If the file was something known illegal pointed out to them, like child pornography, they took it down AND they nuked the file details so it couldn't be reuploaded later. Because there is NO jurisdiction in which child pornography would be legal
This is actually incorrect. The child pornography laws vary between jurisdictions just as the copyright laws do, though they tend to be a bit more consistent. For example, in Japan a mere depiction (i.e. a drawing) of a minor engaging in sexual activity is legal.
There have been a few other linux tablets and so far they just don't compete on specs. They seem to think that going linux means going budget but I am a Linux user and have no interest whatsoever in going budget.
I agree with you, to an extent. However, I'd say that going budget is important for ensuring a low barrier to entry for devs. Once we have a fully working Linux distro designed for tablets/mobiles, how much effort do you think it's gong to take to get that running on most Android devices? Here's a hint: most of the modifications to the kernel needed to get the first gen Asus Transformer to run Ubuntu were performed by 3 guys in different countries. All the KDE guys would have to do is provide a webpage with general information on modifying Android kernels and links to device specific kernels, and most Linux users would be able to install it.
Destruction of evidence has an intent element - it must be demonstrated that you had a police investigation in mind when setting up that mechanism. Claiming simple paranoia (e.g. you wanted your data to be inaccessible if your computer were stolen) avoids this. Destruction of evidence charges normally only arise for actions taken after the defendant has been informed of the proceedings against them for this exact reason; you cannot think it reasonably likely to be required as evidence if you do not reasonably believe you will be going to court.
Using it will scramble the disk beyond ANY recoverability.
And then you've committed the crime of tampering with evidence / destroying evidence. Good luck evading conviction for that.
No, your only hope is to set up a random password whose mnemonic is something the *police* will destroy when they search your premises, as in "Your honor, my password was recorded by the order in which I kept Skittles on my desk but the act of collecting these Skittles destroyed my record of my password. It is irretrievably lost due to the actions of the police. I would help if I were able but my memory is wholly inadequate, and the only record was destroyed by the police."
Whatever happened to 'News for Nerds'? Here's an actual, decent solution: an Arduino hidden inside the PC that is connected to a case open switch and an accelerometer (and a GPS shield, if you want to be really paranoid). The key is stored in RAM only, with a backup copy in some impossible to find location (e.g. with a friend in a different jurisdiction). Any change in the Arduino's inputs (or the insertion of an unrecognised USB drive) results in the encrypted partition being unmounted, and the PC being shutdown (or rebooted into a dummy OS so that the RAM is flooded with new data).
The build costs under $50, is trivial for anyone with experience in C and Linux to setup, and is resilient against the police's standard practice of keeping the PC powered on (via UPS) while in transit to forensics.
But most important of all, it offers a substantial advantage over the other suggested methods while rely upon the 'I forgot' defence: it is demonstrably provable (via inspection of the Arduino's microprocessor) that you do not and never had the password! While you can spend some time in jail on a contempt charge to jog your memory, if you can prove that it is impossible for you to recover the key, there is nothing that can be done.
DISCLAIMER: This post is for the purposes of discussion only, and not to be used in the aid of criminal activities.
I was actually surprised by that figure. It actually seems low given the people who came up with it.
Considering the past history of ludicrously high damage claims and the huge amount of infringing content they probably actually have, I figured they'd be making up new words to describe the number they came up with...
You're assuming they'd calculate them in a logical, proportional way. They're choosing the numbers from a political perspective. They deliberately chose a number in the millions because its large and believable. Had they applied the same kind of valuation used in previous cases, the result would have eclipsed the GDPs of some small nations, and it would raise the courts' suspicions. As long as they remain believable (to the courts), there's not as much risk of their calculations being questioned.
Yep, this is why on-shore cloud computing will never take off, why would a foreign entity want to put in this position. XDA won't get their hosting back, but I highly doubt they lost anything, it's developers after all.
The individuals may still have their original copies. Or maybe they lost them in a hard drive crash a few years ago, who knows? But even if they do, how many are going to reupload all of the relevant files, including for that ancient phone they worked on years ago that no-one would be likely to be using today? (Despite the fact that there will be people with that device who want those files.) Even viewing a list of all files shared via MegaUpload is non-trivial.
Make no mistake - this does represent a rather large data loss for the XDA community.
Sure, but I'd be very surprised if BREIN wasn't taking their cues from the MPAA. Consider that in Australia it emerged (from the wikileaks cables) that AFACT was in fact suing iiNet on the instructions of American interests, who had asked them to emphasize the Australian film industry's interests in the lawsuit...
Agreed, but, I dunno, I got tired of forcing hardware to work. I am very interested in the Transformer. I would have no interest in dual-booting Winders. I would much rather the apps I need be available in Android. Word is, Adobe will be coming through soon.
I suggested dual booting as a transitional step. I doubt very much that the apps you need are not available under x86 Linux, and I suspect that most hardware these days would work under Linux without any additional effort.
And ? it's not 1930 any more. We manage HUGE databases every day.
>> You would need the government to maintain a database of when each work was created and how many payments have been made.
also, the magic word is "payment". This system pays for itself. For the database, it's size can be reduced by simply storing a (crytographic) hash of the digital art.
the problem : big countries are advantaged and small ones do not get any payment, as in the patent system.
The problem with the database isn't the requirements it places upon the government, it's the requirements its places on the consumers and creators. The reason the requirement was abolished is that creators frequently failed to register all their works, and consequently didn't receive legal protection for them. This problem would be even greater today - can you imagine having to individually register every slashdot comment and youtube video you post?
When creators and consumers have to lookup each work individually to determine whether or not it's in the public domain, that places a great deal of friction upon the creative process. The advantage of a fixed term is that you can print 'Copyright ACME Studios 2010' on the work and it will be a given to any consumers of it that the term expires in 2025.
The technical problems of using a mere hash of the work are obvious, given the inaccuracies of Youtube's content detection algorithm. Besides, it would be far better for society to store verbatim copies of the works which would become accessible upon expiry of the term.
In my opinion, we should simply hard limit copyright to 10 years. that's fair and far enough.
In other words, you effectively came to the same conclusion as be, albeit with a difference of 5 years.
Because you don't want Disney causing runaway inflation just to keep Mickey out of the public domain.
If Disney can cause runaway inflation, you have bigger problems. This is like saying that you can't upgrade the network connection, because then the malware would spread faster than it could be removed - something is fundamentally wrong.
Because it adds complexity and bureaucracy. You would need the government to maintain a database of when each work was created and how many payments have been made. There used to be a requirement for copyright registration that was abolished because of the problems it created. This is to say nothing of the added burden it adds to the consumers of such works - you'd have to lookup each work to determine what it's copyright status is.
I suggest a fixed copyright term, perhaps 15 years. No extensions*, no dependency on the creator's lifespan, no dependency on its value. We don't have this crap for patents (why are usually licensed by a more sophisticated demographic), so why would we need it for copyright?
* Yes, I know that patent extensions are allowed, though I don't believe there is a need for them.
Yes, Daughter has an ASUS T101 notebook with a reversible touch screen. Only one thing wrong with it: It runs Windows 7, which is about as touch-centric as... as.... as something that isn't touch-centric. At all. Great hardware, nearly unusable software, from a touchscreen standpoint.
So to answer your question, were I to have both, it still needs to be an OS that works as a touch-only environment. Else it's just a slightly more expensive netbook. You might as well never turn the screen around; you'll only get frustrated.
The ASUS TF101 (the Transformer) runs Android (although I personally found that a bit restrictive). But strictly speaking, there's no reason why you couldn't dualboot Windows with x86 Android or Ubuntu with Gnome 3 on the T101. Once you go from a hardware problem to a software problem, most of the barriers for the average geek are removed.
Meanwhile, I sit down, open my binder, and begin writing right away.
I have a laptop and a tablet. I've written notes with it. But after a while I just got tired of it... there's nothing wrong with my hand writing, there's nothing wrong with my hands. Paper is cheap, it doesn't need a battery, and it doesn't need time to boot up. I can't get a virus, and I won't be tempted to check on Facebook or chat with a friend online.
I spent the last two years studying law. The majority of students took their notes with laptops. The reason for this became apparent to me very quickly - most people (in this demographic) can type much more quickly than they can write, especially as it is not necessary to look down at what you are writing. There was also the advantage of being able to index and search through the notes very easily in practicals, which took an order of magnitude longer when relying upon handwritten notes.
That said, pretty much everyone in my engineering classes (I did a double degree) handwrote their notes, because there's no easy and fast way of entering diagrams and equations that is competitive against handwriting them.
People use different tools for different purposes. There's no point in using a screwdriver as a hammer - they each have their area.
IIRC, the patent only covers certain geometric shapes. There's no reason that the other manufacturers couldn't use a similar connector in the shape of a circle or triangle.
Kubuntu runs comfortably (20 sec boot time from emmc), though there are a few things which don't work. Most notably, video playback (dependent on hardware acceleration) and the external speakers. The 768 MB of RAM can be a bit limiting if you try to open Firefox with a bunch of tabs though. (Chromium won't render anything until we get graphics acceleration working).
In terms of software, mplayer doesn't work (but VLC does, and I think mplayer could be fixed with a recompile) and plasma has an odd bug where you can't add any widgets to the desktop - the pane just doesn't respond when you try and drag them.
Despite these, it actually works pretty well. Once hardware acceleration is working I'll probably get rid of Android entirely and just use Gnome 3 when I want a tablet-style interface.
I just got mine this afternoon, ordered just before Christmas from Best Buy and it came today. So far, I'm impressed with it.
I will probably not root the thing, and have no interest in custom ROMs, so aside from the impending ICS update it's great for me as-is.
I've been playing on it non-stop since I pulled it off the charger about 3 hours ago and even with all manner of app installing and game playing it's barely below 75% charge.
It really depends whether you use it as a tablet or a netbook. As a tablet, it's a nice device. As a netbook, Android is the most painfully limited OS I've seen. You can install the GNU tools and a terminal emulator, but it's not long at all before you start to really miss the functionality of a proper Linux distro. I have a first gen Transformer dual booting Kubuntu, and I only ever use Android for things the Ubuntu kernel doesn't yet support.
It's quite possible that that could change. $1 PC apps never came into fruition because originally the brick-and-mortar distribution costs were too high, then there was always the risk of identity theft from entering your credit card details into a dodgy site. The existing model works for phones & tablets because Google and Apple operate trusted app stores. If Microsoft were to start doing the same for PC apps (which is quite likely with Windows 8), it's very possible that $1 PC apps could become the norm.
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If the file was something known illegal pointed out to them, like child pornography, they took it down AND they nuked the file details so it couldn't be reuploaded later. Because there is NO jurisdiction in which child pornography would be legal
This is actually incorrect. The child pornography laws vary between jurisdictions just as the copyright laws do, though they tend to be a bit more consistent. For example, in Japan a mere depiction (i.e. a drawing) of a minor engaging in sexual activity is legal.
Does anyone else thing that Geeknet should launch an online dating site for geeks?
There have been a few other linux tablets and so far they just don't compete on specs. They seem to think that going linux means going budget but I am a Linux user and have no interest whatsoever in going budget.
I agree with you, to an extent. However, I'd say that going budget is important for ensuring a low barrier to entry for devs. Once we have a fully working Linux distro designed for tablets/mobiles, how much effort do you think it's gong to take to get that running on most Android devices? Here's a hint: most of the modifications to the kernel needed to get the first gen Asus Transformer to run Ubuntu were performed by 3 guys in different countries. All the KDE guys would have to do is provide a webpage with general information on modifying Android kernels and links to device specific kernels, and most Linux users would be able to install it.
Destruction of evidence has an intent element - it must be demonstrated that you had a police investigation in mind when setting up that mechanism. Claiming simple paranoia (e.g. you wanted your data to be inaccessible if your computer were stolen) avoids this. Destruction of evidence charges normally only arise for actions taken after the defendant has been informed of the proceedings against them for this exact reason; you cannot think it reasonably likely to be required as evidence if you do not reasonably believe you will be going to court.
Using it will scramble the disk beyond ANY recoverability.
And then you've committed the crime of tampering with evidence / destroying evidence. Good luck evading conviction for that.
No, your only hope is to set up a random password whose mnemonic is something the *police* will destroy when they search your premises, as in "Your honor, my password was recorded by the order in which I kept Skittles on my desk but the act of collecting these Skittles destroyed my record of my password. It is irretrievably lost due to the actions of the police. I would help if I were able but my memory is wholly inadequate, and the only record was destroyed by the police."
Whatever happened to 'News for Nerds'?
Here's an actual, decent solution: an Arduino hidden inside the PC that is connected to a case open switch and an accelerometer (and a GPS shield, if you want to be really paranoid). The key is stored in RAM only, with a backup copy in some impossible to find location (e.g. with a friend in a different jurisdiction). Any change in the Arduino's inputs (or the insertion of an unrecognised USB drive) results in the encrypted partition being unmounted, and the PC being shutdown (or rebooted into a dummy OS so that the RAM is flooded with new data).
The build costs under $50, is trivial for anyone with experience in C and Linux to setup, and is resilient against the police's standard practice of keeping the PC powered on (via UPS) while in transit to forensics.
But most important of all, it offers a substantial advantage over the other suggested methods while rely upon the 'I forgot' defence: it is demonstrably provable (via inspection of the Arduino's microprocessor) that you do not and never had the password! While you can spend some time in jail on a contempt charge to jog your memory, if you can prove that it is impossible for you to recover the key, there is nothing that can be done.
DISCLAIMER: This post is for the purposes of discussion only, and not to be used in the aid of criminal activities.
I was actually surprised by that figure. It actually seems low given the people who came up with it.
Considering the past history of ludicrously high damage claims and the huge amount of infringing content they probably actually have, I figured they'd be making up new words to describe the number they came up with...
You're assuming they'd calculate them in a logical, proportional way. They're choosing the numbers from a political perspective.
They deliberately chose a number in the millions because its large and believable. Had they applied the same kind of valuation used in previous cases, the result would have eclipsed the GDPs of some small nations, and it would raise the courts' suspicions. As long as they remain believable (to the courts), there's not as much risk of their calculations being questioned.
Citation needed.
Yep, this is why on-shore cloud computing will never take off, why would a foreign entity want to put in this position. XDA won't get their hosting back, but I highly doubt they lost anything, it's developers after all.
The individuals may still have their original copies. Or maybe they lost them in a hard drive crash a few years ago, who knows? But even if they do, how many are going to reupload all of the relevant files, including for that ancient phone they worked on years ago that no-one would be likely to be using today? (Despite the fact that there will be people with that device who want those files.) Even viewing a list of all files shared via MegaUpload is non-trivial.
Make no mistake - this does represent a rather large data loss for the XDA community.
Asus is currently the most adventurous/innovative tablet manufacturer. The eeePad Memo has essentially the same form factor as the Eee Note.
Sure, but I'd be very surprised if BREIN wasn't taking their cues from the MPAA. Consider that in Australia it emerged (from the wikileaks cables) that AFACT was in fact suing iiNet on the instructions of American interests, who had asked them to emphasize the Australian film industry's interests in the lawsuit...
Agreed, but, I dunno, I got tired of forcing hardware to work. I am very interested in the Transformer. I would have no interest in dual-booting Winders. I would much rather the apps I need be available in Android. Word is, Adobe will be coming through soon.
I suggested dual booting as a transitional step. I doubt very much that the apps you need are not available under x86 Linux, and I suspect that most hardware these days would work under Linux without any additional effort.
And ? it's not 1930 any more. We manage HUGE databases every day.
>> You would need the government to maintain a database of when each work was created and how many payments have been made.
also, the magic word is "payment". This system pays for itself.
For the database, it's size can be reduced by simply storing a (crytographic) hash of the digital art.
the problem : big countries are advantaged and small ones do not get any payment, as in the patent system.
The problem with the database isn't the requirements it places upon the government, it's the requirements its places on the consumers and creators. The reason the requirement was abolished is that creators frequently failed to register all their works, and consequently didn't receive legal protection for them. This problem would be even greater today - can you imagine having to individually register every slashdot comment and youtube video you post?
When creators and consumers have to lookup each work individually to determine whether or not it's in the public domain, that places a great deal of friction upon the creative process. The advantage of a fixed term is that you can print 'Copyright ACME Studios 2010' on the work and it will be a given to any consumers of it that the term expires in 2025.
The technical problems of using a mere hash of the work are obvious, given the inaccuracies of Youtube's content detection algorithm. Besides, it would be far better for society to store verbatim copies of the works which would become accessible upon expiry of the term.
In my opinion, we should simply hard limit copyright to 10 years. that's fair and far enough.
In other words, you effectively came to the same conclusion as be, albeit with a difference of 5 years.
Because you don't want Disney causing runaway inflation just to keep Mickey out of the public domain.
If Disney can cause runaway inflation, you have bigger problems. This is like saying that you can't upgrade the network connection, because then the malware would spread faster than it could be removed - something is fundamentally wrong.
Why not?
Because it adds complexity and bureaucracy. You would need the government to maintain a database of when each work was created and how many payments have been made. There used to be a requirement for copyright registration that was abolished because of the problems it created. This is to say nothing of the added burden it adds to the consumers of such works - you'd have to lookup each work to determine what it's copyright status is.
I suggest a fixed copyright term, perhaps 15 years. No extensions*, no dependency on the creator's lifespan, no dependency on its value. We don't have this crap for patents (why are usually licensed by a more sophisticated demographic), so why would we need it for copyright?
* Yes, I know that patent extensions are allowed, though I don't believe there is a need for them.
Yes, Daughter has an ASUS T101 notebook with a reversible touch screen. Only one thing wrong with it: It runs Windows 7, which is about as touch-centric as ... as. ... as something that isn't touch-centric. At all. Great hardware, nearly unusable software, from a touchscreen standpoint.
So to answer your question, were I to have both, it still needs to be an OS that works as a touch-only environment. Else it's just a slightly more expensive netbook. You might as well never turn the screen around; you'll only get frustrated.
The ASUS TF101 (the Transformer) runs Android (although I personally found that a bit restrictive). But strictly speaking, there's no reason why you couldn't dualboot Windows with x86 Android or Ubuntu with Gnome 3 on the T101. Once you go from a hardware problem to a software problem, most of the barriers for the average geek are removed.
Then buy the older Transformer secondhand. People are often willing to pay a little more to have one device replace several.
Meanwhile, I sit down, open my binder, and begin writing right away.
I have a laptop and a tablet. I've written notes with it. But after a while I just got tired of it... there's nothing wrong with my hand writing, there's nothing wrong with my hands. Paper is cheap, it doesn't need a battery, and it doesn't need time to boot up. I can't get a virus, and I won't be tempted to check on Facebook or chat with a friend online.
I spent the last two years studying law. The majority of students took their notes with laptops. The reason for this became apparent to me very quickly - most people (in this demographic) can type much more quickly than they can write, especially as it is not necessary to look down at what you are writing. There was also the advantage of being able to index and search through the notes very easily in practicals, which took an order of magnitude longer when relying upon handwritten notes.
That said, pretty much everyone in my engineering classes (I did a double degree) handwrote their notes, because there's no easy and fast way of entering diagrams and equations that is competitive against handwriting them.
People use different tools for different purposes. There's no point in using a screwdriver as a hammer - they each have their area.
IIRC, the patent only covers certain geometric shapes. There's no reason that the other manufacturers couldn't use a similar connector in the shape of a circle or triangle.
Kubuntu runs comfortably (20 sec boot time from emmc), though there are a few things which don't work. Most notably, video playback (dependent on hardware acceleration) and the external speakers. The 768 MB of RAM can be a bit limiting if you try to open Firefox with a bunch of tabs though. (Chromium won't render anything until we get graphics acceleration working).
In terms of software, mplayer doesn't work (but VLC does, and I think mplayer could be fixed with a recompile) and plasma has an odd bug where you can't add any widgets to the desktop - the pane just doesn't respond when you try and drag them.
Despite these, it actually works pretty well. Once hardware acceleration is working I'll probably get rid of Android entirely and just use Gnome 3 when I want a tablet-style interface.
You may laugh, but this will happen eventually. And it's going to take planned obsolescence to whole new levels.
I just got mine this afternoon, ordered just before Christmas from Best Buy and it came today. So far, I'm impressed with it.
I will probably not root the thing, and have no interest in custom ROMs, so aside from the impending ICS update it's great for me as-is.
I've been playing on it non-stop since I pulled it off the charger about 3 hours ago and even with all manner of app installing and game playing it's barely below 75% charge.
It really depends whether you use it as a tablet or a netbook. As a tablet, it's a nice device. As a netbook, Android is the most painfully limited OS I've seen. You can install the GNU tools and a terminal emulator, but it's not long at all before you start to really miss the functionality of a proper Linux distro.
I have a first gen Transformer dual booting Kubuntu, and I only ever use Android for things the Ubuntu kernel doesn't yet support.
That's most easily achieved on the Android tablets, due to the GPLed kernel. My Asus Transformer dual boots Android and Kubuntu.
It's quite possible that that could change. $1 PC apps never came into fruition because originally the brick-and-mortar distribution costs were too high, then there was always the risk of identity theft from entering your credit card details into a dodgy site. The existing model works for phones & tablets because Google and Apple operate trusted app stores. If Microsoft were to start doing the same for PC apps (which is quite likely with Windows 8), it's very possible that $1 PC apps could become the norm.
The Transformers cost as much as a cheap Windows Laptop and are still only as useful as any other Android Tablet.
That's a software limitation. Come Win8, they will cost as much as a cheap windows netbook, and be more useful (due to tablet functionality).
Is there something not covered by 'cp -a ~/.config /backup/'?