You seem to have a good grasp of the technical aspects, but a severe lack of the legal aspects.
The issue is that once you've got an address, then what? In most countries you can't simply hold the subscriber responsible for an illegal act, at best the ISP can hold them responsible for breaching their ISPs subscriber agreement and cut them off after which they go to an ISP.
Even if they get the police to issue a search warrant and search the house, then what next? They can find a computer with content on it, but they have to prove the content wasn't put there via a remote access trojan, they have to prove it wasn't copied through your wireless network to an open share on your computer, they have to prove that you were the person who downloaded the content. Even if they do forensics on the keyboard they may find other people's fingerprints there, but even then can they prove the keyboard hadn't merely been switched?
The fact is, short of catching you red handed there's absolutely no way to conclusively tie someone to a digital crime committed over the internet. Despite this many people get prosecuted, but it's often because they and their lawyers don't have an understanding of the technicalities involved in trying to prove someone guilty of a computer crime and so fail to put their case across, however the closest case to demonstrating was probably this one:
Whilst it's almost certain the guy was guilty, what's interesting in this case is the circumstances in which he was discovered, and the judges comments on why he chose to rule against him. Specifically, he was only discovered because his computer was seized as the result of another separate investigation, and that the evidence that mattered was the times which those images were downloaded at demonstrating they were downloaded when he was not at work. So if you were to set downloads going remotely, using an unlogged piece of software, whilst you're at work, or if you also demonstrated the unreliability of time stamps on computer files it's very likely he could well have ended up getting away with it. The Judge had to rely on what came down to mistakes due to a lack of technical understanding on behalf of the defendant.
Of course, all this isn't too relevant to a civil case, the standards of evidence required there are lower, but similarly I think the chance of the police being involved in getting a court order for a search warranty over a few movies and MP3s is also unlikely.
The issue is, you're somewhat right in your analysis of how easy it is to follow an IP trail (with some caveats- covered below), but you're missing the weak point- connecting the IP trail to the perpertrator of the crime.
The caveats to your comments on tracking an IP are that you make the assumption that interim systems log all connections- you point out that someone can hop between routers to mask their IP and then suggest that if there is enough cooperation of IPs, the trail can simply be traced back, but that's only true if all those connections are logged. If I connect to a US torrent client, via a VPN connection to a country that doesn't demand ISPs such as the VPN provider log everything then any attempts to track this will stop at the VPN provider, as there's simply no way to tell which way the connection went then. This is similar to the situation of wireless- if someone has home wireless, and another person connects to it and leeches torrents through their wireless router, a device which rarely logs connections, then the buck is going to stop at the wireless router. There's no way even the police can reasonably say that the owner of the internet connection is responsible if they search his hard drive and find nothing, and if he has an open or low security access point, they wouldn't stand a chance in court.
So I think many appreciate it's true that you're always
Probably because most of HP's sales are to the professional market.
People who don't work in IT will indeed have little to do with them anymore, we use HP kit at work, but I've not even seen the slightest hint of an HP consumer product before me in years.
So vote Lib Dem because they're the ones pushing for real parliamentary reform.
If we get parliamentary reform, we don't have to put up with these kind of stitch ups to quite the same extent any more.
If you're disgusted at the way the legislation went through, as well as the legislation itself, then at least vote against the way it went through by voting Lib Dem, and it's not as if the Lib Dems were the staunchest supporters of the bill to start with in that they were against it being rushed through even if they weren't wholly against the bill itself.
The reason to vote Lib Dem is simple, because they're the only ones pushing for PR, and if PR comes into play then the likes of The Pirate Party can have their voice heard in parliament.
Yes, yes, I know it means the likes of the BNP will get their voice heard but so what? No party will work with the BNP other than perhaps UKIP, and if they do they wont get support from the electorate again.
Sure it might mean the same thing for The Pirate Party too, but it's still better than the current situation where it'll be hard for them to get any voice at all.
PR is the real reason to vote Lib Dem, the rest of the political system can be sorted out after that, and this election is the best chance of having electoral reform we've had in over a century, so to throw it away just because some Lib Dem lords made the DEB worse is shooting yourself in the foot. If we don't get a hung parliament (or much less likely, a Lib Dem majority) then you can say goodbye for probably a few more decades to any hope of moving away from the current electoral system where the country is run by a clique of a few MPs easily influenced by the likes of the music industry in each party.
Look at the bigger picture, vote for the party that's going to best fix the electoral system so that the likes of the DEB and the 3 strikes policy coming to fruition in the way they did is much decreased. You're never going to win on the issue of the DEB and similar with the current electoral system in play.
I love Arizona- it's my favourite state when I go to the US on holiday, but I'm concerned now that even as a tourist this law might effect me. Am I supposed to carry my passport with me everywhere I am in Arizona? Can I be arrested in Arizona as a tourist for not having my passport on me if I leave it at the Hotel or something?
If that's the case I'm going to keep well away, there's no way in hell I'm risking having some asshole cop fuck up my holiday by arresting me because I went for a hike round organ pipe or saguaro and left my passport at the hotel.
Can anyone clarify if this new law has any relevance to tourists or not?
Out of interest, do you feel someone whose left their job should have to hand over the passwords if requested?
When I left my last job (which I hated, thoroughly because my boss was a dick) I made sure I gave them everything they needed to take over the systems I managed. Of course, my boss being incompetent never took note of the password I gave him and forgot it, they came to me a year later, when they were finally desperate enough to need to manage the system in question and demanded I give them the password. I could still remember it, but by that point told them if they want me to deal with it, they'll have to pay me a days consultancy fees to go in and help them access the system.
I suspect though this was possibly legally dubious, but frankly I also didn't see why I should have to take phone calls from a boss I hated in a job I'd long left, for information I made sure I handed over once already before I quit.
I do sympathise with Childs, but I'll admit I don't have a full understanding about the case and why he refused to withhold it, perhaps his circumstances were quite different and he was indeed just being an ass.
I have an issue with Facebook, I'm signed up to it, but received an e-mail inviting me to join to a completely different, completely separate e-mail address from a business contact who I have no connection with other than having purchased something off him. That in itself is no big deal, but how the fuck did that e-mail contain "Other people on Facebook you might know" which contained a person who I have only ever spoken to via MSN messenger, using an MSN messenger account which has a different e-mail address, and the person in question isn't even in the same country.
How the fuck, did Facebook link two different e-mail addresses also leeching my or their MSN contact list.
So ignore the fact I have a Facebook account because it's completely separate in terms of contact from everything else I do, effectively Facebook is manage to farm data about me, from my MSN account or their MSN account on one e-mail address, and somehow managing to link it to a completely different e-mail address.
I suspect it's no long people who simply use Facebook that need to worry about their privacy, it seems Facebook is trawling the web in general as well as people's contact lists and so forth to make links and collect data about people who aren't even on Facebook.
Does anyone know how Facebook might have linked a contact list on one e-mail address that I didn't give it access to (although the other person may have) to a completely separate e-mail address that's never been attached to Facebook or MSN or anything like that but was given them by someone in a 3rd country and with no link to either of us? Is Facebook getting given access to data from yet other sites such as Amazon or similar where I have used that e-mail address?
"You realize that's a little hard to enforce when a country is having the shit bombed out of it, right?"
Er, no?
Why did even the media with a historic anti-Israeli bias even state this if it wasn't the case? They wanted to report on the situation freely.
It's easy to control the media in a war zone because otherwise the media risks getting shot- the media will pretty much always stick with soldiers of whatever side they're reporting on for this reason- to ensure they don't get treated as combatants or spies when they're reporting right from the middle of what would otherwise be enemy territory.
When journalists have the choice of trying to go it alone but likely getting shot by a side that would gladly do so if it risked them reporting an inconvenient truth, or sticking with soldiers from that side who can take them through safe routes, who know where likely airstrike targets are (i.e. active missile launchers) but limits their reporting, they're going to take that option because being able to report something is better than getting shot.
In contrast, whilst the Israelis certainly kept some things quiet (e.g. the location of their troops) it was quite clear even from the generally anti-Israeli media that the Israelis gave them a lot more freedom to report.
Anti-Israeli sentiment is fair enough, and more warranted than ever nowadays with Israel's current government and continued settlement building, but anti-Israeli sentiment for the sake of it, and where it's simply not valid because issues of access were mentioned by unbiased media, from reporters on the ground, is just plain outright retarded ignorance and malice. If you're going to hate Israel fair enough, I'd be inclined to join you with it's current government, but I'm not going to try and pretend that Hezbollah didn't strongly control the media in 2006 whilst Israel did, because that'd be just wrong.
As an illustration of my point, in Israel's 2008-2009 incursion into Gaza, Israel strongly controlled the media's access and made sure the media kept to their units, why? precisely because it was widely acknowledged that allowing the press freedom in the 2006 war caused a lot more harm to them in terms of propaganda than Hezbollah's strong control of the media caused to Hezbollah. So feel free to criticise Israeli control of the media in the 2008-2009 Gaza incursion- because it's exactly the same kind of control and manipulation Hezbollah used in 2006, the manipulation you're suggesting never even existed.
Israeli hate without understanding or merit is stupid, at least get a clue about the situation and hate them for what they deserve to be hated for before mouthing off, hate them for the things they do do wrong. Don't hate them when they do allow an open press though as they did in 2006, why? Because it's exactly what Hezbollah was gunning for- and congratulations, you're one of the silly fools who fell for it and convinced Israel to go down that same route in 2008-2009. You're part of the damned problem.
Hate them for illegal settlement building, hate them for the times they do intenationally kill civilians, hate them for their oppression of minority groups in their own country, hate them for not properly investigating or simply covering up incidents that were unacceptable, hate them for not being part of the NPT and their covert nuclear weapons program. Hate them for all these things and more, just don't hate them because they allowed an open press and the other guys didn't, don't hate them because Hamas tells you Israel just bombed a civilian building and that there were no militants in it, because all that does is encourage a closed press, and encourages Hamas to hide militants in civilian buildings and areas putting civilians at risk even more.
Ah so you want to breathe clean air, you want to continue to pollute, and you want a solution that wont inconvnience you at all?
Yeah, what I'd really like is a giant pony, a magical one that fires lightning from it's eyes, and provides chocolate for me whenever I say "Chocolate Ponyo!".
You do realise all press in that war were only allowed to go where Hezbollah took them and that all their reports were vetted right? Journalists were up in arms because of it, they were only being allowed to report from scenes that could've simply been set up, they weren't allowed to travel independently and verify anything at all. Because of this it's simply impossible to say whether Israel hit purely civilian targets in the 2006 war or whether they were in fact armed.
There were multiple occasions where journalists said however that they saw mobile missile launchers being moved away from sites they wanted to report from before they were allowed to start filming and reporting.
"The container ship would have to have a really good excuse for being anywhere near the group in the first place, and would then have to evade battleships on the way to the centre of the fleet where the carrier is, under the fire the whole way, and then the missile it launches will have to make it past the batteries of anti-missile systems like the Phalanx."
That and the container ship has to know where the carrier group is. The only way it can really know that is by either having a radar system on it that makes it stand out as blatantly not a simple container ship, or it must communicate. If it communicates it can do so securely, or unsecurely. If it does it securely the battle group and anyone else listening in is going to wonder why the fuck a container ship is conversing via military satellite or whatever, and if it's done insecurely then the battle group will likely be listening in.
Like you say, it's more of a threat against non-military targets more than anything. To military targets who are looking for anything even remotely but potentially hostile, it'll still stand out like a sore thumb.
There was an interesting article on the BBC the other day talking about the Vatican's PR department.
Apparently, the problem is, unlike in most companies where the PR department vets any external communication and careful crafts it for a purpose, anyone and everyone can blab their mouth off in the Vatican without any PR vetting such that their PR department are actually fighting a losing battle against the rest of the Vatican. Rather than the PR department controlling communications, they instead are basically just left completely out the loop.
So if the Pope wants to try harder to cover up abuse scandals and get public favour in response to them, he might start by realising he isn't in fact the most important person in the world, and that even he would do well to listen to advice from his PR team rather than simply say what he wants, and hope his PR team can magically just mop up after him.
Of course, don't get me wrong, I'd rather the pope didn't realise the importance of using a PR department properly as I quite enjoy watching him act as the most destructive force against Western religion in decades.
My girlfriend has a Magic too and she does have problems for what it's worth, but I always assumed it's just because she's got a load of crap installed. The buttons on her phone are flatter against the rest of the handset too though, so I've also wondered if there was simply and earlier batch of Magics that just weren't running as they should. We're both running Android 1.6, supposedly we get 2.1 sometime this year, so I'm not sure if that'll change things at all.
How much of the battery do they really drain though? Most modern smartphones seem to max out at about 3 days battery life through normal usage, even the iPhone, so are they even that big a deal, or do you think the battery life could reasonably be extended by a worthwhile amount if there weren't so many background apps?
I was considering writing some apps myself and some ideas certainly followed the always on mindset, but battery life was a concern and as I haven't done any development on the handset itself yet I've not really had the opportunity to play around with that sort of thing.
I have an HTC Magic and am a developer myself, although have yet to actually develop for Android, I have played around with it in the emulator. I've not experienced any issues with speed on my HTC Magic, and the only time I've had the wait/force close dialog come up is with Google sky maps when you first load it up and it's trying to pin down your location.
Out of interest though, how does the iPhone deal with that situation? what happens if you have an app that fails to respond because it's waiting for a remote server or similar? It's not like that's something that can be vetted by the app store sentries because it's not something that will necessarily happen in testing. Does the iPhone handle waiting/deadlocked apps in a more graceful manner somehow?
You're right that usability is real, but any usability study can't ever produce a UI that's more usable for everyone. You cannot for example create a UI that provides big high visibility interface elements to make it easier for say elderly people with poorer eyesight to use, whilst satisfying younger power users with great eyesightwho wants as much information on screen at once as possible and hence prefers smaller UI elements.
Further, you can certainly do a usability study of say a program like Microsoft Office and improve the UI to offer better usability (and hopefully productivity) for office users in general and it should be fairly effective because all users are trying to fulfil a subset of goals.
In contrast though with an operating system, users may use it for any number of things because it's such a multi-purpose device it's hard to optimise it to suit everyone, as such you'll find skews towards certain types of user.
Good UI design is indeed all too often overlooked, but there's a similar danger in that usability studies are hard to get right- companies will do usability studies aiming at everyone, and fail to brilliantly please no one. Ensuring you produce general usability and productivity improvements for some people without it being at the expense of others who haven't been tested is near impossible. Generally you have to decide who you're targetting. I suspect this is largely where the Android/iPhone clash comes from, Apple have designed for the lowest common denominator- a UI that absolutely everyone can use, whilst Google have designed Android with a slightly higher level of competence in using electronic devices in mind. To the high end users the iPhone is as awkward as Android is to the low end users, and I suspect in the middle the difference is so small that most users could care either way, but some simply prefer the look/layout of one or the other out of personal taste.
I absolutely do agree with your sentiment about UI design, but I disagree that that conflicts with my original point. To put it another way, I do not believe there's such thing as the one true UI that simply works better for everyone. You may well be able to produce a UI that's better for a certain subset of users for example, but it's usability is still going to be subjective amongst individuals in the set of all users.
Perhaps HTC is just pretty certain that Apple doesn't really have much of a case? There could be a number of reasons HTC doesn't care about that:
- It's certain it's own patent portfolio is strong enough to push a counter-suit
- The Apple patents in the suit hardly seem very solid. They all seemed quite ripe for prior art defences and that sort of thing.
- They are the same patents Apple is using against Nokia, so perhaps they have been speaking to Nokia about it, or simply expect Nokia to destroy Apple's claims before HTC even sees court
- Perhaps Google or even Microsoft (another major HTC partner) have given assurances they'll defend them, using their patent portfolios
The reason leaks of game source code are uncommon is because it isn't really of an awful lot of use to anyone. You can't re-use it for anything because it'd get picked up by automated software for that purpose. However, when there is a will- as there was with Quake and Half-Life 2 because they were so high profile, there's a way. If games are moved to server platforms then the will increases, there is much more incentive.
Tying to server hardware is not really that big a deal, the ease and frequency which pretty much every console has been emulated through the years is perfectly good evidence that hardware specific code isn't ever really a barrier to anyone running it. At the end of the day they'd have to create some pretty obscure custom hardware for it to be a problem, and then of course they'd require that the game developers have implementations of this obscure platform to test with, and compilers to build for. All the developers would need retraining for this new architecture, and you'd have to hope none of those learnt skills or documentation for this obscure new platform ever leaked.
Regarding external storage of assets I don't see that makes much difference - chances are if you can get the source code or the binaries, then you can get the assets, because the binaries must inherently be able to access the assets so getting them wouldn't be a massive step further.
It really just comes down to incentives at the end of the day, whether there's enough incentive to bother. The idea that the process would be leak proof though is a bit far fetched- how many times has that theory been rather embarassingly proven wrong?
For what it's worth, the movie industry is pretty high security because they've had decades of practice at it but they still fail. The issue for them more often than not is that of financial incentives, they'll often get paid by someone to leak a copy- there's no reason OnLive and the development studios supporting it would be any different.
I do have an HTC Magic, so although I prefer the classic numeric pads for texting it hasn't stopped me moving to Android- I just find that my text messages ended up being a whole lot shorter nowadays as I simply cannot be arsed to fuck around with the standard keyboard, and when I tried the iPhone it felt just the same.
As someone else mentioned in response to you, I find Google Voice helpful, but I don't like shouting out text messages in public. I haven't tried the solutions you mention although I do recall hearing briefly about them before so I think I'll have a look, sounds like it might be what I'm looking for as in general I do love Android, it's just as I say I miss my old keypad.
If Quake and Half-Life 2 had their source code leaked, and if movies are leaked pre-release, sometimes even pre-cinema I don't suspect OnLive would necessarily be any more secure. It's not just OnLive that has to be secure either- the game development studio does, and transport of the game to OnLive has to be secure too.
Besides, there's another reason I don't think OnLive will necessarily succede- it'll hurt the big publishers too much, so they'll eventually simply say, either publish with us, or publish with OnLive, and they'll do so before OnLive has reached a large enough criticial mass to be able to convince developers to shun classic publishers.
I suspect at best, OnLive will just become another platform alongside the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo brands, it might have it's own exclusives from publishers who forego the traditional publishing route, but it'll lack some other titles.
There will of course be some games it will never have, because of the latency issue mentioned by the GP making some games always impractical to deliver by this service.
The problem is, no one's actually demonstrated why the iPhone is better either.
Does it have better screen resolution? no. Does it have a better camera? no. Does it have better processor/ram/storagE? no. Is it more open so that you can do more with it? no. Is it smaller, lighter, sturdier? no. Does it have better battery life? no. Is it more practical in allowing you to carry multiple batteries? no.
But of course, you look at the other things- does it look nicer physically, does the software feel nicer, and some people will say yes, others will say no.
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it doesn't mean the GP is wrong either- both of you like the other phone, you don't have to justify it and neither does he. It's simple fact that the iPhone doesn't win on things like those points listed above, and how exactly can he justify the other things? if Android works better for him, then it just does- just as most iPhone fans will tell you that the iPhone just works for them, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. I for example can't stand any of these new touch screen phones for texting on any platform, be it an Android handset without physical keypad, or the iPhone, when the majority of use I get out of my phone is texting, they're both a massive step backwards. In fact, even full keyboards on phones are a hindrance to me because they're too small to type properly- I can text far faster with Nokia's predictive text on a standard numeric pad than any other phone, because that's just what I've been used to for over a decade.
We all use our phones in different ways, and we all get a different experience as a result. Some of us think differently, not everyone appreciates the UI features that others love. When the iPhone can only stand up to the other handsets based on subjective things there's really little that can be said in terms of proving your point, because you really can't prove something that's so subjective. The GP merely seemed to be making a counter point to this effect in response to the initial post because after all, just because one person says the iPhone is better, it doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Well no, you're just jumping to an extremely absurd conclusion. No one sits there with binoculars or records number plates or anything rediculous like that, that's quite an impressive leap of the imagination.
I just happen to live on a street that's quite, and where people all know each other, recognise each other and get on. It's so quiet in fact, that as I've said in other responses anyone coming down our street that we don't recognise or that isn't simply visiting someone else is a fairly infrequent occurance.
I can't be bothered to go in depth into it again, but see my other post. It's not about some hardcore surveillance regime on our street, it's merely about the fact that if something did happen, the chances are that at least someone on the street would remember seeing someone unusual around, and could remember enough details to tell the police "Yes, I did see a grey car looking suspicious with a man around his mid 30s in it come down here the other week", which the police can take away and compare to sightings near other local burglaries, or may even point to a known local criminal who the police are just waiting for information on.
As I say, this is the real issue with the whole street view debate, those defending it don't seem to be able to be rational about it, they jump to absurd extremes- in response to my original post above we've had someone talk of James Bond style surveillance as an alternative to street view, and now we've got this idea that we have a surveillance community. Really, is the fact that some of us live on a quiet street, with friendly neighbours who are in their gardens or coming and going from their house quite a bit going to work, to the shops, walking their dogs and so forth throughout the day so hard to grasp? People are welcome down our street, but the point is why would they come down our street? we're not in walking distance of other population centres, and we're not on any main routes- if you come down our street, you generally do so because you have a purpose, not because you're lost, and not because you simply fancied a walk.
The fact is, every response so far has simply been some insane far fetched theory about the situation, with no understanding that not every street is YOUR street. Sure it may be irrelevant to where you live, it's sure as hell not irrelevant to where I live. As I said elsewhere, sure it's not a big deal in some busy urban centre where there's so many people no one would see anyone being suspicious anyway.
It does work both ways, I could similarly suggest your neighbourhood sounds horrifying is no one talks to each other, people ignore each other and turn a blind eye to suspicious activity and crime. I could make up a story about how I walked to a fractured community like yours too, and got mugged, and no one cared, but then, I'd hope your neighbourhood isn't really like that, and I'd wager it's not, right?
That's exactly the type of simplified mindset I have a problem with in the streetview debate, there seems to be some idea that it's all or nothing- that streetview either explicitly allows a criminal to get away with a crime, or it doesn't. That's patently stupid, it's not what I'm saying. I'm merely making the point that streetview has the potential to increase the ability to commit a crime without getting caught, it is merely the chance of getting caught that decreases.
If a criminal only has to make one trip to the crime scene, he's much less likely to be seen by anyone than if he has to make two trips, and that's my point. You might be right, he might get caught anyone, or he might not get caught at all regardless, but that view is far too binary and simplistic, and doesn't reflect the complexity or the reality of this sort of thing. As I pointed out in my post above, it's not as if all streets are even the same, so some might see no effect, whilst others may well see an effect. If you live in a busy urban centre then the amount of people is so great no one could tell someone suspicious from the other. If you live in a quiet rural village, even a single person who doesn't live there passing by can be an uncommon occurence that people will take note of.
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Not to mention that HTC has been one of the only companies to stick with WinMo through it's recent years of decline through lack of development by MS.
They were also one of, or perhaps the most successful WinMo handset developer when it was going strong too.
Microsoft has a lot of interest in supporting HTC against Apple, even if HTC do continue to create Android handsets.
You seem to have a good grasp of the technical aspects, but a severe lack of the legal aspects.
The issue is that once you've got an address, then what? In most countries you can't simply hold the subscriber responsible for an illegal act, at best the ISP can hold them responsible for breaching their ISPs subscriber agreement and cut them off after which they go to an ISP.
Even if they get the police to issue a search warrant and search the house, then what next? They can find a computer with content on it, but they have to prove the content wasn't put there via a remote access trojan, they have to prove it wasn't copied through your wireless network to an open share on your computer, they have to prove that you were the person who downloaded the content. Even if they do forensics on the keyboard they may find other people's fingerprints there, but even then can they prove the keyboard hadn't merely been switched?
The fact is, short of catching you red handed there's absolutely no way to conclusively tie someone to a digital crime committed over the internet. Despite this many people get prosecuted, but it's often because they and their lawyers don't have an understanding of the technicalities involved in trying to prove someone guilty of a computer crime and so fail to put their case across, however the closest case to demonstrating was probably this one:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/breaking-craig-meehan-guilty-but.4495490.jp
Whilst it's almost certain the guy was guilty, what's interesting in this case is the circumstances in which he was discovered, and the judges comments on why he chose to rule against him. Specifically, he was only discovered because his computer was seized as the result of another separate investigation, and that the evidence that mattered was the times which those images were downloaded at demonstrating they were downloaded when he was not at work. So if you were to set downloads going remotely, using an unlogged piece of software, whilst you're at work, or if you also demonstrated the unreliability of time stamps on computer files it's very likely he could well have ended up getting away with it. The Judge had to rely on what came down to mistakes due to a lack of technical understanding on behalf of the defendant.
Of course, all this isn't too relevant to a civil case, the standards of evidence required there are lower, but similarly I think the chance of the police being involved in getting a court order for a search warranty over a few movies and MP3s is also unlikely.
The issue is, you're somewhat right in your analysis of how easy it is to follow an IP trail (with some caveats- covered below), but you're missing the weak point- connecting the IP trail to the perpertrator of the crime.
The caveats to your comments on tracking an IP are that you make the assumption that interim systems log all connections- you point out that someone can hop between routers to mask their IP and then suggest that if there is enough cooperation of IPs, the trail can simply be traced back, but that's only true if all those connections are logged. If I connect to a US torrent client, via a VPN connection to a country that doesn't demand ISPs such as the VPN provider log everything then any attempts to track this will stop at the VPN provider, as there's simply no way to tell which way the connection went then. This is similar to the situation of wireless- if someone has home wireless, and another person connects to it and leeches torrents through their wireless router, a device which rarely logs connections, then the buck is going to stop at the wireless router. There's no way even the police can reasonably say that the owner of the internet connection is responsible if they search his hard drive and find nothing, and if he has an open or low security access point, they wouldn't stand a chance in court.
So I think many appreciate it's true that you're always
Probably because most of HP's sales are to the professional market.
People who don't work in IT will indeed have little to do with them anymore, we use HP kit at work, but I've not even seen the slightest hint of an HP consumer product before me in years.
So vote Lib Dem because they're the ones pushing for real parliamentary reform.
If we get parliamentary reform, we don't have to put up with these kind of stitch ups to quite the same extent any more.
If you're disgusted at the way the legislation went through, as well as the legislation itself, then at least vote against the way it went through by voting Lib Dem, and it's not as if the Lib Dems were the staunchest supporters of the bill to start with in that they were against it being rushed through even if they weren't wholly against the bill itself.
The reason to vote Lib Dem is simple, because they're the only ones pushing for PR, and if PR comes into play then the likes of The Pirate Party can have their voice heard in parliament.
Yes, yes, I know it means the likes of the BNP will get their voice heard but so what? No party will work with the BNP other than perhaps UKIP, and if they do they wont get support from the electorate again.
Sure it might mean the same thing for The Pirate Party too, but it's still better than the current situation where it'll be hard for them to get any voice at all.
PR is the real reason to vote Lib Dem, the rest of the political system can be sorted out after that, and this election is the best chance of having electoral reform we've had in over a century, so to throw it away just because some Lib Dem lords made the DEB worse is shooting yourself in the foot. If we don't get a hung parliament (or much less likely, a Lib Dem majority) then you can say goodbye for probably a few more decades to any hope of moving away from the current electoral system where the country is run by a clique of a few MPs easily influenced by the likes of the music industry in each party.
Look at the bigger picture, vote for the party that's going to best fix the electoral system so that the likes of the DEB and the 3 strikes policy coming to fruition in the way they did is much decreased. You're never going to win on the issue of the DEB and similar with the current electoral system in play.
Any idea how this effects tourists?
I love Arizona- it's my favourite state when I go to the US on holiday, but I'm concerned now that even as a tourist this law might effect me. Am I supposed to carry my passport with me everywhere I am in Arizona? Can I be arrested in Arizona as a tourist for not having my passport on me if I leave it at the Hotel or something?
If that's the case I'm going to keep well away, there's no way in hell I'm risking having some asshole cop fuck up my holiday by arresting me because I went for a hike round organ pipe or saguaro and left my passport at the hotel.
Can anyone clarify if this new law has any relevance to tourists or not?
Out of interest, do you feel someone whose left their job should have to hand over the passwords if requested?
When I left my last job (which I hated, thoroughly because my boss was a dick) I made sure I gave them everything they needed to take over the systems I managed. Of course, my boss being incompetent never took note of the password I gave him and forgot it, they came to me a year later, when they were finally desperate enough to need to manage the system in question and demanded I give them the password. I could still remember it, but by that point told them if they want me to deal with it, they'll have to pay me a days consultancy fees to go in and help them access the system.
I suspect though this was possibly legally dubious, but frankly I also didn't see why I should have to take phone calls from a boss I hated in a job I'd long left, for information I made sure I handed over once already before I quit.
I do sympathise with Childs, but I'll admit I don't have a full understanding about the case and why he refused to withhold it, perhaps his circumstances were quite different and he was indeed just being an ass.
I have an issue with Facebook, I'm signed up to it, but received an e-mail inviting me to join to a completely different, completely separate e-mail address from a business contact who I have no connection with other than having purchased something off him. That in itself is no big deal, but how the fuck did that e-mail contain "Other people on Facebook you might know" which contained a person who I have only ever spoken to via MSN messenger, using an MSN messenger account which has a different e-mail address, and the person in question isn't even in the same country.
How the fuck, did Facebook link two different e-mail addresses also leeching my or their MSN contact list.
So ignore the fact I have a Facebook account because it's completely separate in terms of contact from everything else I do, effectively Facebook is manage to farm data about me, from my MSN account or their MSN account on one e-mail address, and somehow managing to link it to a completely different e-mail address.
I suspect it's no long people who simply use Facebook that need to worry about their privacy, it seems Facebook is trawling the web in general as well as people's contact lists and so forth to make links and collect data about people who aren't even on Facebook.
Does anyone know how Facebook might have linked a contact list on one e-mail address that I didn't give it access to (although the other person may have) to a completely separate e-mail address that's never been attached to Facebook or MSN or anything like that but was given them by someone in a 3rd country and with no link to either of us? Is Facebook getting given access to data from yet other sites such as Amazon or similar where I have used that e-mail address?
"You realize that's a little hard to enforce when a country is having the shit bombed out of it, right?"
Er, no?
Why did even the media with a historic anti-Israeli bias even state this if it wasn't the case? They wanted to report on the situation freely.
It's easy to control the media in a war zone because otherwise the media risks getting shot- the media will pretty much always stick with soldiers of whatever side they're reporting on for this reason- to ensure they don't get treated as combatants or spies when they're reporting right from the middle of what would otherwise be enemy territory.
When journalists have the choice of trying to go it alone but likely getting shot by a side that would gladly do so if it risked them reporting an inconvenient truth, or sticking with soldiers from that side who can take them through safe routes, who know where likely airstrike targets are (i.e. active missile launchers) but limits their reporting, they're going to take that option because being able to report something is better than getting shot.
In contrast, whilst the Israelis certainly kept some things quiet (e.g. the location of their troops) it was quite clear even from the generally anti-Israeli media that the Israelis gave them a lot more freedom to report.
Anti-Israeli sentiment is fair enough, and more warranted than ever nowadays with Israel's current government and continued settlement building, but anti-Israeli sentiment for the sake of it, and where it's simply not valid because issues of access were mentioned by unbiased media, from reporters on the ground, is just plain outright retarded ignorance and malice. If you're going to hate Israel fair enough, I'd be inclined to join you with it's current government, but I'm not going to try and pretend that Hezbollah didn't strongly control the media in 2006 whilst Israel did, because that'd be just wrong.
As an illustration of my point, in Israel's 2008-2009 incursion into Gaza, Israel strongly controlled the media's access and made sure the media kept to their units, why? precisely because it was widely acknowledged that allowing the press freedom in the 2006 war caused a lot more harm to them in terms of propaganda than Hezbollah's strong control of the media caused to Hezbollah. So feel free to criticise Israeli control of the media in the 2008-2009 Gaza incursion- because it's exactly the same kind of control and manipulation Hezbollah used in 2006, the manipulation you're suggesting never even existed.
Israeli hate without understanding or merit is stupid, at least get a clue about the situation and hate them for what they deserve to be hated for before mouthing off, hate them for the things they do do wrong. Don't hate them when they do allow an open press though as they did in 2006, why? Because it's exactly what Hezbollah was gunning for- and congratulations, you're one of the silly fools who fell for it and convinced Israel to go down that same route in 2008-2009. You're part of the damned problem.
Hate them for illegal settlement building, hate them for the times they do intenationally kill civilians, hate them for their oppression of minority groups in their own country, hate them for not properly investigating or simply covering up incidents that were unacceptable, hate them for not being part of the NPT and their covert nuclear weapons program. Hate them for all these things and more, just don't hate them because they allowed an open press and the other guys didn't, don't hate them because Hamas tells you Israel just bombed a civilian building and that there were no militants in it, because all that does is encourage a closed press, and encourages Hamas to hide militants in civilian buildings and areas putting civilians at risk even more.
Ah so you want to breathe clean air, you want to continue to pollute, and you want a solution that wont inconvnience you at all?
Yeah, what I'd really like is a giant pony, a magical one that fires lightning from it's eyes, and provides chocolate for me whenever I say "Chocolate Ponyo!".
Really, you're not asking for much are you?
Journalists on site in Lebanon? Hah!
You do realise all press in that war were only allowed to go where Hezbollah took them and that all their reports were vetted right? Journalists were up in arms because of it, they were only being allowed to report from scenes that could've simply been set up, they weren't allowed to travel independently and verify anything at all. Because of this it's simply impossible to say whether Israel hit purely civilian targets in the 2006 war or whether they were in fact armed.
There were multiple occasions where journalists said however that they saw mobile missile launchers being moved away from sites they wanted to report from before they were allowed to start filming and reporting.
"The container ship would have to have a really good excuse for being anywhere near the group in the first place, and would then have to evade battleships on the way to the centre of the fleet where the carrier is, under the fire the whole way, and then the missile it launches will have to make it past the batteries of anti-missile systems like the Phalanx."
That and the container ship has to know where the carrier group is. The only way it can really know that is by either having a radar system on it that makes it stand out as blatantly not a simple container ship, or it must communicate. If it communicates it can do so securely, or unsecurely. If it does it securely the battle group and anyone else listening in is going to wonder why the fuck a container ship is conversing via military satellite or whatever, and if it's done insecurely then the battle group will likely be listening in.
Like you say, it's more of a threat against non-military targets more than anything. To military targets who are looking for anything even remotely but potentially hostile, it'll still stand out like a sore thumb.
There was an interesting article on the BBC the other day talking about the Vatican's PR department.
Apparently, the problem is, unlike in most companies where the PR department vets any external communication and careful crafts it for a purpose, anyone and everyone can blab their mouth off in the Vatican without any PR vetting such that their PR department are actually fighting a losing battle against the rest of the Vatican. Rather than the PR department controlling communications, they instead are basically just left completely out the loop.
So if the Pope wants to try harder to cover up abuse scandals and get public favour in response to them, he might start by realising he isn't in fact the most important person in the world, and that even he would do well to listen to advice from his PR team rather than simply say what he wants, and hope his PR team can magically just mop up after him.
Of course, don't get me wrong, I'd rather the pope didn't realise the importance of using a PR department properly as I quite enjoy watching him act as the most destructive force against Western religion in decades.
My girlfriend has a Magic too and she does have problems for what it's worth, but I always assumed it's just because she's got a load of crap installed. The buttons on her phone are flatter against the rest of the handset too though, so I've also wondered if there was simply and earlier batch of Magics that just weren't running as they should. We're both running Android 1.6, supposedly we get 2.1 sometime this year, so I'm not sure if that'll change things at all.
How much of the battery do they really drain though? Most modern smartphones seem to max out at about 3 days battery life through normal usage, even the iPhone, so are they even that big a deal, or do you think the battery life could reasonably be extended by a worthwhile amount if there weren't so many background apps?
I was considering writing some apps myself and some ideas certainly followed the always on mindset, but battery life was a concern and as I haven't done any development on the handset itself yet I've not really had the opportunity to play around with that sort of thing.
I have an HTC Magic and am a developer myself, although have yet to actually develop for Android, I have played around with it in the emulator. I've not experienced any issues with speed on my HTC Magic, and the only time I've had the wait/force close dialog come up is with Google sky maps when you first load it up and it's trying to pin down your location.
Out of interest though, how does the iPhone deal with that situation? what happens if you have an app that fails to respond because it's waiting for a remote server or similar? It's not like that's something that can be vetted by the app store sentries because it's not something that will necessarily happen in testing. Does the iPhone handle waiting/deadlocked apps in a more graceful manner somehow?
You're right that usability is real, but any usability study can't ever produce a UI that's more usable for everyone. You cannot for example create a UI that provides big high visibility interface elements to make it easier for say elderly people with poorer eyesight to use, whilst satisfying younger power users with great eyesightwho wants as much information on screen at once as possible and hence prefers smaller UI elements.
Further, you can certainly do a usability study of say a program like Microsoft Office and improve the UI to offer better usability (and hopefully productivity) for office users in general and it should be fairly effective because all users are trying to fulfil a subset of goals.
In contrast though with an operating system, users may use it for any number of things because it's such a multi-purpose device it's hard to optimise it to suit everyone, as such you'll find skews towards certain types of user.
Good UI design is indeed all too often overlooked, but there's a similar danger in that usability studies are hard to get right- companies will do usability studies aiming at everyone, and fail to brilliantly please no one. Ensuring you produce general usability and productivity improvements for some people without it being at the expense of others who haven't been tested is near impossible. Generally you have to decide who you're targetting. I suspect this is largely where the Android/iPhone clash comes from, Apple have designed for the lowest common denominator- a UI that absolutely everyone can use, whilst Google have designed Android with a slightly higher level of competence in using electronic devices in mind. To the high end users the iPhone is as awkward as Android is to the low end users, and I suspect in the middle the difference is so small that most users could care either way, but some simply prefer the look/layout of one or the other out of personal taste.
I absolutely do agree with your sentiment about UI design, but I disagree that that conflicts with my original point. To put it another way, I do not believe there's such thing as the one true UI that simply works better for everyone. You may well be able to produce a UI that's better for a certain subset of users for example, but it's usability is still going to be subjective amongst individuals in the set of all users.
Perhaps HTC is just pretty certain that Apple doesn't really have much of a case? There could be a number of reasons HTC doesn't care about that:
- It's certain it's own patent portfolio is strong enough to push a counter-suit
- The Apple patents in the suit hardly seem very solid. They all seemed quite ripe for prior art defences and that sort of thing.
- They are the same patents Apple is using against Nokia, so perhaps they have been speaking to Nokia about it, or simply expect Nokia to destroy Apple's claims before HTC even sees court
- Perhaps Google or even Microsoft (another major HTC partner) have given assurances they'll defend them, using their patent portfolios
It could be any number of reasons really.
The reason leaks of game source code are uncommon is because it isn't really of an awful lot of use to anyone. You can't re-use it for anything because it'd get picked up by automated software for that purpose. However, when there is a will- as there was with Quake and Half-Life 2 because they were so high profile, there's a way. If games are moved to server platforms then the will increases, there is much more incentive.
Tying to server hardware is not really that big a deal, the ease and frequency which pretty much every console has been emulated through the years is perfectly good evidence that hardware specific code isn't ever really a barrier to anyone running it. At the end of the day they'd have to create some pretty obscure custom hardware for it to be a problem, and then of course they'd require that the game developers have implementations of this obscure platform to test with, and compilers to build for. All the developers would need retraining for this new architecture, and you'd have to hope none of those learnt skills or documentation for this obscure new platform ever leaked.
Regarding external storage of assets I don't see that makes much difference - chances are if you can get the source code or the binaries, then you can get the assets, because the binaries must inherently be able to access the assets so getting them wouldn't be a massive step further.
It really just comes down to incentives at the end of the day, whether there's enough incentive to bother. The idea that the process would be leak proof though is a bit far fetched- how many times has that theory been rather embarassingly proven wrong?
For what it's worth, the movie industry is pretty high security because they've had decades of practice at it but they still fail. The issue for them more often than not is that of financial incentives, they'll often get paid by someone to leak a copy- there's no reason OnLive and the development studios supporting it would be any different.
I do have an HTC Magic, so although I prefer the classic numeric pads for texting it hasn't stopped me moving to Android- I just find that my text messages ended up being a whole lot shorter nowadays as I simply cannot be arsed to fuck around with the standard keyboard, and when I tried the iPhone it felt just the same.
As someone else mentioned in response to you, I find Google Voice helpful, but I don't like shouting out text messages in public. I haven't tried the solutions you mention although I do recall hearing briefly about them before so I think I'll have a look, sounds like it might be what I'm looking for as in general I do love Android, it's just as I say I miss my old keypad.
What if they repeatedly decimate us?
What happens when there's less than 10 of us left, do they start by just destroying fractions of us?
If Quake and Half-Life 2 had their source code leaked, and if movies are leaked pre-release, sometimes even pre-cinema I don't suspect OnLive would necessarily be any more secure. It's not just OnLive that has to be secure either- the game development studio does, and transport of the game to OnLive has to be secure too.
Besides, there's another reason I don't think OnLive will necessarily succede- it'll hurt the big publishers too much, so they'll eventually simply say, either publish with us, or publish with OnLive, and they'll do so before OnLive has reached a large enough criticial mass to be able to convince developers to shun classic publishers.
I suspect at best, OnLive will just become another platform alongside the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo brands, it might have it's own exclusives from publishers who forego the traditional publishing route, but it'll lack some other titles.
There will of course be some games it will never have, because of the latency issue mentioned by the GP making some games always impractical to deliver by this service.
The problem is, no one's actually demonstrated why the iPhone is better either.
Does it have better screen resolution? no. Does it have a better camera? no. Does it have better processor/ram/storagE? no. Is it more open so that you can do more with it? no. Is it smaller, lighter, sturdier? no. Does it have better battery life? no. Is it more practical in allowing you to carry multiple batteries? no.
But of course, you look at the other things- does it look nicer physically, does the software feel nicer, and some people will say yes, others will say no.
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it doesn't mean the GP is wrong either- both of you like the other phone, you don't have to justify it and neither does he. It's simple fact that the iPhone doesn't win on things like those points listed above, and how exactly can he justify the other things? if Android works better for him, then it just does- just as most iPhone fans will tell you that the iPhone just works for them, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. I for example can't stand any of these new touch screen phones for texting on any platform, be it an Android handset without physical keypad, or the iPhone, when the majority of use I get out of my phone is texting, they're both a massive step backwards. In fact, even full keyboards on phones are a hindrance to me because they're too small to type properly- I can text far faster with Nokia's predictive text on a standard numeric pad than any other phone, because that's just what I've been used to for over a decade.
We all use our phones in different ways, and we all get a different experience as a result. Some of us think differently, not everyone appreciates the UI features that others love. When the iPhone can only stand up to the other handsets based on subjective things there's really little that can be said in terms of proving your point, because you really can't prove something that's so subjective. The GP merely seemed to be making a counter point to this effect in response to the initial post because after all, just because one person says the iPhone is better, it doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Well no, you're just jumping to an extremely absurd conclusion. No one sits there with binoculars or records number plates or anything rediculous like that, that's quite an impressive leap of the imagination.
I just happen to live on a street that's quite, and where people all know each other, recognise each other and get on. It's so quiet in fact, that as I've said in other responses anyone coming down our street that we don't recognise or that isn't simply visiting someone else is a fairly infrequent occurance.
I can't be bothered to go in depth into it again, but see my other post. It's not about some hardcore surveillance regime on our street, it's merely about the fact that if something did happen, the chances are that at least someone on the street would remember seeing someone unusual around, and could remember enough details to tell the police "Yes, I did see a grey car looking suspicious with a man around his mid 30s in it come down here the other week", which the police can take away and compare to sightings near other local burglaries, or may even point to a known local criminal who the police are just waiting for information on.
As I say, this is the real issue with the whole street view debate, those defending it don't seem to be able to be rational about it, they jump to absurd extremes- in response to my original post above we've had someone talk of James Bond style surveillance as an alternative to street view, and now we've got this idea that we have a surveillance community. Really, is the fact that some of us live on a quiet street, with friendly neighbours who are in their gardens or coming and going from their house quite a bit going to work, to the shops, walking their dogs and so forth throughout the day so hard to grasp? People are welcome down our street, but the point is why would they come down our street? we're not in walking distance of other population centres, and we're not on any main routes- if you come down our street, you generally do so because you have a purpose, not because you're lost, and not because you simply fancied a walk.
The fact is, every response so far has simply been some insane far fetched theory about the situation, with no understanding that not every street is YOUR street. Sure it may be irrelevant to where you live, it's sure as hell not irrelevant to where I live. As I said elsewhere, sure it's not a big deal in some busy urban centre where there's so many people no one would see anyone being suspicious anyway.
It does work both ways, I could similarly suggest your neighbourhood sounds horrifying is no one talks to each other, people ignore each other and turn a blind eye to suspicious activity and crime. I could make up a story about how I walked to a fractured community like yours too, and got mugged, and no one cared, but then, I'd hope your neighbourhood isn't really like that, and I'd wager it's not, right?
Sorry, I'll create a flipbook with pictures espcially for you next time so that my post is at a level you can better cope with.
See my response here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1628642&cid=31955210
That's exactly the type of simplified mindset I have a problem with in the streetview debate, there seems to be some idea that it's all or nothing- that streetview either explicitly allows a criminal to get away with a crime, or it doesn't. That's patently stupid, it's not what I'm saying. I'm merely making the point that streetview has the potential to increase the ability to commit a crime without getting caught, it is merely the chance of getting caught that decreases.
If a criminal only has to make one trip to the crime scene, he's much less likely to be seen by anyone than if he has to make two trips, and that's my point. You might be right, he might get caught anyone, or he might not get caught at all regardless, but that view is far too binary and simplistic, and doesn't reflect the complexity or the reality of this sort of thing. As I pointed out in my post above, it's not as if all streets are even the same, so some might see no effect, whilst others may well see an effect. If you live in a busy urban centre then the amount of people is so great no one could tell someone suspicious from the other. If you live in a quiet rural village, even a single person who doesn't live there passing by can be an uncommon occurence that people will take note of.