It wouldn't deter people if the threshold for contributing to most entries is zero, the same level a new user would get when they first log in. They could contribute as much as they want until they're moderated out. And then they could set up a new id and start over again. The only time any administrator would step in to perma-ban an ip would be in cases of repeated abuse.
Yes, it's not perfect but it would encourage new contributors by letting them know that what they type actually counts and will be reviewed.
Why can't they do a contributor rating system, sort of like how slashdot has karma rating?
Require a login. Allow everyone to make changes initially, but track who makes changes. Allow any contributor with a positive rating over a certain threshold to score changes. If the contributor gets ratings below a certain threshold, they're not allowed to change certain "protected" entries. If the rating drops any lower, they're not allowed to contribute, period.
Anonymous ratings would not be allowed.
Thresholds of positive ratings could be used to determine if someone is allowed to make changes to long-established entries or entries otherwise classed as protected.
There would of course be the potential for moderator wars and as always a really persistant jerk could still corrupt the process, but detecting and correcting abuses might be a bit easier especially if ip addresses are logged to help detect abusers with multiple logins.
Yea, it won't stop the abuses but it would limit the number of people willing to take the effort.
In a disaster area, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem. There are no bystanders. Bellsouth basically decided that they are not going to be part of the solution. There are plenty of other companies in the US that ARE willing to be part of not only the short-term solution but also the very long term solution, so good riddance. Lets hope they get out and stay out, and that the govt remembers what they did when it comes time to review contract bids in the future.
Maybe I'm just easily excitable but that sounds like a neat idea. Cross-license with ebay and skype, flavor with paypal, and you can call from your computer and buy stuff without picking up the phone or even pulling out your credit card to read out the numbers or giving your address.
Yea it's consumerism and capitalistic BS, but who wouldn't give a pinky finger to have the rights to the tech and marketing concept?
Call me simple, but I use outlook express and just copy off my.dbx files every once in a while. Any geek should be able to automate the copying of the files, and windows doesn't get all weird over the.dbx files like it does about open.pst files.
Here's a trivial way to do it -
Create a script that you call to open OE. The script first makes a directory that includes a time/datestamp, then copies the contents of your mail identity directory to that folder. Then it opens OE just like usual.
Simple and effective. All you have to remember to do is delete the old folders before you run out of drive space. Sure it would take a while if you keep a ton of email around, but it's just a simple example of how to automate the backup of the.dbx files.
Who said the US govt would be the one to nationalize it?
Plus, any soverign state can identify technology in their national interest, and within their own borders pretty much ignore any intellectual property rights. That's pretty much the useful definition of "soverign", meaning a country can do pretty much whatever it wants within it's own borders. Case in point - imagine a country or company holding a patent for a revolutionary new kind of weapon (such as nukes). Even if such a patent were internationally recognized, would any survival-oriented nation feel compelled to honor such a patent? I think not.
Any technology critical to national infrastructure or survival is going to be used regardless of intellectual property rights. The only variable is whether or not anyone bothers to pay the license fees. If the owner won't license it (a legal way to look at classified technology), there isn't much anyone can do to prevent another nation from declaring it a matter of national interest and using it anyhow. Yes that is an example of an anarchic model of international politics, but it's not very productive to assume any state will subordinate it's welfare to a legal construct (a patent) benefiting an individual or one company.
If an emulator must be specifically coded for every title, it doesn't sound backwards compatible at all. It's a bit like calling a wintel box "commodore 64 backwards compatible" since you can code an emulator, but worse since each game needs separate work and a piece of non-standard hardware (the optional hard drive) to work at all.
If it's that important to the workings of the govt, it sounds like a critical piece of national security infrastructure. That makes it a potential Nationalization candidate.
Now if we could just get the govt to nationalize and release every software patent in existence since both the govt and global economy needs computers to function...
I agree. It's a sloppy review. I could get most of the info in that review from viewsonic's site or from just reading the specs on the box. How about some real detail... Pull the case off and look at the display hardware. What other monitors use the same panel and guts? What are the specs advertised by other manufacturers using the same panel? What is the color depth? What kind of digital image manipulation is going on behind the scenes? What is the quality of the interpolated colors?
They give as a plus "accurate color", but for a 6bpp monitor, you may as well say "nice crisp color banding".
What's the color depth? 6 or 8 bit? I don't care how fast an LCD is... If it shows even a HINT of color banding then it's worthless to me, worse than the crappy used packard bell 15" monitor I have hanging off of my server.
Unfortunately, not many manufacturers are listing color depth in the specs, focusing instead on non-standard claims of response time. There ought to be at least 4 standard measurements - overall brightness, color depth, resolution, and black-white-black response time. Instead, we get resolution, *maybe* a claim of supporting x million colors which could mean anything since they all interpolate to improve image quality anyhow, and a bogus response time number.
The worst part is that so-called enthusiast and gamer hardware review sites let them get away with this. If the color depth isn't printed on the box, the review sites don't even bother to get and report the number. So they're comparing 6 and 8 bit LCDs against each other and not reporting an important difference between the two, or giving great review ratings on monitors without bothering to mention that the monitor only supports a 6 bit color depth so you're guaranteed to get color banding in many situations.
Ok, we admit it... They're ALL fast now. So how about some info on actual image quality?
An easy fix that's been used before - modify the seal to replace each star with a hand that has only the middle finger up. You simply won't notice it until you look closely, but any inspection more careful than a casual glance will instantly reveal that it's not the actual seal. The same can be used for arrowheads or any other small pointed objects in any seal or patch.
Then it's just another spoof, protected like any other goof.
Isn't that the third converted Russian ICBM to have a launch failure? The launch price discount compared to other launch systems means nothing if it can't put the payload into the correct orbit. The other one I remember was that solar sail experiment, but I was sure there was at least one more that used one of these missile conversions that also failed to make orbit.
I doubt they'd have to do much of anything to the motherboard design. My IBM laptop comes with anything from an ati 9000 to a fireGL T2, 9600, and IIRC 9700 series chips on essentially the same mobo. I read somewhere (anandtech?) about 3 years ago that the mobile chipsets from each maker were standardizing on an interface to make it easier to put a range of video solutions on a single mobo design.
If Apple was stupid enough to use a non-standard video interface... Well, it wouldn't suprise anyone but it sure seems shortsighted to have such a popular computer designed so that it simply cannot use the features of their premium desktop OS. If your computer won't run OSX properly, might as well use windows or linux, right?
What we don't need are more petty legal battles, because that's just playing to the RIAA's strength. They have cash to burn and they're feeding it to the lawyers with both claws.
Purely hypothetical situation follows - Don't try this at home...
How would the situation change if a few geek jihadis appeared who were willing to sacrifice themselves against the corporate machine? Would the RIAA survive if every RIAA office burned down at midnight on Halloween? If they think piracy is expensive, how expensive is it going to be when people realize that their governments are not protecting them from "legal" assaults and take matters into their own hands?
I'd be too big of a chicken to do it myself. Plus I haven't been personally hurt by the RIAA. But I think it's only a matter of time before they push someone too far and they snap. And then it'll get real expensive. Hell, as long as you're in court, it might as well be for something you actually DID, eh?
Not that I'd ever advocate an act of terrorism, but there are examples in American history where groups of citizens decided they wouldn't stand for it anymore, especially when the targets of the assaults were normal everyday people, women and children, and then they just burned out the oppressive elements.
It won't happen anyhow. Nobody around here is going to risk anything REAL to stop a corporate monster any more than a flock of sheep would ever band together to take on a wolf. There's just no payoff in making a stand unless you're the one feeling the teeth in your flesh, and by then it's too late.
Although the parent was modded down and I probably will be too, I totally agree.
Why did slashdot feel their obligation to the asshat retard who sent back or authorized those worthless "answers" was greater than their committment to slashdot readers?
I must admit that I am not a subscriber, but if I was I'd probably be pretty pissed. As it is, I'm just a bit disappointed that the standard has been lowered. Slashdot interviews used to contain the best, most interesting content available. Now... Might as well go anywhere else and read PR releases now that we KNOW how low the standard is here.
Military. Willfully breaking almost ANY rule, no matter how small, carries the potential punishment of confinement and/or real jail time, before getting fired.
Certain ummm "organizations" serve up jail time for a wide variety of misbehavior. And even in the general corporate world, many acts can get you jail time. I guarantee if a microsoft employee walked out with their internal development library and customer database, and then got caught, they'd go to jail. Heck, they're jailing kids who break into corporate networks and play around, and if it comes to prosecution of a crime, the punishment isn't going to be all that different if they're doing it from inside the company instead of from outside.
In some places, the line between "mistake" and "crime" is pretty well defined and stepping to the "crime" side of the line may at the very least result in a short period of confinement, reduction in pay, and firing.
Most readers already know what kind of company I'm talking about...
Require absolute standardization. Create a custom installation image similiar to the standard desktop installation including all utilities and software licenses required for the job. Do not give the users administrator rights to anything. Require them to hook the laptop up to the network every week or so to receive updates, patches, and submit to a system scan for unauthorized software and files.
If the system is determined to not meet company standards, give the employee a day to remove personal and work files, and then take the computer back to your IT cave, scrub the hard drive, and re-install the standard image from scratch before giving it back to the employee.
If the company has purchased the laptop, it must be very very clear that the laptop, and everything on it, belongs to the company, period. Policies like this will help keep "innocent" employees from accidentally bringing back something hazardous to the company network, and any employee savvy enough to work around the restrictions should also have the skillz to avoid undetected malware.
And if you have trouble employees who keep getting caught with unauthorized files, software, or who keep bringing back malware infested machines, your security policy and the measures required to circumvent the policies ought to be enough ammunition to support firing them for cause. Or at least confiscating their computer, locking their account, and demoting them to a job that doesn't require the use of a computer. Like janitor or something.
Make it very clear that as their job depends on them having access to a computer, and their access to a computer absolutely depends on them taking care of it and following company policy, if they do something to cause their network and computer privledges to be revoked then they will either be moved to a less technical job or released.
My company works in a very similiar fashion, except that we have the threat of jail time thrown in just for flavor. Guess what... Nobody f**ks with the IT guys and the very very few who violate policy and get caught become well publicized examples of how to ruin you life. Is installing that intardnet solitare game, or peeking at the porn site worth your job? How about worth half your salary for 3 months and a month in jail before you get fired? Well, most companies don't need to go that far, but the general idea that messing with the IT resources is dangerous to company survival is something that nobody will seriously consider unless the both the policies AND actions taken to enforce those policies are black and white. No questions askes, fail to bring in your laptop for a weekly update/scan and you lose compter network privledges until you comply. Fail to comply 3 times or get caught violating the rules 3 times, and lose privledges until reinstated by the appropriate company VP, board member, co-owner, whatever.
If you let people take advantage of the IT department, EVERYONE will bypass the rules. Sure, most slashdot readers could do that without causing harm and many could do it without any real risk of getting caught, but chances are that some of the policy breakers will be relatively incompetent and one single person can bring down the entire company, if the security compliance policies are not clearly defined and rigorously enforced, with real penalties for violations and repeat violators.
I've been on both ends of the corporate IT stick... Been beaten for sidestepping policy, and done the beating later on when it was my turn to enforce policy. There can't be any question in anyone's mind that the policies simply can't be broken without consequences, no exceptions.
Go ahead and do it differently, if you don't mind seeing your company on "CNN Money" next week as being the latest gropu who just let some intruder walk away with your customer database or all your company's proprietary info. Yea, that happened to my company too, with some stuff that had been outsouced. Sucks to know that access to my entire personal financial records have been stolen not once, not twice, but three times due to incompetent IT departments my company has outsourced to.
In other news, an Australian court ruled that the national highway system must be dismantled. Judge Kanga stated in his ruling "It's clear that these roads were intended from the beginning to facilitate illegal activities. Every smuggling operation or fleeing criminal in the country is using these roads. The complex system of registrations, fees, taxes, and licenses does not relieve the road authorities from their culpability in enabling these criminal activities. Without the roads, there are no high speed chases, period. This cannot continue in the face of the law."
Isn't it odd how every country seems to imitate the worst behaviors of the originating country? If the US will pass such a ridiculous set of laws as the DMCA, well golly we all better get right to our own version!
Won't it be priceless when the EFF's lawsuit is dismissed in the name of homeland security, and the next day they're told to hand over all of their collected "evidence", also in the name of homeland security? And of course if they ever reveal that they've been told to hand over the information, they'll all be tossed in jail without charges other than violating some classified measure in the so-called "patriot act".
At least they're not photographing train stations, public parks, or doing something else equally dangerous to national security, but just think of the intelligence goldmine present in all those test pages being sent to the EFF. A goon...er...security agent could get a promotion out of this!
The blog with the highest signal/noise ratio I've ever seen is Jerry Pournelle's site. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/, with daily updates on his "current mail" and "current view" pages. No fancy bling on his pages, just the well thought out views of a former presidential advisor on space and military technology, a global traveller, BYTE magazine columnist, and a popular science fiction writer.
Slashdot Mirror
It wouldn't deter people if the threshold for contributing to most entries is zero, the same level a new user would get when they first log in. They could contribute as much as they want until they're moderated out. And then they could set up a new id and start over again. The only time any administrator would step in to perma-ban an ip would be in cases of repeated abuse.
Yes, it's not perfect but it would encourage new contributors by letting them know that what they type actually counts and will be reviewed.
Why can't they do a contributor rating system, sort of like how slashdot has karma rating?
Require a login. Allow everyone to make changes initially, but track who makes changes. Allow any contributor with a positive rating over a certain threshold to score changes. If the contributor gets ratings below a certain threshold, they're not allowed to change certain "protected" entries. If the rating drops any lower, they're not allowed to contribute, period.
Anonymous ratings would not be allowed.
Thresholds of positive ratings could be used to determine if someone is allowed to make changes to long-established entries or entries otherwise classed as protected.
There would of course be the potential for moderator wars and as always a really persistant jerk could still corrupt the process, but detecting and correcting abuses might be a bit easier especially if ip addresses are logged to help detect abusers with multiple logins.
Yea, it won't stop the abuses but it would limit the number of people willing to take the effort.
In a disaster area, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem. There are no bystanders. Bellsouth basically decided that they are not going to be part of the solution. There are plenty of other companies in the US that ARE willing to be part of not only the short-term solution but also the very long term solution, so good riddance. Lets hope they get out and stay out, and that the govt remembers what they did when it comes time to review contract bids in the future.
Maybe I'm just easily excitable but that sounds like a neat idea. Cross-license with ebay and skype, flavor with paypal, and you can call from your computer and buy stuff without picking up the phone or even pulling out your credit card to read out the numbers or giving your address.
Yea it's consumerism and capitalistic BS, but who wouldn't give a pinky finger to have the rights to the tech and marketing concept?
Call me simple, but I use outlook express and just copy off my .dbx files every once in a while. Any geek should be able to automate the copying of the files, and windows doesn't get all weird over the .dbx files like it does about open .pst files.
.dbx files.
Here's a trivial way to do it -
Create a script that you call to open OE. The script first makes a directory that includes a time/datestamp, then copies the contents of your mail identity directory to that folder. Then it opens OE just like usual.
Simple and effective. All you have to remember to do is delete the old folders before you run out of drive space. Sure it would take a while if you keep a ton of email around, but it's just a simple example of how to automate the backup of the
Who said the US govt would be the one to nationalize it?
Plus, any soverign state can identify technology in their national interest, and within their own borders pretty much ignore any intellectual property rights. That's pretty much the useful definition of "soverign", meaning a country can do pretty much whatever it wants within it's own borders. Case in point - imagine a country or company holding a patent for a revolutionary new kind of weapon (such as nukes). Even if such a patent were internationally recognized, would any survival-oriented nation feel compelled to honor such a patent? I think not.
Any technology critical to national infrastructure or survival is going to be used regardless of intellectual property rights. The only variable is whether or not anyone bothers to pay the license fees. If the owner won't license it (a legal way to look at classified technology), there isn't much anyone can do to prevent another nation from declaring it a matter of national interest and using it anyhow. Yes that is an example of an anarchic model of international politics, but it's not very productive to assume any state will subordinate it's welfare to a legal construct (a patent) benefiting an individual or one company.
If an emulator must be specifically coded for every title, it doesn't sound backwards compatible at all. It's a bit like calling a wintel box "commodore 64 backwards compatible" since you can code an emulator, but worse since each game needs separate work and a piece of non-standard hardware (the optional hard drive) to work at all.
If it's that important to the workings of the govt, it sounds like a critical piece of national security infrastructure. That makes it a potential Nationalization candidate.
Now if we could just get the govt to nationalize and release every software patent in existence since both the govt and global economy needs computers to function...
I agree. It's a sloppy review. I could get most of the info in that review from viewsonic's site or from just reading the specs on the box. How about some real detail... Pull the case off and look at the display hardware. What other monitors use the same panel and guts? What are the specs advertised by other manufacturers using the same panel? What is the color depth? What kind of digital image manipulation is going on behind the scenes? What is the quality of the interpolated colors?
They give as a plus "accurate color", but for a 6bpp monitor, you may as well say "nice crisp color banding".
What's the color depth? 6 or 8 bit? I don't care how fast an LCD is... If it shows even a HINT of color banding then it's worthless to me, worse than the crappy used packard bell 15" monitor I have hanging off of my server.
Unfortunately, not many manufacturers are listing color depth in the specs, focusing instead on non-standard claims of response time. There ought to be at least 4 standard measurements - overall brightness, color depth, resolution, and black-white-black response time. Instead, we get resolution, *maybe* a claim of supporting x million colors which could mean anything since they all interpolate to improve image quality anyhow, and a bogus response time number.
The worst part is that so-called enthusiast and gamer hardware review sites let them get away with this. If the color depth isn't printed on the box, the review sites don't even bother to get and report the number. So they're comparing 6 and 8 bit LCDs against each other and not reporting an important difference between the two, or giving great review ratings on monitors without bothering to mention that the monitor only supports a 6 bit color depth so you're guaranteed to get color banding in many situations.
Ok, we admit it... They're ALL fast now. So how about some info on actual image quality?
An easy fix that's been used before - modify the seal to replace each star with a hand that has only the middle finger up. You simply won't notice it until you look closely, but any inspection more careful than a casual glance will instantly reveal that it's not the actual seal. The same can be used for arrowheads or any other small pointed objects in any seal or patch.
Then it's just another spoof, protected like any other goof.
Isn't that the third converted Russian ICBM to have a launch failure? The launch price discount compared to other launch systems means nothing if it can't put the payload into the correct orbit. The other one I remember was that solar sail experiment, but I was sure there was at least one more that used one of these missile conversions that also failed to make orbit.
I doubt they'd have to do much of anything to the motherboard design. My IBM laptop comes with anything from an ati 9000 to a fireGL T2, 9600, and IIRC 9700 series chips on essentially the same mobo. I read somewhere (anandtech?) about 3 years ago that the mobile chipsets from each maker were standardizing on an interface to make it easier to put a range of video solutions on a single mobo design.
If Apple was stupid enough to use a non-standard video interface... Well, it wouldn't suprise anyone but it sure seems shortsighted to have such a popular computer designed so that it simply cannot use the features of their premium desktop OS. If your computer won't run OSX properly, might as well use windows or linux, right?
Why stick with the 9200 video chip? That one part has kept me from buying from the day it was launched.
What we don't need are more petty legal battles, because that's just playing to the RIAA's strength. They have cash to burn and they're feeding it to the lawyers with both claws.
Purely hypothetical situation follows - Don't try this at home...
How would the situation change if a few geek jihadis appeared who were willing to sacrifice themselves against the corporate machine? Would the RIAA survive if every RIAA office burned down at midnight on Halloween? If they think piracy is expensive, how expensive is it going to be when people realize that their governments are not protecting them from "legal" assaults and take matters into their own hands?
I'd be too big of a chicken to do it myself. Plus I haven't been personally hurt by the RIAA. But I think it's only a matter of time before they push someone too far and they snap. And then it'll get real expensive. Hell, as long as you're in court, it might as well be for something you actually DID, eh?
Not that I'd ever advocate an act of terrorism, but there are examples in American history where groups of citizens decided they wouldn't stand for it anymore, especially when the targets of the assaults were normal everyday people, women and children, and then they just burned out the oppressive elements.
It won't happen anyhow. Nobody around here is going to risk anything REAL to stop a corporate monster any more than a flock of sheep would ever band together to take on a wolf. There's just no payoff in making a stand unless you're the one feeling the teeth in your flesh, and by then it's too late.
What's a "sneak peak"? Is that the top of a mountain that has something to hide?
Although the parent was modded down and I probably will be too, I totally agree.
Why did slashdot feel their obligation to the asshat retard who sent back or authorized those worthless "answers" was greater than their committment to slashdot readers?
I must admit that I am not a subscriber, but if I was I'd probably be pretty pissed. As it is, I'm just a bit disappointed that the standard has been lowered. Slashdot interviews used to contain the best, most interesting content available. Now... Might as well go anywhere else and read PR releases now that we KNOW how low the standard is here.
AOL killed Time Warner by tricking the board into the merger, so the best way for anyone to use AOL to kill anything is to get the target to buy AOL.
Ok, I'll be blunt.
Military. Willfully breaking almost ANY rule, no matter how small, carries the potential punishment of confinement and/or real jail time, before getting fired.
Certain ummm "organizations" serve up jail time for a wide variety of misbehavior. And even in the general corporate world, many acts can get you jail time. I guarantee if a microsoft employee walked out with their internal development library and customer database, and then got caught, they'd go to jail. Heck, they're jailing kids who break into corporate networks and play around, and if it comes to prosecution of a crime, the punishment isn't going to be all that different if they're doing it from inside the company instead of from outside.
In some places, the line between "mistake" and "crime" is pretty well defined and stepping to the "crime" side of the line may at the very least result in a short period of confinement, reduction in pay, and firing.
Most readers already know what kind of company I'm talking about...
Require absolute standardization. Create a custom installation image similiar to the standard desktop installation including all utilities and software licenses required for the job. Do not give the users administrator rights to anything. Require them to hook the laptop up to the network every week or so to receive updates, patches, and submit to a system scan for unauthorized software and files.
If the system is determined to not meet company standards, give the employee a day to remove personal and work files, and then take the computer back to your IT cave, scrub the hard drive, and re-install the standard image from scratch before giving it back to the employee.
If the company has purchased the laptop, it must be very very clear that the laptop, and everything on it, belongs to the company, period. Policies like this will help keep "innocent" employees from accidentally bringing back something hazardous to the company network, and any employee savvy enough to work around the restrictions should also have the skillz to avoid undetected malware.
And if you have trouble employees who keep getting caught with unauthorized files, software, or who keep bringing back malware infested machines, your security policy and the measures required to circumvent the policies ought to be enough ammunition to support firing them for cause. Or at least confiscating their computer, locking their account, and demoting them to a job that doesn't require the use of a computer. Like janitor or something.
Make it very clear that as their job depends on them having access to a computer, and their access to a computer absolutely depends on them taking care of it and following company policy, if they do something to cause their network and computer privledges to be revoked then they will either be moved to a less technical job or released.
My company works in a very similiar fashion, except that we have the threat of jail time thrown in just for flavor. Guess what... Nobody f**ks with the IT guys and the very very few who violate policy and get caught become well publicized examples of how to ruin you life. Is installing that intardnet solitare game, or peeking at the porn site worth your job? How about worth half your salary for 3 months and a month in jail before you get fired? Well, most companies don't need to go that far, but the general idea that messing with the IT resources is dangerous to company survival is something that nobody will seriously consider unless the both the policies AND actions taken to enforce those policies are black and white. No questions askes, fail to bring in your laptop for a weekly update/scan and you lose compter network privledges until you comply. Fail to comply 3 times or get caught violating the rules 3 times, and lose privledges until reinstated by the appropriate company VP, board member, co-owner, whatever.
If you let people take advantage of the IT department, EVERYONE will bypass the rules. Sure, most slashdot readers could do that without causing harm and many could do it without any real risk of getting caught, but chances are that some of the policy breakers will be relatively incompetent and one single person can bring down the entire company, if the security compliance policies are not clearly defined and rigorously enforced, with real penalties for violations and repeat violators.
I've been on both ends of the corporate IT stick... Been beaten for sidestepping policy, and done the beating later on when it was my turn to enforce policy. There can't be any question in anyone's mind that the policies simply can't be broken without consequences, no exceptions.
Go ahead and do it differently, if you don't mind seeing your company on "CNN Money" next week as being the latest gropu who just let some intruder walk away with your customer database or all your company's proprietary info. Yea, that happened to my company too, with some stuff that had been outsouced. Sucks to know that access to my entire personal financial records have been stolen not once, not twice, but three times due to incompetent IT departments my company has outsourced to.
In other news, an Australian court ruled that the national highway system must be dismantled. Judge Kanga stated in his ruling "It's clear that these roads were intended from the beginning to facilitate illegal activities. Every smuggling operation or fleeing criminal in the country is using these roads. The complex system of registrations, fees, taxes, and licenses does not relieve the road authorities from their culpability in enabling these criminal activities. Without the roads, there are no high speed chases, period. This cannot continue in the face of the law."
Isn't it odd how every country seems to imitate the worst behaviors of the originating country? If the US will pass such a ridiculous set of laws as the DMCA, well golly we all better get right to our own version!
Won't it be priceless when the EFF's lawsuit is dismissed in the name of homeland security, and the next day they're told to hand over all of their collected "evidence", also in the name of homeland security? And of course if they ever reveal that they've been told to hand over the information, they'll all be tossed in jail without charges other than violating some classified measure in the so-called "patriot act".
At least they're not photographing train stations, public parks, or doing something else equally dangerous to national security, but just think of the intelligence goldmine present in all those test pages being sent to the EFF. A goon...er...security agent could get a promotion out of this!
The blog with the highest signal/noise ratio I've ever seen is Jerry Pournelle's site. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/, with daily updates on his "current mail" and "current view" pages. No fancy bling on his pages, just the well thought out views of a former presidential advisor on space and military technology, a global traveller, BYTE magazine columnist, and a popular science fiction writer.
I'm using vodaphone pay as you go in the UK. As a computer geek I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I have no idea what standard this phone uses.