Keep in mind that in some countries, bribery is standard practice and failing to bribe would make a business less competitive. If those countries wish to end the practice, they should make it illegal. Why should US law cover actions taken abroad? Why should the US be pushing our set of ethics on other people (yet again)?
Except that article has not come true. There's nothing to stop you lending your kindle/computer to someone else to read your eBooks.
If you read the story, the main character does exactly that: he lends his computer to someone else, so she can read his books. In fact, what the character in that story does is considered a violation of the rules at some universities, since he also told someone else his password.
You're just not allowed to copy them without permission - same as with paper books.
Funny, because when I take a paper book to a copy machine, printed copies come out of the machine. There is no technical measure stopping me, only legal measures, and only if I am not engaging in fair use.
I thought the point of the first amendment argument was that this sort of action would have a chilling effect on free speech, not that the twitter users were having their free speech rights directly violated...
Do you ever click 'decline' and don't use their product based on it's click-wrap?
What was it?
As an example, I was once pushed by an undergrad course instructor to sign up for some "career building" website. What is interesting is that the instructor was annoyed when I said that I did not agree to the terms of use and that I would not sign up -- annoyed, because nobody else had a problem with them (or read them). I was not particularly comfortable signing up for a website that wanted the right to do essentially anything they wanted with the data I uploaded, particularly since I was not getting much in return (it turns out that you can get internships without signing up for such websites).
Personally, I resolve this dilemma (that is, "do you read every word?") by just not installing proprietary software (it is easy to read and understand the 4~ free software licenses that cover the software on my system) and by not signing up for every trendy website that comes along. Slashdot (if we can even consider it "trendy") is a rare exception to that rule.
"Did you know that Facebook records every single thing you do on their website from the very moment you sign up?"
"So what?"
That is an exchange that I had with someone when I was an undergrad. People do not actually care if companies are mining their private lives, they just want to use Facebook and Twitter and not have to think about anything.
This brings up an interesting issue: will SSD manufacturers start pulling dirty tricks like shipping suboptimal wear-level algorithms and thwarting attempts to install or use third party firmware (that would presumably have better wear levelling and therefore increase the life of the drive)? It would be pretty easy for them to market "consumer" grade SSDs that break down faster than "industrial strength" SSDs. I could even see SSD manufacturers using the DMCA to try to stop hackers from distributing better firmware images (yes this is a bit of FUD, but it seems plausible).
Some of us are paid to do non-bullshit research. The more people who get paid to study obvious things, the harder it is to convince anyone to fund non-obvious research.
However, we do not need to employ humans as computers anymore, which is exactly what we used to do. Nobody hires someone to do arithmetic for them these days, we just have electronic computers do it for us.
IF buying an iPad were actually a replacement for buying texbooks, then this really would be a good idea.
Until you wake up one day and discover that you cannot access your textbooks from three years ago. Or when a professor discovers that some course material is banned because Apple's censors did not like it.
Did you think you were going to get a jailbroken iPad? Did you think that jailbreaking was going to be part of the university's policy? Where I went to school, jailbreaking an iPad that the university gave you would have gotten you in serious trouble, to the point of losing your access to school computers.
The microarchitecture argument is not very convincing -- yes, the instruction set is translated, but in the end, you still expose the x86 instruction set. As an example, we still have to deal with floating point registers that are arranged as a stack, although some compilers (GCC for example) have a option to use SSE registers and instructions as an alternative. In general, x86 inherits a lot of very outdated designs, which can be very annoying when you are forced to deal with them (or which just waste space on the die if nobody uses them anymore).
Learn the difference between "should be" and "is." My only point was that this incident highlights a broad problem in America that is not being addressed in any meaningful way.
The sort of damage that could do to a teacher's career is...
...a sign that society is in desperate need of reform. The kind of damage that a Facebook post by a disgruntled student could do to a teacher's career should be nil. We are not talking about an official record of court proceedings, or a police report, or a doctor's report on the examination of the students, we are talking about a post made on Facebook.
Funny, because blind people still pay taxes that are used to construct highways, at least as far as I know. People without children still pay taxes that are used to support public schools. So what exactly is wrong with deaf people paying a tax that supports the creation of music (in theory, anyway)?
My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.
It makes sense if people are going to be allowed to download whatever they want without having to fear a lawsuit. Pay the artists (through the record companies, which is suboptimal but good enough), stop suing everyone, and start talking about bringing copyright law in line with new technology, rather than trying to fight against the growth and progress of computers and the Internet.
Actually, I would not have a problem with this...if it meant that nobody could be sued for downloading. Paying a tax that goes to artists (or recording companies, but at least there is some path toward music production there) and being allowed to download music as I see fit sure sounds like a good deal to me.
Of course, we know that is not what is going to happen (now you are going to pay and still get sued), so yeah, no deal.
I might as well not even bother with encryption if I am going to turn to "laws" to protect me. Hushmail is snake oil cryptography, which is what I said when it was first described to me years before the DEA bust.
U.S. court orders
Court orders should not result in plaintext being produced by a third party, regardless of why the orders were issued.
PGP is stronger, but a people aren't using it,
Then people should be educated, not given snake oil.
Read the fine print -- you cannot do that with the connection I am on, and I bet you cannot do it with most "residential" (read: affordable) connections. Your ISP could disable your Internet access for that sort of sharing, particularly when they get a subpoena and you try to claim that it was one of the dozen friends you are "sharing" your connection with.
Gee, a couple thousand disgruntled/. users vs. millions upon millions of people who have not even heard of the Geohot case, who think that "pirates" are just part of a mafia run video game cheating racket, and who will continue to buy Sony products whenever Consumer Reports gives them decent reviews. Do you think Sony actually cares about hackers, geeks, or anyone who is actually informed about the Geohot issue? As long as the masses keep buying things that Sony makes, Sony will keep on doing what they do.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind that in some countries, bribery is standard practice and failing to bribe would make a business less competitive. If those countries wish to end the practice, they should make it illegal. Why should US law cover actions taken abroad? Why should the US be pushing our set of ethics on other people (yet again)?
Actually, sometimes putting the entire definition in a header file is the right thing to do. Template classes, for example.
Except that article has not come true. There's nothing to stop you lending your kindle/computer to someone else to read your eBooks.
If you read the story, the main character does exactly that: he lends his computer to someone else, so she can read his books. In fact, what the character in that story does is considered a violation of the rules at some universities, since he also told someone else his password.
You're just not allowed to copy them without permission - same as with paper books.
Funny, because when I take a paper book to a copy machine, printed copies come out of the machine. There is no technical measure stopping me, only legal measures, and only if I am not engaging in fair use.
I thought the point of the first amendment argument was that this sort of action would have a chilling effect on free speech, not that the twitter users were having their free speech rights directly violated...
Do you ever click 'decline' and don't use their product based on it's click-wrap?
What was it?
As an example, I was once pushed by an undergrad course instructor to sign up for some "career building" website. What is interesting is that the instructor was annoyed when I said that I did not agree to the terms of use and that I would not sign up -- annoyed, because nobody else had a problem with them (or read them). I was not particularly comfortable signing up for a website that wanted the right to do essentially anything they wanted with the data I uploaded, particularly since I was not getting much in return (it turns out that you can get internships without signing up for such websites).
Personally, I resolve this dilemma (that is, "do you read every word?") by just not installing proprietary software (it is easy to read and understand the 4~ free software licenses that cover the software on my system) and by not signing up for every trendy website that comes along. Slashdot (if we can even consider it "trendy") is a rare exception to that rule.
"Did you know that Facebook records every single thing you do on their website from the very moment you sign up?"
"So what?"
That is an exchange that I had with someone when I was an undergrad. People do not actually care if companies are mining their private lives, they just want to use Facebook and Twitter and not have to think about anything.
...and people give me weird looks when I suggest that they should read the things they "accept" when they install software and sign up for websites.
I am left wondering if it is because the top security researchers just want Macs, or if it is because Mac OS X + Safari is a dangerous combination.
This brings up an interesting issue: will SSD manufacturers start pulling dirty tricks like shipping suboptimal wear-level algorithms and thwarting attempts to install or use third party firmware (that would presumably have better wear levelling and therefore increase the life of the drive)? It would be pretty easy for them to market "consumer" grade SSDs that break down faster than "industrial strength" SSDs. I could even see SSD manufacturers using the DMCA to try to stop hackers from distributing better firmware images (yes this is a bit of FUD, but it seems plausible).
Some of us are paid to do non-bullshit research. The more people who get paid to study obvious things, the harder it is to convince anyone to fund non-obvious research.
However, we do not need to employ humans as computers anymore, which is exactly what we used to do. Nobody hires someone to do arithmetic for them these days, we just have electronic computers do it for us.
IF buying an iPad were actually a replacement for buying texbooks, then this really would be a good idea.
Until you wake up one day and discover that you cannot access your textbooks from three years ago. Or when a professor discovers that some course material is banned because Apple's censors did not like it.
Did you think you were going to get a jailbroken iPad? Did you think that jailbreaking was going to be part of the university's policy? Where I went to school, jailbreaking an iPad that the university gave you would have gotten you in serious trouble, to the point of losing your access to school computers.
The microarchitecture argument is not very convincing -- yes, the instruction set is translated, but in the end, you still expose the x86 instruction set. As an example, we still have to deal with floating point registers that are arranged as a stack, although some compilers (GCC for example) have a option to use SSE registers and instructions as an alternative. In general, x86 inherits a lot of very outdated designs, which can be very annoying when you are forced to deal with them (or which just waste space on the die if nobody uses them anymore).
OK, finally we are moving away from x86 and toward RISC. We are only 20 years behind schedule, but hey, better late than never.
Learn the difference between "should be" and "is." My only point was that this incident highlights a broad problem in America that is not being addressed in any meaningful way.
The sort of damage that could do to a teacher's career is...
No, not "screw these kids." More like, "screw the society that hears 'pedophile' and immediately sends in the SWAT teams."
Funny, because blind people still pay taxes that are used to construct highways, at least as far as I know. People without children still pay taxes that are used to support public schools. So what exactly is wrong with deaf people paying a tax that supports the creation of music (in theory, anyway)?
My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.
It makes sense if people are going to be allowed to download whatever they want without having to fear a lawsuit. Pay the artists (through the record companies, which is suboptimal but good enough), stop suing everyone, and start talking about bringing copyright law in line with new technology, rather than trying to fight against the growth and progress of computers and the Internet.
Actually, I would not have a problem with this...if it meant that nobody could be sued for downloading. Paying a tax that goes to artists (or recording companies, but at least there is some path toward music production there) and being allowed to download music as I see fit sure sounds like a good deal to me.
Of course, we know that is not what is going to happen (now you are going to pay and still get sued), so yeah, no deal.
What's wrong with Hushmail?
This:
protected by ... laws
I might as well not even bother with encryption if I am going to turn to "laws" to protect me. Hushmail is snake oil cryptography, which is what I said when it was first described to me years before the DEA bust.
U.S. court orders
Court orders should not result in plaintext being produced by a third party, regardless of why the orders were issued.
PGP is stronger, but a people aren't using it,
Then people should be educated, not given snake oil.
Everyone should share net connections
Read the fine print -- you cannot do that with the connection I am on, and I bet you cannot do it with most "residential" (read: affordable) connections. Your ISP could disable your Internet access for that sort of sharing, particularly when they get a subpoena and you try to claim that it was one of the dozen friends you are "sharing" your connection with.
When I buy something I want to use it the way I want, not the way somebody told me.
Yes, because as we all know, you "own" what you buy...
Gee, a couple thousand disgruntled /. users vs. millions upon millions of people who have not even heard of the Geohot case, who think that "pirates" are just part of a mafia run video game cheating racket, and who will continue to buy Sony products whenever Consumer Reports gives them decent reviews. Do you think Sony actually cares about hackers, geeks, or anyone who is actually informed about the Geohot issue? As long as the masses keep buying things that Sony makes, Sony will keep on doing what they do.
I imagine people will use it for the same reason people use Hushmail: ignorance.