When you talked about giving the police "means to charge you" I though you meant "criminal charges", the ones that get you jailed.
I did mean 'criminal charges'. But most criminals don't end up in jail, especially after a first offense over some minor technical law like this. Warnings, Probation, suspended sentences, fines, community service, etc, etc are all FAR more likely. Losing his illegally configured camera is probably the worst that would happen, and even that is pretty unlikely if the sum total of the case was the cameraphone doesn't click.
Now if he was a multiple repeat offender captured with actual upskirt shots on the modified camera, which might justify a warrant for them to search his PC where they'd have to find evidence that he has been uploading these pictures onto websites for it to be even remotely plausible that he'd face any significant punishment or spend any time in jail. And even then, if all that were to happen, he's really not in jail not for simply having an illegally modified camera-phone, but rather for his blatant and repeated violations of the privacy rights of his victims.
Also, friends and co-workers aren't a good source of news... remember the "telephone" game from elementary school?:-D
I do. Its currently played out TV and Internet news...
Something like the Barack administration's lawyers filing a motion agreeing with the Bush administration that a particular case be paused while an extremely relevant appeal in another court is still taking place gets relayed on Fox news and Slashdot as "OMG Pres. Barack Obama personally agrees with Bush administration warrantless wiretapping and says so in court!"
These days you can't trust *any* news source for decent reliable coverage. The networks, the internet, they all SUCK.
Hell as a Canadian, I just read the freaking proposed federal budget myself to get a decent picture of what it actually said, because of all the bullshit and rhetoric spewing from the talking heads (both politicians and so-called journalists...)
You can't go cheaper without using older or more efficient software because all the new stuff requires powerful hardware!
Of course you can. You just keep manufacturing the same parts you did last year and since you don't need to do any product development or testing, and the number of units for that product line goes up since its being produced more and longer you realize greater ecnomomies of scale... so your costs are lower, and you can deliver it cheaper at the same profit margin.
Of course, this is one place Linux can really shine, because even though it has gotten more bloated on most distro's default installs, it's quite easy to trim out what you don't need.
Most of bloat just takes up disk space which is irrelevant. You aren't going to realize any actual performance gains unless your system was starving for RAM.
you say it's hopelessly naive to believe we need no secrets? But I say, why do we need to be so aggressive towards the world?
The two aren't related. I agree entirely that there is no reason for us to be anywhere near as aggressive towards the rest of the world. I still think we need to be able to keep secrets.
* You can do whatever you like on your land. It's yours. * I will not use guns and force to take what you have for myself. * I can peacefully buy it from you (or another neighbor). * If you come on my land I will remove you by force. * If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you. * And nothing more..
That model doesn't even work within an American city, never mind in the world at large. And a city has an organized central government, unified legal system, and an authorized police force. All things the world doesn't come close to having.
That said...this:
* If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you.
amounts to an authorization of keeping secrets and creating organizations like the CIA.
Finally, remember, at this point, most countries merely want to rise up to equality with their dominant 'partner' in the US, and free themselves from US interference and exploitation. The US is in the enviable position of being king of the hill, and it is unfortunately abusing that position. However even if the US did back off and treat others fairly, some of those countries would seek to unbalance the partnership, and become king of the hill to the unlimited expense of everyone else on the planet.
So while I agree its wrong for the US to abuse others, there will ALWAYS be someone else looking to abuse you. So "If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you." will never be just a threat, you will always be actively engaged in doing "whatever it takes to stop them".
I agree that much of what the CIA is *currently* doing is outright wrong, they should be protecting America, not seeking to abuse other countries for American corporate profits or whatever else you want to accuse them of... but they DO have a legitimate and necessary role protecting America.
lol, Your out of your mind if you think Germany or Japan was capable of a land war in the United States.
The point was effectively moot since there wouldn't likely even have been a United States.
You also didn't mention blowback.. what do you think about that?
What do you think I think? I think what everyone thinks: I think its awful. But the world is a chess game, you can't share your strategy with your opponents and sometimes you have to sacrifice your pawn to win. Sometimes the sacrifices are high, and the objectives not worth it... and state secrets can be abused to prevent the public from sorting the mess out. And sure putting it all out in the open, so the public can scrutinize it will ensure blowback doesn't happen.
The trouble is, if you operate like that, you ensure you lose overall. Your opponents will take advantage of you.
If you think secrecy is a must.. why not advocate total secrecy?
Because that would be stupid. Some secrecy is a necessary evil. Total secrecy is an un-necessary evil.
Besides your getting hung up here on trying to prove a point over "military" secrets. What I'm saying is if we don't have political, and foreign policy secrets keep from the public, then we won't need military secrets.
That is hopelessly naive. To continue the chess analagy, you might be content to stop moving your pieces around, and call it even. But some of your opponents are out to win.
Yep, this is Firefox 3.0.5 on Vista x64 SP1. However, FF2.x doesn't have this problem. And honestly, FF3.x is the ONLY modern application I use that gives me any trouble like this on Vista.
Frankly, I'm pretty satisfied with Vista, and even prefer it to XP. I certainly realize its not for everyone, and I don't dispute that there were a lot of launch issues in terms of bad drivers, a few nasty bugs, a giant cock-up in terms of what they said the requirements were, and rarely worth the price to upgrade an existing box.... but if you are buying a new system, actually get hardware that has good drivers and meets the actual requirements, Vista has been overall a decent successor from XP.
Of course here on/. everyone is going to argue that Ubuntu or something is a better successor, but while I have Ubuntu on my laptop and my home server is a linux VM host with a Windows 2003 and 2 linuxes (Debian and CentOS) guests to re-affirm "/. cred", but I need to use windows for a variety of things, so I have Vista on my desktop.
Again, FF3 is the ONLY app that gives me a hassle. I have Adblock Plus, ColorZilla, FireShot, HtmlValidator, TamerData, and WebDeveloper installed as add-ons, but only adblock is currently enabled. (I enable the others when needed.)
I don't have a computer with IE7/8 on it. For those, I use IE NetRenderer.
That's pretty much the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Anyone who is remotely serious about doing web site development professionally would have windows box to test with, or at least a windows VM.
I mean seriously, who is this really for?
Besides, there is far more for compatibility testing than just getting screenshots of the layout engine. All the ajax/dhtml/javascript/flash/animation/effects/events etc aren't going to be testable with this.
I'm at a loss at how anyone could find this especially useful outside of very limited scenarios.
I might add.. perhaps if we had no secrets, we would then see the reasons for America's involvement in both WWI and WWII were corrupt..
I think its safe to assume that simple self interest was the prime motivator. It usually is.
What would you think then?
Hard to say what I'd be thinking... what with having to cower under my new Japanese/German masters, as they would have out maneuvered us at every step, bolstered their defenses even higher on D-day, maybe even engaged our landing long before it landed, blocked our supply lins, jammed or intercepted our communications, built their own nuclear arsenal by combining their own secret research with everything we knew, and beat us to Hiroshima by bombing Seattle and Los Angeles months before we had a working weapon.
Of course, that presumes there even was a US to enter WWI/II... for without secrets I doubt the American revolution would have succeeded.
I think a better idea would be to have a red LED (or something similar) on the front of the camera blink
The advantage of the 'click' is that people know what it means.
If my cell phone blinks a red led, who is going to know that it means a picture is being taken, given how many other things it could mean. My phone's led's blink when I get new messages, when it rings, when its not in service, when the battery is low...
Must be nice to have enough screen space to have two browsers open. Even with 2 22" monitors, I *still* find myself moving windows around, and constantly minimizing/maximizing windows (though just not as often as when I had a 17" and a 19").
We're not that different. I have a 24" (HP LP2475w S-IPS) and a 19" (Viewsonic VP930b P-MVA), I had a 19" Viewsonic VA912b, which is TN, but it really was a terrible screen compared to the *VA and IPS panels. I had two of the Viewsonic VP930b's until one died. I'm extremely happy with the new HP unit though, and highly recommend it.
More on topic, having two browser windows open vs having two tabs in one window open doesn't really seem like much of a win to me, since its just as many clicks to switch between them, and besides --- I like to see FF and IE side by side for testing anyway, so that differences are more immediately apparent.
Just in response to point A: Firefox may be damn good, but if you are a web developer and need to make sure your site works across all browsers, IE Tab isn't a bad thing to have.
True, but since you have to have a copy of IE around anyway, you might as well just use it.
IE-Tab doesn't really simplify things that much, and its not inconceivable that something will work differently in actual IE than IE-tab. (basic rendering of course will be the same, but some of the more goofy stuff like how various IE preferences and internet zones impact things might be different. I'm really not 100% sure where "Trident" ends and "Internet Explorer" begins, so to speak), nor exactly where IE-Tab fits -- is it 100% on top of IE or just on just on top of Trident?
So for casual layout testing I'll use IE tab, but for serious testing its done on 'honest-to-goodness-IE' and multiple versions of it to boot.
OK, smart guy, but what if you hid the camera in a ten gallon hat?
Re-read my post to the end. Especially the last paragraph:
"I agree its on the stupid side, but its not entirely useless. Obviously anyone who really wants to still will be able to... but it will get rid of a lot of opportunistic abuse from people who wouldn't go to the trouble of hacking their phone or buying a "spy cam" but who might be tempted if the cellphone they already had was a setting away from being used like that. Given how many people have cellphones, that's probably a pretty big group of people."
That said, I figure most people looking for upskirt shots would put spy cams in their shoes not their hats.
Who cares about an upskirt shot. With the net loaded to the brim with porn, why would anyone salivate over an upskirt picture? That is just pathetic.
Why does anyone have any fetish?
The sheer numbers of such pictures make it as uninteresting as a picture of the road kerb.
By that logic, porn itself should be completely uninteresting by now; you said it yourself the internet is brimming with it. The sheer numbers of such pictures should make it as uninteresting as a picture of the road curb. (kerb is probably right where you live...)
However the interest in porn is clearly running as high as ever, so your hypothesis that having lots of pictures should make something uninteresting is demonstrably false.
Isn't it about time people get past this Victorian attitude with regard to nudity and body parts. We all have them.
Have you posted pictures of your wife, sister(s), and mother nude to the public internet yet? If not, why not?
They can keep all their little incremental security and interface updates. What use are a few little tweaks in IE8, when Firefox offers me add-ons like adblock plus, noscript, slashdotter, etc.?
Competition is good. And firefox has its share of problems. Hell, about 1 time in 3 when I close it it doesn't exit, and I have to terminate the process.
Besides, I can always open a site with IE Tab if I need to.
a) Why would you need to do that if Firefox was so perfect?
b) You do realize that IE Tab uses the IE rendering engine you've got installed. So if you have IE6 installed IE Tab uses IE6's rendering engine. If you have IE7 installed IE Tab uses IE7's rendering engine... etc. There is a reason IE Tab does sweet fuck all on Linux. You need IE to use IT Tab.
That said, yeah, if the ipod touch actually DID have a camera then it would squeak by under this law. (I have agreed all along that its a stupid law.) But that's not the point, the point was to curb the use of ubiquitous cellphone cameras... if you are intent on getting upskirt photos and are willing to spend $229+ on an unobtrustive device just for that purpose, there are a lot more (and better) options than an ipod touch.
This law isn't going to stop determined individuals, but it will potentially stop a lot casual absuse.
That is the old practice of creating criminals out if thin air. Why should you go to jail because you flashed your own cellphone that you bought with your own money?
Jail? Really? Is that the proposed penalty or are you just talking out of your ass here?
Once you start giving away your freedom for nothing, it's a slippery slope ending in a bad place.
Yes, giving away my freedom to carry silent cell phones. I can still carry silent cameras, and noisy cellphones, I'm just not allowed to combine them. This slope doesn't really feel all that slippery to me.
That said, for the nth time, I agree it would be a stupid law if it were ever passed. I'm just "defending" it because the majority of the arguments here on/. are even stupider than the law is.
There is no reason to RTFA. It's easy to tell from the headline that it's a stupid law. If someone wants to take a picture without being noticed having a cell phone camera make a noise isn't going to change anything.
Think of it more like WEP or locking your car door. Completely ineffective at stopping determined criminals from getting in, but surprisingly effective at reducing more casual trespassing.
This is a complete waste of government time and energy.
Fwiw, I agree it would be a stupid law, even if though I think it would be more effective than you give it credit for.
However, that's immaterial too, because its not a law yet. Its actually only a proposed law by a single congressman that hasn't gone anywhere yet, and probably won't. You'd probaby know this too if you'd looked at more than the headline.
I'm wondering how one would unobtrusively attach a phone to the top of a shoe, and how one would unobtrusively bend over to trigger the shutter.
Think harder.
It doesn't exactly require a criminal mastermind to think of countless scenarios where they could unobtrusively get a camera phone into a suitable position long enough to take a picture.
Except it isn't. On small digital cameras the shutter is completely silent, and on those that emit a "clicking" sound through the speakers for familiarity, it can usually be disabled from the menu with ease.
You are missing the point.
The reason a regular digital camera is harder to abuse has NOTHING to do with the audio. You can sit across from someone on the bus and manage an upskirt shot of them with a cellphone silent cam while they are looking right at you with a group of onlookers and get away with it.
Similiarly if you wanted same-sex shots you can easily wander into a locker room fiddling away with your cell phone, and few people would blink.
People however ARE going to notice you if you tried it with a digital camera whether its silent or not; not because it does or doesn't "click", but because you are obviously holding and manipulating a CAMERA, whose sole purpose is trivially and obviously apparent to practically everyone who sees it.
So no, completely stupid, retarded and useless law.
I agree its on the stupid side, but its not entirely useless. Obviously anyone who really wants to still will be able to... but it will get rid of a lot of opportunistic abuse from people who wouldn't go to the trouble of hacking their phone or buying a "spy cam" but who might be tempted if the cellphone they already had was a setting away from being used like that. Given how many people have cellphones, that's probably a pretty big group of people.
Sounds like undue burden to me. How about regular digital cameras? Or webcams? Or ultra-portables with webcams? How about security cameras at stores? Should they make a continuous tone?
No. No. No. No. and No.
This applies to cell phones. That's it.
The reason for it is to prevent privacy abuse (upskirt shots) that are made easy by having a camera built into an innocuous and omnipresent device, but making cameras in that particular type of device audible.
This isn't a law against silent cameras, its a law against silent phone cameras. There is a difference... its generally be a lot more obvious if someone were trying to take upskirt shots with a regular camera, or an ultraportable with a web cam. While still 'possible', its not nearly as simple or unobtrusive.
Cameras are now ubiquitous, unfortunately, and we just have to live with the consequences of that. We can no more prevent them from taking pictures than we can prevent them from seeing.
That is irrelevant.
This law isn't to prevent you from taking pictures. Its to make it harder to take pictures with a very specific class of devices without being noticed.
Perhaps this law might consider banning Leicas too.
Probably not unless those leicas are built into cell phones. This law specifically applies to cell phones. That's it.
The point is to dissuade people from taking upskirt shots etc unobtrusively with their cell phone, and to give police a means of charging you if they don't catch you in the act... because if your camera phone doesn't make a sound its been illegally modified.
If someone tries to fiddle with a traditional camera in the same way its a lot more obvious.
Like most laws of this sort, there is almost no chance of making it work.
Agreed. Its a stupid law. But its not nearly so bad or far reaching as you make it out to be.
Next will have complaints from parents whose children's recitals are marred by clicking cell phones, newlyweds whose vows were interrupted by the same, etc., etc.
They can buy regular cameras. This law only applies to camera phones. I can understand not reading the article, or even not reading the summary, but you didn't even make it through the one line headline.
the only type of war America should ever be involved in is one that requires no secrets at all.. that is a war of defense.
World War II was a war of defense. Surely you can see that there was a need for secrets and intelligence operations.
It's time to shut down the CIA and DHS.
As long as there are hostile nations institutions like the CIA and DHS are necessary. Granted the DHS is only a good idea on paper, as its actual implementation is completey worthless, and granted the CIA has overstepped reasonable bounds on multiple occasions too... but despite that these sorts of organizations are necessary.
We need to improve them, not disband them. (ok, ok, the DHS is so bad, it would probably be better to disband it and start over from scratch, or section it up and fold it into the CIA or FBI as appropriate.)
Slashdot Mirror
When you talked about giving the police "means to charge you" I though you meant "criminal charges", the ones that get you jailed.
I did mean 'criminal charges'. But most criminals don't end up in jail, especially after a first offense over some minor technical law like this. Warnings, Probation, suspended sentences, fines, community service, etc, etc are all FAR more likely. Losing his illegally configured camera is probably the worst that would happen, and even that is pretty unlikely if the sum total of the case was the cameraphone doesn't click.
Now if he was a multiple repeat offender captured with actual upskirt shots on the modified camera, which might justify a warrant for them to search his PC where they'd have to find evidence that he has been uploading these pictures onto websites for it to be even remotely plausible that he'd face any significant punishment or spend any time in jail. And even then, if all that were to happen, he's really not in jail not for simply having an illegally modified camera-phone, but rather for his blatant and repeated violations of the privacy rights of his victims.
If you have to ask, then you couldn't possibly understand.
If your cat mittens died, its dead, you grieve, and you get a new pet. You don't go around trying to reanimate your dead cat do you? \
When I lose my pups....I grieve over them like I would a friend or family member that is close to me.
er... so if your wife died, you'd clone her too? I happen to know for a fact that mine thinks that's creepy on multiple levels.
Also, friends and co-workers aren't a good source of news... remember the "telephone" game from elementary school? :-D
I do. Its currently played out TV and Internet news...
Something like the Barack administration's lawyers filing a motion agreeing with the Bush administration that a particular case be paused while an extremely relevant appeal in another court is still taking place gets relayed on Fox news and Slashdot as "OMG Pres. Barack Obama personally agrees with Bush administration warrantless wiretapping and says so in court!"
These days you can't trust *any* news source for decent reliable coverage. The networks, the internet, they all SUCK.
Hell as a Canadian, I just read the freaking proposed federal budget myself to get a decent picture of what it actually said, because of all the bullshit and rhetoric spewing from the talking heads (both politicians and so-called journalists...)
You can't go cheaper without using older or more efficient software because all the new stuff requires powerful hardware!
Of course you can. You just keep manufacturing the same parts you did last year and since you don't need to do any product development or testing, and the number of units for that product line goes up since its being produced more and longer you realize greater ecnomomies of scale... so your costs are lower, and you can deliver it cheaper at the same profit margin.
Of course, this is one place Linux can really shine, because even though it has gotten more bloated on most distro's default installs, it's quite easy to trim out what you don't need.
Most of bloat just takes up disk space which is irrelevant. You aren't going to realize any actual performance gains unless your system was starving for RAM.
AI was based on a Brian Aldiss story - Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
And it would be hard to miss the Pinocchio theme.
you say it's hopelessly naive to believe we need no secrets? But I say, why do we need to be so aggressive towards the world?
The two aren't related. I agree entirely that there is no reason for us to be anywhere near as aggressive towards the rest of the world. I still think we need to be able to keep secrets.
* You can do whatever you like on your land. It's yours.
* I will not use guns and force to take what you have for myself.
* I can peacefully buy it from you (or another neighbor).
* If you come on my land I will remove you by force.
* If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you.
* And nothing more..
That model doesn't even work within an American city, never mind in the world at large. And a city has an organized central government, unified legal system, and an authorized police force. All things the world doesn't come close to having.
That said...this:
* If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you.
amounts to an authorization of keeping secrets and creating organizations like the CIA.
Finally, remember, at this point, most countries merely want to rise up to equality with their dominant 'partner' in the US, and free themselves from US interference and exploitation. The US is in the enviable position of being king of the hill, and it is unfortunately abusing that position. However even if the US did back off and treat others fairly, some of those countries would seek to unbalance the partnership, and become king of the hill to the unlimited expense of everyone else on the planet.
So while I agree its wrong for the US to abuse others, there will ALWAYS be someone else looking to abuse you. So "If you attack me or my family I will do whatever it takes to stop you." will never be just a threat, you will always be actively engaged in doing "whatever it takes to stop them".
I agree that much of what the CIA is *currently* doing is outright wrong, they should be protecting America, not seeking to abuse other countries for American corporate profits or whatever else you want to accuse them of... but they DO have a legitimate and necessary role protecting America.
lol, Your out of your mind if you think Germany or Japan was capable of a land war in the United States.
The point was effectively moot since there wouldn't likely even have been a United States.
You also didn't mention blowback.. what do you think about that?
What do you think I think? I think what everyone thinks: I think its awful. But the world is a chess game, you can't share your strategy with your opponents and sometimes you have to sacrifice your pawn to win. Sometimes the sacrifices are high, and the objectives not worth it... and state secrets can be abused to prevent the public from sorting the mess out. And sure putting it all out in the open, so the public can scrutinize it will ensure blowback doesn't happen.
The trouble is, if you operate like that, you ensure you lose overall. Your opponents will take advantage of you.
If you think secrecy is a must.. why not advocate total secrecy?
Because that would be stupid. Some secrecy is a necessary evil. Total secrecy is an un-necessary evil.
Besides your getting hung up here on trying to prove a point over "military" secrets. What I'm saying is if we don't have political, and foreign policy secrets keep from the public, then we won't need military secrets.
That is hopelessly naive. To continue the chess analagy, you might be content to stop moving your pieces around, and call it even. But some of your opponents are out to win.
Are you using vista?
Yep, this is Firefox 3.0.5 on Vista x64 SP1. However, FF2.x doesn't have this problem. And honestly, FF3.x is the ONLY modern application I use that gives me any trouble like this on Vista.
Frankly, I'm pretty satisfied with Vista, and even prefer it to XP. I certainly realize its not for everyone, and I don't dispute that there were a lot of launch issues in terms of bad drivers, a few nasty bugs, a giant cock-up in terms of what they said the requirements were, and rarely worth the price to upgrade an existing box.... but if you are buying a new system, actually get hardware that has good drivers and meets the actual requirements, Vista has been overall a decent successor from XP.
Of course here on /. everyone is going to argue that Ubuntu or something is a better successor, but while I have Ubuntu on my laptop and my home server is a linux VM host with a Windows 2003 and 2 linuxes (Debian and CentOS) guests to re-affirm "/. cred", but I need to use windows for a variety of things, so I have Vista on my desktop.
Again, FF3 is the ONLY app that gives me a hassle. I have Adblock Plus, ColorZilla, FireShot, HtmlValidator, TamerData, and WebDeveloper installed as add-ons, but only adblock is currently enabled. (I enable the others when needed.)
I don't have a computer with IE7/8 on it. For those, I use IE NetRenderer.
That's pretty much the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Anyone who is remotely serious about doing web site development professionally would have windows box to test with, or at least a windows VM.
I mean seriously, who is this really for?
Besides, there is far more for compatibility testing than just getting screenshots of the layout engine. All the ajax/dhtml/javascript/flash/animation/effects/events etc aren't going to be testable with this.
I'm at a loss at how anyone could find this especially useful outside of very limited scenarios.
I might add.. perhaps if we had no secrets, we would then see the reasons for America's involvement in both WWI and WWII were corrupt..
I think its safe to assume that simple self interest was the prime motivator. It usually is.
What would you think then?
Hard to say what I'd be thinking... what with having to cower under my new Japanese/German masters, as they would have out maneuvered us at every step, bolstered their defenses even higher on D-day, maybe even engaged our landing long before it landed, blocked our supply lins, jammed or intercepted our communications, built their own nuclear arsenal by combining their own secret research with everything we knew, and beat us to Hiroshima by bombing Seattle and Los Angeles months before we had a working weapon.
Of course, that presumes there even was a US to enter WWI/II... for without secrets I doubt the American revolution would have succeeded.
I think a better idea would be to have a red LED (or something similar) on the front of the camera blink
The advantage of the 'click' is that people know what it means.
If my cell phone blinks a red led, who is going to know that it means a picture is being taken, given how many other things it could mean. My phone's led's blink when I get new messages, when it rings, when its not in service, when the battery is low...
Must be nice to have enough screen space to have two browsers open. Even with 2 22" monitors, I *still* find myself moving windows around, and constantly minimizing/maximizing windows (though just not as often as when I had a 17" and a 19").
We're not that different. I have a 24" (HP LP2475w S-IPS) and a 19" (Viewsonic VP930b P-MVA), I had a 19" Viewsonic VA912b, which is TN, but it really was a terrible screen compared to the *VA and IPS panels. I had two of the Viewsonic VP930b's until one died. I'm extremely happy with the new HP unit though, and highly recommend it.
More on topic, having two browser windows open vs having two tabs in one window open doesn't really seem like much of a win to me, since its just as many clicks to switch between them, and besides --- I like to see FF and IE side by side for testing anyway, so that differences are more immediately apparent.
Just in response to point A: Firefox may be damn good, but if you are a web developer and need to make sure your site works across all browsers, IE Tab isn't a bad thing to have.
True, but since you have to have a copy of IE around anyway, you might as well just use it.
IE-Tab doesn't really simplify things that much, and its not inconceivable that something will work differently in actual IE than IE-tab. (basic rendering of course will be the same, but some of the more goofy stuff like how various IE preferences and internet zones impact things might be different. I'm really not 100% sure where "Trident" ends and "Internet Explorer" begins, so to speak), nor exactly where IE-Tab fits -- is it 100% on top of IE or just on just on top of Trident?
So for casual layout testing I'll use IE tab, but for serious testing its done on 'honest-to-goodness-IE' and multiple versions of it to boot.
OK, smart guy, but what if you hid the camera in a ten gallon hat?
Re-read my post to the end. Especially the last paragraph:
"I agree its on the stupid side, but its not entirely useless. Obviously anyone who really wants to still will be able to... but it will get rid of a lot of opportunistic abuse from people who wouldn't go to the trouble of hacking their phone or buying a "spy cam" but who might be tempted if the cellphone they already had was a setting away from being used like that. Given how many people have cellphones, that's probably a pretty big group of people."
That said, I figure most people looking for upskirt shots would put spy cams in their shoes not their hats.
Who cares about an upskirt shot. With the net loaded to the brim with porn, why would anyone salivate over an upskirt picture? That is just pathetic.
Why does anyone have any fetish?
The sheer numbers of such pictures make it as uninteresting as a picture of the road kerb.
By that logic, porn itself should be completely uninteresting by now; you said it yourself the internet is brimming with it. The sheer numbers of such pictures should make it as uninteresting as a picture of the road curb. (kerb is probably right where you live...)
However the interest in porn is clearly running as high as ever, so your hypothesis that having lots of pictures should make something uninteresting is demonstrably false.
Isn't it about time people get past this Victorian attitude with regard to nudity and body parts. We all have them.
Have you posted pictures of your wife, sister(s), and mother nude to the public internet yet? If not, why not?
They can keep all their little incremental security and interface updates. What use are a few little tweaks in IE8, when Firefox offers me add-ons like adblock plus, noscript, slashdotter, etc.?
Competition is good. And firefox has its share of problems. Hell, about 1 time in 3 when I close it it doesn't exit, and I have to terminate the process.
Besides, I can always open a site with IE Tab if I need to.
a) Why would you need to do that if Firefox was so perfect?
b) You do realize that IE Tab uses the IE rendering engine you've got installed. So if you have IE6 installed IE Tab uses IE6's rendering engine. If you have IE7 installed IE Tab uses IE7's rendering engine... etc. There is a reason IE Tab does sweet fuck all on Linux. You need IE to use IT Tab.
So swapping your iPhone for an almost identical looking iPod touch is fine?
You mean this ipod touch:
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/
Please identify which one has a camera?
That said, yeah, if the ipod touch actually DID have a camera then it would squeak by under this law. (I have agreed all along that its a stupid law.) But that's not the point, the point was to curb the use of ubiquitous cellphone cameras... if you are intent on getting upskirt photos and are willing to spend $229+ on an unobtrustive device just for that purpose, there are a lot more (and better) options than an ipod touch.
This law isn't going to stop determined individuals, but it will potentially stop a lot casual absuse.
That is the old practice of creating criminals out if thin air. Why should you go to jail because you flashed your own cellphone that you bought with your own money?
Jail? Really? Is that the proposed penalty or are you just talking out of your ass here?
Once you start giving away your freedom for nothing, it's a slippery slope ending in a bad place.
Yes, giving away my freedom to carry silent cell phones. I can still carry silent cameras, and noisy cellphones, I'm just not allowed to combine them. This slope doesn't really feel all that slippery to me.
That said, for the nth time, I agree it would be a stupid law if it were ever passed. I'm just "defending" it because the majority of the arguments here on /. are even stupider than the law is.
There is no reason to RTFA. It's easy to tell from the headline that it's a stupid law. If someone wants to take a picture without being noticed having a cell phone camera make a noise isn't going to change anything.
Think of it more like WEP or locking your car door. Completely ineffective at stopping determined criminals from getting in, but surprisingly effective at reducing more casual trespassing.
This is a complete waste of government time and energy.
Fwiw, I agree it would be a stupid law, even if though I think it would be more effective than you give it credit for.
However, that's immaterial too, because its not a law yet. Its actually only a proposed law by a single congressman that hasn't gone anywhere yet, and probably won't. You'd probaby know this too if you'd looked at more than the headline.
I'm wondering how one would unobtrusively attach a phone to the top of a shoe, and how one would unobtrusively bend over to trigger the shutter.
Think harder.
It doesn't exactly require a criminal mastermind to think of countless scenarios where they could unobtrusively get a camera phone into a suitable position long enough to take a picture.
Except it isn't. On small digital cameras the shutter is completely silent, and on those that emit a "clicking" sound through the speakers for familiarity, it can usually be disabled from the menu with ease.
You are missing the point.
The reason a regular digital camera is harder to abuse has NOTHING to do with the audio. You can sit across from someone on the bus and manage an upskirt shot of them with a cellphone silent cam while they are looking right at you with a group of onlookers and get away with it.
Similiarly if you wanted same-sex shots you can easily wander into a locker room fiddling away with your cell phone, and few people would blink.
People however ARE going to notice you if you tried it with a digital camera whether its silent or not; not because it does or doesn't "click", but because you are obviously holding and manipulating a CAMERA, whose sole purpose is trivially and obviously apparent to practically everyone who sees it.
So no, completely stupid, retarded and useless law.
I agree its on the stupid side, but its not entirely useless. Obviously anyone who really wants to still will be able to... but it will get rid of a lot of opportunistic abuse from people who wouldn't go to the trouble of hacking their phone or buying a "spy cam" but who might be tempted if the cellphone they already had was a setting away from being used like that. Given how many people have cellphones, that's probably a pretty big group of people.
Sounds like undue burden to me. How about regular digital cameras? Or webcams? Or ultra-portables with webcams? How about security cameras at stores? Should they make a continuous tone?
No. No. No. No. and No.
This applies to cell phones. That's it.
The reason for it is to prevent privacy abuse (upskirt shots) that are made easy by having a camera built into an innocuous and omnipresent device, but making cameras in that particular type of device audible.
This isn't a law against silent cameras, its a law against silent phone cameras. There is a difference... its generally be a lot more obvious if someone were trying to take upskirt shots with a regular camera, or an ultraportable with a web cam. While still 'possible', its not nearly as simple or unobtrusive.
Cameras are now ubiquitous, unfortunately, and we just have to live with the consequences of that. We can no more prevent them from taking pictures than we can prevent them from seeing.
That is irrelevant.
This law isn't to prevent you from taking pictures. Its to make it harder to take pictures with a very specific class of devices without being noticed.
Perhaps this law might consider banning Leicas too.
Probably not unless those leicas are built into cell phones. This law specifically applies to cell phones. That's it.
The point is to dissuade people from taking upskirt shots etc unobtrusively with their cell phone, and to give police a means of charging you if they don't catch you in the act... because if your camera phone doesn't make a sound its been illegally modified.
If someone tries to fiddle with a traditional camera in the same way its a lot more obvious.
Like most laws of this sort, there is almost no chance of making it work.
Agreed. Its a stupid law. But its not nearly so bad or far reaching as you make it out to be.
Next will have complaints from parents whose children's recitals are marred by clicking cell phones, newlyweds whose vows were interrupted by the same, etc., etc.
They can buy regular cameras. This law only applies to camera phones. I can understand not reading the article, or even not reading the summary, but you didn't even make it through the one line headline.
the only type of war America should ever be involved in is one that requires no secrets at all.. that is a war of defense.
World War II was a war of defense. Surely you can see that there was a need for secrets and intelligence operations.
It's time to shut down the CIA and DHS.
As long as there are hostile nations institutions like the CIA and DHS are necessary. Granted the DHS is only a good idea on paper, as its actual implementation is completey worthless, and granted the CIA has overstepped reasonable bounds on multiple occasions too... but despite that these sorts of organizations are necessary.
We need to improve them, not disband them. (ok, ok, the DHS is so bad, it would probably be better to disband it and start over from scratch, or section it up and fold it into the CIA or FBI as appropriate.)