When are they gonna learn to adopt a new distribution system rather than beat it with fancy lawyers.
They'll learn when their lawsuits stop discouraging people, or when Napster goes back to being free, whichever happens first. But I'm not holding my breath on either one happening. I know music and movie downloads still continue, and I know that where there's a will to pirate content (or just exercise fair use in a way that isn't profitable to the rights holders), there's a way. It would be stupid, though, to pretend that downloaders are still enjoying the unfettered use that they had in, say, 1999.
Dude . . . I am totally showing up unshowered, in animal pelts, and carrying a big wooden club.
Re:No matter how careful you are, you aren't enoug
on
ID Theft Made Easy
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· Score: 1
I used Westlaw (a competitor of LexisNexis) last night to track down a family member's mailing address. I tried the company he owns in part first, but he wasn't one of their registered agents. Then I remembered that he has a private pilots' license and got him through the FAA database.
Now, I'm a law student. I have my free subscription just for having been accepted to law school, which in many places is not hard to achieve. I can't say I've ever used the FAA pilots database for any educational purpose. But I can go there and download the names and licensing status of thousands of people, searching by geographic area and more. I'm not the only one; there are tens of thousands of students like me with access to that information. Nobody's ever asked me how I feel about Al Qaeda. Nobody's asked me if I've been indicted for fraud since I got accepted to law school. And, as far as I know, there's absolutely nothing my uncle and those like him could have done to keep me away from that information.
Personally, I'm intimidated enough by what the IRS can do to me for just messing up my own taxes. I shudder to think what could happen to someone giving bad tax guidance to thousands of people.
will even dedict lightweight objects like motorcycles
But not, alas, bicycles. There's one redlight back at my alma mater that doesn't turn unless you trip the sensor; it was either run it, or wait half an hour for a car to show up.
I can only hope someone does
on
Internet Hunting
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I hope someone does write an aimbot.
Part of responsible, real-life hunting is taking responsibility for your crappy shots. If you wound an animal but don't fell it, you need to track it down and put it out of its misery. Period.
What happens when John Q. Callous hits his target in a slow death spot from a thousand miles away? Who's going to make sure that the animal doesn't crawl into a hole and suffer for hours until it dies?
Me personally, I'm crap with a gun even if I've had hours to practice with it. How many n00b fools are going to try this with neither the means nor the inclination to make a humane kill?
Try sponsoring a design contest at Worth1000. You'll get several people submitting entries that way, in a wide range of styles. You can arrange to get the use rights to the images free and clear. It's not that expensive, and you won't even have to leave the house.
Without a special port of call out in the void, the ride has to be the attraction. And if that's the case, a stretch limo service would be a better business model than a cruise line would be. Imagine if you could show up to your high school reunion in one of those puppies . . .
Find a way to put this capability into a Lear jet or similar. Make it one helluva a status symbol. Then, it won't matter so much how many ordinary people use the service, so much as it will matter *how many* of the filthy rich can boast of using it.
Just secure a thick sheet of glass/lexan/plexiglass between the pictures and the people!
You could do that in movie theaters to prevent bootleggers, but think of the outrage that would generate in the viewing public.
Now, replace "movie theaters" with "The Louvre" and "viewing public" with "art world" and imagine the uproar. Not to be a total elitist snob, but isn't it a much greater loss to culture to be cut off from appreciating the nuances of the great masters than to miss a frame of Pamela Anderson's "Bikini Car Chase 7"?
Re:Install a embedded GPS device and let them stea
on
Securing Pricelessness
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah, but thieves often cut paintings free of their frames to make them easier to move, hide, etc. It's kind of a lost cause to bug a painting, unless you put the locator in an indispensable part of the canvas itself, and I don't think many curators would do that to a pricless masterpiece.
Plus, to bring it back to someone else's point, most major art thefts are going to involve ginormous insurance liabilities. Those insurance companies don't want to encourage wary thieves to go poking through the Mona Lisa with a pair of tweezers.
IANAL is a great acronym, but we need a new one for situations like this. I'm thinking it ought to be IANYL - I am not your lawyer.
Reading a law-talking book can be enough for some things, like getting out of a parking ticket or releasing a very simple piece of software. But it's not a substitute for having your own lawyer.
Just because something's properly GPL'd doesn't mean it's sue-proof, and there's a lot more to litigation than just the substantive law at issue.
For instance, imagine such a bot making a sandwich, and then cleaning your toilette...
And be sure to imagine it completing those actions in exactly that order. No one's been able to teach good kitchen hygiene to cockroaches yet, be they 'bots or bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
When are they gonna learn to adopt a new distribution system rather than beat it with fancy lawyers.
They'll learn when their lawsuits stop discouraging people, or when Napster goes back to being free, whichever happens first. But I'm not holding my breath on either one happening. I know music and movie downloads still continue, and I know that where there's a will to pirate content (or just exercise fair use in a way that isn't profitable to the rights holders), there's a way. It would be stupid, though, to pretend that downloaders are still enjoying the unfettered use that they had in, say, 1999.
Dude . . . I am totally showing up unshowered, in animal pelts, and carrying a big wooden club.
I used Westlaw (a competitor of LexisNexis) last night to track down a family member's mailing address. I tried the company he owns in part first, but he wasn't one of their registered agents. Then I remembered that he has a private pilots' license and got him through the FAA database.
Now, I'm a law student. I have my free subscription just for having been accepted to law school, which in many places is not hard to achieve. I can't say I've ever used the FAA pilots database for any educational purpose. But I can go there and download the names and licensing status of thousands of people, searching by geographic area and more. I'm not the only one; there are tens of thousands of students like me with access to that information. Nobody's ever asked me how I feel about Al Qaeda. Nobody's asked me if I've been indicted for fraud since I got accepted to law school. And, as far as I know, there's absolutely nothing my uncle and those like him could have done to keep me away from that information.
Personally, I'm intimidated enough by what the IRS can do to me for just messing up my own taxes. I shudder to think what could happen to someone giving bad tax guidance to thousands of people.
When he gomes out with a robot with out wheels, then I will be impressed. (It also has to move, no cheating.) The next one will have treads!
I could never accept that Slate had genuine editorial independence from Microsoft.
Slate did recommend Firefox over IE.
will even dedict lightweight objects like motorcycles
But not, alas, bicycles. There's one redlight back at my alma mater that doesn't turn unless you trip the sensor; it was either run it, or wait half an hour for a car to show up.
I hope someone does write an aimbot.
Part of responsible, real-life hunting is taking responsibility for your crappy shots. If you wound an animal but don't fell it, you need to track it down and put it out of its misery. Period.
What happens when John Q. Callous hits his target in a slow death spot from a thousand miles away? Who's going to make sure that the animal doesn't crawl into a hole and suffer for hours until it dies?
Me personally, I'm crap with a gun even if I've had hours to practice with it. How many n00b fools are going to try this with neither the means nor the inclination to make a humane kill?
Try sponsoring a design contest at Worth1000. You'll get several people submitting entries that way, in a wide range of styles. You can arrange to get the use rights to the images free and clear. It's not that expensive, and you won't even have to leave the house.
Without a special port of call out in the void, the ride has to be the attraction. And if that's the case, a stretch limo service would be a better business model than a cruise line would be. Imagine if you could show up to your high school reunion in one of those puppies . . .
Find a way to put this capability into a Lear jet or similar. Make it one helluva a status symbol. Then, it won't matter so much how many ordinary people use the service, so much as it will matter *how many* of the filthy rich can boast of using it.
Just secure a thick sheet of glass/lexan/plexiglass between the pictures and the people!
You could do that in movie theaters to prevent bootleggers, but think of the outrage that would generate in the viewing public.
Now, replace "movie theaters" with "The Louvre" and "viewing public" with "art world" and imagine the uproar. Not to be a total elitist snob, but isn't it a much greater loss to culture to be cut off from appreciating the nuances of the great masters than to miss a frame of Pamela Anderson's "Bikini Car Chase 7"?
Yeah, but thieves often cut paintings free of their frames to make them easier to move, hide, etc. It's kind of a lost cause to bug a painting, unless you put the locator in an indispensable part of the canvas itself, and I don't think many curators would do that to a pricless masterpiece.
Plus, to bring it back to someone else's point, most major art thefts are going to involve ginormous insurance liabilities. Those insurance companies don't want to encourage wary thieves to go poking through the Mona Lisa with a pair of tweezers.
You haven't been on Westlaw or Lexis lately, have you? Those services implement search features that I can only dream about on Google.
IANAL is a great acronym, but we need a new one for situations like this. I'm thinking it ought to be IANYL - I am not your lawyer.
Reading a law-talking book can be enough for some things, like getting out of a parking ticket or releasing a very simple piece of software. But it's not a substitute for having your own lawyer.
Just because something's properly GPL'd doesn't mean it's sue-proof, and there's a lot more to litigation than just the substantive law at issue.
For instance, imagine such a bot making a sandwich, and then cleaning your toilette...
And be sure to imagine it completing those actions in exactly that order. No one's been able to teach good kitchen hygiene to cockroaches yet, be they 'bots or bugs.
Everquest: good practice for those 36 hour shifts during residency.
That's no excuse! There's now a speaking version of Emacs for the blind.
And for Vi users, in both Linux and Windows, there's screen reading software like Jaws and Speakup.
Blind != cut off from the text-based world