Besides, the price of homes there isn't just a measure of desirability, but also a measure of the ability of the economy to support those prices.
No... it used to be. The price of homes in most non-rural areas is not an indicator of the economy's ability to support those prices. Hence the ever increasing foreclosure rate. Hence, house prices have gone up many times more than income (as a for instance, houses that were worth $30K here in a NY suburb 30 years ago are now worth $480K (nothing but upkeep). House prices have thus went up 16 times their previous value... while wages for such people have went up by a factor of 2.5 to 3.
I doubt most of Cali or any other place that isn't rural or very close to rural isnt having the same problem. As the gap widens, it is going to become sickeningly obvious to more people that it's not what the economy can support that is driving house prices...
Oh, they have regard for the law... (a) the ones they can buy, (b) the ones they can use to further their cause, and (c) the ones they can ignore because no one is stopping them.
As for (b) they have already made mention (and the MPAA has already won such suits) of trying to drag these things into criminal prosecution - and folks, though people here claim that is not possible, the laws already exist to allow it. The MPAA won one such case (already talked about someplace on slashdot not too long ago) and the video game industry recently won another:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15143.cfm
If they start getting more wins in civil suits, I can guarantee you they will be going for a two pronged attack (civil and criminal) - at least that's my opinion from reading what they have said, what they have done and what the MPAA has done.
The key difference in the type of suit (if I understand it correctly - and IANAL, so I might not) is that for it to be criminal, the person must be doing it for the purpose of gaining some sort of compensation (such as money). (1) I am sure the **AA would love to see that expanded to these type cases, where compensation is not the reason it's done, and (2) I am sure they could always argue that the file sharer is indeed gaining compensation via downloading songs of certain value during or in conjunction with the commission of their distribution crime. Remember, compensation does not have to be monetary... and while this may be a stretch, the RIAA has made numerous other "stretches" that they have been allowed to carry on over the years.
Enderandrew is right - though the situation may become even more bleak as the RIAA become even more desperate.
Big question is, will they shoot themselves in the collective foot before they maneuver or legislate themselves into a protected haven? (wish I knew - wouldnt wanna bet either way)
I'd think there are more grounds than what you mentioned for throwing out evidence - such as (in this and other RIAA cases) it was illegally obtained (being one additional one - and key to these issues if I am correct).
If I remember correctly, there are pretty specific rules to what laws can be broken while obtaining evidence - and those laws apply to legitimate law enforcement (police, FBI, etc) - not to MediaWhoever. I would think thus, that MediaSentry's evidence, since illegally obtained, should be tossed out. Neither they, nor the companies they "work for" should be entitled to it.
But again, that's just my speculation on how it should work...
Yeah... though I've been thinking... what will the browser report itself as? Will this end up hurting Firefox's adoption rate (as it is seen by the generally clueless media)? And of course, Microsoft is still sure to count each browser using the plugin as IE, even though it's just acting as a container for the new renderer plugin.
In addition, it caters to the IE diehards, or those who simply are familiar with the way IE does things, who would benefit from such a plugin and still feel comfortable using "IE" not caring what is really running under the covers to do the rendering/layout.
A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.
I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)
A larger OS (especially that much larger) should do more. The gains in running Vista (other than eye candy that can be purchased or gotten for free for XP) is minimal. There's the other part of the real problem.
The last Compact Disc I bought from a music store was in (if I remember correctly) 1984. That was when I started getting interested in the media industry, and began to understand what a bunch of really bad people run it.
You may not be remembering correctly. Maybe you meant 1994? The first CD player came out in the very end of 1982 (October) - the Sony CDP-101, and (according to sources online) started selling in 1983. There weren't many CDs to buy back in 1984.
That is, as long as they don't charge you for breaking traffic laws while they're investigating whatever-else
Somehow I doubt they would, as that would give away the fact that they were trying to surrepticiously monitor your car's movements by the "secretly planted GPS" - so no worries there.
I'd be more worried about why they would be tracking someone by using a secretly planted GPS unit - probably something a lot worse than getting a speeding ticket.
Ah... there's my point... watch "To Serve All My Days: 1969" or "World Enough and Time" then... his hair is more "normal" and everyone's acting has improved over the pilot by leaps and bounds (and both Koenig and Takei were wonderful).
Keep in mind that the first few episodes of TOS (and the first few seasons of TNG) had terrible acting.
Sure Elvis did (do a Google image search and you will find tons of pics with Elvis' hair that big or bigger)... and he (James) is quite good at his job... He's the only Elvis impersonator I know of that's played with Elvis' "backup band"
Does this dude know the difference between imitating a stage performance and actual acting? Obviously not.
Well, that answers my earlier question... you have not seen any of the recent episodes.
This is Slashdot though... I guess it is thus quite normal for you to comment about something you dont follow...;-) He does one "Shatner" moment someplace in each episode, and plays the rest as his own interpretation of the role - unless perhaps you are talking about their test pilot, which no one even considers one of their real episodes...
LoL... his hair is that way because he works as an Elvis impersonator (one of the best) as his "day job".
Have you checked out the latest episodes? "World Enough and Time" got nominated for a Hugo (and though we didnt win, we were the first "fan film" nominated). I thought the last two were great... joined the team after I saw "To Serve All My Days" - and the next 3 (which are in Post Production) I think are even better than the rest.
I really loved some of the early Star Trek TOS games (like Judgement Rites) since they actually had a decent storyline. I would have loved to see something like Starfleet Academy ship-level control, integrated with a true story based scenario like Judgement Rites...
But lately, the Trek game offerings seem to be lacking in that respect. So much so that I've stopped playing Star Trek games, and started to help Star Trek episodes instead...
Yeah, this was my thought as well. TFA is, as usual, slim on the technical details...
Yeah, but does that really matter? You are one of the three people on slashdot that actually reads the articles (which I think is against the rules here). I know I didnt read it.
Various routers seem to allow you to either assign your PC's MAC address to it, or add whatever one you want. Pretty easy to find. I'd expect most CIS and IS students know about this.
And apparently, there were (or still are) NIC cards that allow you to use a different MAC address (or reprogram them).
With all the attention such things (the RIAA suits) have garnered, I would expect a bunch more people are aware of how to accomplish this.
Keep in mind, you dont need everyone knowing how to accomplish this, you just need to prove that (1) it can be done, (2) it can be done pretty easily, and (3) there are people who know how. That would bring doubt into the validity of any MAC address logs - the RIAA would have no way of proving that someone, someplace else on campus (for instance) didnt spoof a MAC address used by someone else on campus.
Besides, if the school above is like many others, there are various NAT devices between the computers and the WAN routers... I've seen many levels deep at some places... all being devices that either dont record MAC addresses, or would quickly overwrite the earlier entries (in hours or days).
The problem here is that they aren't a monopoly. Read the article. Dr. Libshitz himself stated that since Verizon wouldn't accommodate him, he was sticking with AT&T, who already were.
Where is the monopoly in that?
Actually, perhaps you should re-read the article... he is sticking with ATT dial-up which is not a competitor for DSL by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, monopoly or otherwise, this problem could occur (as noted above) - simply because of a poorly written word filter - compounded by the time/cost of fixing it outweighing the profit to be made from having the new account (inotherwords, it being a monopoly market area may not be more likely to have caused this to not be addressed... see below).
But fact is, such a situation could occur with a small company as well, who cant afford to have the code revised (especially, if in being a smaller company, they licensed it out, and the code change needed isnt covered in their licensing contract).
And with larger companies, in a non-monopoly situation, it still may not have been changed until the bad press... after all, you do the math... which is worth more? A cheap DSL account, or a bunch of billable hours to fix code?
Note: I emphasized "may" in the last paragraph and asked a question in the end to indicate that such a scenario would or could be part of the determining factor (even in a competitive market) of whether the code got changed - until the incident of bad publicity.
Sadly, that is irrelevant as the non-RIAA labels do not have the lobbying power or tie-ins to the media that the RIAA labels have, thus making it "irrelevant" (regardless of being a worthwhile comparison).
I'm not saying it is going to work (obviously the judge ignored the recommendation)... but the related fact is, the judiciary does not make the laws... therein lies the problem. The judges may ignore such pressure (which they should ignore) put on them by Congress or the Bush Administration... but will be stuck enforcing new laws if either/both of those two manage to push them through.
Sorry if you misunderstood the relationship I was trying to point out...
Sadly (or gladly) enough people do still buy CDs. I know if it is a band I like, that I do.
The problem is, if (assuming) CD sales are declining, it's just more ammo for the RIAA to push for more legislation to "combat" their flawed sales model.
One thing that always gets a laugh out of me are all the people who claim they refuse to buy RIAA member released CDs thinking that will somehow stop the RIAA - when the truth is, as evidenced by too many statements made by the RIAA, they blame every decline in CD sales on piracy and use it as a lobbying effort for more intrusive laws and less consumer rights.
It's not like their money will run out tomorrow... thus, not buying from RIAA labels because they are RIAA labels, only helps them to change the legal landscape in a fashion that hurts consumers even more.
In that, the Bush Administration has already chimed in (on this very case) trying to convince the judge to not do what he is currently doing and to uphold/allow the judgement that currently stands.
When it's a matter of money or business in this country (especially with so many lobbyists helping craft these laws) who do you think is going to win?
Keep in mind that if the current trend continues, there are going to be more lawyers willing to take up such cases on the possibility of counter-suing the RIAA to recoup their expenses.
In addition, with the **AA trying to push this into criminal proceedings (as the MPAA has already successfully done - and has been covered here), I think it is becoming even more dangerous ground to simply settle - especially for a "crime"/crime that you did not commit.
I don't know what happened to the guy in the first story, but the charges in that Carlisle case were dropped:
'When police are audio- and video-recording traffic stops with notice to the subjects, similar actions by citizens, even if done in secret, will not result in criminal charges,' Freed said yesterday. 'The law itself might need to be revised.'"
The part about that statement that concerned me was:
"The law itself might need to be revised"
Revised in what fashion? To make it illegal for a citizen to tape a government official's conduct on public property or on that citizen's private property? Or to protect a citizen's "rights" to do so?
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, the price of homes there isn't just a measure of desirability, but also a measure of the ability of the economy to support those prices.
No... it used to be. The price of homes in most non-rural areas is not an indicator of the economy's ability to support those prices. Hence the ever increasing foreclosure rate. Hence, house prices have gone up many times more than income (as a for instance, houses that were worth $30K here in a NY suburb 30 years ago are now worth $480K (nothing but upkeep). House prices have thus went up 16 times their previous value... while wages for such people have went up by a factor of 2.5 to 3.
I doubt most of Cali or any other place that isn't rural or very close to rural isnt having the same problem. As the gap widens, it is going to become sickeningly obvious to more people that it's not what the economy can support that is driving house prices...
Oh, they have regard for the law... (a) the ones they can buy, (b) the ones they can use to further their cause, and (c) the ones they can ignore because no one is stopping them.
As for (b) they have already made mention (and the MPAA has already won such suits) of trying to drag these things into criminal prosecution - and folks, though people here claim that is not possible, the laws already exist to allow it. The MPAA won one such case (already talked about someplace on slashdot not too long ago) and the video game industry recently won another:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15143.cfm
If they start getting more wins in civil suits, I can guarantee you they will be going for a two pronged attack (civil and criminal) - at least that's my opinion from reading what they have said, what they have done and what the MPAA has done.
The key difference in the type of suit (if I understand it correctly - and IANAL, so I might not) is that for it to be criminal, the person must be doing it for the purpose of gaining some sort of compensation (such as money). (1) I am sure the **AA would love to see that expanded to these type cases, where compensation is not the reason it's done, and (2) I am sure they could always argue that the file sharer is indeed gaining compensation via downloading songs of certain value during or in conjunction with the commission of their distribution crime. Remember, compensation does not have to be monetary... and while this may be a stretch, the RIAA has made numerous other "stretches" that they have been allowed to carry on over the years.
Enderandrew is right - though the situation may become even more bleak as the RIAA become even more desperate.
Big question is, will they shoot themselves in the collective foot before they maneuver or legislate themselves into a protected haven? (wish I knew - wouldnt wanna bet either way)
First, I am not a judge or lawyer... but:
I'd think there are more grounds than what you mentioned for throwing out evidence - such as (in this and other RIAA cases) it was illegally obtained (being one additional one - and key to these issues if I am correct).
If I remember correctly, there are pretty specific rules to what laws can be broken while obtaining evidence - and those laws apply to legitimate law enforcement (police, FBI, etc) - not to MediaWhoever. I would think thus, that MediaSentry's evidence, since illegally obtained, should be tossed out. Neither they, nor the companies they "work for" should be entitled to it.
But again, that's just my speculation on how it should work...
Yeah... though I've been thinking... what will the browser report itself as? Will this end up hurting Firefox's adoption rate (as it is seen by the generally clueless media)? And of course, Microsoft is still sure to count each browser using the plugin as IE, even though it's just acting as a container for the new renderer plugin.
In addition, it caters to the IE diehards, or those who simply are familiar with the way IE does things, who would benefit from such a plugin and still feel comfortable using "IE" not caring what is really running under the covers to do the rendering/layout.
Aside from which, studies have shown that cultures without traffic laws have more efficient mobility and reduced accidents
[citation required]
"
On Slashdot? When since? ;-)
Though I would like to see those studies too...
A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.
I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)
A larger OS (especially that much larger) should do more. The gains in running Vista (other than eye candy that can be purchased or gotten for free for XP) is minimal. There's the other part of the real problem.
The last Compact Disc I bought from a music store was in (if I remember correctly) 1984. That was when I started getting interested in the media industry, and began to understand what a bunch of really bad people run it.
You may not be remembering correctly. Maybe you meant 1994? The first CD player came out in the very end of 1982 (October) - the Sony CDP-101, and (according to sources online) started selling in 1983. There weren't many CDs to buy back in 1984.
I agree with the parent (and grandparent).
That is, as long as they don't charge you for breaking traffic laws while they're investigating whatever-else
Somehow I doubt they would, as that would give away the fact that they were trying to surrepticiously monitor your car's movements by the "secretly planted GPS" - so no worries there.
I'd be more worried about why they would be tracking someone by using a secretly planted GPS unit - probably something a lot worse than getting a speeding ticket.
Ah... there's my point... watch "To Serve All My Days: 1969" or "World Enough and Time" then... his hair is more "normal" and everyone's acting has improved over the pilot by leaps and bounds (and both Koenig and Takei were wonderful).
Keep in mind that the first few episodes of TOS (and the first few seasons of TNG) had terrible acting.
Your loss if you dont. :-)
Not even Elvis wore his hair that big.
Sure Elvis did (do a Google image search and you will find tons of pics with Elvis' hair that big or bigger)... and he (James) is quite good at his job... He's the only Elvis impersonator I know of that's played with Elvis' "backup band"
Does this dude know the difference between imitating a stage performance and actual acting? Obviously not.
Well, that answers my earlier question... you have not seen any of the recent episodes.
This is Slashdot though... I guess it is thus quite normal for you to comment about something you dont follow... ;-) He does one "Shatner" moment someplace in each episode, and plays the rest as his own interpretation of the role - unless perhaps you are talking about their test pilot, which no one even considers one of their real episodes...
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Starfleet_ranks
Just didnt see them often, and very seldomly aboard the Enterprise... interesting indeed.
LoL... his hair is that way because he works as an Elvis impersonator (one of the best) as his "day job".
Have you checked out the latest episodes? "World Enough and Time" got nominated for a Hugo (and though we didnt win, we were the first "fan film" nominated). I thought the last two were great... joined the team after I saw "To Serve All My Days" - and the next 3 (which are in Post Production) I think are even better than the rest.
I really loved some of the early Star Trek TOS games (like Judgement Rites) since they actually had a decent storyline. I would have loved to see something like Starfleet Academy ship-level control, integrated with a true story based scenario like Judgement Rites...
But lately, the Trek game offerings seem to be lacking in that respect. So much so that I've stopped playing Star Trek games, and started to help Star Trek episodes instead...
The place I work... (the Bridge of the TOS Enterprise)
If this game ends up being decent, then I guess I need to find time for both... I love video games too much not to.
Yeah, this was my thought as well. TFA is, as usual, slim on the technical details...
Yeah, but does that really matter? You are one of the three people on slashdot that actually reads the articles (which I think is against the rules here). I know I didnt read it.
Various routers seem to allow you to either assign your PC's MAC address to it, or add whatever one you want. Pretty easy to find. I'd expect most CIS and IS students know about this.
And apparently, there were (or still are) NIC cards that allow you to use a different MAC address (or reprogram them).
With all the attention such things (the RIAA suits) have garnered, I would expect a bunch more people are aware of how to accomplish this.
Keep in mind, you dont need everyone knowing how to accomplish this, you just need to prove that (1) it can be done, (2) it can be done pretty easily, and (3) there are people who know how. That would bring doubt into the validity of any MAC address logs - the RIAA would have no way of proving that someone, someplace else on campus (for instance) didnt spoof a MAC address used by someone else on campus.
Besides, if the school above is like many others, there are various NAT devices between the computers and the WAN routers... I've seen many levels deep at some places... all being devices that either dont record MAC addresses, or would quickly overwrite the earlier entries (in hours or days).
Funny as that was, it is probably true as well. If memory serves, a [b]portion[/b] of his ashes were sent up (or maybe it was a portion of Gene's?).
So... if that is the case, they can just send up another portion on a... working rocket...
Yes, it is their job to control access. And clearly they have decided to give federal agents access.
Indeed... just stating a correction to make your statement accurate and saving you the time to do so (or tried to) ;-)
A public library does not own the computer. They maintain it, house it and control access to it.
The problem here is that they aren't a monopoly. Read the article. Dr. Libshitz himself stated that since Verizon wouldn't accommodate him, he was sticking with AT&T, who already were.
Where is the monopoly in that?
Actually, perhaps you should re-read the article... he is sticking with ATT dial-up which is not a competitor for DSL by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, monopoly or otherwise, this problem could occur (as noted above) - simply because of a poorly written word filter - compounded by the time/cost of fixing it outweighing the profit to be made from having the new account (inotherwords, it being a monopoly market area may not be more likely to have caused this to not be addressed... see below).
But fact is, such a situation could occur with a small company as well, who cant afford to have the code revised (especially, if in being a smaller company, they licensed it out, and the code change needed isnt covered in their licensing contract).
And with larger companies, in a non-monopoly situation, it still may not have been changed until the bad press... after all, you do the math... which is worth more? A cheap DSL account, or a bunch of billable hours to fix code?
Note: I emphasized "may" in the last paragraph and asked a question in the end to indicate that such a scenario would or could be part of the determining factor (even in a competitive market) of whether the code got changed - until the incident of bad publicity.
Sadly, that is irrelevant as the non-RIAA labels do not have the lobbying power or tie-ins to the media that the RIAA labels have, thus making it "irrelevant" (regardless of being a worthwhile comparison).
I'm not saying it is going to work (obviously the judge ignored the recommendation)... but the related fact is, the judiciary does not make the laws... therein lies the problem. The judges may ignore such pressure (which they should ignore) put on them by Congress or the Bush Administration... but will be stuck enforcing new laws if either/both of those two manage to push them through.
Sorry if you misunderstood the relationship I was trying to point out...
Sadly (or gladly) enough people do still buy CDs. I know if it is a band I like, that I do.
The problem is, if (assuming) CD sales are declining, it's just more ammo for the RIAA to push for more legislation to "combat" their flawed sales model.
One thing that always gets a laugh out of me are all the people who claim they refuse to buy RIAA member released CDs thinking that will somehow stop the RIAA - when the truth is, as evidenced by too many statements made by the RIAA, they blame every decline in CD sales on piracy and use it as a lobbying effort for more intrusive laws and less consumer rights.
It's not like their money will run out tomorrow... thus, not buying from RIAA labels because they are RIAA labels, only helps them to change the legal landscape in a fashion that hurts consumers even more.
In that, the Bush Administration has already chimed in (on this very case) trying to convince the judge to not do what he is currently doing and to uphold/allow the judgement that currently stands.
When it's a matter of money or business in this country (especially with so many lobbyists helping craft these laws) who do you think is going to win?
Keep in mind that if the current trend continues, there are going to be more lawyers willing to take up such cases on the possibility of counter-suing the RIAA to recoup their expenses.
In addition, with the **AA trying to push this into criminal proceedings (as the MPAA has already successfully done - and has been covered here), I think it is becoming even more dangerous ground to simply settle - especially for a "crime"/crime that you did not commit.
I don't know what happened to the guy in the first story, but the charges in that Carlisle case were dropped:
The part about that statement that concerned me was:
"The law itself might need to be revised"
Revised in what fashion? To make it illegal for a citizen to tape a government official's conduct on public property or on that citizen's private property? Or to protect a citizen's "rights" to do so?