You're well within your rights to use pictures you find on the internet for you desktop background or whatever,
Um, no. You can view them and your system can cache them so you can save time viewing them later, but copying an image as a desktop isn't part of fair use. Not that anyone is going to sue you over it in the normal course of business, but it's still not fair use. Technically, you can't actively save them or print them without violating copyright law.
Why no automatic persistence? Persistance of what? Program objects - how exactly does the OS know what is & is not an object that should be persistent? When is it safe to destroy a persistent object if you need more space? etc. Why should the OS even care?
Automatic Rollback - what does this even mean? I am assuming that you are referring to removing updates that cause failures after installing. That's reasonable & might actually not be a bad thing to implement. If, however, your looking at file rollback - journaling FS do this, and can be extended to do it very well if you choose to.
Why no automatic compute farm distribution? - because there aren't enough farms available to make it worthwhile. Parallel programming is just now beginning to become mainstream. Additionally, unless your farm is identical, the entire OS & hardware has to be abstracted away or JIT compiled. Add in problems with resource limiting and trust and you're back to defined farms.
Why no refinable auto-generated GUIs? - for what? What do you want a GUI for that's auto generated? A GUI is an integral part of a program - it IS the program as far as most users are concerned - what program would you possibly write where you're not writing the GUI as well? Most IDEs will automate 90% of the GUI design, if you want tweakage after it's built, then again that's not something that an OS could or should have any knowledge of.
Why no intelligent files that load as object by default? How exactly would you load a file as an object by default? Oh, save it as a binary construct with a pointer & then load the file back into memory & pass the new pointer to the object handle - brilliant, I've only been doing that for the last 20 years.
As for your next point, if sensitive user data is ubiquitous, then it's even more important to implement a means of determining trust between computers & isolating programs on a single computer. You indicate that there are better data/program models for the current world, but your arguments as to what would make a better model is arcane at best. As I understand it, you are arguing that because the hardware/OS is commodity and the data is valuable, we should do away with the concept of protecting the hardware/OS and work on securing the data. That's nice except that there is no way to secure data on a compromised system. Let me restate that: Without a secure hardware/OS stack to build on, there is no degree of programming, encryption, or obtuseness which can secure your data. We don't secure the HW/OS for fun, we do it because it's the foundation for everything else.
There are a host of paradigms for building computers, most work extremely well within the limited scope they were designed for. However, for a general purpose, personal computer, the OS/Application paradigm works the best. The concepts of dataclouds & ubiquitous computing don't alter the paradigm, just the application layer. Most of the features you're looking at currently belong in the application layer and unless you bloat you kernel to heights unheard of even by Vista, they are going to remain there.
This sounds no more like censorship than setting up a V-chip so your tykes can't access adult content videos.
Except that the V-chip is opt in and the proposed law is opt out and requires a central list of opt'd out members.
How about, instead of mandating that every ISP create a clean stream - which the market shows isn't wanted, the govt creates a proxy wherein they create their filtered content and people who desire to have a clean stream can use their proxy. See, no opt out, no central lists, no enforcement costs.
Oh wait, that requires that people opt in for a clean stream just like they do now when they have to install a filter on their computer.
If there was a serious market for whitelisted/washed internet streams, there would be ISPs or at least proxy services providing them. The lack of said ISPs/proxies tells me that there isn't a market. Mandating the filtered streams is only going to crash an existing market for the sake of creating a non-existing/undesired market - which is a recipe for failure in any economics book.
Look at your costs, you are going to shift the costs of filtering streams from the few consumers who want them ($12/month for some), to the ISPs. While some things work with an economy of scale - wholesale filtering doesn't without a demand. Even if an ISP can get a license for filtering software for less, they have to have redundant hardware onhand to filter at their maximum bandwidth for anything more exotic than white/blacklists at the DNS server. On top of that, they have to have that hardware running 24/7 even if the load isn't there. On top of that they need people to maintain that hardware. On top of that they have to have people to maintain the opt out lists. All of this, in order to provide a level of protection that people have already decided isn't worth it - in effect a technologically incompetent, but vocal group, is going to shift their minimal cost to everyone in the country.
The OS/Application paradigm works because it allows the general purpose computer to fulfill it's requirement to be a general purpose chunk of hardware.
The purpose of the OS is to provide a basis for the applications to interact with the hardware. File structure, hardware interfacing, interprocess communication, multi-task scheduling, and memory management are all isolated from the individual programs & collectively handled by the OS. This does 2 things, it frees the developers of the applications from having to re-invent the wheel every time they start, and it isolates individual programs from each other - thus helping protect them from rogue software.
If you create a single-purpose device, then by all means use a different paradigm - the GP/Multi-tasking one isn't appropriate. But if you are creating a GP/Multi-tasked environment, then the OS/Application paradigm provides you with flexibility, robustness, modularity, and a host of other advantages.
allows many payment alternatives included cash, check, and bank transfers.
Of those you've mentioned, only cash is a viable alternative - the whole US banking industry is prohibited from dealing with online gambling sites, not just CC companies. The only viable alternative is to route your cash to an offshore account & use that.
By the way, this costs money. And if you're getting hit by some douchebags trying to find valid card numbers, it can cost a lot of money.
You can check if the card number is potentially valid - there are a bunch of routines available to do so. Validating the card against the clearinghouse system does cost money - some processors charge as much as $.25 per request. What's even dumber is that anyone can get an ATM card with the Visa logo on it & then it validates.
Even credit card verification doesn't work, since any kid can borrow their parents' credit card and any identity thief can supply someone else's stolen credit card information.
My favorite was a website requesting CC# for verification purposes. Right next to the entry field was a link to a CC# generator website. To me that was the ultimate example of the futility of the proposed US legislation. Without requiring every website that hosts adult content have a CC processing account, there is no way to even validate that the CC# is actually tied to an account. You can check if it's potentially valid, but not if it's actually valid without trying to process the card.
All forms of 'validation' are pretty much pointless when it comes to this. Unless they can figure out how to do a national authorization database with 2 factor authentication and anonymization , this is pointless. Here in the US, it was too much effort to do 2 factor for the BANKS, can you imagine trying to get everyone set up for this?
IANAL etc, but I believe you actually get to go for the $750/page that was modified. Since it would be different for each customer, you're looking at a new violation for each page for each customer & that is getting into real money.
So, in the US Rogers would be getting a royal rogering. In Canada I'm not sure what the rules are, but I have a feeling that Rogers is probably setting itself up for just as much trouble.
Except that the copyright act's fair use provisions authorize that duplication. The fact that the RIAA lawyers stood in front of SCOTUS & stated that format shifting for personal use was a legitimate exercise in fair use pretty much bars them from ever winning an actual case based on format shifting. Of course that doesn't mean that they won't try to shift the ground out a bit further so they have something to stand on when they get around to trying it.
I think this problem became more troublesome over the years as manufacturing techniques and processes became more consistent.
I will agree that this problem has probably become exacerbated by improved manufacturing techniques - I have done FTIR and GCMS analysis as an industrial chemist, and archived samples are much easier to differentiate than more current samples. However, this and DNA both share the same problem, they were designed as exclusionary tests, but have been used as definitive tests.
Your ignoring several fundamental constructs of the constitution as well as getting the entire FISA laws out of context.
I will admit that I am not a constitutional lawyer. So I will defer to the wisdom of 2 constitutional lawyers - the AG and the Assistant AG at the time this whole thing broke - they both indicated that the NSA spying program as it was being operated was illegal. When 2 constitutional lawyers who know all the facts both declare it illegal, I tend to believe them over non lawyers armed with speculation & inuendo.
The constitution specifically tells congress where it can directly interfere with the other branches. It doesn't say that congress and [can?] limit the president's ability to operate as commander in chief.
It does. At any time Congress feels that the President has committed a crime, they have the right to impeach him. There is no caveat that says it can't be done during a time of war. Congress has the ultimate check on the power of the President.
In addition there are many things outside of Congress that are supposed to check the power of the President.
International Treaties
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;
IE when you sign a treaty, it's not negotiable, it's part of the legal system. You don't like it, don't sign the damn thing. If it's already signed - then withdraw, you can't just arbitrarily negate parts of it, or redefine away parts you don't like.
The Bill of Rights -
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I fail to see a caveat here regarding times of war. There is a hundred years of legal precedent regarding wiretaps and the requirement of Warrants to legally conduct them. A hundred years ignored by the current President.
The biggest one is the Constitution itself.
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
The administration has stated that it does not feel that this does not apply to suspected terrorists - ignoring the fact that neither exception has been legally met.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;
Note the power of the Presidency doesn't expand in the time of war. The President is always the Commander in Chief. Also note that nowhere does the constitution allow for the suspension of any laws in the time of war*.
* - the Writ of Habeas Corpus may be suspended in times of Rebellion or Invasion - which are not necessarily aligned with times of war.
You don't have to agree with what they are doing. But your disagreement doesn't make it any more wrong. It either is wrong or it isn't.
What they are doing is playing politics with National Security. They have declared that the details of the domestic spying operation are too secret to be subjected to oversight. However, in order to get approval for relaxing the oversight, they are willing to share the details with a committee that doesn't actually do the oversight. The details are either too secret to be revealed to any member of Congress, or they are subject to oversight. To subject them to scrutiny for political gain but withhold the
Scientific testing is required to be peer reviewed and 'generally accepted as valid'. However, sometimes things get peer reviewed and approved which are then shown to be inaccurate. Sometimes they just get dumped into play regardless of the rules..
Bullet Lead analysis is accurate to a point. The problem is that after decades of review, that point appears to be to vague to match the bullet with a specific batch of bullets. It might however be able to exclude bullets of similar caliber from different manufacturers.
Another case in point is the silicone breast implant debacle. The test used to 'prove' that the silicone from breast implants was causing health problems was unable to statistically show who actually had breast implants - IE. healthy women without breast implants came back positive in the same statistical numbers as ill women with breast implants. Yet, Dow Corning lost the case even though it was shown in court that the test was worthless. (these women are suffering & someone has to pay don't you know)
3. Also worth noting is that the judge isn't really saying "this isn't spam" but rather saying "there is insufficient evidence that this is spam." So the judge's ruling shouldn't be construed as an endorsement of what the defendant did--it could merely be that from a single email alone (and without, e.g. proof that the same email was sent to other people) the judge cannot reasonably come to that conclusion.
If she ruled that it wasn't proven to be spam that would be 1 thing. The problem is she ruled that the email was personal in nature and not commercial. If she had ruled that the subject was in error and not misleading, or that there was a lack of bulk distribution, or any of the other reasons it potentially wasn't spam, then OK. But she ruled it wasn't spam because it was a personal email.
The whole point is that the blatant commercial nature of the content, tone, and greeting were all ignored. I would have to say that per her ruling, 95+% of the mail I've sent from my work computer in the last 2 years qualifies as personal correspondence. Why she would make that determination I have no idea. Regardless of how she ruled, this would have been off her desk in the same timeframe, so why did she decide that
Dear Webmaster (of a site you don't own),
Would you pretty please help bump my search rating on my website?
Thanks
Bubba Jones
is a personal email instead of commercial?
According to some other postings regarding her previous censures, she's a bitch with a gavel who shouldn't be anywhere near a small claims court room. She apparently hates pro-se (For self) litigants, which is 99+ what you see in small claims. It's entirely possible she ruled against him simply because he's not a lawyer & had the temerity to bring a case to her court.
A) The judge is not obligated to do your fact-finding for you. If you are claiming that the e-mail was a bulk e-mail, prove it. If you are claiming that the e-mail was sent by an automated program, prove it. It's not up to the judge to pore through e-mail headers to decide what's important, and most judges would probably not know how anyway
Examining the headers is rather pointless since a BCC will usually show up on your system sans everyone else - hence the Blind Carbon Copy.
B) There is probably a specific legal definition of what 'spam' is, and the likelihood of it magically happening to perfectly dovetail with the general Slashdot opinion is vanishingly small.
The definitions of spam are rather lax compared to the/. version however, they include -
misleading subject lines
commercial usage
This judge decided that an email with a misleading subject, a request for a link on the authors website, and the very personal opening of 'Dear Webmaster', was personal not commercial in nature, based on the fact that the guy on the other end of the phone said so & used his real name in the signature file. She ignored the fact that the request was commercial in nature. She ignored the fact that the greeting was rote, vague, and impersonal. She essentially ignored that there was nothing personal about the letter except the sender's name, and ruled the email as personal and not commercial. Under her definition, every email I have sent from my work computer in the last 2 years has been 'personal'.
There will be some ruling that in the capacity of the taps, the FISA laws didn't apply because the congress cannot restrict the constitutional obligations of another branch.
The whole point is that without the FISA laws, the DOJ has to go through the regular courts to get their warrants. IE: FISA makes it easier for the executive branch to 'do their constitutional duty'. What this debacle is about is the executive branch ignoring their duty to observe the constitution - specifically the right to be free from unreasonable search & seizure.
It is the explicit purpose of the design of the government that the 3 branches balance each other. There is nothing in the US constitution or the bill of rights that says "unless we think you're a terrorist". So I think that if congress can authorize $28M of our tax dollars to find out that Billy boy was fucking the intern, they damn well better start investing some of my tax dollars into finding out why the fuck US citizens are being wiretapped without warrants.
And sorry, this "we'll reveal zooper zeecret documents to one oversight committee but not the one that has higher clearances & has been asking longer" is more BS right along with ignoring legislation on retaining Emails and proper document handling.
In short - impeach the damn bastard already - he's certainly done more to piss on the constitution than any other president that's been impeached.
If the Al-Haramain lawyers were allowed to use their "recollections", they could say anything, and the only effective defense the govt would have would be to produce the documents and thus reveal state secrets.
The only reason the Al-Haramain lawyers don't produce a certified copy of the original is because they are being nice. Copies of all of the documentation regarding the orginal FOIA request were shipped to the middle east. They presented one of those copies to the court initially. They can produce a copy at any time they want. If the Al-Haramain lawyers wanted to play games like that they would simply release the document to the public through channels outside the control of the US govt.
I am certain that as in the 1953 case, this round of 'state secrets' is going to eventually be revealed as a ploy to avoid public humiliation and not a matter of national security at all.
The charity's lawyers still have copies of the document stored in the middle east. They know exactly what the document says to the exact number of recorded calls, when they were, & how long. They initially presented the original copy to the court, which was then reclaimed by the govt & declared 'classified' after being entered into the record. However, the copies sent to the charity's lawyers in the middle east still have copies of the document.
So in another declaration of stupidity, the US govt is declaring state secrets to avoid getting their asses handed to them in court, over a document that they have absolutely no control over. With a phone call, the charity can have that document on the internet - better, there's nothing the US govt can say about it. Since the document is already out of the country, the US govt cannot exert any form of pressure to have it returned. Any attempt at exerting that kind of pressure is almost certain to see the whole document released.
Personally, I believe that Bush is violating the precept of state secret in that he is using it to forestall the lawsuits to avoid the humiliation of having been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. From the beginning, it's been clear that that is not an appropriate usage of the state secrets claim. I am wondering if the next president will review these claims of state secrets & void them - just to taint Bush & the republican party.
There is one way to fairly strongly demonstrate the existence of a hidden volume, and that's to have access to the file over a period of usage without the owner's knowledge.
If you have that kind of access to the computer, then you would have also had enough access to do keylogging for the password, and the issue would be moot.
The only scenario I can possibly see where that would help you is if you had incremental backups. But then again, you may just be blowing away the partition & rebuilding it as you change projects/finish getting your latest pre-release movie/etc.
The British have an inquisitional judicial system not an advisarial one. Better? Eh. Worse? Eh. Different? definitely. Among the biggest differences are that you don't have a right to remain silent or one against self incrimination. If you're asked a question you have to answer it.
And how do you mount the volume? If you mount it using TrueCrypt, then this only gives you deniability if the forensics people don't know about TrueCrypt. If they do, then a decent lawyer could convince a court that there was a second key that the suspect was not divulging and get them convicted under RIPA.
That's actually pretty much a stretch. Your 'decent' lawyer would have to give some sort of proof that there was a second partition there. Something that TrueCrypt is pretty much designed to prevent. You can easily show the existence of the first truecrypt partition - it's there in the open. You can't prove the existence of the second partition.
I'm not sure a judge will buy 'because we didn't find what we were looking for' as a reasonable showing of proof that a second partition exists, and unfortunately, that's all the proof that exists. The formatting method and the processing method result in random data covering the entire partition block, as data is written to both the shown & hidden partitions, that data changes from random to encrypted. However the whole goal of the crypto data is to make it look random.
So you have potentially 3 blocks of random data each constructed with the same randomizing algorythm. How exactly do you show where one begins & one ends? How do you even show that the 3rd block exists? The whole purpose of the hidden block is to make it almost impossible to prove the existence of that third block. You literally are more likely to brute force the key than you are to prove the existence of the hidden partition.
the point of talking to your kids about the risks "out there" is to educate them about being safe and smart in situations where their judgment plays a big part in the risk. ie: it's not a waste of time to teach your kids to make a difference where they actually CAN.
I think the poster did get exactly your point about risk assesment - don't waste your time with things that aren't likely to happen & focus on the ones that are: IE. 97% of sexual propositions to minors occur in the real world. Less than 3% occur online. Of those numbers, 75% are by other minors. We are talking about 3/4 of 1% of
propositions
happen online by an adult.
Where exactly do you think we should be focusing our attention in light of that? Statistically, your local priest is more of a risk. Hell, your brother is more of a statistical risk than the internet. It's a lot harder for a child to say no to a trusted/loved person than it is to a stranger on the internet. You want to do some good? Focus where the problem actually is, not some tiny segment who's total elimination won't make a difference in the statistics of the problem. It's like opening a foodbank in Westchester county to deal with world hunger.
Charges were dropped in some cases in one county, and this contradicts what I'm saying... how?
Because those dropped charges - more importantly, why they were dropped - will influence any future legitimate arrests with their tainted stink.
Dateline spend $100K last year on their 'Predator' series just paying for 'Perverted Justice' to sit on the web. That's almost 1% of the national budget for the FBI's Missing & Exploited Children - which covers all forms of child molestations. The data they quote at the beginning of their show is wrong. The 1 in 5 is an aggregate figure of sexual propositions. From the actual report by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice:
19 percent of Internet users age 10-17 "received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year," but three-quarters of those were from fellow-children or juveniles. Just 3 percent of youth Internet users "received an aggressive solicitation involving offline contact," and "none of the solicitations led to an actual sexual contact or sexual assault."
19% quoted vs 3% in the actual report. That seems to be a bit off don't you think - if this were an actual attempt at producing a NEWS program. This program is damaging to everyone:
the botched, paid for raids damage the credibility of the police.
Having to drop the charges on the cases is damaging to the credibility of the DA's office.
The misleading, self agrandizing information pumped out by the studio is damaging to it's reputation as a serious news organization.
and that same misleading crap is damaging to society in general because it generates a false sense of urgency related to the internet while ignoring that real world abuse is 50X more likely. One of your bothers is vastly more likely to molest your little girl than some stranger on the internet.
The show is sensationalist crap and the studio should be ashamed to have their name associated with it.
Check the stats - 98%+ of abuse cases are real world cases - not related to the internet. How many times have you heard a politician screaming about needing more funds for handling real world cases? The bill last year wanted to make data retention mandatory (to the tune of $400M+ annually) with some governmental financial support. However they vetoed the FBI request for a budget increase for the MEC department.
Even if the government could manage to exterminate every case of child abuse related to the internet, it wouldn't make a noticeable change in the amount of abuse going on. However, because it's a wild frontier that politicians can get publicity on, they scream about it like it's the end of the world. The internet is no different than the real world in terms of how to protect yourself. If parents take the time to teach their kids how to stay safe in the real world, then Internet safety is a footnote.
Committing hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars to 'make the internet safe' without also committing a proportionately larger amount of cash to the real world problem is almost criminal. It shows that the soundbytes are all people are interested in. Actual results are completely secondary to the volume of airtime and feelgood support politicians can generate by spouting off this crap.
Second, these capacitors would also have a rapid discharge time.
Yes, that's why capacitors are used in electronics at all. But that's not a reason to use them as laptop batteries. I don't see what use you are advocating here.
He was pointing out that a fast charge block could charge your battery in 5 seconds while still drawing less current from the grid than a 60W lightbulb. Ideal for someplace like an airport waiting room - they charge the block over the course of an hour, you plug in & hit the button, 5 seconds later you unplug & get on your flight fully charged.
Why would I want to double the size of my battery to achieve the same power output as a Li-ion?
From what I read in the article, it appears that the charge density/kg is better for nanotube supercaps than for batteries. That means you get a battery the same size, it lasts only 50% as long/charge, but it also weighs 50% as much. Rough feel, my laptop battery is around 2#. I wouldn't mind trimming 1# off the weight - since I rarely use it unplugged for more than an hour at a stretch anyway. Add in the fact that my 1 battery lasts the life of the laptop instead of 2 years, and I am all for swapping batteries for ultracaps.
How about going from dead to full charge in under a minute instead of an hour? Plug your laptop in for a 5 minute sales presentation & by the time your done, it's fully charged. Alternately, how about the fact that you can toss your emergency phone in the glovebox & 2 years later when you have an accident, your cellphone battery is dead, it's 2AM, and it's raining, you can grab the emergency phone & it still has a charge.
You could also create hybrid batteries that charge/discharge the LiON battery at it's optimal rate without effecting performance - spin up the HD & the cap takes the load instead of the battery having to kick out a spike. That would double the lifespan of your laptop battery without significantly changing it's weight or AH rating - depending on how you use the laptop, it might even enhance the time/charge.
A supercap isn't the answer to every technical need, but it another tool in the shed. It's not going to help your IPod play longer while you're running a marathon, but it'll keep you from having to replace the battery every 18months if you only every go from home dock->car dock->work dock & back.
Slashdot Mirror
OK lets run in order:
Persistance of what? Program objects - how exactly does the OS know what is & is not an object that should be persistent? When is it safe to destroy a persistent object if you need more space? etc. Why should the OS even care?
As for your next point, if sensitive user data is ubiquitous, then it's even more important to implement a means of determining trust between computers & isolating programs on a single computer. You indicate that there are better data/program models for the current world, but your arguments as to what would make a better model is arcane at best. As I understand it, you are arguing that because the hardware/OS is commodity and the data is valuable, we should do away with the concept of protecting the hardware/OS and work on securing the data. That's nice except that there is no way to secure data on a compromised system. Let me restate that: Without a secure hardware/OS stack to build on, there is no degree of programming, encryption, or obtuseness which can secure your data. We don't secure the HW/OS for fun, we do it because it's the foundation for everything else.
There are a host of paradigms for building computers, most work extremely well within the limited scope they were designed for. However, for a general purpose, personal computer, the OS/Application paradigm works the best. The concepts of dataclouds & ubiquitous computing don't alter the paradigm, just the application layer. Most of the features you're looking at currently belong in the application layer and unless you bloat you kernel to heights unheard of even by Vista, they are going to remain there.
Except that the V-chip is opt in and the proposed law is opt out and requires a central list of opt'd out members.
How about, instead of mandating that every ISP create a clean stream - which the market shows isn't wanted, the govt creates a proxy wherein they create their filtered content and people who desire to have a clean stream can use their proxy. See, no opt out, no central lists, no enforcement costs.
Oh wait, that requires that people opt in for a clean stream just like they do now when they have to install a filter on their computer.
If there was a serious market for whitelisted/washed internet streams, there would be ISPs or at least proxy services providing them. The lack of said ISPs/proxies tells me that there isn't a market. Mandating the filtered streams is only going to crash an existing market for the sake of creating a non-existing/undesired market - which is a recipe for failure in any economics book.
Look at your costs, you are going to shift the costs of filtering streams from the few consumers who want them ($12/month for some), to the ISPs. While some things work with an economy of scale - wholesale filtering doesn't without a demand. Even if an ISP can get a license for filtering software for less, they have to have redundant hardware onhand to filter at their maximum bandwidth for anything more exotic than white/blacklists at the DNS server. On top of that, they have to have that hardware running 24/7 even if the load isn't there. On top of that they need people to maintain that hardware. On top of that they have to have people to maintain the opt out lists. All of this, in order to provide a level of protection that people have already decided isn't worth it - in effect a technologically incompetent, but vocal group, is going to shift their minimal cost to everyone in the country.
All hail our new breast cancer free internet!
The OS/Application paradigm works because it allows the general purpose computer to fulfill it's requirement to be a general purpose chunk of hardware.
The purpose of the OS is to provide a basis for the applications to interact with the hardware. File structure, hardware interfacing, interprocess communication, multi-task scheduling, and memory management are all isolated from the individual programs & collectively handled by the OS. This does 2 things, it frees the developers of the applications from having to re-invent the wheel every time they start, and it isolates individual programs from each other - thus helping protect them from rogue software.
If you create a single-purpose device, then by all means use a different paradigm - the GP/Multi-tasking one isn't appropriate. But if you are creating a GP/Multi-tasked environment, then the OS/Application paradigm provides you with flexibility, robustness, modularity, and a host of other advantages.
Of those you've mentioned, only cash is a viable alternative - the whole US banking industry is prohibited from dealing with online gambling sites, not just CC companies. The only viable alternative is to route your cash to an offshore account & use that.
My favorite was a website requesting CC# for verification purposes. Right next to the entry field was a link to a CC# generator website. To me that was the ultimate example of the futility of the proposed US legislation. Without requiring every website that hosts adult content have a CC processing account, there is no way to even validate that the CC# is actually tied to an account. You can check if it's potentially valid, but not if it's actually valid without trying to process the card.
All forms of 'validation' are pretty much pointless when it comes to this. Unless they can figure out how to do a national authorization database with 2 factor authentication and anonymization , this is pointless. Here in the US, it was too much effort to do 2 factor for the BANKS, can you imagine trying to get everyone set up for this?
IANAL etc, but I believe you actually get to go for the $750/page that was modified. Since it would be different for each customer, you're looking at a new violation for each page for each customer & that is getting into real money. So, in the US Rogers would be getting a royal rogering. In Canada I'm not sure what the rules are, but I have a feeling that Rogers is probably setting itself up for just as much trouble.
Except that the copyright act's fair use provisions authorize that duplication. The fact that the RIAA lawyers stood in front of SCOTUS & stated that format shifting for personal use was a legitimate exercise in fair use pretty much bars them from ever winning an actual case based on format shifting. Of course that doesn't mean that they won't try to shift the ground out a bit further so they have something to stand on when they get around to trying it.
I will agree that this problem has probably become exacerbated by improved manufacturing techniques - I have done FTIR and GCMS analysis as an industrial chemist, and archived samples are much easier to differentiate than more current samples. However, this and DNA both share the same problem, they were designed as exclusionary tests, but have been used as definitive tests.
I will admit that I am not a constitutional lawyer. So I will defer to the wisdom of 2 constitutional lawyers - the AG and the Assistant AG at the time this whole thing broke - they both indicated that the NSA spying program as it was being operated was illegal. When 2 constitutional lawyers who know all the facts both declare it illegal, I tend to believe them over non lawyers armed with speculation & inuendo.
It does. At any time Congress feels that the President has committed a crime, they have the right to impeach him. There is no caveat that says it can't be done during a time of war. Congress has the ultimate check on the power of the President.
In addition there are many things outside of Congress that are supposed to check the power of the President.
IE when you sign a treaty, it's not negotiable, it's part of the legal system. You don't like it, don't sign the damn thing. If it's already signed - then withdraw, you can't just arbitrarily negate parts of it, or redefine away parts you don't like.
I fail to see a caveat here regarding times of war. There is a hundred years of legal precedent regarding wiretaps and the requirement of Warrants to legally conduct them. A hundred years ignored by the current President.
The administration has stated that it does not feel that this does not apply to suspected terrorists - ignoring the fact that neither exception has been legally met.
Note the power of the Presidency doesn't expand in the time of war. The President is always the Commander in Chief. Also note that nowhere does the constitution allow for the suspension of any laws in the time of war*.
* - the Writ of Habeas Corpus may be suspended in times of Rebellion or Invasion - which are not necessarily aligned with times of war.
What they are doing is playing politics with National Security. They have declared that the details of the domestic spying operation are too secret to be subjected to oversight. However, in order to get approval for relaxing the oversight, they are willing to share the details with a committee that doesn't actually do the oversight. The details are either too secret to be revealed to any member of Congress, or they are subject to oversight. To subject them to scrutiny for political gain but withhold the
Scientific testing is required to be peer reviewed and 'generally accepted as valid'. However, sometimes things get peer reviewed and approved which are then shown to be inaccurate. Sometimes they just get dumped into play regardless of the rules..
Bullet Lead analysis is accurate to a point. The problem is that after decades of review, that point appears to be to vague to match the bullet with a specific batch of bullets. It might however be able to exclude bullets of similar caliber from different manufacturers.
Another case in point is the silicone breast implant debacle. The test used to 'prove' that the silicone from breast implants was causing health problems was unable to statistically show who actually had breast implants - IE. healthy women without breast implants came back positive in the same statistical numbers as ill women with breast implants. Yet, Dow Corning lost the case even though it was shown in court that the test was worthless. (these women are suffering & someone has to pay don't you know)
If she ruled that it wasn't proven to be spam that would be 1 thing. The problem is she ruled that the email was personal in nature and not commercial. If she had ruled that the subject was in error and not misleading, or that there was a lack of bulk distribution, or any of the other reasons it potentially wasn't spam, then OK. But she ruled it wasn't spam because it was a personal email.
The whole point is that the blatant commercial nature of the content, tone, and greeting were all ignored. I would have to say that per her ruling, 95+% of the mail I've sent from my work computer in the last 2 years qualifies as personal correspondence. Why she would make that determination I have no idea. Regardless of how she ruled, this would have been off her desk in the same timeframe, so why did she decide that
Dear Webmaster (of a site you don't own),
Would you pretty please help bump my search rating on my website?
Thanks
Bubba Jones
is a personal email instead of commercial?
According to some other postings regarding her previous censures, she's a bitch with a gavel who shouldn't be anywhere near a small claims court room. She apparently hates pro-se (For self) litigants, which is 99+ what you see in small claims. It's entirely possible she ruled against him simply because he's not a lawyer & had the temerity to bring a case to her court.
Examining the headers is rather pointless since a BCC will usually show up on your system sans everyone else - hence the Blind Carbon Copy.
The definitions of spam are rather lax compared to the /. version however, they include -
This judge decided that an email with a misleading subject, a request for a link on the authors website, and the very personal opening of 'Dear Webmaster', was personal not commercial in nature, based on the fact that the guy on the other end of the phone said so & used his real name in the signature file. She ignored the fact that the request was commercial in nature. She ignored the fact that the greeting was rote, vague, and impersonal. She essentially ignored that there was nothing personal about the letter except the sender's name, and ruled the email as personal and not commercial. Under her definition, every email I have sent from my work computer in the last 2 years has been 'personal'.
The whole point is that without the FISA laws, the DOJ has to go through the regular courts to get their warrants. IE: FISA makes it easier for the executive branch to 'do their constitutional duty'. What this debacle is about is the executive branch ignoring their duty to observe the constitution - specifically the right to be free from unreasonable search & seizure.
It is the explicit purpose of the design of the government that the 3 branches balance each other. There is nothing in the US constitution or the bill of rights that says "unless we think you're a terrorist". So I think that if congress can authorize $28M of our tax dollars to find out that Billy boy was fucking the intern, they damn well better start investing some of my tax dollars into finding out why the fuck US citizens are being wiretapped without warrants.
And sorry, this "we'll reveal zooper zeecret documents to one oversight committee but not the one that has higher clearances & has been asking longer" is more BS right along with ignoring legislation on retaining Emails and proper document handling.
In short - impeach the damn bastard already - he's certainly done more to piss on the constitution than any other president that's been impeached.
The only reason the Al-Haramain lawyers don't produce a certified copy of the original is because they are being nice. Copies of all of the documentation regarding the orginal FOIA request were shipped to the middle east. They presented one of those copies to the court initially. They can produce a copy at any time they want. If the Al-Haramain lawyers wanted to play games like that they would simply release the document to the public through channels outside the control of the US govt.
I am certain that as in the 1953 case, this round of 'state secrets' is going to eventually be revealed as a ploy to avoid public humiliation and not a matter of national security at all.
The charity's lawyers still have copies of the document stored in the middle east. They know exactly what the document says to the exact number of recorded calls, when they were, & how long. They initially presented the original copy to the court, which was then reclaimed by the govt & declared 'classified' after being entered into the record. However, the copies sent to the charity's lawyers in the middle east still have copies of the document.
So in another declaration of stupidity, the US govt is declaring state secrets to avoid getting their asses handed to them in court, over a document that they have absolutely no control over. With a phone call, the charity can have that document on the internet - better, there's nothing the US govt can say about it. Since the document is already out of the country, the US govt cannot exert any form of pressure to have it returned. Any attempt at exerting that kind of pressure is almost certain to see the whole document released.
Personally, I believe that Bush is violating the precept of state secret in that he is using it to forestall the lawsuits to avoid the humiliation of having been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. From the beginning, it's been clear that that is not an appropriate usage of the state secrets claim. I am wondering if the next president will review these claims of state secrets & void them - just to taint Bush & the republican party.
If you have that kind of access to the computer, then you would have also had enough access to do keylogging for the password, and the issue would be moot.
The only scenario I can possibly see where that would help you is if you had incremental backups. But then again, you may just be blowing away the partition & rebuilding it as you change projects/finish getting your latest pre-release movie/etc.
The British have an inquisitional judicial system not an advisarial one. Better? Eh. Worse? Eh. Different? definitely. Among the biggest differences are that you don't have a right to remain silent or one against self incrimination. If you're asked a question you have to answer it.
That's actually pretty much a stretch. Your 'decent' lawyer would have to give some sort of proof that there was a second partition there. Something that TrueCrypt is pretty much designed to prevent. You can easily show the existence of the first truecrypt partition - it's there in the open. You can't prove the existence of the second partition.
I'm not sure a judge will buy 'because we didn't find what we were looking for' as a reasonable showing of proof that a second partition exists, and unfortunately, that's all the proof that exists. The formatting method and the processing method result in random data covering the entire partition block, as data is written to both the shown & hidden partitions, that data changes from random to encrypted. However the whole goal of the crypto data is to make it look random.
So you have potentially 3 blocks of random data each constructed with the same randomizing algorythm. How exactly do you show where one begins & one ends? How do you even show that the 3rd block exists? The whole purpose of the hidden block is to make it almost impossible to prove the existence of that third block. You literally are more likely to brute force the key than you are to prove the existence of the hidden partition.
I think the poster did get exactly your point about risk assesment - don't waste your time with things that aren't likely to happen & focus on the ones that are: IE. 97% of sexual propositions to minors occur in the real world. Less than 3% occur online. Of those numbers, 75% are by other minors. We are talking about 3/4 of 1% of
propositions
happen online by an adult.Where exactly do you think we should be focusing our attention in light of that? Statistically, your local priest is more of a risk. Hell, your brother is more of a statistical risk than the internet. It's a lot harder for a child to say no to a trusted/loved person than it is to a stranger on the internet. You want to do some good? Focus where the problem actually is, not some tiny segment who's total elimination won't make a difference in the statistics of the problem. It's like opening a foodbank in Westchester county to deal with world hunger.
Because those dropped charges - more importantly, why they were dropped - will influence any future legitimate arrests with their tainted stink.
Dateline spend $100K last year on their 'Predator' series just paying for 'Perverted Justice' to sit on the web. That's almost 1% of the national budget for the FBI's Missing & Exploited Children - which covers all forms of child molestations. The data they quote at the beginning of their show is wrong. The 1 in 5 is an aggregate figure of sexual propositions. From the actual report by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice:
19% quoted vs 3% in the actual report. That seems to be a bit off don't you think - if this were an actual attempt at producing a NEWS program. This program is damaging to everyone:
The show is sensationalist crap and the studio should be ashamed to have their name associated with it.
Check the stats - 98%+ of abuse cases are real world cases - not related to the internet. How many times have you heard a politician screaming about needing more funds for handling real world cases? The bill last year wanted to make data retention mandatory (to the tune of $400M+ annually) with some governmental financial support. However they vetoed the FBI request for a budget increase for the MEC department.
Even if the government could manage to exterminate every case of child abuse related to the internet, it wouldn't make a noticeable change in the amount of abuse going on. However, because it's a wild frontier that politicians can get publicity on, they scream about it like it's the end of the world. The internet is no different than the real world in terms of how to protect yourself. If parents take the time to teach their kids how to stay safe in the real world, then Internet safety is a footnote.
Committing hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars to 'make the internet safe' without also committing a proportionately larger amount of cash to the real world problem is almost criminal. It shows that the soundbytes are all people are interested in. Actual results are completely secondary to the volume of airtime and feelgood support politicians can generate by spouting off this crap.
He was pointing out that a fast charge block could charge your battery in 5 seconds while still drawing less current from the grid than a 60W lightbulb. Ideal for someplace like an airport waiting room - they charge the block over the course of an hour, you plug in & hit the button, 5 seconds later you unplug & get on your flight fully charged.
From what I read in the article, it appears that the charge density/kg is better for nanotube supercaps than for batteries. That means you get a battery the same size, it lasts only 50% as long/charge, but it also weighs 50% as much. Rough feel, my laptop battery is around 2#. I wouldn't mind trimming 1# off the weight - since I rarely use it unplugged for more than an hour at a stretch anyway. Add in the fact that my 1 battery lasts the life of the laptop instead of 2 years, and I am all for swapping batteries for ultracaps.
How about going from dead to full charge in under a minute instead of an hour? Plug your laptop in for a 5 minute sales presentation & by the time your done, it's fully charged. Alternately, how about the fact that you can toss your emergency phone in the glovebox & 2 years later when you have an accident, your cellphone battery is dead, it's 2AM, and it's raining, you can grab the emergency phone & it still has a charge.
You could also create hybrid batteries that charge/discharge the LiON battery at it's optimal rate without effecting performance - spin up the HD & the cap takes the load instead of the battery having to kick out a spike. That would double the lifespan of your laptop battery without significantly changing it's weight or AH rating - depending on how you use the laptop, it might even enhance the time/charge.
A supercap isn't the answer to every technical need, but it another tool in the shed. It's not going to help your IPod play longer while you're running a marathon, but it'll keep you from having to replace the battery every 18months if you only every go from home dock->car dock->work dock & back.