These companies are only allowed to present the national security requests mixed in with other numbers, you know, for obfuscation purposes. Is there a way to get the "other" numbers without the obfuscated national security numbers? Because, you know, analysing the "other stuff" without the obfuscation is important too.....
How exactly does he prove that he was in possession of the phones when this happened AND that he wasn't there. It seems that if the location of my phone will prove I'm not in the area of a crime, then just have a friend in another part of town with my phone at the time of the crime. If a phone is needed during the crime, use a burner.... BUT, BUT I wasn't there judge check my mobile phone location. I was across town talking to my girl.....
Way back in the last century when I had a Motorolla Star-Tac flip phone (this is important) I always turned it off. In order to save the battery I even found the setting to turn off the little flashing light that indicated that it was on. However; when the pilot walked out of the cockpit to go to the bathroom, his Star-Tac phone was flashing. I pointed this out to the flight attendant. Her response was "Are you sure?" So, I took out my phone (which was off) and showed her the I had the same phone and knew what I was talking about. She was very happy. She said as soon as he returned to the cockpit she was going to give him a "raft of Sh*t about it". That was in 1998 to be exact. The pilots didn't care even back then. I "mostly" turn the power off so that my battery doesn't go dead looking for towers when none are around. If I forget "oh well". So far, none of the planes I've been on have crashed when we're on the ground and I go to turn it on and find out that I left it on because I was distracted at the time they said to turn it off.
Wow, New York is well on the way to implementing the Pre-Crime bureau but without the 3 future readers in the pond. Authorities have become so preoccupied with stopping crime before it happens that they have become blind to the fact that they are the ones committing the crimes by stomping on the Constitution they swore to protect. If it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny.
Last time we wrote about it, it had been shelved following some aggressive work by lobbyists.
Please be more clear. Were these the good lobbyist or the bad lobbyists. It is rare that only one side is doing any lobbying. If lobbying is bad, then neither side should be doing it. Like many of the discussions here, lobbying is a "tool" that is used by both/all sides of the argument. Are these the evil purble lobbyist, the orangtuan underground lobbyist, or ones who happen to be working toward the side you like. Please stop villifying lobbying/lobbyist since "it is a tool"/"they are tool users" that can support either/any side of a proposal/argument. Otherwise, the next time there is a call to "lobby your local government representative" to support "XYZ" good position that you like, supporters will need to get over the bad lobbyist picture that has been painted. Please correctly state the position you want to support and the one you want to defeat and stop villifying the tools of the trade since you will want to use them to support your position as well to fight the good fight.
What it seems Bloomberg and many other politicians would like is to put everyone in a pen like good sheep and keep out the rest of that nasty world for us. However; being in the pen means eating, working and pooping on his schedule to his drummer. Unfortunatly, in the real world where we live, the only way to stop terrorists is to show that that "its not working". It used to be that people died in a plane hijacking. Then everyone just followed orders and nobody died. Now planes don't even get hijacked anymore. The problem seems to be that the "powers that be" want to stop all the bad stuff from happening before it happens (remember the perfect FBI record of stopping all of their own terrorist attacks). Unfortunatly, what we need is better ways for all of the various police forces to catch up (once again) to the bad guys. It will always be an effort to catch the criminals after the crime is done. There will never be a way to herd a group of free people into the pen and protect them from the big bad world. As I remember from the movie "An American President", "Democracy is hard work. You have to work at it every day" (probably a bad paraphrase). There is no hope for the maintenance of our freedom by taking it all away. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.
When searching for flights, clearing cookies is mandatory. I searched for flights once. Got called away to do some work. Went back to the saved flights and the prices on the flights had gone up 75%. It was only two hours later. I cleared the cookies for that web site, and the prices went back down. Another fun thing is the "Buy Now only x+1 seats left" scam. I was looking for flights for my family (the 4 of us) but got tired up changing it to 4 seats, 2 adults and 2 children. So I started leaving the default of just 1. On every list of flights was a note to "hurry up, only 2 seats left at this price". So, after I found the fligts I was interested in, I cleared the cookies and specified 2 adults and 2 children. It was amazing, now there were "only 5 seats left". So, I thought, let's stretch it some. Cleared the cookies again and entered, 8 adults and 8 children. It was truly amazing. In the 5 minutes since the last search, 12 people canceled their flights and now only 17 seats were left at that price (same price per seat per flight as the other searches). So, now I just ignore the "only x seats left" because it is a flat out lying scam most of the time because some people will hurry up and book because they don't want to miss out on that 1 remaining seat.
I only know this because I have learned a lot about computers and browsing the Internet, plus I traveled every week for 15 years for work. I could more easily "see" all the flights online rather than listen to a travel agent give me their limited selection of flights. So, I started looking for flights myself (especially non-stops) and just told the travel agents the flights I wanted.
Knowledge is power, as with many, many other things in life, it is important to learn as much as you can and not necessarily rely on the "experts" that you trust to pull the wool over your eyes.
IE wasn't a blatant copy of Mosaic. Microcrappy bought Mosaic and destroyed it in the process of creating IE. So, not blatant copy, blatant destruction of a good product they bought. This is not to say either way was better for us. Just a more accurate rendition of history.
But But But The Redcoats
But But But The Germans
But But But The Communists
But But But For The Children
But But But The Hackers
But But But The Indians (you know, the real ones from India)
But But But The Mexicans
But But But The Terrorists
But But But The Hackers
Personnally, I see a trend here...... 50 bitcoins to whoever can predict next years But But But..... from the Congress Critters who seem to be unable to balance a very real budget, but can spend Billions chasing the next boogeyman that was created via FUD.
One HUGE unintended consequence of this is that now teachers are going to have to teach all students under the age of 18 to very carefully read the Terms of Service on any website they land on to do research for school. Especially any class that references current events.
To protect themselves (like NYT did), most big news services are going to have this clause also. So every student trying to research current events are going to have to be trained to be lawyers in order to read the TOS to see if they can use that online service to do their research.
Let's add some secondary liability too. Does this mean that Google and other search engines are going to need to know the age of the person doing the search so that they can eliminate search results that they are not "protecting a child from viewing" because they are too young? This could get very rediculous very fast.
When ReDigi points out that, under this interpretation, digital files have no first sale rights, the court hits back that this is not true. After all, it argues, you can still sell your hard drive with the original file on it.
Don't ever download to your harddisk. Download to a CD. Then "rip" it to your harddrive and use it there. The CD is then your first copy, so when you no longer need that track, you can sell it (as long as you get rid of the copies on your harddrive and other music devices first).
People like to see places they are familiar with in their movies/games. "The Sum of All Fears" blew up a nuclear bomb during a football game in Baltimore. It grossed close to $200 million. You know what? Nobody was actually hurt or killed (or do we count the bits in the computer). There is an old expression that I think aptly fits, "Get a Life" and I want to add, "Stay out of Fiction if you can't handle it".
We are seeing more and more that when you work for the DOJ its OK to do anything, even if its illegal. Just make sure the legal doublespeak obfusticates it. As a citizen, watch out for double jeoperdy with charges at the state and federal level (and don't even start THINKING about committing a crime because just talking about it is going to be just as bad as doing it). How do they maintain a straight face with all of these double standards.
After 12 years of "travelers are criminals" treatment at the airport, they still haven't caught any terrorists. They've thrown away lots of toothpaste, water and soda pop (I can still see the trash can full of these hazardous materials right next to the screening area where it makes me feel so much safer). But no terrorists! There are plenty of stories of airports being emptied after someone self-reports that they brought in a gun, but no terrorists. Oh wait, I know "See its working, no terrorists". But they still don't seem to be able to catch the people who "accidently" have a gun and aren't even trying to hide it. How are they going to catch the ones that are trying to hide them. Its actually quite easy to break down a gun into pieces and hide the pieces in the clutter of a regular suitcase. Never mind, I remember now, "Just trust them, they know how to grope every ones' genitals without my help".
This is just a money grab by the school board. It is actually two separate issues. One is the teachers. There "work" could be considered a work for hire, if thier contract specifically states it is a work for hire. That is part of the law. The students were not hired or contracted, so that part of the "policy" would be shot down as soon as it got to court. Part two is that the students were not hired in any way shape or form. Since the students are not hired and don't have a contract, the school system is not their employer and under federal law have no right to their work. The taxpayer money paying the teachers "should" mean that all of the teachers "work", done on the taxpayer's dime and equipment should be in the public domain or at least school system property anyway at least for public schools and private schools that are taking public taxpayer money. I would love to see how PG county is going to get around the requirements of copyright law on this. The law is specific in that it requires a contractural agreement. All teacher contracts have to be approved by the teachers union first. This means that next the teachers union is going to try to make a money grab for the teachers work, just watch.
To repeat on the point of what will CISPA (or any law) do to help the situation. What evidence is there that any new law will stop the blankety-blank-war attacks. I mean just like laws against stealing, killing, and jaywalking have totally stopped all of those activities, passing CISPA will just instantly stop all of those activities that the insiders want to call Cyber something to make it sound ominous. Anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet will still need to put a lot of effort into providing security (to everything). The only thing a new law could possibly provide is the ability to go after suspected violators way after the fact AND to use to HARASS others who do something that is not liked. Its alredy illegal to break in and take things, now just better locks are needed, not new laws.
To expand on Ninja's comment, its time and resources that are required to "invent" something. The time to pursue the new invention and the resources to "make" it. The price of a computer is small in life's absolute terms. Plenty of free programming languages are available. Free web servers, databases, and all the other pieces are generally available free. Now the time and some effort start getting involved to put it all together and then build the "million dollar idea" on top of the existing stuff. Where software patents seem to run into a problem is with the separation of the idea from the implementation. Take for example, the infamous Amazon "One-Click" patent. They didn't invent clicking, they didn't invent a sales check-out, but they patented the "idea" of clicking once to check out and pay for a purchase. So, due to this patent, no one else anywhere on the planet can allow a computer system to let a person make a purchase of a product with one click of the mouse? I could easily see if they obtained a patent on all of the combination of the various parts that went into making it a reality, the combination of a database (which they wrote of course because they couldn't have a patent on comeone else's database), Web Server (ditto, no patent here), http, tcp, and so on, can't be patented either. But, the code that glued it all together to make a "fine" customer experience maybe could be patented. BUT, in that case, the idea of a "One-Click" check-out experience should still be able to be developed using a different set of "glue" code that hooked everything together to make the experience work. So much in the software patent world seems to be trying to patent the idea and not the implementation. I am sure that Quicken would love to have a patent on home and small business accouting software because it would lock out all of the competition. But, despite the fact that Microsoft gave up and Quicken bought out all of the competition, many new competitors have cropped up. After 30 years in the computer business, I have a very difficult time making sense out of what software patents seem to claim. Software patents seem to be well written to obfuscate what is being claimed so that it can be broadened as desire. It includes a requirement that "system and method" be used as many times as possible as well. What seems to be missing is the courts taking a close look at the various "systems and methods" that are claimed are actually infringed, or just the idea that was supposed to be implmented.
presenting the counts
These companies are only allowed to present the national security requests mixed in with other numbers, you know, for obfuscation purposes. Is there a way to get the "other" numbers without the obfuscated national security numbers? Because, you know, analysing the "other stuff" without the obfuscation is important too.....
Re: The Phones
How exactly does he prove that he was in possession of the phones when this happened AND that he wasn't there. It seems that if the location of my phone will prove I'm not in the area of a crime, then just have a friend in another part of town with my phone at the time of the crime. If a phone is needed during the crime, use a burner.... BUT, BUT I wasn't there judge check my mobile phone location. I was across town talking to my girl.....
I'm a non-believer
Way back in the last century when I had a Motorolla Star-Tac flip phone (this is important) I always turned it off. In order to save the battery I even found the setting to turn off the little flashing light that indicated that it was on. However; when the pilot walked out of the cockpit to go to the bathroom, his Star-Tac phone was flashing. I pointed this out to the flight attendant. Her response was "Are you sure?" So, I took out my phone (which was off) and showed her the I had the same phone and knew what I was talking about. She was very happy. She said as soon as he returned to the cockpit she was going to give him a "raft of Sh*t about it". That was in 1998 to be exact. The pilots didn't care even back then. I "mostly" turn the power off so that my battery doesn't go dead looking for towers when none are around. If I forget "oh well". So far, none of the planes I've been on have crashed when we're on the ground and I go to turn it on and find out that I left it on because I was distracted at the time they said to turn it off.
Re: Re:
Just with a really really really long cord that doesn't have her shows anyway.
When Does Tom Cruise Step into the Picture
Wow, New York is well on the way to implementing the Pre-Crime bureau but without the 3 future readers in the pond. Authorities have become so preoccupied with stopping crime before it happens that they have become blind to the fact that they are the ones committing the crimes by stomping on the Constitution they swore to protect. If it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny.
Stop "Villifying" the Tool
Please be more clear. Were these the good lobbyist or the bad lobbyists. It is rare that only one side is doing any lobbying. If lobbying is bad, then neither side should be doing it. Like many of the discussions here, lobbying is a "tool" that is used by both/all sides of the argument. Are these the evil purble lobbyist, the orangtuan underground lobbyist, or ones who happen to be working toward the side you like. Please stop villifying lobbying/lobbyist since "it is a tool"/"they are tool users" that can support either/any side of a proposal/argument. Otherwise, the next time there is a call to "lobby your local government representative" to support "XYZ" good position that you like, supporters will need to get over the bad lobbyist picture that has been painted. Please correctly state the position you want to support and the one you want to defeat and stop villifying the tools of the trade since you will want to use them to support your position as well to fight the good fight.
The Pre-Police are not here yet
What it seems Bloomberg and many other politicians would like is to put everyone in a pen like good sheep and keep out the rest of that nasty world for us. However; being in the pen means eating, working and pooping on his schedule to his drummer. Unfortunatly, in the real world where we live, the only way to stop terrorists is to show that that "its not working". It used to be that people died in a plane hijacking. Then everyone just followed orders and nobody died. Now planes don't even get hijacked anymore. The problem seems to be that the "powers that be" want to stop all the bad stuff from happening before it happens (remember the perfect FBI record of stopping all of their own terrorist attacks). Unfortunatly, what we need is better ways for all of the various police forces to catch up (once again) to the bad guys. It will always be an effort to catch the criminals after the crime is done. There will never be a way to herd a group of free people into the pen and protect them from the big bad world. As I remember from the movie "An American President", "Democracy is hard work. You have to work at it every day" (probably a bad paraphrase). There is no hope for the maintenance of our freedom by taking it all away. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.
Re: cookies
When searching for flights, clearing cookies is mandatory. I searched for flights once. Got called away to do some work. Went back to the saved flights and the prices on the flights had gone up 75%. It was only two hours later. I cleared the cookies for that web site, and the prices went back down. Another fun thing is the "Buy Now only x+1 seats left" scam. I was looking for flights for my family (the 4 of us) but got tired up changing it to 4 seats, 2 adults and 2 children. So I started leaving the default of just 1. On every list of flights was a note to "hurry up, only 2 seats left at this price". So, after I found the fligts I was interested in, I cleared the cookies and specified 2 adults and 2 children. It was amazing, now there were "only 5 seats left". So, I thought, let's stretch it some. Cleared the cookies again and entered, 8 adults and 8 children. It was truly amazing. In the 5 minutes since the last search, 12 people canceled their flights and now only 17 seats were left at that price (same price per seat per flight as the other searches). So, now I just ignore the "only x seats left" because it is a flat out lying scam most of the time because some people will hurry up and book because they don't want to miss out on that 1 remaining seat.
I only know this because I have learned a lot about computers and browsing the Internet, plus I traveled every week for 15 years for work. I could more easily "see" all the flights online rather than listen to a travel agent give me their limited selection of flights. So, I started looking for flights myself (especially non-stops) and just told the travel agents the flights I wanted.
Knowledge is power, as with many, many other things in life, it is important to learn as much as you can and not necessarily rely on the "experts" that you trust to pull the wool over your eyes.
Re: Re: Re: Hackers are minor alongside Microsoft.
IE wasn't a blatant copy of Mosaic. Microcrappy bought Mosaic and destroyed it in the process of creating IE. So, not blatant copy, blatant destruction of a good product they bought. This is not to say either way was better for us. Just a more accurate rendition of history.
Have I got the order right
But But But The Redcoats
But But But The Germans
But But But The Communists
But But But For The Children
But But But The Hackers
But But But The Indians (you know, the real ones from India)
But But But The Mexicans
But But But The Terrorists
But But But The Hackers
Personnally, I see a trend here...... 50 bitcoins to whoever can predict next years But But But..... from the Congress Critters who seem to be unable to balance a very real budget, but can spend Billions chasing the next boogeyman that was created via FUD.
What???
And Still IS!
Schools Better Inform Teachers of This
One HUGE unintended consequence of this is that now teachers are going to have to teach all students under the age of 18 to very carefully read the Terms of Service on any website they land on to do research for school. Especially any class that references current events.
To protect themselves (like NYT did), most big news services are going to have this clause also. So every student trying to research current events are going to have to be trained to be lawyers in order to read the TOS to see if they can use that online service to do their research.
Let's add some secondary liability too. Does this mean that Google and other search engines are going to need to know the age of the person doing the search so that they can eliminate search results that they are not "protecting a child from viewing" because they are too young? This could get very rediculous very fast.
The Bear has been Poked
...... will the bear turn around and take that abusive bite!
They opened a huge hole here
Don't ever download to your harddisk. Download to a CD. Then "rip" it to your harddrive and use it there. The CD is then your first copy, so when you no longer need that track, you can sell it (as long as you get rid of the copies on your harddrive and other music devices first).
Nuclear Bomb Explodes during Football Game in Baltimore----you better duck
People like to see places they are familiar with in their movies/games. "The Sum of All Fears" blew up a nuclear bomb during a football game in Baltimore. It grossed close to $200 million. You know what? Nobody was actually hurt or killed (or do we count the bits in the computer). There is an old expression that I think aptly fits, "Get a Life" and I want to add, "Stay out of Fiction if you can't handle it".
Just Trust Us
We are seeing more and more that when you work for the DOJ its OK to do anything, even if its illegal. Just make sure the legal doublespeak obfusticates it. As a citizen, watch out for double jeoperdy with charges at the state and federal level (and don't even start THINKING about committing a crime because just talking about it is going to be just as bad as doing it). How do they maintain a straight face with all of these double standards.
But where are the terrorists
After 12 years of "travelers are criminals" treatment at the airport, they still haven't caught any terrorists. They've thrown away lots of toothpaste, water and soda pop (I can still see the trash can full of these hazardous materials right next to the screening area where it makes me feel so much safer). But no terrorists! There are plenty of stories of airports being emptied after someone self-reports that they brought in a gun, but no terrorists. Oh wait, I know "See its working, no terrorists". But they still don't seem to be able to catch the people who "accidently" have a gun and aren't even trying to hide it. How are they going to catch the ones that are trying to hide them. Its actually quite easy to break down a gun into pieces and hide the pieces in the clutter of a regular suitcase. Never mind, I remember now, "Just trust them, they know how to grope every ones' genitals without my help".
Bad School Board
This is just a money grab by the school board. It is actually two separate issues. One is the teachers. There "work" could be considered a work for hire, if thier contract specifically states it is a work for hire. That is part of the law. The students were not hired or contracted, so that part of the "policy" would be shot down as soon as it got to court. Part two is that the students were not hired in any way shape or form. Since the students are not hired and don't have a contract, the school system is not their employer and under federal law have no right to their work. The taxpayer money paying the teachers "should" mean that all of the teachers "work", done on the taxpayer's dime and equipment should be in the public domain or at least school system property anyway at least for public schools and private schools that are taking public taxpayer money. I would love to see how PG county is going to get around the requirements of copyright law on this. The law is specific in that it requires a contractural agreement. All teacher contracts have to be approved by the teachers union first. This means that next the teachers union is going to try to make a money grab for the teachers work, just watch.
Another Law that will What
To repeat on the point of what will CISPA (or any law) do to help the situation. What evidence is there that any new law will stop the blankety-blank-war attacks. I mean just like laws against stealing, killing, and jaywalking have totally stopped all of those activities, passing CISPA will just instantly stop all of those activities that the insiders want to call Cyber something to make it sound ominous. Anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet will still need to put a lot of effort into providing security (to everything). The only thing a new law could possibly provide is the ability to go after suspected violators way after the fact AND to use to HARASS others who do something that is not liked. Its alredy illegal to break in and take things, now just better locks are needed, not new laws.
Time and Resources
To expand on Ninja's comment, its time and resources that are required to "invent" something. The time to pursue the new invention and the resources to "make" it. The price of a computer is small in life's absolute terms. Plenty of free programming languages are available. Free web servers, databases, and all the other pieces are generally available free. Now the time and some effort start getting involved to put it all together and then build the "million dollar idea" on top of the existing stuff. Where software patents seem to run into a problem is with the separation of the idea from the implementation. Take for example, the infamous Amazon "One-Click" patent. They didn't invent clicking, they didn't invent a sales check-out, but they patented the "idea" of clicking once to check out and pay for a purchase. So, due to this patent, no one else anywhere on the planet can allow a computer system to let a person make a purchase of a product with one click of the mouse? I could easily see if they obtained a patent on all of the combination of the various parts that went into making it a reality, the combination of a database (which they wrote of course because they couldn't have a patent on comeone else's database), Web Server (ditto, no patent here), http, tcp, and so on, can't be patented either. But, the code that glued it all together to make a "fine" customer experience maybe could be patented. BUT, in that case, the idea of a "One-Click" check-out experience should still be able to be developed using a different set of "glue" code that hooked everything together to make the experience work. So much in the software patent world seems to be trying to patent the idea and not the implementation. I am sure that Quicken would love to have a patent on home and small business accouting software because it would lock out all of the competition. But, despite the fact that Microsoft gave up and Quicken bought out all of the competition, many new competitors have cropped up. After 30 years in the computer business, I have a very difficult time making sense out of what software patents seem to claim. Software patents seem to be well written to obfuscate what is being claimed so that it can be broadened as desire. It includes a requirement that "system and method" be used as many times as possible as well. What seems to be missing is the courts taking a close look at the various "systems and methods" that are claimed are actually infringed, or just the idea that was supposed to be implmented.