced to 8 years for conspiracy to commit rape. I have no problem with them arresting him for some other charge- what he was doing was questionable, and I'm sure violates laws about entrapment, child porn distribution, etc. I think it's pretty clear, though, that he wasn't going to rape little girls like the others were planning to."
... very shocking." i.e. Beavan had them on his home PC - not at all compatible with being a mere vigilante trying to set up others. For this reason, Beavan got ELEVEN years, and the others eight. He was a paedo who lost his nerve and went to the police. Best to RTFCT (Read The (ahem)*Factual* Court Transcript)......
No that's not correct. That is what his defence was. However the police and jury didn't believe him, rather probably not least because as the judge said ""All three of you were found to be in possession of very many photographs of children, some of them
Anyone who doesn't actually get that the two growth powerhouses of the next 20 years will be China and India and understand why investors pump money into *growth* prospects not doing-it-already economies needs to go back to fairly early high-school economics. The posters who say "I am here and the roads are shit so they'll never make it" are the sort of head-in-the-sand neo-colonialist observers that ever underestimated the ability of growth economies on the grounds of well, naivety.
Here's a clue - spot a single investment bank in the world (one of which is my paymaster for my sins) that isn't majoring on "Chindia". Wonder why that is? Or is your cod economic and cultural chalk-drawing more likely to be the case?