Historically, that's been true. But the reason for that is to prevent contraband from coming into the country. With the advent of the Internet, anyone can download anything from anywhere. So searching laptops at the border isn't going to have any effect, whatsoever, on the flow of contraband digital items (pirated software, kiddie porn, whatever). It might (and has) nabbed a few individuals, but it certainly hasn't had an appreciable effect on the wider practice of these things.
Not that I'm arguing for border searches or anything... but... if the point of these searches is to nap 'contraband' information, I would think it would be highly effective.
What's that saying that always floats around whenever an *AA attacks a P2P network? "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a box of floppies"-- or in this case, a 320GB 2.5" hard drive?
If it's an effective means of transporting tons of music files between friends, then surely it's just as effective for contraband-runners. And if that's the case, then yes, preventing those laptops from crossing the border (via fear of high probability of being caught) is a viable strategy.
Given that, is it worth the sacrifice to human rights to keep doing it?
Nah, it's just that EVERYONE in the movie is super-strong. That's why Doc Ok thought nothing of just whipping a car at Peter Parket in the cafe-- long before he knew Peter Parker was spiderman.
"How do I get their attention, without harming them, because I want to capture them. I know, THROW A CAR AT THEM! {chuck}"
why not go look to the great science fiction writers and put them on the screen (suitably updated)?
Masters of Science Fiction
I highly recommend you hop onto your nearest torrent site, and grab the 6 (or 8) episodes they made. Great, prime-time, hour long sci-fi dramas. Killed off before it finished airing, obviously.
For what it's worth, I'd love to see a weekly anthology series set on Ringworld.
Hey, I've actually done a comic (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1416) on this subject! I'm firmly in the "I'd rather you have a cool email address then a suck-up one" camp.
Funny, but could you provide an XKCD reference instead? =)
Trying to fight RIAA in the courts is a loosing effort. RIAA pay politicians handsomely, and generally gets the laws they want. If they temporarily loose in court, they just pay to have the laws changed, and than they win.
As much as I hate to admit it, you're half right. It is a losing effort. But the goal is to make sure it's a losing effort for the RIAA as well. The best case scenario for them is that they collect every penny of the $675k. I'm willing to bet they owe their law firm a good chunk of that in billable hours. The longer the defendant drags this out (no arguments from me on that one), the more costly it will be form them. At some point, the money gained from the settlement (or however much they can squeeze from him as creditors during a bankrupcy) will be far less than the money they owe their lawyers.
As for the intangible benefits... they're hoping this will "discourage" "pirates" from committing further acts of pirating. Based on the attitudes I've encountered, only a small fraction of people I know are changing their downloading habits. Of those that do, most are switching to private trackers or using encryption. A small minority have stopped downloading "illegally", and a small minority of THAT sample have switched to buying only. So, what, an additional ten or twenty bucks, maybe?
As for public perception... whenever someone asks me about "that guy they read about in the news", I just tell them that the case is still in appeals on constitutional question grounds. That usually results in them shrugging their shoulders and forgetting about it; unless there's another "news at 11" piece about it, it'll fall out of their attention span in a week at most.
I don't think this ruling is gaining them any of the benefits, tangible or otherwise, that they'd hoped for.
Odd, I had my email set to "just display it". Thanks, Slashcode. Reset, should be displaying now. Feel free to drop me a line at halcyon1234@hotmail.com
That's hardly a fair comparison. To be completely fair and balanced, the browser usage stats should come from a different page outside of your control. I think http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx would present the sort of unbiased sample base we'd expect from a browser-war data set.
Do they actually care? From what I understand, the mere act of installing the app has given Zynga everything valuable you have. They have your demographic data, and the data of all your friends. If you play the game every day, they earn nothing new from you (aside from demo data of new friends). They've already gotten the milk, leather and meat from the cow. Right now they're just gnawing your bones hoping for some overlooked marrow. Otherwise, you can go away and they won't care. What good is the boycott?
You know what's worth getting the extended warranty on? Ink jet printers, if you use them with any frequency.
The home models are pure crap. I can almost guarantee you that it will die within about 3 years. It'll break a roller, or get clogged with ink, or some stupid scrap of paper will get caught way down there, or some dumb thing. The lights will blink in an unhelpful manner.
Then you march down to the Worst Buy you got it from and get it serviced. Except no one there has any knowledge, let alone knowledge of printers. They can't fix it, and the thing is so damned disposable it isn't worth the freight to ship it back.
They'll punch some buttons then tell you it'll be a few days to fix the thing. If they can't, and they won't, you'll get a new comparable printer as a replacement.
When they give you that printer, offer to buy the extended warranty again. It'll cost you another $20, but you'll get a newer model, and it will come with a "full" set of cartridges.
Do this right, and you'll never have to buy a new printer again.
Google isn't going after scammers in general for the good of the public. From TFA:
Google said it has not created or endorsed advertisements such as "Use Google to make 1000s of Dollars!"
...
Google's name is often used in such schemes because of its recognizable branding and good reputation.
They're going after someone who is threatening their name, trademark and reputation. You can bet that if it had read "Use Bing to make 1000s of Dollars", Google wouldn't be involved.
It doesn't look like there's any settlement money for normal Facebook users.
The settlement provides that the $9.5 million will be spent on:
* (i) setting up a non-profit Privacy Foundation
So opt-out, and sue facebook yourself. If you need help, I hear there's a non-profit Privacy Foundation that has $9.5 million in their legal coffers...
"being truly machiavellian is an art rarely practiced outside of government."...and a million executives howled with laughter, patted each other on the back,
Google News Results: Half a million advertising executives were found dead today with knife wounds to their backs...
I have to wonder, is it better that these glitches and outages are happening now rather than later?
What would happen if the LHC gets up to full capacity, THEN has a system-killing power outage? Does the LHC shut down gracefully, or could it be a disaster waiting to happen?
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I'm arguing for border searches or anything... but... if the point of these searches is to nap 'contraband' information, I would think it would be highly effective.
What's that saying that always floats around whenever an *AA attacks a P2P network? "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a box of floppies"-- or in this case, a 320GB 2.5" hard drive?
If it's an effective means of transporting tons of music files between friends, then surely it's just as effective for contraband-runners. And if that's the case, then yes, preventing those laptops from crossing the border (via fear of high probability of being caught) is a viable strategy.
I don't think so. So-- ummm-- go, lawyers? Yay? :|
Good job, Slashdot.
Wait, can I send .exe files through gmail now?
Nah, it's just that EVERYONE in the movie is super-strong. That's why Doc Ok thought nothing of just whipping a car at Peter Parket in the cafe-- long before he knew Peter Parker was spiderman.
"How do I get their attention, without harming them, because I want to capture them. I know, THROW A CAR AT THEM! {chuck}"
What does it score on the Acid 3 test?
Masters of Science Fiction
I highly recommend you hop onto your nearest torrent site, and grab the 6 (or 8) episodes they made. Great, prime-time, hour long sci-fi dramas. Killed off before it finished airing, obviously.
For what it's worth, I'd love to see a weekly anthology series set on Ringworld.
Hey, I've actually done a comic (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1416) on this subject! I'm firmly in the "I'd rather you have a cool email address then a suck-up one" camp.
Funny, but could you provide an XKCD reference instead? =)
50% of all datacenter operators lie about their staffing levels.
The other 50% didn't return calls in time to be included in the survey.
Really? Wow, I would never have known. Thanks, Mr. Rogers. Can you say "IANA"? Try it. "I--A--N--A---". Very good, I knew you could.
Yes-- behind the back. Let's go with that.
Odd, I had my email set to "just display it". Thanks, Slashcode. Reset, should be displaying now. Feel free to drop me a line at halcyon1234@hotmail.com
Coming up next, make a peppercorn sauce with a 3G Modem Antenna.
That's hardly a fair comparison. To be completely fair and balanced, the browser usage stats should come from a different page outside of your control. I think http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx would present the sort of unbiased sample base we'd expect from a browser-war data set.
Do they actually care? From what I understand, the mere act of installing the app has given Zynga everything valuable you have. They have your demographic data, and the data of all your friends. If you play the game every day, they earn nothing new from you (aside from demo data of new friends). They've already gotten the milk, leather and meat from the cow. Right now they're just gnawing your bones hoping for some overlooked marrow. Otherwise, you can go away and they won't care. What good is the boycott?
You know what's worth getting the extended warranty on? Ink jet printers, if you use them with any frequency.
The home models are pure crap. I can almost guarantee you that it will die within about 3 years. It'll break a roller, or get clogged with ink, or some stupid scrap of paper will get caught way down there, or some dumb thing. The lights will blink in an unhelpful manner.
Then you march down to the Worst Buy you got it from and get it serviced. Except no one there has any knowledge, let alone knowledge of printers. They can't fix it, and the thing is so damned disposable it isn't worth the freight to ship it back.
They'll punch some buttons then tell you it'll be a few days to fix the thing. If they can't, and they won't, you'll get a new comparable printer as a replacement.
When they give you that printer, offer to buy the extended warranty again. It'll cost you another $20, but you'll get a newer model, and it will come with a "full" set of cartridges.
Do this right, and you'll never have to buy a new printer again.
Call it a feature that lowers bandwidth costs by reducing overhead incurred by page redirects
Give it away for free for 6 months, then charge a 0.5% convenience fee on all transactions.
For fun, in 1 year, start charging a 0.5% legacy implementation fee on all old-style transactions.
There you go. Where's my $150k?
halcyon1234 notes that 'the original content appears in the comments', says tech site Salshdot regular SomeJoel.
Update: as several readers have pointed out, the name of the site in question is "Slashdot" and not "Salshdot".
tags: yes no maybe fuckyouhalcyon1234 micro$oft !dupe dupe
That is what I had hoped for when I first read the summary. The article was a bit of a let-down.
I wonder if any Google employee has tried to use their "work on anything" time to do just that?
Google isn't going after scammers in general for the good of the public. From TFA:
They're going after someone who is threatening their name, trademark and reputation. You can bet that if it had read "Use Bing to make 1000s of Dollars", Google wouldn't be involved.
So opt-out, and sue facebook yourself. If you need help, I hear there's a non-profit Privacy Foundation that has $9.5 million in their legal coffers...
Google News Results: Half a million advertising executives were found dead today with knife wounds to their backs...
Are you sure? Can you provide a link?
Mcafee and a PDF. Two pieces of malware from one .com site. Excellent evidence, sir.
Good.
I have to wonder, is it better that these glitches and outages are happening now rather than later?
What would happen if the LHC gets up to full capacity, THEN has a system-killing power outage? Does the LHC shut down gracefully, or could it be a disaster waiting to happen?