grow up and pay the fine when you get caught for actually knowingly breaking the law. How about that for a radical idea?
When I speed the fine is $350, when I let a parking meter run out the fine is $30. Were I to get into a fight and punch someone (misdemeanor assault) I'd face 2 weeks in jail and and $500 fine. Were I to steal a car I'd be facing maybe 1 year in jail, but in all likelihood would serve at most a couple months as a first time offender.
These are all reasonable punishments.
We're I to torrent my favorite artists discography (uploading it in the process, and thereby infringing copyright on several tracks), I would be fined... $675,000. Say what now? That's more than my house, cars, and everything in them are worth altogether. LOTS more. How is that reasonable?
I have fuck all sympathy for those who not only pirate music instead, but when they get caught red handed they act like they are being persecuted.
They ARE being persecuted. They commited a non-violent crime, for neglible personal benefit (they gain a few songs which can legally be obtained by borrowing a friends CD, recording them off a radio, or purchased for under a buck each), and which caused no real measurable harm to the copyright owner (at most the infringment in this act deprived them of a few hundred dollars due to lost sales... and that's highly debateable).
So sure I can see it being on par with shoplifting or something... a moderate fine 10 to 100 times in excess of the value of the items infringed to deter people from doing it seems reasonable. A few hundred to a few thousand dollars... sure no problem.
After all its pretty petty offense against society.
Fining them an amount that's greater than the value of their house, cars, and all their possessions seems a bit over the top for downloading a few albums.
Would you also support law that made loitering is a life sentence in maximum security prison? Making a rolling stop instead of coming to a complete stop is punished with hanging?
Why EXACTLY do you support bankrupting an entire family over p2p sharing a Britney Spears album?
Maybe you shouldn't be banking online if you don't want everyone to know what your doing?
So your theory is that people should have to physically go out in public if they want something to be private? I hope i don't have to point out the obvious flaw in this.
Online banking, and any other encrypted communication should be private by default.
The difference being that if Google is down for a day, most users can use Yahoo, Bing, Live, WolframAlpha, etc. to search. Not every Facebook user has a MySpace.
No, the difference being that if facebook went down, people would discover they didn't actually need anything it does after all.
Sort of like when their cable goes out. You pace aimlessly for a few minutes, and then do something else with your new found free time.
Oh, wait, now you want to sell your derivative works without permission of the copyright holder? Well, that's copyright infringement.
If the copyright holder is being paid for a license of each so-called "derivative work" that is sold I'm not convinced they can complain. How exactly have they been harmed? What damages are they claiming?
Psst. The word upgrade is not on the box art. It's in the actual text to determine which upgrade license is correct for a situation. Leopard, pay $29. Tiger, pay $169. There is no other option.
Thanks for the clarification.
I've done a bit of searching, and the actual text appears to be:
"Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
First it states that: "only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade". no problem there.
Then it goes on to say that " Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
That doesn't preclude other people from buying the box set too. Nobody is *restricted* from buying it. Tiger and earlier OS users are explicitly invited to buy the box set. But it doesn't say that Leopard users can't buy the $169 box set. They can buy it if they want. They are the only ones eligible for the cheap one, but they can still buy the box set. And similarly, people with no OS at all can buy it. It doesn't say anywhere they can't.
Apple doesn't give a shit if you install OSX on a Dell. Apple only cares if you install it on a hundred dells and sell them as "OS X" computers.
notice the difference.
No. I don't actually.
I could see the difference if I bought one copy of OSX, and sold it on 100 dells. That would be a clear copyright violation. But if I buy a 100 copies and resell them bundled with 100 dells, what exactly is wrong with that?
If I go to a gallery, buy ten art prints, are you suggesting I can't try and resell them for a profit? Hint: buying 10 copies, and then reselling those 10 copies is entirely legal.
Suppose the art gallery also will frame the prints for an additional fee... but instead I take the ten prints to a different cheaper frame store and buy ten frames, put the prints in the frames, are you seriously suggesting that now I can't turn around and resell the framed print for a profit? If not, exactly why not?
So what makes buying a 10 copies of OSX, sticking them into 10 Dells and reselling them wrong?
So you are arguing that if I order a replacement apple logic board from apple repair, and pick up an optical drive, hard disk, and other scraps from ebay etc that the resulting unit could not legally have OSX on it, because this mac it didn't come with a version of OSX, and I can't buy an OSX license?
Really? That seems absurd. By the way I know of people who -have- gotten macs something like this.
In fact their text for the $169 version begins with "Upgrade your Mac with the latest..." It says upgrade right there. First word. It implies a continuity if nothing else.
I saw dvd player ad that said "upgrade your home theatre experience..." or some such. It certainly didn't require you have a previous version of the dvd player, or even a home theatre.
The word upgrade on the box art is not a legally binding term.
The arbitrary "placing" of products is one of the more annoying features of these reviews.
Its often the case that one product is head and shoulders above the others. There's no reason that shouldn't be recognized, even if one of the lesser products has a niche it excels in.
I agree the rankings are often arbitrary, and based on author biases, and so on, but they are often relevant. When I'm looking at 10 consumer laser printers... having them identify clearly which they felt were the best gives me a starting point. Their number 1 may not be the best unit for me, maybe number 2 or 3 is the right one for me... but their number 10 is probably not really worth looking at. At least if its a competent reviewer.
The thing is, with electronics and the Internet, there is such a thing called 'unlimited'. Once the infrastructure is in place and you have fleshed out the support and maintenance costs there is nothing further that gets consumed - whether you use it or not, the switches, the routers and the firewalls all have to stay in place and they all keep moving bits in their silicon substance, a transistor doesn't break because it's being used.
It still has a finite fixed capacity. It is limited not unlimited.
It might not be unlimited 10Mbps which is what they try to upsell but there is definitely unlimited x-bps for x-connections per second.
This doesn't make sense. Its still limited. x bps max x 24hours x 7days a week x 31 days/month = Y, the limit.
The problem is that the providers have been overselling beyond their capacity and when even just a handful of users actually uses what they have been sold, they flood the network and the network slows down to a crawl
Providers should oversell. Its totally absurd that they wouldn't. 2000 users can all surf the web for a month "at 10mbps" on a single 100mbps connection, and for the most part they won't even notice they are sharing. It would be ridiculous to sell them all dedicated 20kbps connections instead.
"and when even just a handful of users actually uses what they have been sold"
That's just it. Nobody was ever sold a dedicated 10bmps down/ 1mbps up channel for $45/mo. Its absurd to REALLY believe the ISP is selling you a connection an order of magnitude better than a T1 line 2 orders of magnitude cheaper. Only an idiot would argue that. Its like walking into an 'all you can eat salad bar' placing an order, pulling out a box of glad bags, and taking enough foood to feed your herd of elephants. And then doing this again every feeding time.
What the fine print, for comcast, for example, says: "Many factors affect speed. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively."
They sell a connection, there is no limit on how much you use it, and while it can go up to speed X, it may not.
The average consumer wants a "fast connection for surfing the web, email, instant messaging, maybe download a bit of music or stream some video, and an inexpensive bill with no surprises".
They don't need a dedicated 10mbps link with guaranteed service, and they can't possibly afford one.
What they can afford, is a "a 24x7 connection, with variable bandwidth based on overall network utilization, suitable for intermittent bursty traffic, with speeds up to 10mbps, no hard usage caps, and subject to reasonable qos and network shaping" for ~$25-50/mo.
But the ISPs can't successfully advertise that technical mess. So the advertise what the average consumer wants "high speed internet, unlimited usage, $50/mo", and honestly if your an average consumer they deliver what you want.
The problem is that this other group of users see what they advertise and think that the service being offered is a "24x7 dedicated connection at 10mbps", and then piss and moan when the ISPs can't and won't deliver that... at least not for less than $50/mo. On the one hand you can argue the advertisers are being misleading... and to a point they are, but on the other side caveat emptor... Tide doesn't realiably get chocolate stains out of white shirts, when I put a full bowl of rice into an overloaded dishwasher my crystal comes out with rice stuck to it instead of sparkling clean, there are several iphone applications for which there isn't 'an app for that', and my ISP isn't really selling a commercial grade internet service that would normally cost thousands of dollars for $50/mo.
All we have is the victim/suspect's account of the events which is obviously going to be biased, just as if you had the boarder agent's report it would be biased towards their side. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I'll agree its going to be biased. But if we can take the basic claimed circumstances as facts:
1) He was beaten, and punched in the face. 2) He was pepper sprayed. 3) He was charged with assaulting an officer 4) He was locked in a cell wet and half clothed 5) He was released into a December night along the northern border without his jacket. 6) His computer was seized.
EVEN if this guy had been a COMPLETE JACKASS, and even if you give the guards the benefit of the doubt and allow for them to have taken him down roughly...why does it keep going? Once he's in a holding cell, and the situation is well under control even from the border patrols perspective. Once they've established who he is, and that he is not a threat. (And remember he was LEAVING the USA and returning to Canada, so their interest in him should have been MINIMAL once his identity and the fact that he was not wanted for anything in either country was established. So why keep his computer? Why not return his jacket?
As for the criminal charges, unless they have video of him taking a swing at the gaurd I just don't buy it. Nobody normal would be that stupid. Meanwhile, If you touch their arm to get their attention that's "assualting a federal officer". If they are in the process of punching you in the face and you deflect the blow... thats "assaulting a federal officer" too. It can be pretty bogus charge. And this guy is entirely normal... he's an academic (doctrate in marine biology and a sci-fi author) -- he has no apparent history of being a brawler. Does anyone REALLY think he posed a threat to the gaurds?
And like I said, even if you give the benefit of the doubt to the guards, and agree that all they saw was a distraught angry man approaching them 'threateningly', and so they took him down. Fine... even if you agree to all that...that's no justification for what has been claimed. I've seen police take people down before... they are efficient at pinning and securing people. The individuals comfort is not a factor but its nothing like a beating with pepper spray and punches flying. That's completely unncessary. And normal people don't even generally fight back; once they realize what is happening they just shut down and go limp. EVERYONE knows that if its reached this stage, fighting back just makes it worse... I mean what are you going to do? Escape, beat up the cop, hop into his car, and drive away like nothing happened? So no, I just don't see this Peter Watts guy putting up any sort of fight that would justify what he claims was done.
I watched a clip a few nights ago of an officer performing a traffic stop. The suspect got out of his vehicle part way through, and actually did a little dance in the street. Within a few seconds, he was back at the vehicle, where he pulled a gun and shot and killed the officer. Prior to the gun appearing, he just looked like a goofy idiot. The clip is now used as a training video to show cops how quickly a stop can go bad.
And in the next clip they show the guy reach into his glove box after being told to produce his registration, and instead he pulls a gun out and proceeds to shoot and kill the officer. Traffic stops can go bad quickly, even if the driver is acting perfectly normally right up until the gun comes out.
why is it you would take that as a given but fail to believe this guy with an axe to grind isn't a huge dick himself?
I'm happy to believe he might have been a dick with an axe to grind. But he wasn't in a position of power. And one can't abuse power one doesn't have. Or do you think he
this form of selective hearing people seem to have is whats wrong with the world.
Apparently you asked the question, and assumed the answer. I said I was happy to believe he was a dick with an axe to grind.
I've crossed many borders many times including the US, and it've never had a single problem. you know why? because i don't act like an asshole the moment one of these guys tries to do his job. i've been scanned, sniffed, searched the whole lot and the grand total time in 10 years of travel that this has cost me wouldn't be more then 1 hour tops.
Lucky you. But that doesn't prove a thing.
next time some over worked under paid public servant stops you and asks to look in your bag, how about you try being polite, smiling ask them how their day is going and say thanks have a nice day when they are done? i'd bet money that's not what this guy did...
I suspect our border crossing gaurd wasn't polite, smiling, asked them how their day was, or said thanks either. I'd bet money on that too. Honestly, they get back what they give.
But that's almost entirely beside the point. They may have a shitty job and people might hate dealing with them, but part of that shitty job is to deal with the fact that they have shitty job and people hate dealing with them.
An IRS auditor has a shitty job too, but he doesn't get to beat people up, pepper spray them, and so forth.
And border patrol... they don't actually get to beat people up, pepper spray them, and arrest them for simply being rude, belligerent, or stand-offish. Unfortunately they can get away with it, and they know they can get away with it, and so they do it.
Sure if they feel the need to detain someone, because they got out their car and started yelling that's fine... but they went WAY beyond that. They routinely use completely inappropriate levels of force, and they know damned well its inappropriate. But they are almost untouchable... and they know it.
The Doctorow account quotes Watts saying that he got out of his car when questioned (mistake #1), then refused the order to get back in (mistake #2). No, of course that doesn't justify a beating. It just suggests we don't have the whole story.
Why does it suggest that?
If you take it as a given that a large number of border patrol officers are gigantic dicks given excessive amounts of power with little oversight, with victims who are essentially powerless, with almost no access to legal representation, then it adds up just fine with no additional information.
Based on my experiences crossing the US-Canada border (either way) I can take that as a given.
Could know. Yes. Actually know. No. Big difference. They certainly have the ability to track me, and yes, a great deal of tracking information exists in their logs... but they don't actually data mine it to figure things out about me.
and pretty much any site you visit will have your IP too and know what you did on their site.
And I'm ok with going into a store, and being tracked by that store while im in that store. Especially since they don't follow me home. They don't try and figure out who my friends are. They don't read my mail. They don't track where I took my pictures. etc etc etc. What the average online store does is entirely reasonable, and technically necessary if they want to maintain any sort of session state with me and/or improve their site.
The government can already track you and may be doing so now
Luckily the government has a set of checks and balances. They don't always work, and are clumsy at the best of times, but as a society we try to keep our government on a bit of a leash. For the most part, its actually been pretty successful. Society isn't perfect, but its a long way from complete suck too. And while they could be tracking me right now they probably aren't.
But google? They have a policy of keeping everything. They have a presence almost everywhere. They have a policy of data mining the shit out of anything they get. They are the worst of the entire bunch by far.
Having players who disabled XP gain matched against each others means that winning and losing is a contest of skill and teamwork. I see that as a positive aspect.
Except that every non-'mmorpg' based team combat game ever released gives you exactly that type of fight without a monthly subscription.
It's immaterial whether Obama was personally responsible or not. The buck stops with the President
That's asinine. Yeah the buck stops with the president. But you don't get to hold him accountable for something until the buck actually stops.
Just as, if someone went to a retail chain X and some low level clerk gives you the wrong change and then gets belligerent when you challenge him, you aren't justified in saying "President of X has policy of training staff to steal from customers". Yeah, the buck stops with the president, but its a bit premature to draw conclusions about his policy based on an isolated action of a single individual that reports (perhaps very indirectly) to him.
Maybe in the X case, as the dispute is escalated, the employee is disciplined or retrained and the 'victim' is issued a gift card far in excess of the error. Wait maybe THAT reflects the presidents attitude?
Maybe just maybe, you should ask the president himself to explain his position or allow the situation to resolve itself so we can see what the final outcome actually is before one "concludes" what it is.
This would be functionally equivalent to going into a human resources office and instead of seizing the personal folders of an employee, seizing the cabinet that contains all personal folders.
Where as I see it more like going into an office, seeing a filing cabinet marked 'steroid dispensing records', and upon opening that filing cabinet, not only do they have files on the 6 people I have a warrant for, but there are also several hundred other folders.
Arguably the agents should have received copies of new files that were copied from the original. If this had been information contained in a database for example, (which the court considers equivalent in function to the Excel document) someone would have created a report or data dump containing only information tied to those names listed on the warrant.
That's the crux of the dispute. With a classic search warrant the police are empowered to search a specified location for a specified item. They are allowed to discover evidence related to that crime, and even other crimes carrying out a lawful search. (e.g. if the police have warrant to search my locker for evidence that I sold cocaine to Alice, and in searching that locker they find evidence that I sold cocaine to Bob... oh and they found a gun with the serial number ground off... they get to keep those too.)
The analogy to that with what the defence is claiming is that some '3rd party' searches the locker, finds the relevant evidence of cocaine to Suzie, while the gun and the evidence of cocaine to Bob stay private.
If it was paper in a cabinet they could search all of it. (After all, If I'm doing something illegal, guess what, I might have a 2nd set of books, not in the clearly marked 'personal records' cabinet; maybe its marked 'family photos and its behind a locked door in a disused washroom...) But with a database, or a PC, they have this ruling requiring a '3rd party' between them and the evidence acting as a filter. I'm not saying the 3rd party idea is necessarily bad, but its not as cut and dry as you make out.
Hmmm, using that logic we could also clear Bush of many of the accusations layed on him.
Certainly. Several of the things that were "Bush policy" headlines can be refuted by the same logic. This sort of journalistic grandstanding didn't start with Obama.
Unfortunately, many of the more egregious Bush ones, actually came 'straight from the horses mouth'.
The question isn't whether he's everything the advertising billed him as, it's whether he was a better choice than the alternative.
Not really. The question HERE is whether the article writer has a shred of journalistic integrity at all.
Seriously, first read the article and then post. I doubt Obama is even slightly involved beyond appointing key person who is involved to a broad role of which 'computer privacy law' is a drop in the bucket. This headline is as absurd as printing 'Obama wants to banish ketchup based on an incident where the secretary of defense complained there was too much ketchup on their McDonalds cheeseburger.
Second, the dispute here is pretty benign. Federal investigators had a WARRANT to search a PC for evidence of steriod use for a handful of players, and uncovered evidence of some hundred other players using steroids in the same folder and files as the information for the players in question. The dispute is whether they should be allowed to use the additional evidence of the additional crime.
The court ruled no, citing that the investigators 'actively scrolled the excel spreadsheet past the names of the players in question'. Come on. Even I, a privacy advocate, don't see anything wrong with what the agents did. I don't even think its wrong to admit this as evidence. I'd argue against being able to search inside every document, hack encrypted files,... but they found evidence of additional instances of the same crime in the same files and folders that their warrant covered.
Clearly this ruling probably should be overturned. I don't think agents should be given carte blanche to search your entire PC and charge you with unrelated crimes. But there is probably some middle ground where if they are investing the PC for evidence you ripped off the Smiths with ScamX, and they find evidence in the same file you that also ripped off the Jones... that SHOULD be allowed.
But bottom line, declaring that Obama "wants" anything at all with respect to this case is absurd.
So? When your staff wants do something intelligent and innovative you let them. Especially in a recession.
b)his is certainly not the only company with extreme limits on spending in it and even harsher limits on support staff.
The capital cost of getting the tools he needs is ZERO. The support costs of allowing him to do what he needs is NEXT to ZERO. The benefit of allowing him to do what he needs to do is clear. The only "extreme limit" is political and/or bureaucratic in nature.
I honestly think I wouldn't hire someone like you. An employee who has so little financial savvy doesn't deserve employment.
Thanks. I wouldn't want to work for you. I wouldn't want to work for any company that didn't empower its employees to do their job. Besides, I'm much happier owning my own business anyway... its pretty liberating not having to argue with twits about the economy and debate my financial savvy when I want to install a free copy of Visual Studio Express so that I don't have to write software in Access.
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grow up and pay the fine when you get caught for actually knowingly breaking the law. How about that for a radical idea?
When I speed the fine is $350, when I let a parking meter run out the fine is $30. Were I to get into a fight and punch someone (misdemeanor assault) I'd face 2 weeks in jail and and $500 fine. Were I to steal a car I'd be facing maybe 1 year in jail, but in all likelihood would serve at most a couple months as a first time offender.
These are all reasonable punishments.
We're I to torrent my favorite artists discography (uploading it in the process, and thereby infringing copyright on several tracks), I would be fined... $675,000. Say what now? That's more than my house, cars, and everything in them are worth altogether. LOTS more. How is that reasonable?
I have fuck all sympathy for those who not only pirate music instead, but when they get caught red handed they act like they are being persecuted.
They ARE being persecuted. They commited a non-violent crime, for neglible personal benefit (they gain a few songs which can legally be obtained by borrowing a friends CD, recording them off a radio, or purchased for under a buck each), and which caused no real measurable harm to the copyright owner (at most the infringment in this act deprived them of a few hundred dollars due to lost sales... and that's highly debateable).
So sure I can see it being on par with shoplifting or something... a moderate fine 10 to 100 times in excess of the value of the items infringed to deter people from doing it seems reasonable. A few hundred to a few thousand dollars... sure no problem.
After all its pretty petty offense against society.
Fining them an amount that's greater than the value of their house, cars, and all their possessions seems a bit over the top for downloading a few albums.
Would you also support law that made loitering is a life sentence in maximum security prison? Making a rolling stop instead of coming to a complete stop is punished with hanging?
Why EXACTLY do you support bankrupting an entire family over p2p sharing a Britney Spears album?
But if you and the person you are talking to understand what you are doing...
Your asking for a lot here. People should be able to benefit from security and privacy without understanding it.
Suitable law, regulation, and appropriate oversight can make this happen.
You can trust that it is private, but you will never know
I can never know that it is private. But i can know that it isn't private if laws are passed and systems are in place ensuring that it won't be.
Obviously I'd prefer laws to be in place that enable privacy to at least be possible.
Maybe you shouldn't be banking online if you don't want everyone to know what your doing?
So your theory is that people should have to physically go out in public if they want something to be private? I hope i don't have to point out the obvious flaw in this.
Online banking, and any other encrypted communication should be private by default.
Would you rather have a small bowl containing 1 cup of of delicious rice, or a large pot containing 2 cups of delicious rice, and 50 cups of maggots?
5% of 11 million may be more than the entire population of EQ, but you have to wade through a sea of maggots.
The difference being that if Google is down for a day, most users can use Yahoo, Bing, Live, WolframAlpha, etc. to search. Not every Facebook user has a MySpace.
No, the difference being that if facebook went down, people would discover they didn't actually need anything it does after all.
Sort of like when their cable goes out. You pace aimlessly for a few minutes, and then do something else with your new found free time.
Oh, wait, now you want to sell your derivative works without permission of the copyright holder? Well, that's copyright infringement. If the copyright holder is being paid for a license of each so-called "derivative work" that is sold I'm not convinced they can complain. How exactly have they been harmed? What damages are they claiming?
Psst. The word upgrade is not on the box art. It's in the actual text to determine which upgrade license is correct for a situation. Leopard, pay $29. Tiger, pay $169. There is no other option.
Thanks for the clarification.
I've done a bit of searching, and the actual text appears to be:
"Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
First it states that: "only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade". no problem there.
Then it goes on to say that " Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set"
That doesn't preclude other people from buying the box set too. Nobody is *restricted* from buying it.
Tiger and earlier OS users are explicitly invited to buy the box set.
But it doesn't say that Leopard users can't buy the $169 box set. They can buy it if they want. They are the only ones eligible for the cheap one, but they can still buy the box set.
And similarly, people with no OS at all can buy it. It doesn't say anywhere they can't.
Apple doesn't give a shit if you install OSX on a Dell. Apple only cares if you install it on a hundred dells and sell them as "OS X" computers.
notice the difference.
No. I don't actually.
I could see the difference if I bought one copy of OSX, and sold it on 100 dells. That would be a clear copyright violation. But if I buy a 100 copies and resell them bundled with 100 dells, what exactly is wrong with that?
If I go to a gallery, buy ten art prints, are you suggesting I can't try and resell them for a profit? Hint: buying 10 copies, and then reselling those 10 copies is entirely legal.
Suppose the art gallery also will frame the prints for an additional fee... but instead I take the ten prints to a different cheaper frame store and buy ten frames, put the prints in the frames, are you seriously suggesting that now I can't turn around and resell the framed print for a profit? If not, exactly why not?
So what makes buying a 10 copies of OSX, sticking them into 10 Dells and reselling them wrong?
So you are arguing that if I order a replacement apple logic board from apple repair, and pick up an optical drive, hard disk, and other scraps from ebay etc that the resulting unit could not legally have OSX on it, because this mac it didn't come with a version of OSX, and I can't buy an OSX license?
Really? That seems absurd. By the way I know of people who -have- gotten macs something like this.
In fact their text for the $169 version begins with "Upgrade your Mac with the latest ..." It says upgrade right there. First word. It implies a continuity if nothing else.
I saw dvd player ad that said "upgrade your home theatre experience..." or some such. It certainly didn't require you have a previous version of the dvd player, or even a home theatre.
The word upgrade on the box art is not a legally binding term.
The arbitrary "placing" of products is one of the more annoying features of these reviews.
Its often the case that one product is head and shoulders above the others. There's no reason that shouldn't be recognized, even if one of the lesser products has a niche it excels in.
I agree the rankings are often arbitrary, and based on author biases, and so on, but they are often relevant. When I'm looking at 10 consumer laser printers... having them identify clearly which they felt were the best gives me a starting point. Their number 1 may not be the best unit for me, maybe number 2 or 3 is the right one for me... but their number 10 is probably not really worth looking at. At least if its a competent reviewer.
The thing is, with electronics and the Internet, there is such a thing called 'unlimited'. Once the infrastructure is in place and you have fleshed out the support and maintenance costs there is nothing further that gets consumed - whether you use it or not, the switches, the routers and the firewalls all have to stay in place and they all keep moving bits in their silicon substance, a transistor doesn't break because it's being used.
It still has a finite fixed capacity. It is limited not unlimited.
It might not be unlimited 10Mbps which is what they try to upsell but there is definitely unlimited x-bps for x-connections per second.
This doesn't make sense. Its still limited. x bps max x 24hours x 7days a week x 31 days/month = Y, the limit.
The problem is that the providers have been overselling beyond their capacity and when even just a handful of users actually uses what they have been sold, they flood the network and the network slows down to a crawl
Providers should oversell. Its totally absurd that they wouldn't. 2000 users can all surf the web for a month "at 10mbps" on a single 100mbps connection, and for the most part they won't even notice they are sharing. It would be ridiculous to sell them all dedicated 20kbps connections instead.
"and when even just a handful of users actually uses what they have been sold"
That's just it. Nobody was ever sold a dedicated 10bmps down/ 1mbps up channel for $45/mo. Its absurd to REALLY believe the ISP is selling you a connection an order of magnitude better than a T1 line 2 orders of magnitude cheaper. Only an idiot would argue that. Its like walking into an 'all you can eat salad bar' placing an order, pulling out a box of glad bags, and taking enough foood to feed your herd of elephants. And then doing this again every feeding time.
What the fine print, for comcast, for example, says: "Many factors affect speed. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively."
They sell a connection, there is no limit on how much you use it, and while it can go up to speed X, it may not.
The average consumer wants a "fast connection for surfing the web, email, instant messaging, maybe download a bit of music or stream some video, and an inexpensive bill with no surprises".
They don't need a dedicated 10mbps link with guaranteed service, and they can't possibly afford one.
What they can afford, is a "a 24x7 connection, with variable bandwidth based on overall network utilization, suitable for intermittent bursty traffic, with speeds up to 10mbps, no hard usage caps, and subject to reasonable qos and network shaping" for ~$25-50/mo.
But the ISPs can't successfully advertise that technical mess. So the advertise what the average consumer wants "high speed internet, unlimited usage, $50/mo", and honestly if your an average consumer they deliver what you want.
The problem is that this other group of users see what they advertise and think that the service being offered is a "24x7 dedicated connection at 10mbps", and then piss and moan when the ISPs can't and won't deliver that... at least not for less than $50/mo. On the one hand you can argue the advertisers are being misleading... and to a point they are, but on the other side caveat emptor... Tide doesn't realiably get chocolate stains out of white shirts, when I put a full bowl of rice into an overloaded dishwasher my crystal comes out with rice stuck to it instead of sparkling clean, there are several iphone applications for which there isn't 'an app for that', and my ISP isn't really selling a commercial grade internet service that would normally cost thousands of dollars for $50/mo.
All we have is the victim/suspect's account of the events which is obviously going to be biased, just as if you had the boarder agent's report it would be biased towards their side. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I'll agree its going to be biased. But if we can take the basic claimed circumstances as facts:
1) He was beaten, and punched in the face.
2) He was pepper sprayed.
3) He was charged with assaulting an officer
4) He was locked in a cell wet and half clothed
5) He was released into a December night along the northern border without his jacket.
6) His computer was seized.
EVEN if this guy had been a COMPLETE JACKASS, and even if you give the guards the benefit of the doubt and allow for them to have taken him down roughly...why does it keep going? Once he's in a holding cell, and the situation is well under control even from the border patrols perspective. Once they've established who he is, and that he is not a threat. (And remember he was LEAVING the USA and returning to Canada, so their interest in him should have been MINIMAL once his identity and the fact that he was not wanted for anything in either country was established. So why keep his computer? Why not return his jacket?
As for the criminal charges, unless they have video of him taking a swing at the gaurd I just don't buy it. Nobody normal would be that stupid. Meanwhile, If you touch their arm to get their attention that's "assualting a federal officer". If they are in the process of punching you in the face and you deflect the blow... thats "assaulting a federal officer" too. It can be pretty bogus charge. And this guy is entirely normal... he's an academic (doctrate in marine biology and a sci-fi author) -- he has no apparent history of being a brawler. Does anyone REALLY think he posed a threat to the gaurds?
And like I said, even if you give the benefit of the doubt to the guards, and agree that all they saw was a distraught angry man approaching them 'threateningly', and so they took him down. Fine... even if you agree to all that...that's no justification for what has been claimed. I've seen police take people down before... they are efficient at pinning and securing people. The individuals comfort is not a factor but its nothing like a beating with pepper spray and punches flying. That's completely unncessary. And normal people don't even generally fight back; once they realize what is happening they just shut down and go limp. EVERYONE knows that if its reached this stage, fighting back just makes it worse... I mean what are you going to do? Escape, beat up the cop, hop into his car, and drive away like nothing happened? So no, I just don't see this Peter Watts guy putting up any sort of fight that would justify what he claims was done.
I watched a clip a few nights ago of an officer performing a traffic stop. The suspect got out of his vehicle part way through, and actually did a little dance in the street. Within a few seconds, he was back at the vehicle, where he pulled a gun and shot and killed the officer. Prior to the gun appearing, he just looked like a goofy idiot. The clip is now used as a training video to show cops how quickly a stop can go bad.
And in the next clip they show the guy reach into his glove box after being told to produce his registration, and instead he pulls a gun out and proceeds to shoot and kill the officer. Traffic stops can go bad quickly, even if the driver is acting perfectly normally right up until the gun comes out.
why is it you would take that as a given but fail to believe this guy with an axe to grind isn't a huge dick himself?
I'm happy to believe he might have been a dick with an axe to grind. But he wasn't in a position of power. And one can't abuse power one doesn't have. Or do you think he
this form of selective hearing people seem to have is whats wrong with the world.
Apparently you asked the question, and assumed the answer. I said I was happy to believe he was a dick with an axe to grind.
I've crossed many borders many times including the US, and it've never had a single problem. you know why? because i don't act like an asshole the moment one of these guys tries to do his job. i've been scanned, sniffed, searched the whole lot and the grand total time in 10 years of travel that this has cost me wouldn't be more then 1 hour tops.
Lucky you. But that doesn't prove a thing.
next time some over worked under paid public servant stops you and asks to look in your bag, how about you try being polite, smiling ask them how their day is going and say thanks have a nice day when they are done? i'd bet money that's not what this guy did...
I suspect our border crossing gaurd wasn't polite, smiling, asked them how their day was, or said thanks either. I'd bet money on that too. Honestly, they get back what they give.
But that's almost entirely beside the point. They may have a shitty job and people might hate dealing with them, but part of that shitty job is to deal with the fact that they have shitty job and people hate dealing with them.
An IRS auditor has a shitty job too, but he doesn't get to beat people up, pepper spray them, and so forth.
And border patrol... they don't actually get to beat people up, pepper spray them, and arrest them for simply being rude, belligerent, or stand-offish. Unfortunately they can get away with it, and they know they can get away with it, and so they do it.
Sure if they feel the need to detain someone, because they got out their car and started yelling that's fine... but they went WAY beyond that. They routinely use completely inappropriate levels of force, and they know damned well its inappropriate. But they are almost untouchable... and they know it.
The Doctorow account quotes Watts saying that he got out of his car when questioned (mistake #1), then refused the order to get back in (mistake #2). No, of course that doesn't justify a beating. It just suggests we don't have the whole story.
Why does it suggest that?
If you take it as a given that a large number of border patrol officers are gigantic dicks given excessive amounts of power with little oversight, with victims who are essentially powerless, with almost no access to legal representation, then it adds up just fine with no additional information.
Based on my experiences crossing the US-Canada border (either way) I can take that as a given.
Your ISP already knows everything you're doing
Could know. Yes. Actually know. No. Big difference. They certainly have the ability to track me, and yes, a great deal of tracking information exists in their logs... but they don't actually data mine it to figure things out about me.
and pretty much any site you visit will have your IP too and know what you did on their site.
And I'm ok with going into a store, and being tracked by that store while im in that store. Especially since they don't follow me home. They don't try and figure out who my friends are. They don't read my mail. They don't track where I took my pictures. etc etc etc. What the average online store does is entirely reasonable, and technically necessary if they want to maintain any sort of session state with me and/or improve their site.
The government can already track you and may be doing so now
Luckily the government has a set of checks and balances. They don't always work, and are clumsy at the best of times, but as a society we try to keep our government on a bit of a leash. For the most part, its actually been pretty successful. Society isn't perfect, but its a long way from complete suck too. And while they could be tracking me right now they probably aren't.
But google? They have a policy of keeping everything. They have a presence almost everywhere. They have a policy of data mining the shit out of anything they get. They are the worst of the entire bunch by far.
Did he actually commit unauthorized access? Wouldn't that depend on whether he created the botnet, or merely rented it?
Does it really matter?
If mean, I could steal a car, or I could knowingly rent one from a group of car thieves... either way I'd be guilty of something.
Having players who disabled XP gain matched against each others means that winning and losing is a contest of skill and teamwork. I see that as a positive aspect.
Except that every non-'mmorpg' based team combat game ever released gives you exactly that type of fight without a monthly subscription.
It's immaterial whether Obama was personally responsible or not. The buck stops with the President
That's asinine. Yeah the buck stops with the president. But you don't get to hold him accountable for something until the buck actually stops.
Just as, if someone went to a retail chain X and some low level clerk gives you the wrong change and then gets belligerent when you challenge him, you aren't justified in saying "President of X has policy of training staff to steal from customers". Yeah, the buck stops with the president, but its a bit premature to draw conclusions about his policy based on an isolated action of a single individual that reports (perhaps very indirectly) to him.
Maybe in the X case, as the dispute is escalated, the employee is disciplined or retrained and the 'victim' is issued a gift card far in excess of the error. Wait maybe THAT reflects the presidents attitude?
Maybe just maybe, you should ask the president himself to explain his position or allow the situation to resolve itself so we can see what the final outcome actually is before one "concludes" what it is.
This would be functionally equivalent to going into a human resources office and instead of seizing the personal folders of an employee, seizing the cabinet that contains all personal folders.
Where as I see it more like going into an office, seeing a filing cabinet marked 'steroid dispensing records', and upon opening that filing cabinet, not only do they have files on the 6 people I have a warrant for, but there are also several hundred other folders.
Arguably the agents should have received copies of new files that were copied from the original. If this had been information contained in a database for example, (which the court considers equivalent in function to the Excel document) someone would have created a report or data dump containing only information tied to those names listed on the warrant.
That's the crux of the dispute. With a classic search warrant the police are empowered to search a specified location for a specified item. They are allowed to discover evidence related to that crime, and even other crimes carrying out a lawful search. (e.g. if the police have warrant to search my locker for evidence that I sold cocaine to Alice, and in searching that locker they find evidence that I sold cocaine to Bob... oh and they found a gun with the serial number ground off... they get to keep those too.)
The analogy to that with what the defence is claiming is that some '3rd party' searches the locker, finds the relevant evidence of cocaine to Suzie, while the gun and the evidence of cocaine to Bob stay private.
If it was paper in a cabinet they could search all of it. (After all, If I'm doing something illegal, guess what, I might have a 2nd set of books, not in the clearly marked 'personal records' cabinet; maybe its marked 'family photos and its behind a locked door in a disused washroom...) But with a database, or a PC, they have this ruling requiring a '3rd party' between them and the evidence acting as a filter. I'm not saying the 3rd party idea is necessarily bad, but its not as cut and dry as you make out.
Hmmm, using that logic we could also clear Bush of many of the accusations layed on him.
Certainly. Several of the things that were "Bush policy" headlines can be refuted by the same logic. This sort of journalistic grandstanding didn't start with Obama.
Unfortunately, many of the more egregious Bush ones, actually came 'straight from the horses mouth'.
The question isn't whether he's everything the advertising billed him as, it's whether he was a better choice than the alternative.
Not really. The question HERE is whether the article writer has a shred of journalistic integrity at all.
Seriously, first read the article and then post. I doubt Obama is even slightly involved beyond appointing key person who is involved to a broad role of which 'computer privacy law' is a drop in the bucket. This headline is as absurd as printing 'Obama wants to banish ketchup based on an incident where the secretary of defense complained there was too much ketchup on their McDonalds cheeseburger.
Second, the dispute here is pretty benign. Federal investigators had a WARRANT to search a PC for evidence of steriod use for a handful of players, and uncovered evidence of some hundred other players using steroids in the same folder and files as the information for the players in question. The dispute is whether they should be allowed to use the additional evidence of the additional crime.
The court ruled no, citing that the investigators 'actively scrolled the excel spreadsheet past the names of the players in question'. Come on. Even I, a privacy advocate, don't see anything wrong with what the agents did. I don't even think its wrong to admit this as evidence. I'd argue against being able to search inside every document, hack encrypted files, ... but they found evidence of additional instances of the same crime in the same files and folders that their warrant covered.
Clearly this ruling probably should be overturned. I don't think agents should be given carte blanche to search your entire PC and charge you with unrelated crimes. But there is probably some middle ground where if they are investing the PC for evidence you ripped off the Smiths with ScamX, and they find evidence in the same file you that also ripped off the Jones... that SHOULD be allowed.
But bottom line, declaring that Obama "wants" anything at all with respect to this case is absurd.
a) there's a recession out there
So? When your staff wants do something intelligent and innovative you let them. Especially in a recession.
b)his is certainly not the only company with extreme limits on spending in it and even harsher limits on support staff.
The capital cost of getting the tools he needs is ZERO. The support costs of allowing him to do what he needs is NEXT to ZERO. The benefit of allowing him to do what he needs to do is clear. The only "extreme limit" is political and/or bureaucratic in nature.
I honestly think I wouldn't hire someone like you. An employee who has so little financial savvy doesn't deserve employment.
Thanks. I wouldn't want to work for you. I wouldn't want to work for any company that didn't empower its employees to do their job. Besides, I'm much happier owning my own business anyway... its pretty liberating not having to argue with twits about the economy and debate my financial savvy when I want to install a free copy of Visual Studio Express so that I don't have to write software in Access.