As some irrelevant extra information, in Canada GST is 7% (usually coupled with a provincial tax, which in Ontario is 8%, so the next consumption tax on a product is 15% at the till).
While originally they talked about making inclusive of the price, in the end absolutely no one does that. Thus, if you pick up something labeled $100, you'll pay $115 when you get to the till (to the irritation of many tourists. Tourists, as an aside, can get a full refund of any taxes they paid during their stay).
This is really becoming absurd now though. Just becuase people have a false impression about things does not mean they are right. At some point, people are going to have to realize their errors.
You have remarkably low expectations.
Personally I've seen both my cable and high speed over cable achieving perfect reliability over the last two years. Not 90%, but rather 100% reliability. Given that the cable providers themselves are now starting to roll out their own VoIP, I guarantee you that they aren't going to give some vague hazy answers about the reliability - they are going to guarantee telephone level reliability. The government will invariably then legislate required reliability, and right so.
In Canada, where we retain more of fair Brittania, we use center to indicate the central position, and centre for a facility - e.g. "The Learning Centre".
Microsoft has had the MapPoint Web Services product for several years now - with it you can make complex mapping web applications that utilize the excellent MapPoint mapping engine for graphing. Unfortunately it isn't a free service (there is a fairly substantial start-up fee, and then you have to buy transactions in bulk), so you don't see the amateur freebie apps appearing for it, but it has been out there for some time.
This is a hilarious treat to come across (God bless score:5 skimming). I actually worked at that organization for a short period of time. Sort of soul destroying, but it was an enjoyable stint.
While I can't confirm or deny the parent's claims (although I'm prone to believing their claims given the use of the term "machiavellian", which is one that I heard used by quite a few coworkers. It sort of lost its uniqueness), I will give the organization props by saying that there were efforts afoot to implement a secure infrastructure, so obviously at some point there were some changes. Perhaps the parent has outdated info.
Anyhoo, definitely enjoy how small of a world it is.
Incidentally CBC does not advertise itself or play adverts on their tv/radio channels. They are fully subsidised by the Canadian government and don't give a toss whether anyone listens to their broadcasts or not.
??? The CBC televsion channel that I receive (here in the outskirts of Outer Southern Ontario. Maybe some pirates are manipulating with the signal) is jam packed with as much advertising as any other channel. The CBC most certainly does give a toss whether they have viewers, as the government continually talks about kicking them off the teat.
The subsidization of the CBC isn't to provide a freebie channel, but to allow them to pursue risky and likely unprofitable exercises of Canadiana (e.g. historical shows), but overall the CBC does strive to be sustaining.
Everyone who buys a car must submit their fingerprints to the government
Right, because you have to submit your fingerprint to use the internet. Oh, no, wait, you're just throwing in a little classic Slashdot hyperbole to try to prop up your incredibly weak analogy.
and every car must have a GPS unit installed to record the car's position every time the doors are opened and transmit it to a central database
Here's the problem with your terrible analogy - driving a car around leaves a huge wake of evidence: From the fact that it left your drive-way (or that you rented it if it was a rental), to ever meter maid that punches it in the logging app to parking stubs (you know that many automated parking garages record your license now, right?) to toll highways to surveillance cameras. All of this is instantly trackable to you because, like IP address logs, they know who owns what license plate, and those people need to account for who uses their car.
I expect this sort of absurd analogy on here though.
First off, IP addresses are not evidence that will result in a conviction in court. Just ask the guy in Britain who got off because he was able to argue that "a virus must have done it". Yes, it was his computer. Yes it was his IP. But prove that it was him? Nope. You need a lot more than an ip address matched with an account-holders' name for criminal liability, same as you need a lot more than a license plate matched to a car for a hit-and-run conviction. You actually have to put the person behind the wheel of the car at the time.
Right, and if someone used their credit card to buy 500lbs of explosives and the next day a government building blows up, they can't convict based on the credit card. Instead it is just one important part in a universe of evidence. Maybe he used it for good purposes, or maybe his card was stolen - regardless the police can check it out, have a chat with him, and either discount it as misleading evidence, perhaps a coincidence, or this can unleash a series of additional evidence. The same sort of trail of evidence occurs when a phone is used to make a threatening phone call: Maybe someone broke in and made the call, or maybe they rewired the telephone box, but regardless it is a hot trail of evidence.
It's the same thing with IP addresses - no one is claiming that they alone convict, however often they are the crucial first step that uncovers lots of correlating evidence. Maybe the guy whose IP address sent IMs to a girl who then went missing was trojaned or had a insecure wifi, but when the police chat with him and he's sweating, some of his carpet has just been replaced, and he can't account for his actions on the night in question, a real case is built.
Again I really think you're reaching in some desperation to discount IP logging, and again you've become confused about privacy versus accountability.
There are a lot of the ridiculously rich that can't spend their money fast enough, and if going on a little rocket trip gives them a trill, then more power to them. Not really sure if there enough with the desire for something like this to fill 400 seats a year, not to mention that once it's been done the desirability would definitely plummit among the uber-rich (why go on a sub-orbital flight if 1200 of your peers already have? Instead you'd pooh pooh it and say that's so last year).
Imagine what life insurance costs to cover a trip like this though - I would imagine that a million dollar policy would have about a $250,000 premium.
As for the rest, please take the time to evolve. Justifying massive invasions of privacy by saying "what about the pedopholes/child pornographers/terrorists/whatever" is juvenile logic. There are better ways to make a case against someone than IP addresses. And if you bothered to do any research, you'd know that they don't get caught that way - they get caught through complaints, their credit-card transactions, informers, and people finding pix on their computers at work, then getting warrants and searching their homes . . . you know, REAL police work, not the shit you see on TV.
What a load of bullshit. Hilarious that the "massive invasion of privacy" is your ISP keeping a log of who used what IP when. Massive invasion of privacy indeed. You then follow this up by saying that the police use things like credit-card transactions: Oh my god! You mean the credit card company tracks when and where I use my card?! What a massive invasion of privacy.
You, sir, are a complete dumbass, clearly evident by your moronic grasp of the topic, and your inability to even keep any coherence in your point.
I guess they are just going to do what phone companies do when the police asked them...I.e. answer: "can't be done."
The phone company has a log of every single from and to phone call, and they keep it for perpetuity. I think you've watched a few too many TV shows where they sit there tracing the number (in reality it's instantly known, for obvious switching reasons).
Can you give us the identity of the passenger who went on a train at station X and left at station Y at 7:34pm 2nd of last month?"
And the train company would say "sure here's our video footage from those times at those two stations", and furthermore the police could question commuters.
Ultimately virtually anything you do is traceable - even if you use a payphone you leave a massive trail of evidence.
The problem is that the ISPs are all too ready to just give the info when requested, without a warrant.
Okay, therein lies a problem - deal with that problem. Here in Canada we have the privacy act that bars them from sharing this information without your explicit consent. Furthermore, the courts have barred the CRIA from getting the information because it doesn't believe their need outweighs the public's right to privacy. If your problem is dumbass legislation and government, deal with that.
We need a new "Godwin's Law" for privacy debates, so here it is
Remarkable. It's like saying that in a discussion on gun control that it's inappropriate for someone to say that guns can be used to kill innocent people. Simply shooing it away, pretending that an entirely apt and very worrisome reality should be discarded because it doesn't serve your needs is, honestly, disgusting and self-serving.
No, you don't. All you're doing is showing how terribly poor you are at proposing valid analogies.
You see, no one is banning the internet - all people are asking for is some sort of traceability for your actions, only derivable (or SHOULD be only derivable) through a warrant (and thus in the investigation of a crime).
It's terribly ironic that the real me too'ers here are the ones decrying the use of kiddy porn/kiddy abductions after internet luring as an example (it's an obvious example given that it's the most heinous, but I could have said crack/hack/phishing/spamming as well...they just aren't as vile), yet the #1, by far, reason people worry about IPsubscriber logs is because they worry that one day the hammer might fall about their P2P activities. On the grand scale of valid worries, I think the former is galaxies more credible than the latter.
No, I think it's become less prevalent among the general population - Napster was something that Joe Average used, but then Napster's decline and the actions of the various copyright holders scared most people out of it. Of course it's prevalent among high school and college students, and geeks (which I am one of).
I think a larger proportion of the "populace at large" uses P2P.
The majority of the population does not use P2P programs - that fad ended with Napster's decline. Of course more than just the Slashdot crowd does, however I didn't limit my statement to only the Slashdot crowd.
Well, let's compare - the exploitation of children is a very real, very serious, and sadly too common occurrence. But it is too dramatic for us to worry about the children. Instead we should worry about some thieving, pimple-faced file sharer that thinks that he is entitled to that copy of Clay Aiken's new CD. Give me a break. Real hard choice.
Any person with less-than honorable intentions won't do so from the comforts of their own home.
They're going to haul their laptop, equiped with Wi-Fi, to some random unsecured access point on the far side of town and do it there. In a situation like that, logs are almost entirely useless.
And here it is. Of course this explanation would appear, despite the fact that if this was the case then this story wouldn't be an issue at all. All of the file sharers could just grab their laptops and head to a wifi location.
Of course we know that is nonsense - criminals generally are dumb, and the police endlessly bust child-porn rings, as well as find people who communicate with children through IM services, via trusty IP logs and warrants. Even outside of this, though, forcing a criminal to go to a specific wifi point, itself easily identifiable, is vastly more of a lead to go on than "somebody in the state of New York". If you know that somebody sent a serious death threat from Joe's Coffee Shop at 2 in the afternoon, you can connect the dots and build some evidence.
It is quite a sad state of affairs when a company does something that is popular with the people, and yet there is controversy because another company doesn't want it to be done.
Popular with the people? Popular with the Slashdot crowd perhaps, but I assure you that the populace at large could easily be convinced that this is akin to accessory to commit a crime.
While we can all hypothesize about the many ways that one can achieve anonimity on the net (of course if it was so trivial then this would be a non-issue), I personally appreciate the fact that a child-porn sharer, for instance, can easily be, as are regularly, tracked down because ISPs keep logs that can be used to track back from networks. I like the fact that the same accountability holds for emails threats, hate crimes, and so on.
It's one thing to call for a higher bar to the correlation of customer records with IP addresses (such as has been shown in Canada - the CIAA can suck it, but a warrant to investigate a child abduction will get the record pronto), and that actually seems credible and logical. It's quite another to say that to protect file sharers we should eliminate any legal accountability.
This is news, how?... Help me Jebus, this Google fixation has gone too far.
Probably because a good percentage of the Slashdot community runs blogs/technology sites/whatever, and Adsense is one of the only small-player partners, giving them a minute amount of payback to help offset hosting fees and hassles. This isn't about an advertisement technique for use on CNN.com, but rather on "Joe's Kernel Rants", and thus it is apropos.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people wouldn't bother below $50, however note that PST, at least in Ontario, is also refunded.
- 03e.pdf
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/E/pbg/gf/gst176/gst176
As some irrelevant extra information, in Canada GST is 7% (usually coupled with a provincial tax, which in Ontario is 8%, so the next consumption tax on a product is 15% at the till).
While originally they talked about making inclusive of the price, in the end absolutely no one does that. Thus, if you pick up something labeled $100, you'll pay $115 when you get to the till (to the irritation of many tourists. Tourists, as an aside, can get a full refund of any taxes they paid during their stay).
This is really becoming absurd now though. Just becuase people have a false impression about things does not mean they are right. At some point, people are going to have to realize their errors.
You have remarkably low expectations.
Personally I've seen both my cable and high speed over cable achieving perfect reliability over the last two years. Not 90%, but rather 100% reliability. Given that the cable providers themselves are now starting to roll out their own VoIP, I guarantee you that they aren't going to give some vague hazy answers about the reliability - they are going to guarantee telephone level reliability. The government will invariably then legislate required reliability, and right so.
In Canada, where we retain more of fair Brittania, we use center to indicate the central position, and centre for a facility - e.g. "The Learning Centre".
Further, with google, you can do cool things like http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/ and http://labs.google.com/ridefinder.
Microsoft has had the MapPoint Web Services product for several years now - with it you can make complex mapping web applications that utilize the excellent MapPoint mapping engine for graphing. Unfortunately it isn't a free service (there is a fairly substantial start-up fee, and then you have to buy transactions in bulk), so you don't see the amateur freebie apps appearing for it, but it has been out there for some time.
This is a hilarious treat to come across (God bless score:5 skimming). I actually worked at that organization for a short period of time. Sort of soul destroying, but it was an enjoyable stint.
While I can't confirm or deny the parent's claims (although I'm prone to believing their claims given the use of the term "machiavellian", which is one that I heard used by quite a few coworkers. It sort of lost its uniqueness), I will give the organization props by saying that there were efforts afoot to implement a secure infrastructure, so obviously at some point there were some changes. Perhaps the parent has outdated info.
Anyhoo, definitely enjoy how small of a world it is.
For the n-th time, what would Apple have to gain?
Really. I mean, everyone knows that software companies can't make any money.
Yet Another Waist of the Net
Personally I thought OSDN was the waist, and Slashdot was the anus. Google is, of course, the nipples.
Incidentally CBC does not advertise itself or play adverts on their tv/radio channels. They are fully subsidised by the Canadian government and don't give a toss whether anyone listens to their broadcasts or not.
??? The CBC televsion channel that I receive (here in the outskirts of Outer Southern Ontario. Maybe some pirates are manipulating with the signal) is jam packed with as much advertising as any other channel. The CBC most certainly does give a toss whether they have viewers, as the government continually talks about kicking them off the teat.
The subsidization of the CBC isn't to provide a freebie channel, but to allow them to pursue risky and likely unprofitable exercises of Canadiana (e.g. historical shows), but overall the CBC does strive to be sustaining.
Everyone who buys a car must submit their fingerprints to the government
Right, because you have to submit your fingerprint to use the internet. Oh, no, wait, you're just throwing in a little classic Slashdot hyperbole to try to prop up your incredibly weak analogy.
and every car must have a GPS unit installed to record the car's position every time the doors are opened and transmit it to a central database
Here's the problem with your terrible analogy - driving a car around leaves a huge wake of evidence: From the fact that it left your drive-way (or that you rented it if it was a rental), to ever meter maid that punches it in the logging app to parking stubs (you know that many automated parking garages record your license now, right?) to toll highways to surveillance cameras. All of this is instantly trackable to you because, like IP address logs, they know who owns what license plate, and those people need to account for who uses their car.
I expect this sort of absurd analogy on here though.
First off, IP addresses are not evidence that will result in a conviction in court. Just ask the guy in Britain who got off because he was able to argue that "a virus must have done it". Yes, it was his computer. Yes it was his IP. But prove that it was him? Nope. You need a lot more than an ip address matched with an account-holders' name for criminal liability, same as you need a lot more than a license plate matched to a car for a hit-and-run conviction. You actually have to put the person behind the wheel of the car at the time.
Right, and if someone used their credit card to buy 500lbs of explosives and the next day a government building blows up, they can't convict based on the credit card. Instead it is just one important part in a universe of evidence. Maybe he used it for good purposes, or maybe his card was stolen - regardless the police can check it out, have a chat with him, and either discount it as misleading evidence, perhaps a coincidence, or this can unleash a series of additional evidence. The same sort of trail of evidence occurs when a phone is used to make a threatening phone call: Maybe someone broke in and made the call, or maybe they rewired the telephone box, but regardless it is a hot trail of evidence.
It's the same thing with IP addresses - no one is claiming that they alone convict, however often they are the crucial first step that uncovers lots of correlating evidence. Maybe the guy whose IP address sent IMs to a girl who then went missing was trojaned or had a insecure wifi, but when the police chat with him and he's sweating, some of his carpet has just been replaced, and he can't account for his actions on the night in question, a real case is built.
Again I really think you're reaching in some desperation to discount IP logging, and again you've become confused about privacy versus accountability.
Thanks AC. It lightens my heart to know that I have fans.
There are a lot of the ridiculously rich that can't spend their money fast enough, and if going on a little rocket trip gives them a trill, then more power to them. Not really sure if there enough with the desire for something like this to fill 400 seats a year, not to mention that once it's been done the desirability would definitely plummit among the uber-rich (why go on a sub-orbital flight if 1200 of your peers already have? Instead you'd pooh pooh it and say that's so last year).
Imagine what life insurance costs to cover a trip like this though - I would imagine that a million dollar policy would have about a $250,000 premium.
As for the rest, please take the time to evolve. Justifying massive invasions of privacy by saying "what about the pedopholes/child pornographers/terrorists/whatever" is juvenile logic. There are better ways to make a case against someone than IP addresses. And if you bothered to do any research, you'd know that they don't get caught that way - they get caught through complaints, their credit-card transactions, informers, and people finding pix on their computers at work, then getting warrants and searching their homes . . . you know, REAL police work, not the shit you see on TV.
What a load of bullshit. Hilarious that the "massive invasion of privacy" is your ISP keeping a log of who used what IP when. Massive invasion of privacy indeed. You then follow this up by saying that the police use things like credit-card transactions: Oh my god! You mean the credit card company tracks when and where I use my card?! What a massive invasion of privacy.
You, sir, are a complete dumbass, clearly evident by your moronic grasp of the topic, and your inability to even keep any coherence in your point.
I guess they are just going to do what phone companies do when the police asked them...I.e. answer: "can't be done."
The phone company has a log of every single from and to phone call, and they keep it for perpetuity. I think you've watched a few too many TV shows where they sit there tracing the number (in reality it's instantly known, for obvious switching reasons).
Can you give us the identity of the passenger who went on a train at station X and left at station Y at 7:34pm 2nd of last month?"
And the train company would say "sure here's our video footage from those times at those two stations", and furthermore the police could question commuters.
Ultimately virtually anything you do is traceable - even if you use a payphone you leave a massive trail of evidence.
The problem is that the ISPs are all too ready to just give the info when requested, without a warrant.
Okay, therein lies a problem - deal with that problem. Here in Canada we have the privacy act that bars them from sharing this information without your explicit consent. Furthermore, the courts have barred the CRIA from getting the information because it doesn't believe their need outweighs the public's right to privacy. If your problem is dumbass legislation and government, deal with that.
We need a new "Godwin's Law" for privacy debates, so here it is
Remarkable. It's like saying that in a discussion on gun control that it's inappropriate for someone to say that guns can be used to kill innocent people. Simply shooing it away, pretending that an entirely apt and very worrisome reality should be discarded because it doesn't serve your needs is, honestly, disgusting and self-serving.
- do I need to go on?
No, you don't. All you're doing is showing how terribly poor you are at proposing valid analogies.
You see, no one is banning the internet - all people are asking for is some sort of traceability for your actions, only derivable (or SHOULD be only derivable) through a warrant (and thus in the investigation of a crime).
It's terribly ironic that the real me too'ers here are the ones decrying the use of kiddy porn/kiddy abductions after internet luring as an example (it's an obvious example given that it's the most heinous, but I could have said crack/hack/phishing/spamming as well...they just aren't as vile), yet the #1, by far, reason people worry about IPsubscriber logs is because they worry that one day the hammer might fall about their P2P activities. On the grand scale of valid worries, I think the former is galaxies more credible than the latter.
No, I think it's become less prevalent among the general population - Napster was something that Joe Average used, but then Napster's decline and the actions of the various copyright holders scared most people out of it. Of course it's prevalent among high school and college students, and geeks (which I am one of).
I think a larger proportion of the "populace at large" uses P2P.
The majority of the population does not use P2P programs - that fad ended with Napster's decline. Of course more than just the Slashdot crowd does, however I didn't limit my statement to only the Slashdot crowd.
Don't you worry AC - the RIAA probably won't come after you for your monster Clay Aiken collection.
Won't SOMEBODY think of the children!! *sob*
Well, let's compare - the exploitation of children is a very real, very serious, and sadly too common occurrence. But it is too dramatic for us to worry about the children. Instead we should worry about some thieving, pimple-faced file sharer that thinks that he is entitled to that copy of Clay Aiken's new CD. Give me a break. Real hard choice.
Any person with less-than honorable intentions won't do so from the comforts of their own home.
They're going to haul their laptop, equiped with Wi-Fi, to some random unsecured access point on the far side of town and do it there. In a situation like that, logs are almost entirely useless.
And here it is. Of course this explanation would appear, despite the fact that if this was the case then this story wouldn't be an issue at all. All of the file sharers could just grab their laptops and head to a wifi location.
Of course we know that is nonsense - criminals generally are dumb, and the police endlessly bust child-porn rings, as well as find people who communicate with children through IM services, via trusty IP logs and warrants. Even outside of this, though, forcing a criminal to go to a specific wifi point, itself easily identifiable, is vastly more of a lead to go on than "somebody in the state of New York". If you know that somebody sent a serious death threat from Joe's Coffee Shop at 2 in the afternoon, you can connect the dots and build some evidence.
It is quite a sad state of affairs when a company does something that is popular with the people, and yet there is controversy because another company doesn't want it to be done.
Popular with the people? Popular with the Slashdot crowd perhaps, but I assure you that the populace at large could easily be convinced that this is akin to accessory to commit a crime.
While we can all hypothesize about the many ways that one can achieve anonimity on the net (of course if it was so trivial then this would be a non-issue), I personally appreciate the fact that a child-porn sharer, for instance, can easily be, as are regularly, tracked down because ISPs keep logs that can be used to track back from networks. I like the fact that the same accountability holds for emails threats, hate crimes, and so on.
It's one thing to call for a higher bar to the correlation of customer records with IP addresses (such as has been shown in Canada - the CIAA can suck it, but a warrant to investigate a child abduction will get the record pronto), and that actually seems credible and logical. It's quite another to say that to protect file sharers we should eliminate any legal accountability.
I run a blog. I don't have ads on it. I'll never have ads on it. Why? Because the attention and time of my readers is not mine to sell.
This is completely nonsensical.
This is news, how? ... Help me Jebus, this Google fixation has gone too far.
Probably because a good percentage of the Slashdot community runs blogs/technology sites/whatever, and Adsense is one of the only small-player partners, giving them a minute amount of payback to help offset hosting fees and hassles. This isn't about an advertisement technique for use on CNN.com, but rather on "Joe's Kernel Rants", and thus it is apropos.