Not unless you (or someone else) has a web page which explicitely links the two. I don't know about you, but my home phone number isn't listed on any websites, and certainly not next to my name or address.
And if you've willingly and voluntarily linked the two, in a publicly-searchable resource like the web, what are you complaining about privacy for? In addition, if someone else has put up a page with your personal information on it without your premission, I think this is a pretty clear violation of various Data Protection laws, so you could probably (and probably quite successfully) sue.
Besides, this whole point it moot - the GGP was complaining about people being able to see a picture of his house on-line, not people being able to link phone numbers to addresses - that was pretty irrelevant to his complaint.
People who crack Windows boxen while bungee jumping? Releasing IIS worms from a wi-fi enabled handheld in a canoe half-way down some whitewater rapids?
Or, y'know, just yet another pathetic attempt to make something fundamentally known and understood sound suddenly somehow exciting and dangerous?
Oh, and for reference? The "Extreme Hacker" your link's about was a 37 year-old script kiddie who Haxx0red Us government machines direct from his own home connection.
You couldn't get stupider (and less '1ee7) if you tried...
I think what the parent and GGP were getting at was the record for "Oldest Uninterrupted Current Democratic System" - ie, of all the current democratic governments, which one started first.
"the US is after all the oldest democracy in the world"
The rest of the post was relatively well-argued and lucid, but this... Dude, what have you been smoking?
Do USians really believe this? Has america really become so insular that even apparently-intelligent, eloquent citizens think they and their ~300 year-old country invented something as ancient and basic as democracy?
And, of course (despite the fact I agree with the rest of what you said), you do realise you've just negated any good points you made by demonstrating clearly you have no idea what you're talking about, right?
"I don't know about the rest of you, but how about a little privacy?"
What, you consider un-personally-attributable images merely of your building to be a privacy violation?
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but your privacy is being violated hundreds of times a day - they're called passers-by. You might want to spend some time on the corner of your lot with paper head-bags and a persuasive smile.
"There will be a great deal of abuse here. Imagine some girl gives out her phone number, or some guy finds it in a phone book."
Ignoring the sheer difficulty of doing reverse-lookups from phone number to address (which is made intentionally hard, for this very reason)...
"They find the address, they map it out. They even know what bushes to hide behind. Neat, tech helping pervs."
Right, and they can't do this with... oh, I dunno... a paper map? Or by, you know, walking past the house once or twice?
"I can see the mafia use this technology too. What to kill someone? How about a little research first. Lets see what roads lead to his house and away."
Right, 'cause the Mafia are always bumping off people left, right and centre round where I live. How about you?
And face it, any hitman or criminal who plans his crimes without first thoroughly casing the joint in real life first is a fucking retard.
And someone that fucking stupid is going to be caught pretty soon anyway when they realise sniper rifles don't flush.
You know, it's just occurred that you might be trolling - congrats if so, I utterly fell for it.
And a belt to strap down that jerking knee of yours.
Jesus Christ on a crutch - why is it everything in the US now has to be defined in terms of its potential utility to terrorism? Other countries have been putting up with terrorism for years (often with the US's implicit or explicit approval) without reigning in basic human rights like privacy and freedom, but the second you have a large-scale foreign terrorist action on the US mainland suddenly the FBI can unilaterally read your mail and harsh language is banned in case it's used by Teh Terr0ri5ts!!!!
Even after 9/11, you're still hundreds of thousands of times more likely to die in a car crash than from terrorist action. Why aren't you worrying about the implications of allowing anyone to buy a car without a background check, fingerprinting, surgically-embedded RFID tag and rectal swab on file?
Indeed... I also thought some parts of the article were rather... forgiving of Microsoft...?
"People blamed Microsoft, but let's try a reality check: did administrators really need more than six months to install an update? Yeah, it was Microsoft programmers who wrote the buggy code, but were they any different than most programmers at that time?"
Well yes. Linux/Unix/FLOSS apps didn't have a fraction of the security problems, and those were fixed faster and better. And for the inevitable apologist who mentions relative market share I have three words: "IIS vs Apache".
"Were they not just a reflection of society's attitude about security?"
No, they were a reflection of Microsoft's attitudes about society, that Microsoft's users had (wrongly) adopted. Unix/Linux had a perfectly good security model all this time, and all this time Unix/Linux "society" was laughing and tutting at Microsoft's.
"Besides, a large part of this code was written half a decade before, when security was an enhancement, not a user requirement. Administrators at the time were just lazy. Or lame."
And who educated the users and lead their expectations? Microsoft. And "administrators" weren't lazy, Unix/Linuix admins were generally fine - when was the last time we had a Apache or *nix-specific worm?
"The problem was that back then you couldn't just go to WindowsUpdate and see what hotfixes you needed to install."
Whose fault?
"You had to go through the entire list of fixes one-by-one and make sense of it all."
Whose fault?
"To make things worse, Microsoft had distributed enough buggy hotfixes by then to make administrators wary of installing anything too quickly."
So, whose fault?
"We have to admit that Microsoft's patching strategy was truly a mess at that time. Nothing was consistent and there seemed to be little communication anywhere."
Right! So whose fault is it? You've just got through trying to blame the administrators, but is it their fault Microsoft's patching system was crap? The users' fault they had a pathetic security model, then banged out shitty bug-ridden "fixes"?
Disclosure: I'm not a Linux/Unix freak (I don't even run a Linux box), but I do know a non-sequiteur when I see one. And I've got a keen nose for bullshit, too.
"WHoa re you and what have you done being reasonable on/.;)"
Heh, many thanks. I just don't see the point in sticking to your position if you think about it and decide there's a better one. In a choice between Consistent and Right I'd rather be Right...;-)
"[Broken windscreens are] not necessarily illegal."
This is a bit more serious in the UK, IIRC - cracks/breaks can block the driver's view of the road and massively reduce the structural integrity of the windscreen (and hence, surprisingly, the entire car), and since it's so hard to draw the line at which "a few cracks" becomes "a serious hazard", you aren't (again, IIRC) supposed to have even a single chip. True, the video wasn't shot in the UK, but I just assumed that it was the same in the US - no?
"Actually we don't know that [she was talking on a mobile while driving]... I suspect you watched the video that started with [her on the phone]"
Yes I did - did the other videos below have additional footage? Fair play then - that changes a lot...
"Here, DWP (Driving Without Privileges) is a misdemeanor."
Wow, really? If you were driving without a licence in the UK you'd likely be taken down the station, charged and at least fined or given community service.
Is it really no big deal in the US that people could be driving over a ton of metal, at high speeds, with no proven ability to control it, around pedestrians?
And a nip-slip at a football game is that big a deal? Sometimes I doubt I'll ever understand US culture;-)
"What's your name? What's your name What's your name? I've asked you three f*ing times! You have had no time to respond. Around here, the cops are taught to give plenty of time for compliance and have been hit hard for not doing so."
Again though, she doesn't even make an attempt to answer the question (even talking over him). And if you listen to her talking during the video she hardly sounds terrified into silence - annoyed, obnoxious, unhelpful... and surprised and apprehensive when she sees the Tazer, but she hardly sounds terrified to me.
"In non-violent cases such as this there is no cause for rapid requirements."
How do you know? This is outside the context of the video - IIRC all we see is the cop approach the car. We have no idea how she'd been driving before she was stopped, how long it had taken to get her to pull over, or anything else about the greater context. I'm not arguing we should forgive the cop everything because we don't know, but it's easy to play armchair quarterback when you're not the one on the spot...
"Here is where we will have to disagree. You are describing a prime characteristic of a police state: cops can arrest you on their whim. That is wrong, dead wrong. Here we are taught different. Being mouthy, and standing up for what you beleive to be your rights is part of who we are, not being a sheep "for dah man"."
Not at all - you're letting your countercultural values and assumptions blind you. My point was that, given she's broken the law (speeding, cracked windscreen, broken taillight, etc, etc, etc), the cop has a certain leeway in deciding whether to write her up for it or not.
In this situation, it's not standing up for your rights to give them attitude, it's fucking stupid.
I believe in standing up for your rights as much as the next guy, but when you've just been caught (red-handed!) breaking the law, to aggressively provoke the cop who caught you is just counterproductive.
"Lack of respect is irrelevant, nor is it criminal."
No, but in the situation it is fucking stupid. And it does serve to unhelpfully escalate the confrontation. Especially when you're totally and utterly in the wrong, and both parties know it. You broke the law, you got caught, grow up and deal with it - don't be petulant
You've got some good points, and you've certainly made me reassess what I saw in the video. I wasn't saying the cop(s) couldn't have handled it in a more constructive way, but I was disputing the way the video was presented by the original poster.
However, there are still several things that make this at least 50% her fault, in my opinion - these are mostly judgement calls and guesswork, but I find it hard to be sympathetic to someone so obviously asking for trouble.
Regardless of the cops' response, she was doing nearly twice the speed limit. She did have a broken windscreen. She did have broken taillights. She was talking on a mobile while driving (I dunno, maybe it's considered more serious over here in the UK), and she didn't ring off when they started talking to her, which is pretty much common courtesy, and blatantly provocative to someone who can take you down the station and book you, solely at their discretion. She also didn't get out of the car when they asked, repeatedly.
Finally, regarding arrest, exiting the vehicle and drawing Tazers, given all the above infractions and the monsterous amount of attitude, she obviously hasn't got a huge amount of respect for the law, even when she's clearly in the wrong, and clearly endangering others (speeding and dodgy mechanics in the car are not victimless crime).
In this sort of situation, would it be proper procedure to get the person out of the car before arresting them (and possibly provoking them to flee), or would you let them know they're definitely in trouble which will definitely have consequences while they're sat, ready and waiting in their getaway vehicle?
Having seen footage of officers being dragged along by runaway drivers they'd tried to stop, I'd ask her nicely to get out of the car, then be ready to draw the Tazer at the first hint she might be combatative or likely to flee.
As I said, it seems to be a judgement call, and while I might have been a little harsh on her in the GP, I still think she escalated the situation nicely on her own. The cops could have responded more gently, but if you create a provocative and tense situation, don't complain if someone's provoked or tense...
Heh. I was speaking specifically about congressmen/senators/MPs, etc. Maybe my idealism's showing, but I find it hard to believe they're all that corrupt. Or all that stupid.
You'd get more respect and sympathy if you hadn't claimed to have bought a successful niche business, abandoned your regular clientele, decided to compete with enormous multinational store-chains, stocked shitty Christian Rock that nobody (relatively speaking) wants to listen to, and run the company into the ground. You're clearly the fuckwit here, so you're less likely to garner that empathy so essential to a successful troll.
Nice attempt at igniting side-fires by disparaging and stereotyping controversial bands though, but it's been done to death. Oh, and you'd be better off targeting Eminem and the like - scapegoating Marilyn Manson and "cop-killer" rappers is soooo 90s...
Oh, and you'd be better to do some more hand-waving when blaming your store's decline on filesharing - the unsupported non-sequiteur stands out like a sore thumb, especially after you've just finished telling us how you personally ran the company into the ground.
The whole scene in the store is too badly-written. No-one's stupid enough to plan piracy out-loud in front of the store owner, and 99.999% of people who share music don't plan it as a premeditated act either - they rip the songs, then "might as well" share them. The dialogue is also truly awful - get some writing skills, for Christ's sake... and nobody would admit to the fucking owner they were planning to pirate music, even if they were
Nice mis-spelling of "'Leet" though - it suggests you only overheard it, although you go an blow it by adding a [sic] afterwards.
Full marks for advocating a National Register Of Pirates - it's completely useless (since you'd never be able to administrate the millions of filesharers and would in effect be banning a large proportion of the population), but sounds feasible, so it's exactly the type of stupid, half-arsed idea that's liable to be seriously promoted by someone at some point.
Lastly, lose the whole maudlin part about your poor shoeless children - it's cheap tacky sentimentalism, and doesn't fool anyone.
I'd give this troll a C-... Lots of good ideas, but ultimately let down by a poor execution...
Copyright was intended to temporarily reward the artist, to encourage them to produce art.
(s/innovator/innovations/ but it's all the same).
Artists do not commonly live for 100 years. Especially not 100 years from when they produce the work that gets them the most praise.
Even if the artist got 100% of the royalties from the copyright, extending it past the artist's natural lifetime is meaningless.
In addition, even compensating the artist for their entire natural lifetime is counter-productive, since it removes the driving force (according to traditional wisdom, above) behind their production or art. If you're singing to eat, then giving you all the money you'll ever need reduces your need to sing. This is the exact opposite of what copyright is intended for.
Finally, artists commonly don't even get 10% of the profits from their work. Why? Because the copyright is usually owned by a large corporation, which had no hand whatsoever in the creative, artistic work. They simply publicise the artist and distribute the art, and reap 90%+ of the profits from it.
Given this state of affairs, extending copyright does nothing but feed more money to already overcompensated multinationals, while either shutting out the originating artist or (if they own their own copyright and get all the profits) discouraging them from producing further art.
This is fucking obvious. Why don't people see it?
Or are they just blinded by all those dollar bills the entertainment industry keeps piling over their heads?
"That said, did they make the right choice in selecting the Taser? It was two large, male officers versus one small woman, perhaps they could have easily subdued her physically."
I thought one of the reasons behind equipping law enforcers with Tazers was because "reasonable force" was such a huge, lawsuit-prone grey area. Tazers have (rightly or wrongly) been certified as safe and nonlethal, so from the cop's point of view they were the right thing to use. Going in, grabbing her and dragging her out of the vehicle might have hurt her less in the long term, but one single bruise and the officers would have been up to their necks in lawsuits (and listen to the precious attitude - you know she was exactly the type to file for anything).
They also mention that they'd been Tazered before themselves, so they know what it feels like. They also tell her to stop overacting, since it doesn't hurt nearly as much as she's making out.
Finally, (IIRC) chemical sprays have been implicated in deaths here in the UK (complications due to asthma, I believe) - nothing's entirely "safe" (although yes, Tazers may well be at the least-safe end of the "non-lethal" spectrum).
Let's see, she's talking on her mobile phone and speeding, with a suspended licence, which is both stupid and illegal.
The cop then asks her politely to get out of the car. She ignores him and carries on talking on her phone, which is stupid.
He asks her repeatedly to hang up and get out of the car, and she refuses. She could even get out of the car while still talking on the phone, which would at least show willing, but she doesn't. This is stupid, and (IIRC) tantamount to resisting arrest.
The cop then pulls a tazer on her, and threatens her with it twice. She hears and sees him ("he's got a gun - he's going to shoot me!"), and he clearly tells her it's a Taser, and states "If you don't get out of the car I am going to Tase you". She ignores him. This is monumentally stupid.
You can't actually see the next bit (she's still in the car), but the police officers mention later in the video that they Tazed her because she "took a swing" at one of them. Now, either she did or she didn't, but if she's driving around, speeding, with a suspended licence, and is then hostile and un-cooperative once pulled over, it's not that much of stretch to assume she did take a swing at them. At the very least, she (solely) created the tense situation where they were likely to mis-interpret any sudden movements (especially after she'd already repeatedly refused to move from the car). If she actually tried to throw a punch this is criminal, but either way it's so monumentally stupid she deserves a fucking Tazing right there.
Next she's actually Tazed. Now, I believe Tazing hurts (I've had a few big shocks from electrical projects going wrong before now, and it's highly liable to be worse), but she's moaning and whimpering in rather a theatrical manner for over five minutes, by the clock. She can also clearly walk by the end of it, and yet (off-camera) still gives the officers a hard time getting her into the car.
One of them can also be heard telling her "I told you multiple times to get out of the car and you refused to do it." She denies this (despite the fact we've just watched the whole thing). One officer also indicates they've both been Tazed before, and know she's overacting.
Now I'm as quick with the tinfoil hat as the next paranoid conspiracy-theorist, but this ain't evidence of jackbooted fascism.
This is an object lesson in why it's fucking stupid to:
Ostentatiously break the law. (Driving on a suspended licence? And speeding with it?)
Give unnecessary attitude to the officers who (legitimately) call you on it
Ignore explicit warnings when one of them waves a Tazer in your face and warns you he'll use it if necessary
Try to play the victim when they do exactly what they warned you they'd do, repeatedly, if you didn't stop unnecessarily pissing them about and acting like an abusive fucking shithead.
I've heard and seen a lot of sketchy things done in the name of Law & Order, but she brought this one entirely on herself.
As I understand it (warning: non-USAian), the 5th Ammendment only applies to testifying, and then only to speech - you'd have a hard time claiming exhaling was speech, unless you're prepared to claim "Hhhhhuuuuuhhhhhhh" is meaningful communication. And they'd probably want an unvoiced exhalation when testing you for DUI anyway.
I also don't think the 5th Ammendment applies to incriminating yourself in any way, only about testifying - I doubt you could take the fifth to avoid giving fingerprints when arrested, could you?
Now, taking away your licence for a year because you refuse to help a cop incriminate you for DUI when he has no hard evidence already, that's fscking messed up - it basically allows the police to go on fishing expeditions doing random stops and tests (tantamount to illegal stop-and-search, IMO).
That said, there isn't really any way to prove alcohol consumption without your voluntary participation (and breathalyzers don't store any identifiable data on you)... So it's basically a toss-up between "risking making you incriminate yourself before you're even charged", and "letting every single drunk-driver in the world get away with it", and with that choice I think it's the lesser of two evils...
So what you're saying is that using Gentoo's automated scripts never taught you anything, apart from where it was broken and you had to do it by hand, so LFS (which forces you to do it all by hand) won't teach you anything?
I'm not following you...
Apologies if I'm missing something (I'm not currently a Linux hacker, although LFS does look appealing in a sort of do-or-die baptism-of-fire kind of way...) but that didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me...
Not to troll, but what else should they have used?
It's not Offtopic, Flamebait (at least not intentionally, despite all the people panning it), or a Troll. It's not Redundant (because nobody else had posted a logo), but it's certainly not Insightful, Interesting, Informative or intentionally Funny. It's certainly not Underrated.
In the absence of "-1 Boring" or "-1 Not Very Good Artwork", what is there to mod it so people won't waste their time reading it?
Frankly (and apologies, Wikinerd - nothing against you), even Posting it at 1 is a bit overrated - there are plenty of Anonymous Coward posts I've read which were vastly more interesting, entertaining or informative than this one. So someone modded it Overrated - what's wrong with that?
As I recall when I was an undergrad (and, I believe when you're a postgrad), the university owns any IP you produce as part of your course (or, presumably, research). They can take it and spin it off into a separate company themselves (as often happens), and generally aren't obligated to reimburse you for the work. However, they usually do cut the actual inventor in for a slice since otherwise they'd start losing their best/most profitable researchers to other institutions that did.
On the one hand it can be a pain (the process to get permission to release a program I wrote in my first UG year was so onerous I just gave up in the end), but OTOH for non-trivial products it does afford you use of the university's contacts, advice and resources, which can be very helpful indeed.
Yeah, ok, bad phrasing. I meant "non-standard" as in even Joe Sixpack knows what blah.blahblahblah.com means. It's going to take a while before even non-techies have the same level of instantaneous recognition of.xxx as.com...
Re:Yeah, like they're going to voluntarily do this
on
New .XXX Top Level Domain
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Even better, from TFA:
"ICM contends the "xxx" Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will protect children from online smut if adult sites voluntarily adopt the suffix so filtering software used by families can more effectively block access to those sites. The $60 price is roughly ten times higher than prices other companies charge for dot-com names."
So... what? The.xxx top-level domain only exists to help filter pr0n (blithely assuming parents all use filtering software)? And it costs ten times what a.com address does? And because it's new and non-standard people are less likely to recognise/remember/use it?
Wow, sounds like they're really stacking up those reasons to change to a.xxx address, eh?
"Hitler shrugged off nuclear physics as "Jewish Physics" and refused to have anything to do with it."
Again, class, here we have yet another an object lesson in why it's a Bad Idea to let a religious position dictate the progress of Science.
Kansas, are you paying attention? Take that opposable thumb out of your mouth this minute, and take your bipedally-evolved feet off the desk. So help me, if I see you flicking spitwads at the Separation of Church and State one more time...
Slashdot Mirror
Not unless you (or someone else) has a web page which explicitely links the two. I don't know about you, but my home phone number isn't listed on any websites, and certainly not next to my name or address.
And if you've willingly and voluntarily linked the two, in a publicly-searchable resource like the web, what are you complaining about privacy for? In addition, if someone else has put up a page with your personal information on it without your premission, I think this is a pretty clear violation of various Data Protection laws, so you could probably (and probably quite successfully) sue.
Besides, this whole point it moot - the GGP was complaining about people being able to see a picture of his house on-line, not people being able to link phone numbers to addresses - that was pretty irrelevant to his complaint.
WTF are "Extreme hackers"?
People who crack Windows boxen while bungee jumping? Releasing IIS worms from a wi-fi enabled handheld in a canoe half-way down some whitewater rapids?
Or, y'know, just yet another pathetic attempt to make something fundamentally known and understood sound suddenly somehow exciting and dangerous?
Oh, and for reference? The "Extreme Hacker" your link's about was a 37 year-old script kiddie who Haxx0red Us government machines direct from his own home connection.
You couldn't get stupider (and less '1ee7) if you tried...
I think what the parent and GGP were getting at was the record for "Oldest Uninterrupted Current Democratic System" - ie, of all the current democratic governments, which one started first.
Aaaaaah... Fair play, then. But (as noted by other posters) I think you'll find they were hardly the first...
;-)
(And kudos for the considered and balanced reply to my sarky and provocative rant-ette
"the US is after all the oldest democracy in the world"
The rest of the post was relatively well-argued and lucid, but this... Dude, what have you been smoking?
Do USians really believe this? Has america really become so insular that even apparently-intelligent, eloquent citizens think they and their ~300 year-old country invented something as ancient and basic as democracy?
And, of course (despite the fact I agree with the rest of what you said), you do realise you've just negated any good points you made by demonstrating clearly you have no idea what you're talking about, right?
"I don't know about the rest of you, but how about a little privacy?"
What, you consider un-personally-attributable images merely of your building to be a privacy violation?
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but your privacy is being violated hundreds of times a day - they're called passers-by. You might want to spend some time on the corner of your lot with paper head-bags and a persuasive smile.
"There will be a great deal of abuse here. Imagine some girl gives out her phone number, or some guy finds it in a phone book."
Ignoring the sheer difficulty of doing reverse-lookups from phone number to address (which is made intentionally hard, for this very reason)...
"They find the address, they map it out. They even know what bushes to hide behind. Neat, tech helping pervs."
Right, and they can't do this with... oh, I dunno... a paper map? Or by, you know, walking past the house once or twice?
"I can see the mafia use this technology too. What to kill someone? How about a little research first. Lets see what roads lead to his house and away."
Right, 'cause the Mafia are always bumping off people left, right and centre round where I live. How about you?
And face it, any hitman or criminal who plans his crimes without first thoroughly casing the joint in real life first is a fucking retard.
And someone that fucking stupid is going to be caught pretty soon anyway when they realise sniper rifles don't flush.
You know, it's just occurred that you might be trolling - congrats if so, I utterly fell for it.
You were trolling, right?
Yeah, a sense of proportion.
And a belt to strap down that jerking knee of yours.
Jesus Christ on a crutch - why is it everything in the US now has to be defined in terms of its potential utility to terrorism? Other countries have been putting up with terrorism for years (often with the US's implicit or explicit approval) without reigning in basic human rights like privacy and freedom, but the second you have a large-scale foreign terrorist action on the US mainland suddenly the FBI can unilaterally read your mail and harsh language is banned in case it's used by Teh Terr0ri5ts!!!!
Even after 9/11, you're still hundreds of thousands of times more likely to die in a car crash than from terrorist action. Why aren't you worrying about the implications of allowing anyone to buy a car without a background check, fingerprinting, surgically-embedded RFID tag and rectal swab on file?
Indeed... I also thought some parts of the article were rather... forgiving of Microsoft...?
"People blamed Microsoft, but let's try a reality check: did administrators really need more than six months to install an update? Yeah, it was Microsoft programmers who wrote the buggy code, but were they any different than most programmers at that time?"
Well yes. Linux/Unix/FLOSS apps didn't have a fraction of the security problems, and those were fixed faster and better. And for the inevitable apologist who mentions relative market share I have three words: "IIS vs Apache".
"Were they not just a reflection of society's attitude about security?"
No, they were a reflection of Microsoft's attitudes about society, that Microsoft's users had (wrongly) adopted. Unix/Linux had a perfectly good security model all this time, and all this time Unix/Linux "society" was laughing and tutting at Microsoft's.
"Besides, a large part of this code was written half a decade before, when security was an enhancement, not a user requirement. Administrators at the time were just lazy. Or lame."
And who educated the users and lead their expectations? Microsoft. And "administrators" weren't lazy, Unix/Linuix admins were generally fine - when was the last time we had a Apache or *nix-specific worm?
"The problem was that back then you couldn't just go to WindowsUpdate and see what hotfixes you needed to install."
Whose fault?
"You had to go through the entire list of fixes one-by-one and make sense of it all."
Whose fault?
"To make things worse, Microsoft had distributed enough buggy hotfixes by then to make administrators wary of installing anything too quickly."
So, whose fault?
"We have to admit that Microsoft's patching strategy was truly a mess at that time. Nothing was consistent and there seemed to be little communication anywhere."
Right! So whose fault is it? You've just got through trying to blame the administrators, but is it their fault Microsoft's patching system was crap? The users' fault they had a pathetic security model, then banged out shitty bug-ridden "fixes"?
Disclosure: I'm not a Linux/Unix freak (I don't even run a Linux box), but I do know a non-sequiteur when I see one. And I've got a keen nose for bullshit, too.
"WHoa re you and what have you done being reasonable on /. ;)"
;-)
;-)
Heh, many thanks. I just don't see the point in sticking to your position if you think about it and decide there's a better one. In a choice between Consistent and Right I'd rather be Right...
"[Broken windscreens are] not necessarily illegal."
This is a bit more serious in the UK, IIRC - cracks/breaks can block the driver's view of the road and massively reduce the structural integrity of the windscreen (and hence, surprisingly, the entire car), and since it's so hard to draw the line at which "a few cracks" becomes "a serious hazard", you aren't (again, IIRC) supposed to have even a single chip. True, the video wasn't shot in the UK, but I just assumed that it was the same in the US - no?
"Actually we don't know that [she was talking on a mobile while driving]... I suspect you watched the video that started with [her on the phone]"
Yes I did - did the other videos below have additional footage? Fair play then - that changes a lot...
"Here, DWP (Driving Without Privileges) is a misdemeanor."
Wow, really? If you were driving without a licence in the UK you'd likely be taken down the station, charged and at least fined or given community service.
Is it really no big deal in the US that people could be driving over a ton of metal, at high speeds, with no proven ability to control it, around pedestrians?
And a nip-slip at a football game is that big a deal? Sometimes I doubt I'll ever understand US culture
"What's your name? What's your name What's your name? I've asked you three f*ing times! You have had no time to respond. Around here, the cops are taught to give plenty of time for compliance and have been hit hard for not doing so."
Again though, she doesn't even make an attempt to answer the question (even talking over him). And if you listen to her talking during the video she hardly sounds terrified into silence - annoyed, obnoxious, unhelpful... and surprised and apprehensive when she sees the Tazer, but she hardly sounds terrified to me.
"In non-violent cases such as this there is no cause for rapid requirements."
How do you know? This is outside the context of the video - IIRC all we see is the cop approach the car. We have no idea how she'd been driving before she was stopped, how long it had taken to get her to pull over, or anything else about the greater context. I'm not arguing we should forgive the cop everything because we don't know, but it's easy to play armchair quarterback when you're not the one on the spot...
"Here is where we will have to disagree. You are describing a prime characteristic of a police state: cops can arrest you on their whim. That is wrong, dead wrong. Here we are taught different. Being mouthy, and standing up for what you beleive to be your rights is part of who we are, not being a sheep "for dah man"."
Not at all - you're letting your countercultural values and assumptions blind you. My point was that, given she's broken the law (speeding, cracked windscreen, broken taillight, etc, etc, etc), the cop has a certain leeway in deciding whether to write her up for it or not.
In this situation, it's not standing up for your rights to give them attitude, it's fucking stupid.
I believe in standing up for your rights as much as the next guy, but when you've just been caught (red-handed!) breaking the law, to aggressively provoke the cop who caught you is just counterproductive.
"Lack of respect is irrelevant, nor is it criminal."
No, but in the situation it is fucking stupid. And it does serve to unhelpfully escalate the confrontation. Especially when you're totally and utterly in the wrong, and both parties know it. You broke the law, you got caught, grow up and deal with it - don't be petulant
You've got some good points, and you've certainly made me reassess what I saw in the video. I wasn't saying the cop(s) couldn't have handled it in a more constructive way, but I was disputing the way the video was presented by the original poster.
However, there are still several things that make this at least 50% her fault, in my opinion - these are mostly judgement calls and guesswork, but I find it hard to be sympathetic to someone so obviously asking for trouble.
Regardless of the cops' response, she was doing nearly twice the speed limit. She did have a broken windscreen. She did have broken taillights. She was talking on a mobile while driving (I dunno, maybe it's considered more serious over here in the UK), and she didn't ring off when they started talking to her, which is pretty much common courtesy, and blatantly provocative to someone who can take you down the station and book you, solely at their discretion. She also didn't get out of the car when they asked, repeatedly.
Finally, regarding arrest, exiting the vehicle and drawing Tazers, given all the above infractions and the monsterous amount of attitude, she obviously hasn't got a huge amount of respect for the law, even when she's clearly in the wrong, and clearly endangering others (speeding and dodgy mechanics in the car are not victimless crime).
In this sort of situation, would it be proper procedure to get the person out of the car before arresting them (and possibly provoking them to flee), or would you let them know they're definitely in trouble which will definitely have consequences while they're sat, ready and waiting in their getaway vehicle?
Having seen footage of officers being dragged along by runaway drivers they'd tried to stop, I'd ask her nicely to get out of the car, then be ready to draw the Tazer at the first hint she might be combatative or likely to flee.
As I said, it seems to be a judgement call, and while I might have been a little harsh on her in the GP, I still think she escalated the situation nicely on her own. The cops could have responded more gently, but if you create a provocative and tense situation, don't complain if someone's provoked or tense...
Heh. I was speaking specifically about congressmen/senators/MPs, etc. Maybe my idealism's showing, but I find it hard to believe they're all that corrupt. Or all that stupid.
Good troll, but you could tighten it up a bit:
You'd get more respect and sympathy if you hadn't claimed to have bought a successful niche business, abandoned your regular clientele, decided to compete with enormous multinational store-chains, stocked shitty Christian Rock that nobody (relatively speaking) wants to listen to, and run the company into the ground. You're clearly the fuckwit here, so you're less likely to garner that empathy so essential to a successful troll.
Nice attempt at igniting side-fires by disparaging and stereotyping controversial bands though, but it's been done to death. Oh, and you'd be better off targeting Eminem and the like - scapegoating Marilyn Manson and "cop-killer" rappers is soooo 90s...
Oh, and you'd be better to do some more hand-waving when blaming your store's decline on filesharing - the unsupported non-sequiteur stands out like a sore thumb, especially after you've just finished telling us how you personally ran the company into the ground.
The whole scene in the store is too badly-written. No-one's stupid enough to plan piracy out-loud in front of the store owner, and 99.999% of people who share music don't plan it as a premeditated act either - they rip the songs, then "might as well" share them. The dialogue is also truly awful - get some writing skills, for Christ's sake... and nobody would admit to the fucking owner they were planning to pirate music, even if they were
Nice mis-spelling of "'Leet" though - it suggests you only overheard it, although you go an blow it by adding a [sic] afterwards.
Full marks for advocating a National Register Of Pirates - it's completely useless (since you'd never be able to administrate the millions of filesharers and would in effect be banning a large proportion of the population), but sounds feasible, so it's exactly the type of stupid, half-arsed idea that's liable to be seriously promoted by someone at some point.
Lastly, lose the whole maudlin part about your poor shoeless children - it's cheap tacky sentimentalism, and doesn't fool anyone.
I'd give this troll a C-... Lots of good ideas, but ultimately let down by a poor execution...
Copyright was intended to temporarily reward the artist, to encourage them to produce art.
(s/innovator/innovations/ but it's all the same).
Artists do not commonly live for 100 years. Especially not 100 years from when they produce the work that gets them the most praise.
Even if the artist got 100% of the royalties from the copyright, extending it past the artist's natural lifetime is meaningless.
In addition, even compensating the artist for their entire natural lifetime is counter-productive, since it removes the driving force (according to traditional wisdom, above) behind their production or art. If you're singing to eat, then giving you all the money you'll ever need reduces your need to sing. This is the exact opposite of what copyright is intended for.
Finally, artists commonly don't even get 10% of the profits from their work. Why? Because the copyright is usually owned by a large corporation, which had no hand whatsoever in the creative, artistic work. They simply publicise the artist and distribute the art, and reap 90%+ of the profits from it.
Given this state of affairs, extending copyright does nothing but feed more money to already overcompensated multinationals, while either shutting out the originating artist or (if they own their own copyright and get all the profits) discouraging them from producing further art.
This is fucking obvious. Why don't people see it?
Or are they just blinded by all those dollar bills the entertainment industry keeps piling over their heads?
"That said, did they make the right choice in selecting the Taser? It was two large, male officers versus one small woman, perhaps they could have easily subdued her physically."
I thought one of the reasons behind equipping law enforcers with Tazers was because "reasonable force" was such a huge, lawsuit-prone grey area. Tazers have (rightly or wrongly) been certified as safe and nonlethal, so from the cop's point of view they were the right thing to use. Going in, grabbing her and dragging her out of the vehicle might have hurt her less in the long term, but one single bruise and the officers would have been up to their necks in lawsuits (and listen to the precious attitude - you know she was exactly the type to file for anything).
They also mention that they'd been Tazered before themselves, so they know what it feels like. They also tell her to stop overacting, since it doesn't hurt nearly as much as she's making out.
Finally, (IIRC) chemical sprays have been implicated in deaths here in the UK (complications due to asthma, I believe) - nothing's entirely "safe" (although yes, Tazers may well be at the least-safe end of the "non-lethal" spectrum).
Let's see, she's talking on her mobile phone and speeding, with a suspended licence, which is both stupid and illegal.
The cop then asks her politely to get out of the car. She ignores him and carries on talking on her phone, which is stupid.
He asks her repeatedly to hang up and get out of the car, and she refuses. She could even get out of the car while still talking on the phone, which would at least show willing, but she doesn't. This is stupid, and (IIRC) tantamount to resisting arrest.
The cop then pulls a tazer on her, and threatens her with it twice. She hears and sees him ("he's got a gun - he's going to shoot me!"), and he clearly tells her it's a Taser, and states "If you don't get out of the car I am going to Tase you". She ignores him. This is monumentally stupid.
You can't actually see the next bit (she's still in the car), but the police officers mention later in the video that they Tazed her because she "took a swing" at one of them. Now, either she did or she didn't, but if she's driving around, speeding, with a suspended licence, and is then hostile and un-cooperative once pulled over, it's not that much of stretch to assume she did take a swing at them. At the very least, she (solely) created the tense situation where they were likely to mis-interpret any sudden movements (especially after she'd already repeatedly refused to move from the car). If she actually tried to throw a punch this is criminal, but either way it's so monumentally stupid she deserves a fucking Tazing right there.
Next she's actually Tazed. Now, I believe Tazing hurts (I've had a few big shocks from electrical projects going wrong before now, and it's highly liable to be worse), but she's moaning and whimpering in rather a theatrical manner for over five minutes, by the clock. She can also clearly walk by the end of it, and yet (off-camera) still gives the officers a hard time getting her into the car.
One of them can also be heard telling her "I told you multiple times to get out of the car and you refused to do it." She denies this (despite the fact we've just watched the whole thing). One officer also indicates they've both been Tazed before, and know she's overacting.
Now I'm as quick with the tinfoil hat as the next paranoid conspiracy-theorist, but this ain't evidence of jackbooted fascism.
This is an object lesson in why it's fucking stupid to:
I've heard and seen a lot of sketchy things done in the name of Law & Order, but she brought this one entirely on herself.
As I understand it (warning: non-USAian), the 5th Ammendment only applies to testifying, and then only to speech - you'd have a hard time claiming exhaling was speech, unless you're prepared to claim "Hhhhhuuuuuhhhhhhh" is meaningful communication. And they'd probably want an unvoiced exhalation when testing you for DUI anyway.
I also don't think the 5th Ammendment applies to incriminating yourself in any way, only about testifying - I doubt you could take the fifth to avoid giving fingerprints when arrested, could you?
Now, taking away your licence for a year because you refuse to help a cop incriminate you for DUI when he has no hard evidence already, that's fscking messed up - it basically allows the police to go on fishing expeditions doing random stops and tests (tantamount to illegal stop-and-search, IMO).
That said, there isn't really any way to prove alcohol consumption without your voluntary participation (and breathalyzers don't store any identifiable data on you)... So it's basically a toss-up between "risking making you incriminate yourself before you're even charged", and "letting every single drunk-driver in the world get away with it", and with that choice I think it's the lesser of two evils...
So what you're saying is that using Gentoo's automated scripts never taught you anything, apart from where it was broken and you had to do it by hand, so LFS (which forces you to do it all by hand) won't teach you anything?
I'm not following you...
Apologies if I'm missing something (I'm not currently a Linux hacker, although LFS does look appealing in a sort of do-or-die baptism-of-fire kind of way...) but that didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me...
IIRC:
Anonymous Cowards post at 0.
Signed-in Slashdot users automatically post at +1, unless you specifically select the "Post without Karma bonus" checkbox when posting.
Signed-in Slashdot users with good karma (I believe "Excellent" or above - is there an "above"?) post at +2.
Default user settings read at 0+.
HTH.
Not to troll, but what else should they have used?
It's not Offtopic, Flamebait (at least not intentionally, despite all the people panning it), or a Troll. It's not Redundant (because nobody else had posted a logo), but it's certainly not Insightful, Interesting, Informative or intentionally Funny. It's certainly not Underrated.
In the absence of "-1 Boring" or "-1 Not Very Good Artwork", what is there to mod it so people won't waste their time reading it?
Frankly (and apologies, Wikinerd - nothing against you), even Posting it at 1 is a bit overrated - there are plenty of Anonymous Coward posts I've read which were vastly more interesting, entertaining or informative than this one. So someone modded it Overrated - what's wrong with that?
As I recall when I was an undergrad (and, I believe when you're a postgrad), the university owns any IP you produce as part of your course (or, presumably, research). They can take it and spin it off into a separate company themselves (as often happens), and generally aren't obligated to reimburse you for the work. However, they usually do cut the actual inventor in for a slice since otherwise they'd start losing their best/most profitable researchers to other institutions that did.
On the one hand it can be a pain (the process to get permission to release a program I wrote in my first UG year was so onerous I just gave up in the end), but OTOH for non-trivial products it does afford you use of the university's contacts, advice and resources, which can be very helpful indeed.
Heh, cheers for biting. I deliberately said "religious position" rather than "religion", for that very reason.
"I hate all christians" is a religious position, even though it's not a religion.
Yeah, ok, bad phrasing. I meant "non-standard" as in even Joe Sixpack knows what blah.blahblahblah.com means. It's going to take a while before even non-techies have the same level of instantaneous recognition of .xxx as .com...
Even better, from TFA:
.xxx top-level domain only exists to help filter pr0n (blithely assuming parents all use filtering software)? And it costs ten times what a .com address does? And because it's new and non-standard people are less likely to recognise/remember/use it?
.xxx address, eh?
"ICM contends the "xxx" Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will protect children from online smut if adult sites voluntarily adopt the suffix so filtering software used by families can more effectively block access to those sites. The $60 price is roughly ten times higher than prices other companies charge for dot-com names."
So... what? The
Wow, sounds like they're really stacking up those reasons to change to a
Now how are we supposed to talk about all our registered .com, .org, .(etc) domains all at once?
.sex?
"yeah, just update the MX records for www.google.xxx will you?"
"So that's just one domain, right?"
What's wrong with
"Hitler shrugged off nuclear physics as "Jewish Physics" and refused to have anything to do with it."
Again, class, here we have yet another an object lesson in why it's a Bad Idea to let a religious position dictate the progress of Science.
Kansas, are you paying attention? Take that opposable thumb out of your mouth this minute, and take your bipedally-evolved feet off the desk. So help me, if I see you flicking spitwads at the Separation of Church and State one more time...