"If I can't go into my rented house, and in privately owned property i'm renting and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!"
As long as what you say goes no further than the walls of your house. Start yelling obscenities out the window at the neighbors, and I think the landlord (and the police) might have a wee problem with that.
"This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities."
And yet (as is painfully aware to me every month when I pay my power bill), the big power companies still survived and thrived. So will the telecoms.
It amazes me how they say it isn't profitable to for them to serve a certain market, municipality, or region, then suddenly covet those same populations when someone else tries to serve them. If you want them, serve them. If you don't want to serve them, don't go crying to court when someone else does.
Drive a girl to commit suicide, and get prosecuted for loggin in under a fake name...
Yeah, what's the deal with that? That's like "Orchestrate the St. Valentine's Massacre, and get prosecuted for tax evasion." Just so friggin' wrong....
Before y'all begin hootin' and hollerin', note that the person being charged is this Lori Drew who -- instead of talking to other parents and handling a problem as a mature responsible parent should -- helped drive a vulnerable little girl to suicide. As messed up as the American legal system is becoming with regard to computer and internet law, I hope that they stick it to her and give her the maximum punishment.
Exactly -- this is not somebody using a fake Hotmail account to sign up for newsletters -- this is a grown adult woman who created a false identity with the specific intent of mentally and emotionally harassing a minor child. While I worry as much as everyone on here about overly-broad laws being used well beyond their intended purpose, I have *NO* qualms about this law being used against this piece of shit. Clearly, if they were to arrest everybody who has ever used a fake name on the Internet, the whole fucking country would be in jail. This is exactly the sort of thing a law like this was intended for -- not just creating a false Net persona for role playing, spam protection, or just plain privacy, but using that fake identity in the commitment of a much greater evil.
These days web pages comprise of multiple sources, often displaying content from multiple servers. Consider that 'back in the day' a web site was a static HTML file with multiple links. These days we have a 'site' linking to an image server, media server, advertising server, with sql backbones and other content providers. When one of these sites fail, often the whole works goes down.
Which is also why many major sites are so slow to load on less than optimal connections (which many are still stuck with). Personally, I find all the bells and whistles distracting, complicating, and useless. It seems like sites compete to see how crowded and busy they can make their pages. Right up at the top of the list for me are sites that insist on displaying some stupid Flash screen (that adds nothing to the meat and potatoes content/function of the site) and give you no option for bypassing it. The Internet could be a marvelous animal for information if website designers could just resist the impulse to throw every possible widget and geegaw into the mix. It not only adds little to the basic functionality of the site, but as pointed out above, just increases the number of individual elements that can fail and slow or stop a site in its tracks.
Me, if I want the MLB scores, or the news headlines, or to compare prices between a few retailers, all I need is the information, please -- I don't need need a floor show accompanying it.
But how about something to compensate her for the harassment, stress, and general upheaval of her life for three years? The RIAA might cave in to paying her fees if they have no other way out of it, but a nice fat damage award would go a long way toward tempering the cartel's tactics, and to encourage others who have been sued. Of course, to get such an award she would probably have to file some sort of countersuit against them, and I doubt she has the stomach for that right now. Shows how in our legal system, even when you win, you still lose to some degree.
You are naive to the Nth degree if you think you still can't get ripped off just because the messages happen to pass through eBay, or the payment form happens to be PayPal. You are still sending your money to a private individual, and that individual is the one (allegedly) shipping your item. That doesn't change, and if the seller is dishonest, he's dishonest, period. If you buy a high-dollar item from an eBayer who has not been active for long, and has a sketchy or very short feedback record, well then you take your chances. But when you look at my track record, and see over 6,000 positive feedbacks and a 99.9% positive rate over many years, and still think I'm trying to rip you off because I prefer to deal with you personally and directly (which is still allowed, and used to be the norm), then you are too paranoid to be buying anything on the Internet.
I have to sympathize at least a little with those users. I recently bought something on ebay, and I have no less than 7 emails about it in my in-box, from 5 different addresses.
That doesn't even make sense, and assuming you aren't exaggerating (no one on Slashdot ever does that), clearly this is a seller who is at the very least disorganized. There are thousands of sellers on eBay who conduct themselves in a very organized, professional manner. When eBay was still relatively new (and less obtrusive), it was merely a means for such sellers, small and large, to have a well-publicized venue in which to conduct business, without having to go through the expense and bother of maintaining one's own website.
When one of my auctions ends, the bidder almost immediately gets an e-mail from me with clear, detailed instructions on what they owe, shipping options, payment options, etc. And yet, so conditioned are bidders now to think of eBay as the entity they are dealing with, and not the seller, even though this professional-looking and intelligent e-mail arrives within minutes of the end of the auction, goes to the e-mail address that the bidder has registered with eBay, references the item number and title, reflects the final bid amount, and is clearly indicated as coming from the eBay seller (moi) by name, I still have people who either do not respond to the message or don't even read it at all, because since it doesn't come through eBay, it must be a scam.
Part of the problem is that there are tons of eBay phishing scams out there, and the average user cannot or will not learn how to discriminate between those and a legitimate e-mail from a seller, so they ignore or delete ANY e-mail with eBay as a subject. Of course, if you cannot distinguish between my End of Auction message, and the for the most part blatantly obvious phishing scams (come out of the blue, often to an address you don't even use on eBay, reference auction numbers and items that are either totally fictitious or some item you never bid on, written in broken English, and containing embedded links that go to some website in Russia, Romania, or some "Whatever-istan"), then you shouldn't be on eBay to begin with (or, indeed, on the Internet at all).
EBay is a medium to connect buyers and sellers, nothing more.
That's the mantra eBay has often chanted (usually in the context of somebody wanting to hold them responsible for some fraud that has been perpetrated), but the fact is that they have gradually done everything they can over the years to insert themselves between buyer and seller, and to be directly involved in every phase of the transaction. They have already previously tried to ban or at least discourage other forms of payment -- this is nothing new. They tried several years ago to force all sellers to complete transactions through eBay's own "Checkout" system, and only backed down after mass bitching by some very high volume sellers. They try to intimidate you into using only eBay's own on-site message system to contact bidders instead of e-mailing them directly.
The problem with these measures is, while still technically "optional," eBay does nothing to encourage such "rogue" behavior, and many (maybe most) users, both sellers and bidders, who have come aboard after these "options" were implemented are under the impression that they are mandatory because eBay pushes them constantly while burying the more seller-centric options in obscurity. Consequently, many bidders no longer understand the "eBay is only a venue" schtick, and believe that they are dealing directly with eBay. After all, when your messages all come through the eBay site, and you pay by clicking on buttons on the eBay site, you lose track of the fact that there are thousands of individual sellers who are the actual merchants. I've had problems with more than a few bidders who refuse to answer my e-mails or to pay me directly instead of through eBay's Checkout because they think it's not "official" otherwise, and that I am trying to pull some sort of scam on them.
I would like to know what they intend to do with this information. Sue the people who watched these 'illegal' videos? I could see giving them info on the people that posted the videos, but info on the viewers just feels like a fishing expedition.
I'd think they want to ascertain how many people viewed an infringing video while it was up in order to determine the level of damages they might seek if they sued the person who posted the video. But they could do that with anonymous stats that don't reveal IP addresses and other potentially targeting information against viewers of the material. Use it to go after the viewers for infringement? That's a stretch. Practically, because if 50,000 users view an infringing video, so they have the time and resources to sue that many people? And philosophically, because it unfairly puts the burden of determining what is and is not infringing on a publicly accessible site in the hands of the web surfer.
I am on dial-up for a number of reasons (both chosen and situational) that I need not go into here. Several posts cry "well, what do you do when you need to download software or patches or (fill in the blank) -- doesn't it take, like, forever?" No, not forever, but sometimes a few hours depending on the size of the file. So what? I can still get and receive e-mail or do simple browsing (checking news headlines, posting on Slashdot, etc.) without too much slowdown of the download. And if there is no pressing need to do those things, then I start the download and (**SHUDDER**) step away from the computer and go read a book, or cook a nice meal, or take a walk in the fresh air, or any number of other activities that, believe it or not, actually provide one pleasure and satisfaction without a keyboard and monitor. If I could download the same file in 2 minutes, I'd then probably be tempted to spend those next few hours doing even more web surfing and never seeing the sun. I consider slow downloads a nice forced excuse to spend a little time interacting with reality, and I think I'm healthier in all respects because of it.
.....than being afraid of words is being afraid of acronyms that might stand for those words.
Really, someone needs to.....
(1).....take every possible three-letter combination
(2) Come up with a suggested offensive, blasphemous, or obscene connotation for each one.
(3) Circulate said list widely, especially on North Carolina related sites and boards (maybe e-mail to everyone in the N.C. DMV).
(4) Stand back and watch the fun as they are forced to recall every last fuckin' license plate and replace it with numbers-only plates.
A majority of our people can't even be bothered to drag themselves to the polls once in a while, and you expect enough of them to make any small ripple of difference are going to participate in a general strike?
So, what, are you saying Americans are so lazy they can't even be bothered to not show up for work?
No, I'm saying that they are so relatively unconcerned about these things that they are not going to put their asses on the line and risk losing their jobs to protest laws and acts of government that they do not perceive as affecting them.
At this point the only hope for citizens to return to constitutional governance nonviolently will be for mass general strikes throughout the United States.
I was going to mod you "+1 Funny" -- then I realized you were serious.
"Mass general strikes?" Sure, that's gonna happen. A majority of our people can't even be bothered to drag themselves to the polls once in a while, and you expect enough of them to make any small ripple of difference are going to participate in a general strike? Good luck with that. You DO understand, don't you, that the average U.S. citizen doesn't really think that any of these draconian laws and end runs around Constitutional guarantees affect THEM, right? They're just to catch the terrorists, see. Most people are so tied up in the day-to-day struggles and minutiae of life (you know...trying to earn a living, keep food on the table, watch "American Idol"...that sort of thing) that the abstract notion that these various actions by the President, Congress, or SCOTUS might someday actually affect some of THEIR rights directly (instead of theoretically) is hardly a brief glitch in their minds?
I do not wish to live in a totalitarian United States of America.
Neither do I, but I can't afford a plane ticket outta here. Know of any freighters I can stow away on??
Let's face it, the Nuclear Cat is slowly crawling out of the bag and will no longer be containable soon.
Imagine cleaning up after a nuclear cat...oy...
Seriously, it will happen, and sooner than we think. Either a state-sponsored or aided group stealing a nuke or paying off enough disgruntled Russian scientists and engineers to make a decent one, or some independent cell with a sufficient amount of knowhow and enough reasonably enriched uranium to create a big honkin', crude and ugly, but deadly Hiroshima-style boomer. I'm not as worried about the physical effects -- such a device would, indeed, kill thousands and devastate part of whatever city it's set off in, but is likely for financial and physical reasons to be a one-off event. What scares me is this: if you thought our freedoms have already been eroded, compromised, or plain out negated to an uncomfortable degree after 9/11, just wait until some group sets off a nuke somewhere on U.S. soil. When that happens, prepare to live under the Fourth Reich. Even a so-called "dirty bomb" that would merely spread some radiation around will be sufficiently alarming (the very word "radiation" scares the hell out of the masses) will mean more draconian laws, more intrusive surveillance, and more suspensions of Constitutional rights. But that is the victory terrorists hope for -- it's not so much the actual carnage that they seek, but the subsequent panic and overreaction of the populace and their government. "Terror" consists of far more than a body count.
See, that's insightful. If we take away our enemies' incentive to fight us, we will be safer. I'm glad you actually got modded up for saying it, rather than modded to -1 and buried under "boohooo you're letting the terrorists win" replies. That's not what it's about. It's not about giving in to our enemies, it's about preventing people from becoming our enemies in the first place.
You are obviously too mature, perceptive, and reasonable to be on Slashdot. Please leave immediately, before you ruin the site's reputation.
I was looking at the geohashing map for my area of NJ a while ago. That particular day, the site happened to fall in someone's back yard in suburbia, with no apparent way to get there using public property.
I wondered how the geohashers, if they went, would handle that. I assumed they'd just meet up on the street instead of actually going onto someone's private property. Now, I'm not so sure. Do these guys make a practice of meeting on private property? If so, they're probably lucky they haven't been challenged before this.
From random pokings around their wiki, it looks like proper protocol is to ask permission of the property owner, if available. If not, some of them seem to just hang in the area, perhaps maneuvering to where they can get a visual/photo on the hash.
In any "hobby" like this, there are always a few nogoodniks who fail to use common courtesy (or sense). Like the folks who want to hit the highest point in every state. A few of the lower "high points" in eastern states are actually on private property, and I recall reading about one where the land owner fenced in the area to keep people from just traipsing up to the spot and taking pictures with no permission.
IF this technology is used to restrict recording for a LIMITED period of time, until the initial theatrical release has run its course and they have milked the initial profits off the DVD release, THEN I would not have a serious problem with it. After all, unless you are one of those folks that MUST see a new movie as soon as it comes out, you can wait a little while. And even with the restriction, you could still WATCH the flick and even pause/rewind/etc. the thing -- you just wouldn't be able to dump it to a permanent source (disk, hard drive) right away. And hell, most movies will show up on non-PPV TV eventually anyway. By restricting the recording disability to the initial "surge" of the movie's release, the "can't wait" crowd are going to rush to the theater or buy the DVD the first day it's on sale and send the cartel its dough anyway, and the rest of us can just wait until it trickles down to a non-premium source from which we can record and save it if we want.
That's all very speculative, though. Knowing the methods of the MPAA as we do, it's more likely that this is just a way to get a foot in the door to eventually restrict or prevent ALL recording of its releases. That's an old tactic -- you know you can't get EVERYTHING you want right now, so you ask for just a limited option that most people would agree on, then slowly expand the parameters over time. Like the ban on "partial birth abortion." Or just like all the Bush era "anti-terrorist" legislation -- most people accepted it as necessary within the limited scope of "fighting terrorism," but we have already seen these laws starting to be used for things that have little, if anything, to do with terrorism. (Unless you then expand the definition of "terrorism," which is also happening.) The MPAA probably is playing the same game. (As we have often seen, the worlds of business and government are pretty much interchangeable in their more underhanded tactics...)
You used to be such a nice place -- an oasis of relative sanity parked next to the 800-pound gorilla. All the Canadians I've ever met were so nice, so together, and so NOT full of themselves (unlike their counterparts to the south). Great beer, universal health care, and a pervasive live and let live attitude. Why, oh, WHY do you guys all of a sudden lately want to be like us?
In an updated version of the story, the L.A. Times now reporting that the trial has been suspended:
Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."
One new wrinkle is that the good judge is at least partially trying to shift blame to his own son!
After publication of an latimes.com article about his website Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale. ["Yale??"]
"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."
Or maybe it was one of his brothers, Harvard and Princeton....
Looks like Jewish groups may not appreciate his sense of humor as well as the anti-porn crowd. At any rate, I don't see much of anything there that looks from the file names alone to be hardcore. It really does look like a directory of miscellaneous stuff that came in "Look at this!" and "Check THIS out!" e-mails from friends that he just stored on the site for easy access.
The hyperlink to the site (http://alex.kozinski.com/) is in the sentence that indicates that the judge took the stuff down. Nothing to see there. The Wayback Machine shows several versions of the site dating back to 2004, none of the juicy stuff is there.
Slashdot Mirror
Just wait...if Cuomo discovers that child porn is shared via HTTP, he might force ISPs to drop access to the web.
Some pervs send kiddie porn through the mail -- let's ban the USPS!!
"If I can't go into my rented house, and in privately owned property i'm renting and say what I want, you are oppressing me!!!"
As long as what you say goes no further than the walls of your house. Start yelling obscenities out the window at the neighbors, and I think the landlord (and the police) might have a wee problem with that.
"This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities."
And yet (as is painfully aware to me every month when I pay my power bill), the big power companies still survived and thrived. So will the telecoms.
It amazes me how they say it isn't profitable to for them to serve a certain market, municipality, or region, then suddenly covet those same populations when someone else tries to serve them. If you want them, serve them. If you don't want to serve them, don't go crying to court when someone else does.
Drive a girl to commit suicide, and get prosecuted for loggin in under a fake name...
Yeah, what's the deal with that? That's like "Orchestrate the St. Valentine's Massacre, and get prosecuted for tax evasion." Just so friggin' wrong....
Sincerely,
A. Capone
Before y'all begin hootin' and hollerin', note that the person being charged is this Lori Drew who -- instead of talking to other parents and handling a problem as a mature responsible parent should -- helped drive a vulnerable little girl to suicide. As messed up as the American legal system is becoming with regard to computer and internet law, I hope that they stick it to her and give her the maximum punishment.
Exactly -- this is not somebody using a fake Hotmail account to sign up for newsletters -- this is a grown adult woman who created a false identity with the specific intent of mentally and emotionally harassing a minor child. While I worry as much as everyone on here about overly-broad laws being used well beyond their intended purpose, I have *NO* qualms about this law being used against this piece of shit. Clearly, if they were to arrest everybody who has ever used a fake name on the Internet, the whole fucking country would be in jail. This is exactly the sort of thing a law like this was intended for -- not just creating a false Net persona for role playing, spam protection, or just plain privacy, but using that fake identity in the commitment of a much greater evil.
These days web pages comprise of multiple sources, often displaying content from multiple servers. Consider that 'back in the day' a web site was a static HTML file with multiple links. These days we have a 'site' linking to an image server, media server, advertising server, with sql backbones and other content providers. When one of these sites fail, often the whole works goes down.
Which is also why many major sites are so slow to load on less than optimal connections (which many are still stuck with). Personally, I find all the bells and whistles distracting, complicating, and useless. It seems like sites compete to see how crowded and busy they can make their pages. Right up at the top of the list for me are sites that insist on displaying some stupid Flash screen (that adds nothing to the meat and potatoes content/function of the site) and give you no option for bypassing it. The Internet could be a marvelous animal for information if website designers could just resist the impulse to throw every possible widget and geegaw into the mix. It not only adds little to the basic functionality of the site, but as pointed out above, just increases the number of individual elements that can fail and slow or stop a site in its tracks.
Me, if I want the MLB scores, or the news headlines, or to compare prices between a few retailers, all I need is the information, please -- I don't need need a floor show accompanying it.
But how about something to compensate her for the harassment, stress, and general upheaval of her life for three years? The RIAA might cave in to paying her fees if they have no other way out of it, but a nice fat damage award would go a long way toward tempering the cartel's tactics, and to encourage others who have been sued. Of course, to get such an award she would probably have to file some sort of countersuit against them, and I doubt she has the stomach for that right now. Shows how in our legal system, even when you win, you still lose to some degree.
You are naive to the Nth degree if you think you still can't get ripped off just because the messages happen to pass through eBay, or the payment form happens to be PayPal. You are still sending your money to a private individual, and that individual is the one (allegedly) shipping your item. That doesn't change, and if the seller is dishonest, he's dishonest, period. If you buy a high-dollar item from an eBayer who has not been active for long, and has a sketchy or very short feedback record, well then you take your chances. But when you look at my track record, and see over 6,000 positive feedbacks and a 99.9% positive rate over many years, and still think I'm trying to rip you off because I prefer to deal with you personally and directly (which is still allowed, and used to be the norm), then you are too paranoid to be buying anything on the Internet.
I have to sympathize at least a little with those users. I recently bought something on ebay, and I have no less than 7 emails about it in my in-box, from 5 different addresses.
That doesn't even make sense, and assuming you aren't exaggerating (no one on Slashdot ever does that), clearly this is a seller who is at the very least disorganized. There are thousands of sellers on eBay who conduct themselves in a very organized, professional manner. When eBay was still relatively new (and less obtrusive), it was merely a means for such sellers, small and large, to have a well-publicized venue in which to conduct business, without having to go through the expense and bother of maintaining one's own website.
When one of my auctions ends, the bidder almost immediately gets an e-mail from me with clear, detailed instructions on what they owe, shipping options, payment options, etc. And yet, so conditioned are bidders now to think of eBay as the entity they are dealing with, and not the seller, even though this professional-looking and intelligent e-mail arrives within minutes of the end of the auction, goes to the e-mail address that the bidder has registered with eBay, references the item number and title, reflects the final bid amount, and is clearly indicated as coming from the eBay seller (moi) by name, I still have people who either do not respond to the message or don't even read it at all, because since it doesn't come through eBay, it must be a scam.
Part of the problem is that there are tons of eBay phishing scams out there, and the average user cannot or will not learn how to discriminate between those and a legitimate e-mail from a seller, so they ignore or delete ANY e-mail with eBay as a subject. Of course, if you cannot distinguish between my End of Auction message, and the for the most part blatantly obvious phishing scams (come out of the blue, often to an address you don't even use on eBay, reference auction numbers and items that are either totally fictitious or some item you never bid on, written in broken English, and containing embedded links that go to some website in Russia, Romania, or some "Whatever-istan"), then you shouldn't be on eBay to begin with (or, indeed, on the Internet at all).
EBay is a medium to connect buyers and sellers, nothing more.
That's the mantra eBay has often chanted (usually in the context of somebody wanting to hold them responsible for some fraud that has been perpetrated), but the fact is that they have gradually done everything they can over the years to insert themselves between buyer and seller, and to be directly involved in every phase of the transaction. They have already previously tried to ban or at least discourage other forms of payment -- this is nothing new. They tried several years ago to force all sellers to complete transactions through eBay's own "Checkout" system, and only backed down after mass bitching by some very high volume sellers. They try to intimidate you into using only eBay's own on-site message system to contact bidders instead of e-mailing them directly.
The problem with these measures is, while still technically "optional," eBay does nothing to encourage such "rogue" behavior, and many (maybe most) users, both sellers and bidders, who have come aboard after these "options" were implemented are under the impression that they are mandatory because eBay pushes them constantly while burying the more seller-centric options in obscurity. Consequently, many bidders no longer understand the "eBay is only a venue" schtick, and believe that they are dealing directly with eBay. After all, when your messages all come through the eBay site, and you pay by clicking on buttons on the eBay site, you lose track of the fact that there are thousands of individual sellers who are the actual merchants. I've had problems with more than a few bidders who refuse to answer my e-mails or to pay me directly instead of through eBay's Checkout because they think it's not "official" otherwise, and that I am trying to pull some sort of scam on them.
I would like to know what they intend to do with this information. Sue the people who watched these 'illegal' videos? I could see giving them info on the people that posted the videos, but info on the viewers just feels like a fishing expedition.
I'd think they want to ascertain how many people viewed an infringing video while it was up in order to determine the level of damages they might seek if they sued the person who posted the video. But they could do that with anonymous stats that don't reveal IP addresses and other potentially targeting information against viewers of the material. Use it to go after the viewers for infringement? That's a stretch. Practically, because if 50,000 users view an infringing video, so they have the time and resources to sue that many people? And philosophically, because it unfairly puts the burden of determining what is and is not infringing on a publicly accessible site in the hands of the web surfer.
The worst part is, here in Québec people keep calling them "Site internet" because they seem to fear the english word "Web" in "Site Web".
So "internet" is really a French word?
I am on dial-up for a number of reasons (both chosen and situational) that I need not go into here. Several posts cry "well, what do you do when you need to download software or patches or (fill in the blank) -- doesn't it take, like, forever?" No, not forever, but sometimes a few hours depending on the size of the file. So what? I can still get and receive e-mail or do simple browsing (checking news headlines, posting on Slashdot, etc.) without too much slowdown of the download. And if there is no pressing need to do those things, then I start the download and (**SHUDDER**) step away from the computer and go read a book, or cook a nice meal, or take a walk in the fresh air, or any number of other activities that, believe it or not, actually provide one pleasure and satisfaction without a keyboard and monitor. If I could download the same file in 2 minutes, I'd then probably be tempted to spend those next few hours doing even more web surfing and never seeing the sun. I consider slow downloads a nice forced excuse to spend a little time interacting with reality, and I think I'm healthier in all respects because of it.
.....than being afraid of words is being afraid of acronyms that might stand for those words.
Really, someone needs to.....
(1).....take every possible three-letter combination
(2) Come up with a suggested offensive, blasphemous, or obscene connotation for each one.
(3) Circulate said list widely, especially on North Carolina related sites and boards (maybe e-mail to everyone in the N.C. DMV).
(4) Stand back and watch the fun as they are forced to recall every last fuckin' license plate and replace it with numbers-only plates.
Which is why they took pretzels off the White House menu.....
No, I'm saying that they are so relatively unconcerned about these things that they are not going to put their asses on the line and risk losing their jobs to protest laws and acts of government that they do not perceive as affecting them.
I was going to mod you "+1 Funny" -- then I realized you were serious.
"Mass general strikes?" Sure, that's gonna happen. A majority of our people can't even be bothered to drag themselves to the polls once in a while, and you expect enough of them to make any small ripple of difference are going to participate in a general strike? Good luck with that. You DO understand, don't you, that the average U.S. citizen doesn't really think that any of these draconian laws and end runs around Constitutional guarantees affect THEM, right? They're just to catch the terrorists, see. Most people are so tied up in the day-to-day struggles and minutiae of life (you know...trying to earn a living, keep food on the table, watch "American Idol"...that sort of thing) that the abstract notion that these various actions by the President, Congress, or SCOTUS might someday actually affect some of THEIR rights directly (instead of theoretically) is hardly a brief glitch in their minds?
I do not wish to live in a totalitarian United States of America.Neither do I, but I can't afford a plane ticket outta here. Know of any freighters I can stow away on??
Imagine cleaning up after a nuclear cat...oy...
Seriously, it will happen, and sooner than we think. Either a state-sponsored or aided group stealing a nuke or paying off enough disgruntled Russian scientists and engineers to make a decent one, or some independent cell with a sufficient amount of knowhow and enough reasonably enriched uranium to create a big honkin', crude and ugly, but deadly Hiroshima-style boomer. I'm not as worried about the physical effects -- such a device would, indeed, kill thousands and devastate part of whatever city it's set off in, but is likely for financial and physical reasons to be a one-off event. What scares me is this: if you thought our freedoms have already been eroded, compromised, or plain out negated to an uncomfortable degree after 9/11, just wait until some group sets off a nuke somewhere on U.S. soil. When that happens, prepare to live under the Fourth Reich. Even a so-called "dirty bomb" that would merely spread some radiation around will be sufficiently alarming (the very word "radiation" scares the hell out of the masses) will mean more draconian laws, more intrusive surveillance, and more suspensions of Constitutional rights. But that is the victory terrorists hope for -- it's not so much the actual carnage that they seek, but the subsequent panic and overreaction of the populace and their government. "Terror" consists of far more than a body count.
You are obviously too mature, perceptive, and reasonable to be on Slashdot. Please leave immediately, before you ruin the site's reputation.
From random pokings around their wiki, it looks like proper protocol is to ask permission of the property owner, if available. If not, some of them seem to just hang in the area, perhaps maneuvering to where they can get a visual/photo on the hash.
In any "hobby" like this, there are always a few nogoodniks who fail to use common courtesy (or sense). Like the folks who want to hit the highest point in every state. A few of the lower "high points" in eastern states are actually on private property, and I recall reading about one where the land owner fenced in the area to keep people from just traipsing up to the spot and taking pictures with no permission.
IF this technology is used to restrict recording for a LIMITED period of time, until the initial theatrical release has run its course and they have milked the initial profits off the DVD release, THEN I would not have a serious problem with it. After all, unless you are one of those folks that MUST see a new movie as soon as it comes out, you can wait a little while. And even with the restriction, you could still WATCH the flick and even pause/rewind/etc. the thing -- you just wouldn't be able to dump it to a permanent source (disk, hard drive) right away. And hell, most movies will show up on non-PPV TV eventually anyway. By restricting the recording disability to the initial "surge" of the movie's release, the "can't wait" crowd are going to rush to the theater or buy the DVD the first day it's on sale and send the cartel its dough anyway, and the rest of us can just wait until it trickles down to a non-premium source from which we can record and save it if we want.
That's all very speculative, though. Knowing the methods of the MPAA as we do, it's more likely that this is just a way to get a foot in the door to eventually restrict or prevent ALL recording of its releases. That's an old tactic -- you know you can't get EVERYTHING you want right now, so you ask for just a limited option that most people would agree on, then slowly expand the parameters over time. Like the ban on "partial birth abortion." Or just like all the Bush era "anti-terrorist" legislation -- most people accepted it as necessary within the limited scope of "fighting terrorism," but we have already seen these laws starting to be used for things that have little, if anything, to do with terrorism. (Unless you then expand the definition of "terrorism," which is also happening.) The MPAA probably is playing the same game. (As we have often seen, the worlds of business and government are pretty much interchangeable in their more underhanded tactics...)
You used to be such a nice place -- an oasis of relative sanity parked next to the 800-pound gorilla. All the Canadians I've ever met were so nice, so together, and so NOT full of themselves (unlike their counterparts to the south). Great beer, universal health care, and a pervasive live and let live attitude. Why, oh, WHY do you guys all of a sudden lately want to be like us?
In an updated version of the story, the L.A. Times now reporting that the trial has been suspended:
Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."
One new wrinkle is that the good judge is at least partially trying to shift blame to his own son!
After publication of an latimes.com article about his website Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale. ["Yale??"]
"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."
Or maybe it was one of his brothers, Harvard and Princeton....
Cryptome posted a Yahoo cache of Kozinski's directory on its site.
Some of the more interesting file names include:
a.day.without.jews.wmv
BBCCopsUndies.wmv
Colo-rectalSurgeon.wav
isitmanisitwoman.pps
jewsdontcamp.mp3
piss_diver.wmv
Sheep_guy.jpg
show.them.to.me.wmv
testicle.interview.wmv
Looks like Jewish groups may not appreciate his sense of humor as well as the anti-porn crowd. At any rate, I don't see much of anything there that looks from the file names alone to be hardcore. It really does look like a directory of miscellaneous stuff that came in "Look at this!" and "Check THIS out!" e-mails from friends that he just stored on the site for easy access.
The hyperlink to the site (http://alex.kozinski.com/) is in the sentence that indicates that the judge took the stuff down. Nothing to see there. The Wayback Machine shows several versions of the site dating back to 2004, none of the juicy stuff is there.