Assuming you're one of the parties this is of interest to, let me ask this: of what significance is this find, outside of anthropological circles? Unless it leads us to the missing link, what effect does this knowledge have on the world? What does it change? I suspect that may have been more of what GP's point was.
I think I prefer that it does resolve correctly, personally - I'd rather make that choice myself instead of having my browser make it for me. Interesting that it behaves differently on Mac though -- perhaps it relies on the underlying network stack to resolve it, and the difference is there?
But your right, it's not like the US has a precedent of have laws like that.
I'm not sure that I agree with GP, but I think this is fallacious reasoning. Looking at the history over the last 80 years or so, the US has been removing each and every one of those, with no signs of regression. Your statement is like saying...
When you were six, you stole a candybar
When you were twelve, you stole a pack of cigarettes
Now that you're in your thirties we'd best not let you lock down the store at the end of the day, given your history of theft.
Unfortunately I can no longer find the source, but I seem to recall that jitter makes this pretty unworkable: that is, human eyes are almost never absolutely, 100% still. And when they do move, it is not necessarily to an exact point, but rather to a general area/region of a certain size.
Found this when I was looking for a way to make eye-tracking window focus changes because I was tired of typing into the wrong window;)
All that said - TFA points to the thought controlled computing article source, and I can't (won't) view video at work -- maybe TFV addresses this?
Also true. My first moment of surprise was that someone hadn't tagged this article with "bloat". While I don't necessarily agree with each app doing one thing, I *do* think it's best to stay within a single problem domain...
I've been using gmail, and have started taking advantage of the feature where gmail will let you append things to your address. my.name+yourwebsite@gmail.com. That lets me identify pretty easily the ones who are abusing my address, as well as providing a simple rule for blocking them if they do.
True, but that doesn't seem like what this is used for? As I read it, it's more for populating forms with other people's addresses from your address book.
Correct, as I've (more or less) said in follow-up replies to my own. I say "the law" -- meaning "the law as applies to this case". (ANd no IANAL, just doing some reading...)
I'd also add to that form factor. When it's down to the size of a Steno notebook in dimensions and weight (and I think there's no doubt it will get there) -- or at most an A4 50-page tablet -- and meets the requirements above, at least I know of one customer then.
Are you sure? You're basically saying it's legal in the US to surf child porn as long as you don't store it? I'm not really buying that, but hey, you might be right.
I'm saying that in Canada, where this case occurred, there seems to be a distinction made between "accessing" and "possessing" - and the charge here is "possessing". Were the charge 'accessing' perhaps the result would have been different - though IANAL in either country, so this is just based on a layman's reading of the relevant code.
I agree- but the charge as raised is "possession". The judge made a common-sense ruling; it's not reasonable to rule that because a browser cache contains something that it's a case of "possession". Had the charge been for "accessing" it seems as if there's a pretty darned strong case for it. (So in other words - yes , the cops and DA missed the boat on this one.)
I do have to wonder whether or not it's possible for them to raise exactly that charge, no matter the result of this one?
"see 18 U.S.C. 2251, 2252, 2252A)."... except this case is in Canada which actually makes a distinction between viewing and possessing. The charge here was "possessing", and the criteria for "possessing" were not met.
First of all, when I'm filling out a web form I'm *never* putting somebody else's information into it -- it's always my own. Second of all... actually, there is no second of all. When I'm using Firefox for email, it's just my front-end to GMail or other webmail which already has an address book. I'm not a big fan of the "well, I don't see a need therefore nobody should" school of thought; so I'd love to hear about use cases where this functionality is actually meeting some need not already handled more appropriately elsewhere.
This kind of crap would not fly in the United States. The computer user might not have knowingly possessed the images through his computer's browser cache, but I am sure he knowingly viewed the images through his browser.
But the law specifically says you cannot possess such material. It does not state that you cannot *view* the images. Which means that while the cache constitutes likely proof to show that he did view it -- that is not a criminal act. The distinction you're trying to erase is exactly the one that prevented him from being convicted.
So in other words, the people who created music, produced it, marketed it, etc - they shouldn't get anything? It should simply be a matter of reproduction costs? I'm just having a hard time figuring out the premise for your argument.
Sell them $99 or $0.01, I am not willing to pay for middlemen more than the final artist will get. I think I'll wait for flattr.
So even though the artist agrees to have the middleman manage this and even receive the lion's share of the money, it doesn't matter? It's not the artist's right to do that?
Yeah, that sounds really worth the extra money. I have barely any space to store my DVDs and blu-rays in my flat right now. I'm glad I could shove all my CDs into my mum's attic. I
Might be doing it wrong -- you don't need jewel cases, just toss 'em out and stick everything in CD books (which also work for DVDs and games). We turned a ton of CD jewel cases into 6 thick books and saved a ton of space; and we're currently going through the same process for DVDs/BD. (The books are now in either one or two boxes in the basement storage.)
don't see anything empowering about needing to keep highly inefficient backups of what is essentially just something you want to hear - not something you need to look at or touch.
By following the above, it's not particularly inefficient. I guess you would be better off by ripping to lossless and burning lossless to BD, but having physical storage kept separate from your single hard drive copy is not a Bad Thing to do. Of course, it gets easier still if you're not concerned with lossless.
Think about it. If you're continuously doing updates to your systems it's business as usual. If you have to roll out the latest windows to over 2000 desktops every 10 years that's going to cost you a lot of downtime and productivity loss.
Large companies - 2000+ desktops - won't do continuous updates either. There's a reason that the once-per-decade model is popular: it's a huge pain in the ass, but it's a periodic, schedulable pain in the ass. And you don't have issues every other month where video drivers stop working, your custom app is no longer compatible with the newest glibc version, etc.
Instead, these upgrades become scheduled releases - you roll them out in a test environment first, discover issues, make what corrections you have to, then roll out to a pilot team, then roll out in stages across the enterprise. Having 2000+ (or 100k+ in some companies) systems getting continuously upgraded would be a disaster and a support nightmare.
The examples I gave were for Linux but it really applies both ways. Even a Windows service pack rollout or a browser upgrade is a big deal that requires testing and remediation of standard and custom apps in enterprise environments.
The whole point of the article is that the bandwidth *itself* has no cost. It's not irrelevant when you consider that most companies are paying by bandwidth usage and not a flat connection rate like a home user will.
No matter how much or little bandwidth they use, operational and infrastructure costs remains fixed.
If I run a shop that trades spare left shoes for spare right shoes, I don't come out even, I'm down the cost of running the shop.
But we're not talking about a trade that disadvantages either or both parties. Capacity is X. Usage is Y. While Y < X, cost remains fixed for both parties. By trading what would otherwise be unused capacity in both directions, both parties are spending less than paying each other for the same thing on a usage basis. If the capacity would *not* otherwise be unused, it becomes a different story.
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Assuming you're one of the parties this is of interest to, let me ask this: of what significance is this find, outside of anthropological circles? Unless it leads us to the missing link, what effect does this knowledge have on the world? What does it change? I suspect that may have been more of what GP's point was.
I think I prefer that it does resolve correctly, personally - I'd rather make that choice myself instead of having my browser make it for me. Interesting that it behaves differently on Mac though -- perhaps it relies on the underlying network stack to resolve it, and the difference is there?
Yeah, I'll be the jackass who says it -- maybe you should be spending your time looking at the road and not inside of the cars next to you...
Erm... "over the last hundred years or so"... my mind is stuck in the 80s. (Excepting prohibition, which didn't last very long... )
But your right, it's not like the US has a precedent of have laws like that.
I'm not sure that I agree with GP, but I think this is fallacious reasoning. Looking at the history over the last 80 years or so, the US has been removing each and every one of those, with no signs of regression. Your statement is like saying...
When you were six, you stole a candybar
When you were twelve, you stole a pack of cigarettes
Now that you're in your thirties we'd best not let you lock down the store at the end of the day, given your history of theft.
but Firefox actually makes an effort to disallow using IP addresses with this notation. So if they're using Firefox, it won't work so well.
Well... except that clicking each of the links in the blog entry pointed out by TSHTF above shows that it *does* work in FF...
Found this when I was looking for a way to make eye-tracking window focus changes because I was tired of typing into the wrong window ;)
All that said - TFA points to the thought controlled computing article source, and I can't (won't) view video at work -- maybe TFV addresses this?
We had a debate. You acted like children. You lost.
I love how there are always people who fail to see that BadAnalogyGuy deliberately makes... um... bad analogies...
Also true. My first moment of surprise was that someone hadn't tagged this article with "bloat". While I don't necessarily agree with each app doing one thing, I *do* think it's best to stay within a single problem domain...
I've been using gmail, and have started taking advantage of the feature where gmail will let you append things to your address. my.name+yourwebsite@gmail.com. That lets me identify pretty easily the ones who are abusing my address, as well as providing a simple rule for blocking them if they do.
True, but that doesn't seem like what this is used for? As I read it, it's more for populating forms with other people's addresses from your address book.
Correct, as I've (more or less) said in follow-up replies to my own. I say "the law" -- meaning "the law as applies to this case". (ANd no IANAL, just doing some reading...)
I'd also add to that form factor. When it's down to the size of a Steno notebook in dimensions and weight (and I think there's no doubt it will get there) -- or at most an A4 50-page tablet -- and meets the requirements above, at least I know of one customer then.
Are you sure? You're basically saying it's legal in the US to surf child porn as long as you don't store it? I'm not really buying that, but hey, you might be right.
I'm saying that in Canada, where this case occurred, there seems to be a distinction made between "accessing" and "possessing" - and the charge here is "possessing". Were the charge 'accessing' perhaps the result would have been different - though IANAL in either country, so this is just based on a layman's reading of the relevant code.
I do have to wonder whether or not it's possible for them to raise exactly that charge, no matter the result of this one?
"see 18 U.S.C. 2251, 2252, 2252A)." ... except this case is in Canada which actually makes a distinction between viewing and possessing. The charge here was "possessing", and the criteria for "possessing" were not met.
First of all, when I'm filling out a web form I'm *never* putting somebody else's information into it -- it's always my own. Second of all... actually, there is no second of all. When I'm using Firefox for email, it's just my front-end to GMail or other webmail which already has an address book. I'm not a big fan of the "well, I don't see a need therefore nobody should" school of thought; so I'd love to hear about use cases where this functionality is actually meeting some need not already handled more appropriately elsewhere.
This kind of crap would not fly in the United States. The computer user might not have knowingly possessed the images through his computer's browser cache, but I am sure he knowingly viewed the images through his browser.
But the law specifically says you cannot possess such material. It does not state that you cannot *view* the images. Which means that while the cache constitutes likely proof to show that he did view it -- that is not a criminal act. The distinction you're trying to erase is exactly the one that prevented him from being convicted.
So in other words, the people who created music, produced it, marketed it, etc - they shouldn't get anything? It should simply be a matter of reproduction costs? I'm just having a hard time figuring out the premise for your argument.
Sell them $99 or $0.01, I am not willing to pay for middlemen more than the final artist will get. I think I'll wait for flattr.
So even though the artist agrees to have the middleman manage this and even receive the lion's share of the money, it doesn't matter? It's not the artist's right to do that?
Yeah, that sounds really worth the extra money. I have barely any space to store my DVDs and blu-rays in my flat right now. I'm glad I could shove all my CDs into my mum's attic. I
Might be doing it wrong -- you don't need jewel cases, just toss 'em out and stick everything in CD books (which also work for DVDs and games). We turned a ton of CD jewel cases into 6 thick books and saved a ton of space; and we're currently going through the same process for DVDs/BD. (The books are now in either one or two boxes in the basement storage.)
don't see anything empowering about needing to keep highly inefficient backups of what is essentially just something you want to hear - not something you need to look at or touch.
By following the above, it's not particularly inefficient. I guess you would be better off by ripping to lossless and burning lossless to BD, but having physical storage kept separate from your single hard drive copy is not a Bad Thing to do. Of course, it gets easier still if you're not concerned with lossless.
Think about it. If you're continuously doing updates to your systems it's business as usual. If you have to roll out the latest windows to over 2000 desktops every 10 years that's going to cost you a lot of downtime and productivity loss.
Large companies - 2000+ desktops - won't do continuous updates either. There's a reason that the once-per-decade model is popular: it's a huge pain in the ass, but it's a periodic, schedulable pain in the ass. And you don't have issues every other month where video drivers stop working, your custom app is no longer compatible with the newest glibc version, etc.
Instead, these upgrades become scheduled releases - you roll them out in a test environment first, discover issues, make what corrections you have to, then roll out to a pilot team, then roll out in stages across the enterprise. Having 2000+ (or 100k+ in some companies) systems getting continuously upgraded would be a disaster and a support nightmare.
The examples I gave were for Linux but it really applies both ways. Even a Windows service pack rollout or a browser upgrade is a big deal that requires testing and remediation of standard and custom apps in enterprise environments.
No matter how much or little bandwidth they use, operational and infrastructure costs remains fixed.
If I run a shop that trades spare left shoes for spare right shoes, I don't come out even, I'm down the cost of running the shop.
But we're not talking about a trade that disadvantages either or both parties. Capacity is X. Usage is Y. While Y < X, cost remains fixed for both parties. By trading what would otherwise be unused capacity in both directions, both parties are spending less than paying each other for the same thing on a usage basis. If the capacity would *not* otherwise be unused, it becomes a different story.
Clearly you've forgotten about the wear-and-tear cost of light...
"Bandwidth bill" != "infrastructure cost".