Isn't the problem that nobody who could fix this is motivated to do so?
If we all switch to ipv6 now, then everyone on the existing internet has incurred a cost, but will see no benefit; the benefit will go to currently-unconnected Chinese who will not pay the cost because the work will already have been done by the time they join up.
The only way that the switch to ipv6 is going to happen, is if someone finds a way of making the currently-unconnected Chinese population pay for it. That could be done, for example, by waiting until ipv4 addresses become very scarce, then auctioning the remaining ipv4 addresses for large sums of money, and using that money to switch everyone else over to ipv6. But then you've got the problem of distributing the money...
Never seen those stickers on your opened and resealed envelopes?
I've never seen anything like this, although I often send and receive packages internationally; but then, I don't live in the US. Is it common in the US for the authorities to interfere with the mail like this?
The +10% thing just goes to prove my point. The police are choosing not to prosecute people who are breaking the law, because they know that strictly enforcing the law would be so unpopular.
What's always happened whan I've bought an untaxed car is: 1. I arrange insurance and get the cover note. 2. I give the cover note to the seller, who taxes the car. 3. I then collect the legal-to-drive car from the seller.
Maybe your best bet is to tell the court that the previous owner of the car drove it to your house. If it wasn't taxed, that was illegal.
I think it's sad that there are legions of people willing to report each other to the authorities over pretty much nothing
It's always been like that. People were always willing to report their neighbours, even when it meant the neighbours would be sent to a death camp. And it never seems to be difficult to recruit people to carry our a massacre, or to bomb another country, or whatever. That's what people are like.
I knew someone who used to live in Poland, who said that getting reported to the authorities by your neighbours was once fairly common there too. One day someone reported him and his wife and children. He managed to escape but the rest of his family sadly did not.
In an ideally policed state, there would be sufficient police employed to witness or prevent every deliberate crime but this is impractical.
Really? Very many things that we do every day are technically crimes. Even the most careful driver will sometimes exceed the speed limit by 1mph. So we depend on the lack of ubiquitous policing in order to be able to live our lives as we do.
That's one reason why the sudden imposition of automated, mechanical law enforcement is so unpopular. Everyone knows that the speed limit is (say) 30mph, but everyone breaks it occasionally. If you had to drive such that you never exceeded the limit, you would have to drive at 10mph less than the limit, just to make sure. So what appears to be enforcement of the limit is really a reduction of the limit.
If you drove the car to your road without tax or insurance, that was already illegal. You should have arranged tax and insurance before buying it. Insurance companies will fax documents to you if you are in a hurry, or else an insurance broker could issue a cover note on the spot. If you still have not taxed your car after a few weeks, perhaps you are not really trying?
Actually, the top and bottom quarks were originally named truth and beauty. They were renamed to top and bottom because the original names were thought to be silly. Names like top and bottom count as sensible in the context of quantum mechanics.
If he leaves out the company name, it's just an amusing story but achieves nothing. If he puts in the company name, it might just get seen by their customers, who might then take their business elsewhere, thereby solving the problem.
Lots of things are advertised as "GPS tracking devices", so it's easy to see how the technically naive would come to the conclusion that the GPS system somehow keeps track of these "tracking devices".
I doubt whether many CDs are produced in Frace, and I bet that those which are do not currently have copyright protection devices attached to them. So it's not much of a sweetener: one side is punished without due legal process, and the other side carries on doing what they have always done.
People often go through the scanners with metal objects in their pockets (coins, keys etc) by mistake. The scanners can be set so that they do not detect metal at waist height: when things are busy, the operators will turn off waist-height detection to speed things up a bit.
From TFA: [Google] admits the product is not feature-complete and has opened up the code base...to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code
Since when was "open source" just an excuse for releasing a half-finished product? Google is a multi-million-dollar company. Surely they can afford to pay some programmers and testers to produce a finished product before they release it?
So: allow access to websites in a foreign language that most Chinese can't understand, for a period of - what - two weeks? And presumably keep a list of everyone who reads those websites? And then back to normal afterwards?
Wow, the IOC is really helping to open up China to new ideas about freedom and democracy, isn't it?
Sadly, it's true. Google for "BT Cleanfeed" if you don't believe me. Since it blocks websites, there's no traffic monitoring involved. Of course, like all censorship, it is not 100% effective. Presumably the people who want to download this sort of stuff simply make the effort to discover how to circumvent it.
My point is, though, that if the government ever wants to start web censorship on a larger scale, the infrastructure is already in place for them to do so.
To be fair, some of the small ISPs may still be holding out, but all the big ones selling to the domestic market have installed this filter.
Of course, the beauty of the government's position is that no-one has been forced to do anything: if it were mandated by law, then parliament would have had to pass such a law first, so the issue of "web censorship" would have had a public airing. But by making it "voluntary" (but backed up by threats) has meant that it has been implemented without any discussion, and of course without any legal oversight.
Yes, if they don't have to worry about breaking backward compatibility, they could move to a better hardware platform: the PowerPC, for example. That would make them more Mac-like, wouldn't it?
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You have chosen to live in a society
Are you sure? Supposing he didn't choose to live in society. Where would he go?
You obviously never learned Latin, or you would know the correct declension of the noun "bus", as given here
Isn't the problem that nobody who could fix this is motivated to do so?
If we all switch to ipv6 now, then everyone on the existing internet has incurred a cost, but will see no benefit; the benefit will go to currently-unconnected Chinese who will not pay the cost because the work will already have been done by the time they join up.
The only way that the switch to ipv6 is going to happen, is if someone finds a way of making the currently-unconnected Chinese population pay for it. That could be done, for example, by waiting until ipv4 addresses become very scarce, then auctioning the remaining ipv4 addresses for large sums of money, and using that money to switch everyone else over to ipv6. But then you've got the problem of distributing the money...
Unless, of course, the unobtainium used to build it turns out to be really expensive.
Never seen those stickers on your opened and resealed envelopes?
I've never seen anything like this, although I often send and receive packages internationally; but then, I don't live in the US. Is it common in the US for the authorities to interfere with the mail like this?
The +10% thing just goes to prove my point. The police are choosing not to prosecute people who are breaking the law, because they know that strictly enforcing the law would be so unpopular.
What's always happened whan I've bought an untaxed car is:
1. I arrange insurance and get the cover note.
2. I give the cover note to the seller, who taxes the car.
3. I then collect the legal-to-drive car from the seller.
Maybe your best bet is to tell the court that the previous owner of the car drove it to your house. If it wasn't taxed, that was illegal.
It's good to know that the police are not wasting resources on a useless "war on drugs" in your neighbourhood.
I think it's sad that there are legions of people willing to report each other to the authorities over pretty much nothing
It's always been like that. People were always willing to report their neighbours, even when it meant the neighbours would be sent to a death camp. And it never seems to be difficult to recruit people to carry our a massacre, or to bomb another country, or whatever. That's what people are like.
I knew someone who used to live in Poland, who said that getting reported to the authorities by your neighbours was once fairly common there too. One day someone reported him and his wife and children. He managed to escape but the rest of his family sadly did not.
In an ideally policed state, there would be sufficient police employed to witness or prevent every deliberate crime but this is impractical.
Really? Very many things that we do every day are technically crimes. Even the most careful driver will sometimes exceed the speed limit by 1mph. So we depend on the lack of ubiquitous policing in order to be able to live our lives as we do.
That's one reason why the sudden imposition of automated, mechanical law enforcement is so unpopular. Everyone knows that the speed limit is (say) 30mph, but everyone breaks it occasionally. If you had to drive such that you never exceeded the limit, you would have to drive at 10mph less than the limit, just to make sure. So what appears to be enforcement of the limit is really a reduction of the limit.
If you drove the car to your road without tax or insurance, that was already illegal. You should have arranged tax and insurance before buying it. Insurance companies will fax documents to you if you are in a hurry, or else an insurance broker could issue a cover note on the spot.
If you still have not taxed your car after a few weeks, perhaps you are not really trying?
You kept a cat on a leash?
Really?
Is that not considered cruel in your culture?
Actually, the top and bottom quarks were originally named truth and beauty. They were renamed to top and bottom because the original names were thought to be silly. Names like top and bottom count as sensible in the context of quantum mechanics.
If he leaves out the company name, it's just an amusing story but achieves nothing.
If he puts in the company name, it might just get seen by their customers, who might then take their business elsewhere, thereby solving the problem.
But when the government introduces "road pricing" based on tracking your car all the time, you'll be very glad of your GPS jammer.
Lots of things are advertised as "GPS tracking devices", so it's easy to see how the technically naive would come to the conclusion that the GPS system somehow keeps track of these "tracking devices".
I doubt whether many CDs are produced in Frace, and I bet that those which are do not currently have copyright protection devices attached to them. So it's not much of a sweetener: one side is punished without due legal process, and the other side carries on doing what they have always done.
The only small problem with this amusing story is that pubs in England still sell beer by the pint. Perhaps the dope makes you hallucinate?
People often go through the scanners with metal objects in their pockets (coins, keys etc) by mistake. The scanners can be set so that they do not detect metal at waist height: when things are busy, the operators will turn off waist-height detection to speed things up a bit.
From TFA: ...to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code
[Google] admits the product is not feature-complete and has opened up the code base
Since when was "open source" just an excuse for releasing a half-finished product? Google is a multi-million-dollar company. Surely they can afford to pay some programmers and testers to produce a finished product before they release it?
So: allow access to websites in a foreign language that most Chinese can't understand, for a period of - what - two weeks? And presumably keep a list of everyone who reads those websites? And then back to normal afterwards? Wow, the IOC is really helping to open up China to new ideas about freedom and democracy, isn't it?
Sadly, it's true. Google for "BT Cleanfeed" if you don't believe me. Since it blocks websites, there's no traffic monitoring involved.
Of course, like all censorship, it is not 100% effective. Presumably the people who want to download this sort of stuff simply make the effort to discover how to circumvent it.
My point is, though, that if the government ever wants to start web censorship on a larger scale, the infrastructure is already in place for them to do so.
To be fair, some of the small ISPs may still be holding out, but all the big ones selling to the domestic market have installed this filter. Of course, the beauty of the government's position is that no-one has been forced to do anything: if it were mandated by law, then parliament would have had to pass such a law first, so the issue of "web censorship" would have had a public airing. But by making it "voluntary" (but backed up by threats) has meant that it has been implemented without any discussion, and of course without any legal oversight.
Yes, if they don't have to worry about breaking backward compatibility, they could move to a better hardware platform: the PowerPC, for example. That would make them more Mac-like, wouldn't it?