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User: gnasher719

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  1. Re:Cell phone on Making a Child Locating System · · Score: 1

    I don't think the OP mentioned a power supply criteria, but the cellphone solutions mentioned here all require a frequently-charged battery. What low-power options exist?

    A cellphone that is only turned on for emergency calls. The phone in the glove compartment of my car works easily for three months, probably more, without a charge. Of course that is because I only turn it on when I want to make a call. But if they child only uses the phone when the teachers put her on the wrong bus, the battery should last quite long.

  2. Re:$250 K ? Must be a typo on Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The DMCA has not come up in this legal battle that I know of. Apple might, however, add DRM and use the DMCA to stop Pystar and others going forward.

    Yes, it has come up. One of the things that Apple sued for was DMCA violation. And Psystar's answer was "Apple is an evil monopolist that puts things into its code to prevent it from running on our computers, and we had to remove it, but it isn't DRM".

    Apple's DRM in MacOS X is quite well documented. There is a chip on the Macintosh motherboard containing a 64 bit number which is used by the OS to decrypt several important modules. It is completely unnoticeable to a Macintosh user; it doesn't prevent you from installing any number of copies of MacOS X on any number of Macintosh computers, and it is quite easy to work around (which is why many people think there is no DRM), but it is there; just effective enough to allow Apple to sue anyone copying MacOS X to a non-Macintosh computer for DMCA violation.

    That's like the lock on my door that wouldn't physically prevent my neighbours from entering my house if they really wanted to, but it is enough to make it a rather serious crime.

  3. Re:Had to happen on Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy · · Score: 1

    I saw this coming when mac went Intel over PPC. There's no way it's going to stop. There's too much money to be made selling cheap Macs. I'm only surprised that it took this long for it to start to take off.

    Excuse me, but the headline is "Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy". This just puts a little damper on your theory that there is much money to be made selling cheap Mac clones.

  4. Re:The question is: how come on Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy · · Score: 1

    Or did their management just drink all profits that should've been used to expand the company and pay for in-house lawyers?

    PJ published some numbers. The biggest debtors: Rodolfo Pedraza, CEO ($120,000 loan to the company), and Carr & Farell, lawyers ($88,000).

    I think they will have to look for new lawyers if they ever come out of Chapter 11.

  5. Re:afaik on In Istanbul, Cameras To Recognize 15,000 Faces/sec. · · Score: 1

    The "there are no alternatives" excuse only goes so far. I'll excuse the behavior of someone who steals but I will not excuse the behavior of someone who uses violence to achieve the objective of stealing (i.e: robbery). If you are willing to use violence against your fellow human beings then your moral compass is so fucked up that you don't deserve to live among the rest of us.

    Does that apply to people who keep guns at their home in the hope that one day they might be able to use them in "self defense" against some trespasser?

  6. Re:Motion to Supress Denied? on Judge Says Boston Student's Laptop Was Seized Illegally · · Score: 1

    On the last page of the court order why is the motion to suppress evidence denied? Isn't evidence from an illegal search warrant usually suppressed? Is there some technical distinction between quashing a warrant(*) and suppressing the evidence that I am missing?

    The evidence can only be suppressed if the police is stupid enough to try to prosecute him for something and use evidence that was gathered through this illegal search. Evidence that isn't used by the police cannot be suppressed. Yes, it sounds weird, but it is logical.

  7. Misleading comments on EFF page on Judge Says Boston Student's Laptop Was Seized Illegally · · Score: 1

    I read the EFF article that was linked to, and it seems to me that it is quite misleading.

    First, the judge noted absolutely correctly that sending of emails from public email services does not constitute the crime of obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation. Nothing wrong with that. Then the judge said "the claim that such an email might be unlawful because it violates a hypothetical internet use policy goes well beyond the reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the affidavit". Let's examine this: The police had an affidavit from the guy's roommate that he sent emails. These emails may or may not have violated someone's internet use policy - but as the judge correctly said, the police only had the roommate's affidavit, they didn't have any statement from Boston College about their internet use policy. The EFF now states "This appears to be the highest state court to address the question of whether a terms of service violation can itself constitute a "computer hacking" crime, an argument that the district court and jury got wrong in the Lori Drew case". It doesn't. It addresses the fact that the police only imagined such a terms of service violation. They had no good reason to believe that such a terms of service violation existed, according to the facts that they had.

    Contrary to what the EFF says, whether such a violation would be a crime is not part of this case. There are two questions: "Did he do X" and "is X a crime". As the judge said: The police had no reason to assume that he did X, based on the information that they had, and that is enough to throw the search warrant out. The second question "is X a crime" was never discussed.

    The second conclusion that the article draws is also wrong. The judge observed that the police further tried to justify the search warrant by mentioning that in one and a half lines someone claims they observed that the guy hacked into BC's computers. That was thrown out as justification for a search warrant for a very simple reason: The affidavit never mentioned where the alleged hacking happened. He worked at a university. He could have performed the hacking from his home computer, from a computer lab at the university, from an internet cafe. The affidavit said nothing about it. The police couldn't raid his home, because they didn't actually have any information that the hacking happened at his home!

    The EFF claims the court was "Rejecting the Commonwealth's argument that the unsupported allegation of "grade hacking" constituted probable cause". This is misleading. The judge stopped looking further when he noticed that the place of that alleged hacking wasn't specified, and therefore there was no good reason to believe that searching the guy's home could show up any evidence.

    All in all, the search warrant was declared unlawful because the police did not actually have any information that would have justified a search warrant. There is nothing in this decision that would be any precedent for other cases; the police just didn't do their homework.

  8. Re:After Reading The Fine Article... on RIAA MediaSentry, Dead In US, Is Alive In Australia · · Score: 1

    It seems that the situation is this:

    1. Person X has by his own admission downloaded a movie. The admission was probably in some blog post, he hasn't (hopefully) admitted anything to the dorm management.
    2. Dorm management received an email from MediaSentry telling them about some copyright infringement, and asking them to take the strongest possible action.
    3. Dorm management talked to the guy, and the guy thinks he now has very little time to find a new place to stay.

    In the USA, one of the main problems is that the RIAA threatens 80 year old grannies, dead people, seven year olds and so on for illegally downloading music that we can reasonably assume they haven't downloaded. We may also assume that they threaten some genuine illegal downloaders as well. The other problem is that the consequences don't fit the severity of the action.

    In this case, it seems from what the article says that the guy is guilty of what he was accused of. But what should he have done? The problem is between him and dorm management. You can't expect the dorm manager to know about the RIAA (or whatever it is called in Australia) strategy; it took US judges years to figure it out, and I would expect that the average US judge should be more intelligent than the average Australian dorm manager. I think the right thing to do would have been first to deny anything to the dorm manager, then take a day to collect some of the tons of information that is available about the company and show it to the manager.

    Tell the manager: This is a company that in the US has accused 80 year old grannies, dead people, and seven year olds. That is currently accused in the USA for illegal investigations, and that has been fired by the RIAA in the USA because they are so incompetent. I haven't downloaded any movies. You can't evict me from the dorm because these guys make some wild accusations. You definitely can't evict me 14 days before my exams. If you try to evict me, I would have to go to court and ask for damages, which would be considerable. I'd hate to do that. Maybe the RIAA in the USA can do that, but you are a dorm manager and not the RIAA, and this is Australia where we have proper laws and not the USA. So let me stay here. If these guys think I've done something illegal, they can sue me.

  9. After Reading The Fine Article... on RIAA MediaSentry, Dead In US, Is Alive In Australia · · Score: 1

    It seems that the situation is this: 1. Person X has by his own admission downloaded a movie. The admission was probably in some blog post, he hasn't (hopefully) admitted anything to the dorm management. 2. Dorm management received an email from MediaSentry telling them about some copyright infringement, and asking them to take the strongest possible action. 3. Dorm management talked to the guy, and the guy thinks he now has very little time to find a new place to stay. In the USA, one of the main problems is that the RIAA threatens 80 year old grannies, dead people, seven year olds and so on for illegally downloading music that we can reasonably assume they haven't downloaded. We may also assume that they threaten some genuine illegal downloaders as well. The other problem is that the consequences don't fit the severity of the action. In this case, it seems from what the article says that the guy is guilty of what he was accused of. But what should he have done? The problem is between him and dorm management. You can't expect the dorm manager to know about the RIAA (or whatever it is called in Australia) strategy; it took US judges years to figure it out, and I would expect that the average US judge should be more intelligent than the average Australian dorm manager. I think the right thing to do would have been first to deny anything to the dorm manager, then take a day to collect some of the tons of information that is available about the company and show it to the manager. Tell the manager: This is a company that in the US has accused 80 year old grannies, dead people, and seven year olds. That is currently accused in the USA for illegal investigations, and that has been fired by the RIAA in the USA because they are so incompetent. I haven't downloaded any movies. You can't evict me from the dorm because these guys make some wild accusations. You definitely can't evict me 14 days before my exams. If you try to evict me, I would have to go to court and ask for damages, which would be considerable. I'd hate to do that. Maybe the RIAA in the USA can do that, but you are a dorm manager and not the RIAA, and this is Australia where we have proper laws and not the USA. So let me stay here. If these guys think I've done something illegal, they can sue me.

  10. Re:All I have to say is... on Australia, UK To Test Vehicle Speed-Limiting Devices · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And what happens when the guy in the lane next to you spins out and you have to make a split second decision to punch the accelerator and get clear, or get in an accident?

    Your brakes are usually about four times stronger than your engine. If you need to change your speed very quickly, the brakes are much better at doing it. Instead of thinking that you can rely on engine power to get you out of trouble, learn watching the traffic, and reading other people's behavior. If the guy in the next line spins out, then most likely you should have noticed suspicious behavior before, and acted accordingly, like giving him space.

  11. Re:This is poorly thought out. on Australia, UK To Test Vehicle Speed-Limiting Devices · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This fails to address either the legitimate need for speedy travel (medical emergencies, birth, etc.) and the possibility of error on the part of the system. If the system is taught that a particular road has a speed limit of 10kph when in reality, the limit is 50, it's going to do nothing but inconvenience people.

    A medical emergency is no legal excuse for you as a driver with no special training, and with no means to alert other drivers of the situation, to exceed the speed limit.

  12. Re:OK, now what... on Court Rejects RIAA's Proposed Protective Order · · Score: 1

    Don't forget that some files almost always considered as data -- PostScript files -- literally are programs. They cannot be viewed or printed without being executed.

    What? Most PostScript files that are generated nowadays, especially those created by a printer driver, are so trivial that they can be converted into PDF mechanically, without ever executing the PostScript code.

  13. Re:DMCA on A System For Handling 'Impostor' Complaints · · Score: 1

    Yep, going after the ex was the right way. However, if she just wanted the page down fast, she could simply send a nice DMCA take-down notice claiming copyright to all material related to whatever her name is. It works beautifully for corporate lying bastards, why not her?

    She would be in deeply illegal territory then, because the material on that page is actually _not_ copyrighted by her. The copyright holder is the bastard who put the stuff there.

  14. Re:Meh on The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well how about this. You, as an IT knowing guy, tell your friend, the retard, that his hard drive is broken. Instead of buying a new hard drive, he buys a new PC, on your recommendation. Language is language and it's important that we are all synced.

    Well, if you tell him the hard drive is broken, and he buys a new computer, then logically he _had_ to buy a new computer because that person would have never, ever been able to buy a new hard drive and to get his old computer with the new hard drive to work. The guy's only choices were to buy a new computer or to pay someone to fix it.

  15. Re:After the protest against dell is over on Does Dell Know What Women Want In a Laptop? · · Score: 1

    Then will the same groups go on to shut down Better Homes, Oprah, Family Circle and Good Housekeeping magazines? These magazines are focused on women and only publish articles on calorie counting, cooking tips, recipies, and shopping. Won't the same groups think these magazines stereotype women as being stay at home moms? Or does it simply address the needs of a particular marketing segment?

    You see, that kind of contents is entirely appropriate for women who want to read about calorie counting, cooking tips, and shipping. It is not appropriate for selling a computer. When a person asks "Why should I buy your computers" the answer should be "because they are good computers", not "because we know you love calorie counting, cooking tips and shopping" or "because we know you love fast cars and women wearing very little".

    See Apple's latest advertisement. Where Megan wants a computer with a big screen, a fast processor, and that doesn't crash or freeze. She may very well want a fast computer with a big screen because she wants to see lots of recipes, but that's her business.

  16. Re:so what would be condescending towards men? on Does Dell Know What Women Want In a Laptop? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If someone created a website aimed at attracting men and used images of fast cars, busty models and bottles of beer, would those "stereotypes" be condescending to men?

    Absolutely. Thinking that I might buy your product because you add a picture of a busty model _is_ stupid and condescending. Unless your product is busty models.

  17. Re:Lies, damn lies. on Hacker Destroys Avsim.com, Along With Its Backups · · Score: 1

    However, what would be a good policy for small business (sole proprietorships or only a few people) or individuals? Not everyone can afford properly secured offline remote backups. The best effort that the average individual can do is set up a cron job rsync to a remote server if he/she has one and then do a few local rsyncs for redundancy every few hours. (this is what I do)

    A small business can buy two Terabyte external drives, and make a complete backup every Friday evening, alternating between the drives, take the drive home. A small business using Macs can use Time Machine on each computer with a $100 external drive which protects against stupidity, hacking and hardware failure.

  18. Re:first weeks is exclusively "warez" on Why Bother With DRM? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pirating the game later has the same effect as buying the game second hand as far as the publisher is concerned, but by pirating it you don't support the second hand market, which benefits the publisher. I might see such practices justified for games that break the second hand market, but if they have no/reasonable DRM, I can't say I entirely agree with you.

    I think you've got that backwards. By buying used games (instead of pirating), you give money to people who bought the new game, reducing the effective cost for them, and making it possible for them to buy more new games. Say I have $50 to spend, and used games sell for $25. So I can buy one game for $50, you pirate the same game, that's it. Or I buy a game for $50, three months later you buy it used for $25, I buy another game for $50, three months later you buy it used for $25, so it cost me the same $50, but the manufacturer got $100. So buying used games _does_ support the manufacturer by making new games less costly.

  19. Re:Copyright is a religion on Copyright Infringement of Books · · Score: 0, Troll

    You're operating under a fallacy. It ceases to be only "your" work when you release it for public consumption. At that point it becomes part of our(I mean the inclusive sense) culture.

    So you will agree that your car ceases to be "yours" when you take it out on a public road. Hand over the keys. And I like your watch, too.

  20. The truth: It's Apple on Microsoft Raises $3.8B in Bond Sale · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apple made Microsoft a present: One iPod for every Microsoft employee. $3.8 bn is the money that Microsoft needs now to fill these iPods with music :-)

  21. Complete bullshit on New Pattern Found In Prime Numbers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The prime number theorem was conjectured in 1796 by Adrien-Marie Legendre and proved in 1896 independently by Jacques Hadamard and Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin. It says that if pi (N) denotes the number of primes p = N, then pi (N) / (N / ln N) converges towards 1; accordingly the number of primes between A and B is about (B / ln B - A / ln A). This shows that there should be slightly more d digit primes starting with 1 than with 2, 3, 4 etc. A reasonably good approximation is that the number of d digit primes starting with 1 is not 1/9 th of all d digit primes, but more precisely (11 1/9 + 5.7 / d) percent. This is all very, very simple maths. I don't think it hasn't been observed before, it was just never considered worth mentioning. However, the prime number theorem alone is not enough to prove this; it would be necessary to prove that convergence happens at a certain speed. So anything that these so-called "mathematicians" claim that depends on observations of large list of primes is pure nonsense.

  22. She was right on Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage · · Score: 1, Troll

    Absolutely right. 44 GB is more than most people use in a year.

    I can understand that there is a lot of resistance against usage caps from people who use that amount in one week. But the majority would not want their fees to go up because of that kind of usage.

  23. Re:Isn't RIAA's request reasonable? on Appeals Court Stays RIAA Subpoena Vs. Students · · Score: 1

    So you're saying if I hire some homeless person (hey, I'm cheap) to watch over my car, someone steals it, the homeless guy I hired tells me who the thief is and I go to the police, they won't be able to get a search warrant? If that's true that's fucked up...

    See, you come up with this straw men, but they are quite easy to blow down. The situation that I described and the one that you described are completely different. Case 1: Unlicensed investigator is trying to dig up dirt on a person. And comes up with an accusation of car theft. There is no evidence of theft except the statement of an unlicensed investigator. Case 2: Homeless person is hired to watch your car. Note that he isn't acting as an investigator. He doesn't need a license for car watching. He hasn't done anything wrong. And his statement is not the only evidence of theft: There is also the evidence of the car's owner, who found that his car is gone.

    So yes, the police shouldn't get a search warrant on the word of a scumbag and nothing else. They should likely get a search warrant based on the word of a car owner who reports his car stolen and a homeless person who witnessed the theft.

  24. Re:Confused on Appeals Court Stays RIAA Subpoena Vs. Students · · Score: 1

    It really depends on the exact statutes you're working with. Since they technically do nothing except monitor public information, it's not illegal anywhere I am aware of.

    I think this is misunderstanding what an investigator is (whether licensed or unlicensed).

    A licensed investigator is allowed to do about anything that any private person is allowed to do, nothing more and nothing less. The difference between a licensed investigator and a private person is that the licensed investigator gets paid for it. Same as a licensed taxi driver and any private citizen. I can drive my friends around in my car as much as I like. But I am not allowed to park my car somewhere, put up a sign "for hire" and charge people for driving them, even though the driving is exactly the same.

    The unlicensed investigator is investigating for money. Just as the unlicensed taxi driver does something illegal, just by driving around in his car with passengers, even when he follows all the traffic rules, the unlicensed investigator is doing something illegal, even though the things he does are things that you and I would be allowed to do.

  25. Re:Isn't RIAA's request reasonable? on Appeals Court Stays RIAA Subpoena Vs. Students · · Score: 3, Informative

    How about you bring suit based on your friend reporting whatever. Should the judge basically say "your friend is not a license investigator, you thereby have no argument whatsoever"? I realize the weakness of the analogy, but shouldn't the validity of the argument be discussed rather than dismissed without examining?

    There is a difference. My friend is not a licensed investigator, but he can have a look around things if I ask him to, as long as he is not investigating for hire. Perfectly legal. If he goes to court, the judge can ask him questions to find out whether he is a reliable witness, and his evidence would be treated accordingly. The unlicensed investigator, on the other hand, has already broken the law just by taking money for investigating when he didn't have a license. We don't even need to examine what he says in court, he can't be trusted anyway.

    You also miss that this unlicensed, illegal investigators testimony is used to breach the privacy of presumably innocent people. You have to have a very good reason to do that. For example, if my friend, he is just an ordinary and presumably honest person, claims that he saw you stealing something, then this may be enough for the police to get a search warrant and then breach your privacy. If that unlicensed, illegal investigator claims that he saw you stealing a car, then this is most likely not enough for the police to get a search warrant. And what the RIAA wanted was the equivalent of a search warrant.