The process needs to be simple and automatic to fit in with Apple's idea of what these devices should be like. Pairing 2 devices isn't (yet) and so they don't do it (yet.)
The process should be incredibly simple when you make the hardware and the software for both devices. It would be trivial to have a single push-button activation on one device which scans for local devices and triggers an acceptance prompt on the other device - bam, single step pairing. If they're not allowing this then it's not for reasons of UI complexity.
That makes no sense - why do you need to own the rights in order to produce copies of the work with the consent of the true rights holder? The only thing that prevents every company out there legitimately copying and sellings copyrighted works is the threat of legal action from the rights holder, and this should be enough to ensure that the author's own distribution channel follows his rules when they reproduce his works, no need for any transfer of rights (otherwise technically the guy who hits the big PRINT button on a book run would need to own the rights to the work to prevent the company that employs him from suing him for infringement).
The rules that MPs have to stop them lining their own pockets are mind-bogglingly complex purely because MPs have proven so creative at finding new ways to do so. However, to not fall foul of the rules is relatively simple, don't try and get away with as much as possible within the rules, remember why you're meant to be there in the first place (to promote the best interests of your constituents) and stop trying to game the system. So many MPs came out and said they didn't technically break the rules on expenses, or they didn't know they were falling foul of the complex expenses rules in the first place, but the fact is if they'd not been trying to get something for nothing they would have been in zero danger of breaking the rules.
While I don't take a hardline stance that all copyright should be eradicated, playing devil's advocate for a moment, you can't say that artists wouldn't produce worthwhile work in the absence of copyright, because we already know that for hundreds of years they did just that. Some of them did very well for themselves, too.
Charging for performances (for music artists, gigs, for movies, make the cinema experience actually something worthwhile to compete with the home cinema experience, for painters, exhibitions, etc); patronage (actually corporate sponsorship in this day and age would be more likely, and we've already seen how lucrative that can be for artists); asking your fans for donations (much easier now than ever where anyone can set up a page on the internet to accept donations and can use blogging/micro blogging tools to get their message out).
Removing copyright would, of course, mean that artists had to survive on merit rather than having a god-given right to make money, but I honestly can't see how that would be a bad thing. If the ones who don't care passionately about what they do just slink off into the night, has society been cheapened by their loss? Maybe not so many artists will be able to live the millionaire lifestyle, but again, the ones who are only in it for the money are probably not a great loss (and nobody guarantees the rest of society to live a "comfortable" lifestyle but they seem to still turn up for work every day...).
We're already in that world - people already can get anything they want freely from file sharing sites, but they still buy and games, etc are still made. The reasons for this are numerous - maybe a small percentage are people who are scared of being sued, but many more are likely people who want to show their support for a product, or who like the convenience. The middle approach is to prosecute the companies who profit from file sharing, not the end users who are likely your fan base.
Go after the big file sharing sites, play whack a mole, make it painful for them if you want, they're the ones making money from other people's hard work, but stop suing the little guy and everyone wins. Those who are time rich but cash poor still get to enjoy your product, and you get to enjoy the massive goodwill they'll spread to their friends and relatives who are working and will give you money. Instead we have a horrible mess of artists suing their fans, angering the fans and making the artists look like scum, while everyone loses out because of crappy DRM (which probably drives as many people too file sharing sites as the threat of legal action drives away).
In a marginal seat, even a reasonable minority of people voting for these issues could be enough to get them on the agenda of the big parties (after all, telling people you're going to soften your stance on copyright isn't likely to lose you votes, it might lose you some financial support but if the result is a couple of extra seats in parliament then they might consider it worth the hit).
"Forcing authors to lose rights" - NO! A common misconception. *Some* rights maybe, but only to guarantee the rights of the public!
What these "artists" (and I use the term loosely, as this mainly seems to be driven by the labels and many artists actually oppose the labels' standpoint) always seem to gloss over when they talk about "losing rights" is that these aren't some kind of natural, inalienable rights, they're rights specifically granted to them by the public. If the public feel that they are abusing those rights or taking them to the extreme then it's perfectly justifiable to reign them in or remove them completely. What the governments continually forget is that they're meant to serve the will of the people, not the will of the labels.
More to the point, if it doesn't have any of those things, you can brew your own without breaking the terms of your contract and maybe even make a little money (or just share the love) by letting others use it, too.
It was reported at the end of last year that the government was recommending the DNA of "innocent" people only be kept on record for 6 years. Seriously, if you're helping the police by offering sample DNA, their duty of responsibility to you should be to test it and eliminate it from their enquiries as soon as possible. What possible reason could they have for keeping it for 6 years, let alone being able to automatically cross search that DNA on non-related offences without your prior knowledge or permission.
There would be plenty of loose hairs collected when they initially brush the hair - and a freshly cut hair doesn't necessarily preclude that it came from a criminal who'd had a hair cut within the last fews days so wouldn't necessarily rule it out as evidence, it's just one more thing for a good defence lawyer to pick them up on.
I just let my hair grow, it's extra insulation against microwaves as well as reducing chafing from my tinfoil hat. Sounds like you're not too paranoid enough!
That's the thing - while the submission may be voluntary, there are numerous little ways in which the police can make your life uncomfortable if you fail to comply. Nobody wants to turn up at work with a police tail, for instance, or have an officer drag you off for questioning in front of all your friends and family at a gathering such as a wedding, or even to be picked up on every petty little violation - 1mph over the speed limit? You're coming with us, son.
Of course, the stock response is always "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about", which is patently absurd. On the most basic level it neglects to consider false positive DNA matches (which become incresingly likely the more of the population are in the database), that's without even considering the much more serious possibility of accidental or even deliberate cross contamination.
I'd be surprised if there are any rules of conduct such as this. In the UK (well, in England - I believe the rules are different in Scotland), the police are legitimately allowed to use entrapment without it necessarily affecting the validity of the evidence they gain from it.
He could have spotted the lie just as soon as they promised him the samples would be removed. Almost everybody on/. knows that it is almost impossible to delete data from fail-over sites, backups, archived data, etc. in a way that one can guarantee that all traces of the data has really been destroyed everywhere...
It probably wouldn't have mattered whether he volunteered his DNA or not. The police generally just tend to sift through peoples garbage or get their samples from other round-about means if they don't have the cooperation of their victims.
While you're likely right about them finding DNA from other means, if that means is sifting through his garbage then it could matter to the guy if he was actually not guilty. All they can do with "found evidence" such as this is use it to justify bringing in the guy officially and getting a further sample from him at that point if there is a positive match. If there's no positive match, they can't very well store it against his identity because they have no conclusive evidence at that point that it's actually his DNA.
Of course, that doesn't preclude them from following him around until he commits what could be classed as a petty crime (driving offence or something - even a spurious dangerous driving offence which has zero merit would probably be enough) and bringing him in for official sampling at that point, which I guess are the "other round-about means" you mentioned.
I sincerely hope not, or the next big human endeavour will be blowing holes in fault lines to try and "fix" climate change. Although if they can manage to make it a few degrees warmer here in the UK while simultaneously lengthening the weekends by an extra day, I may reconsider my position.
Well we could suspect nefarious link ranking by Google, but it's more likely the fact that anything Google does is instantly linked from every news source on the planet, including the big, respected media websites which generate a lot of page rank and don't want to be seen as missing out on the Next Big Thing.
That's what I always understanded by the term, the ability to, for instance, pause a TV stream and then start watching it x amount of time later but before the programme you are recording has ended, or rewinding/fast forwarding within a captured section of a stream before it's ended, something that was certainly not possible with VCR.
Furthermore I'd be surprised if any government was in such robust shape as to be able to withstand a prolonged, concerted attack of this kind. As others have suggested, singling itself out this way is just a ploy to get more cash for "security", which as we've seen in the past generally means more monitoring of the average guy.
Not to mention that it's trivial for businesses who don't want their users watching videos to simply block the site at the firewall. Why throw out all the additional benefits of a newer, standards compliant browser just to save your admins typing one line in a config file? Not to mention if Youtube ever did make the site completely unusable to IE6 users by implementing a UI they can't access, it would be a couple of hours before a bunch of opportunists threw up sites offering Youtube content with IE6 support using embedded Youtube videos.
The benefit of IE7 is that at least the upgrade path is simpler, since it can be pushed through the windows update process, so when MS finally gets on board with CSS3/HTML5 (hopefully IE9, but we've been burned before), maybe it'll decide to flick the switch and bring everyone up to date.
It's not like they're even going to be preventing users with IE6 using the site (at least in the short to mid term), just not supporting them with additional features. I'm sure at the most basic level it will still allow users to go to the site and view videos.
Even Microsoft want people to move away from IE6. Of course, they want them to move to IE7/8 which often means a Windows OS upgrade, but in either case I don't think they'll be too concerned by this (as far as I know they plan to drop security patch updates in three years anyway, so even if all the existing IE6 users switch to FF/Opera/Chrome/Safari, etc it will still be a good move in MS' view since they won't be hit with the negative publicity when they do stop patching exploits.
Yeah, it looks like any impact will be extremely minimal, at least in the very short term. The only way we'll ever be rid of this thrice cursed browser is when enough company execs can't get their daily fill of kitten jumping into box videos and start asking their IT guys why.
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The process needs to be simple and automatic to fit in with Apple's idea of what these devices should be like. Pairing 2 devices isn't (yet) and so they don't do it (yet.)
The process should be incredibly simple when you make the hardware and the software for both devices. It would be trivial to have a single push-button activation on one device which scans for local devices and triggers an acceptance prompt on the other device - bam, single step pairing. If they're not allowing this then it's not for reasons of UI complexity.
That makes no sense - why do you need to own the rights in order to produce copies of the work with the consent of the true rights holder? The only thing that prevents every company out there legitimately copying and sellings copyrighted works is the threat of legal action from the rights holder, and this should be enough to ensure that the author's own distribution channel follows his rules when they reproduce his works, no need for any transfer of rights (otherwise technically the guy who hits the big PRINT button on a book run would need to own the rights to the work to prevent the company that employs him from suing him for infringement).
The rules that MPs have to stop them lining their own pockets are mind-bogglingly complex purely because MPs have proven so creative at finding new ways to do so. However, to not fall foul of the rules is relatively simple, don't try and get away with as much as possible within the rules, remember why you're meant to be there in the first place (to promote the best interests of your constituents) and stop trying to game the system. So many MPs came out and said they didn't technically break the rules on expenses, or they didn't know they were falling foul of the complex expenses rules in the first place, but the fact is if they'd not been trying to get something for nothing they would have been in zero danger of breaking the rules.
While I don't take a hardline stance that all copyright should be eradicated, playing devil's advocate for a moment, you can't say that artists wouldn't produce worthwhile work in the absence of copyright, because we already know that for hundreds of years they did just that. Some of them did very well for themselves, too.
Charging for performances (for music artists, gigs, for movies, make the cinema experience actually something worthwhile to compete with the home cinema experience, for painters, exhibitions, etc); patronage (actually corporate sponsorship in this day and age would be more likely, and we've already seen how lucrative that can be for artists); asking your fans for donations (much easier now than ever where anyone can set up a page on the internet to accept donations and can use blogging/micro blogging tools to get their message out).
Removing copyright would, of course, mean that artists had to survive on merit rather than having a god-given right to make money, but I honestly can't see how that would be a bad thing. If the ones who don't care passionately about what they do just slink off into the night, has society been cheapened by their loss? Maybe not so many artists will be able to live the millionaire lifestyle, but again, the ones who are only in it for the money are probably not a great loss (and nobody guarantees the rest of society to live a "comfortable" lifestyle but they seem to still turn up for work every day...).
We're already in that world - people already can get anything they want freely from file sharing sites, but they still buy and games, etc are still made. The reasons for this are numerous - maybe a small percentage are people who are scared of being sued, but many more are likely people who want to show their support for a product, or who like the convenience. The middle approach is to prosecute the companies who profit from file sharing, not the end users who are likely your fan base.
Go after the big file sharing sites, play whack a mole, make it painful for them if you want, they're the ones making money from other people's hard work, but stop suing the little guy and everyone wins. Those who are time rich but cash poor still get to enjoy your product, and you get to enjoy the massive goodwill they'll spread to their friends and relatives who are working and will give you money. Instead we have a horrible mess of artists suing their fans, angering the fans and making the artists look like scum, while everyone loses out because of crappy DRM (which probably drives as many people too file sharing sites as the threat of legal action drives away).
In a marginal seat, even a reasonable minority of people voting for these issues could be enough to get them on the agenda of the big parties (after all, telling people you're going to soften your stance on copyright isn't likely to lose you votes, it might lose you some financial support but if the result is a couple of extra seats in parliament then they might consider it worth the hit).
"Forcing authors to lose rights" - NO! A common misconception. *Some* rights maybe, but only to guarantee the rights of the public!
What these "artists" (and I use the term loosely, as this mainly seems to be driven by the labels and many artists actually oppose the labels' standpoint) always seem to gloss over when they talk about "losing rights" is that these aren't some kind of natural, inalienable rights, they're rights specifically granted to them by the public. If the public feel that they are abusing those rights or taking them to the extreme then it's perfectly justifiable to reign them in or remove them completely. What the governments continually forget is that they're meant to serve the will of the people, not the will of the labels.
More to the point, if it doesn't have any of those things, you can brew your own without breaking the terms of your contract and maybe even make a little money (or just share the love) by letting others use it, too.
And similarly, "did Final Fantasy make it to Android?" != "did the iPhone specific version of Final Fantasy make it to Android?", what's your point?
I dunno, it'd be kind of nice to go along and pay my respects. Preferably with a full bladder.
It was reported at the end of last year that the government was recommending the DNA of "innocent" people only be kept on record for 6 years. Seriously, if you're helping the police by offering sample DNA, their duty of responsibility to you should be to test it and eliminate it from their enquiries as soon as possible. What possible reason could they have for keeping it for 6 years, let alone being able to automatically cross search that DNA on non-related offences without your prior knowledge or permission.
There would be plenty of loose hairs collected when they initially brush the hair - and a freshly cut hair doesn't necessarily preclude that it came from a criminal who'd had a hair cut within the last fews days so wouldn't necessarily rule it out as evidence, it's just one more thing for a good defence lawyer to pick them up on.
I just let my hair grow, it's extra insulation against microwaves as well as reducing chafing from my tinfoil hat. Sounds like you're not too paranoid enough!
That's the thing - while the submission may be voluntary, there are numerous little ways in which the police can make your life uncomfortable if you fail to comply. Nobody wants to turn up at work with a police tail, for instance, or have an officer drag you off for questioning in front of all your friends and family at a gathering such as a wedding, or even to be picked up on every petty little violation - 1mph over the speed limit? You're coming with us, son.
Of course, the stock response is always "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about", which is patently absurd. On the most basic level it neglects to consider false positive DNA matches (which become incresingly likely the more of the population are in the database), that's without even considering the much more serious possibility of accidental or even deliberate cross contamination.
I'd be surprised if there are any rules of conduct such as this. In the UK (well, in England - I believe the rules are different in Scotland), the police are legitimately allowed to use entrapment without it necessarily affecting the validity of the evidence they gain from it.
He could have spotted the lie just as soon as they promised him the samples would be removed. Almost everybody on /. knows that it is almost impossible to delete data from fail-over sites, backups, archived data, etc. in a way that one can guarantee that all traces of the data has really been destroyed everywhere...
It probably wouldn't have mattered whether he volunteered his DNA or not. The police generally just tend to sift through peoples garbage or get their samples from other round-about means if they don't have the cooperation of their victims.
While you're likely right about them finding DNA from other means, if that means is sifting through his garbage then it could matter to the guy if he was actually not guilty. All they can do with "found evidence" such as this is use it to justify bringing in the guy officially and getting a further sample from him at that point if there is a positive match. If there's no positive match, they can't very well store it against his identity because they have no conclusive evidence at that point that it's actually his DNA.
Of course, that doesn't preclude them from following him around until he commits what could be classed as a petty crime (driving offence or something - even a spurious dangerous driving offence which has zero merit would probably be enough) and bringing him in for official sampling at that point, which I guess are the "other round-about means" you mentioned.
I sincerely hope not, or the next big human endeavour will be blowing holes in fault lines to try and "fix" climate change. Although if they can manage to make it a few degrees warmer here in the UK while simultaneously lengthening the weekends by an extra day, I may reconsider my position.
Well we could suspect nefarious link ranking by Google, but it's more likely the fact that anything Google does is instantly linked from every news source on the planet, including the big, respected media websites which generate a lot of page rank and don't want to be seen as missing out on the Next Big Thing.
That's what I always understanded by the term, the ability to, for instance, pause a TV stream and then start watching it x amount of time later but before the programme you are recording has ended, or rewinding/fast forwarding within a captured section of a stream before it's ended, something that was certainly not possible with VCR.
Furthermore I'd be surprised if any government was in such robust shape as to be able to withstand a prolonged, concerted attack of this kind. As others have suggested, singling itself out this way is just a ploy to get more cash for "security", which as we've seen in the past generally means more monitoring of the average guy.
Not to mention that it's trivial for businesses who don't want their users watching videos to simply block the site at the firewall. Why throw out all the additional benefits of a newer, standards compliant browser just to save your admins typing one line in a config file? Not to mention if Youtube ever did make the site completely unusable to IE6 users by implementing a UI they can't access, it would be a couple of hours before a bunch of opportunists threw up sites offering Youtube content with IE6 support using embedded Youtube videos.
The benefit of IE7 is that at least the upgrade path is simpler, since it can be pushed through the windows update process, so when MS finally gets on board with CSS3/HTML5 (hopefully IE9, but we've been burned before), maybe it'll decide to flick the switch and bring everyone up to date.
It's not like they're even going to be preventing users with IE6 using the site (at least in the short to mid term), just not supporting them with additional features. I'm sure at the most basic level it will still allow users to go to the site and view videos.
Even Microsoft want people to move away from IE6. Of course, they want them to move to IE7/8 which often means a Windows OS upgrade, but in either case I don't think they'll be too concerned by this (as far as I know they plan to drop security patch updates in three years anyway, so even if all the existing IE6 users switch to FF/Opera/Chrome/Safari, etc it will still be a good move in MS' view since they won't be hit with the negative publicity when they do stop patching exploits.
Yeah, it looks like any impact will be extremely minimal, at least in the very short term. The only way we'll ever be rid of this thrice cursed browser is when enough company execs can't get their daily fill of kitten jumping into box videos and start asking their IT guys why.