Posts by dssf
1381 posts • joined Wednesday 11th August 2010 19:47 GMT
Now, Vegas casinos intend to ban GG.
http://www.latinospost.com/articles/19447/20130518/google-glass-privacy-concerns-raised-congress-questions-asked-larry-page.htm
I bed Disney will be next, since GG might capture ride crash incidents more readily than ordinary cameras and camcorders might.
You know that this is a Google Trojan, right?
You know that this is a Google Trojan, right? It stands a good chance of raking in BILLONS for Google
On several fronts, this is Google shafting ms, Apple, and a slew of other companies and map makers and vacation/tour/travel agencies/sites.
-- With these glasses, now Google can SUPER enhance Google Maps. Now, instead of talking to Google Maps and asking about nearby sites to see, GG can overlay the most highly rated or most underrated nearby sites an even use arrows to guide the turn-by-turn-on-foot navigation
-- Users visiting World Heritage Sites/Treasures can get live, customized tour guides for an extra fee
-- Museums and libraries might be able to piggy back on the service and pick up some extra foot traffic and even funding
-- Law Enforcement agencies can have stylish tactical and beat/patrol tools, with the glasses offering instant facial recognition to find stool pigeions, ummm, CIs (Confidential Informants), and even overlay the visuals of what nearby officers see. If cops are in a firefight, their own POV can be overlaid to offer subsequent responders (copos, fire fighters, paramedics, FBI, etc) a better picture of which officers are down, which are low on ammo, what innocent by-standers need extraction, etc.. Cops on warrants service can be live-fed legal cues, and watch commanders and agency attorneys can collectively ensure that servers knock on and knock down the correct doors, not the wrong ones
-- The military can do the above and more
-- Reactor and fracking plants and power plant employees can use them to facilitate inspection and live feeds of plant conditions
-- Families and travelers can take periodic snapshots of what is going on around them, for posterity
-- Parole boards, probation courts, and even insurance companies can use these to lower premiums and to watch over people/insured
So long as the public do not abuse place such as Costco, Whole Foods, museums, government benefits issuance buildings, secured federal buildings, etc, Congress may not need to lay down reiterated, draconian rules/restrictions/laws.
Tax Repatriation Idea...
Tax repatriation scheme 2013-05-17 idea 2, expansion of my idea 1
Reduce the nominal 35% tax to this scheme:
-- All US corporations having substatial money abroad but wishing to repatriate it must, collectively:
-- Pay a 15% income repatriation tax for 2014-2018
-- pay a 10% income repatriation tax for 2019-2040
-- pay off all the college debt incurred but not paid off by USA citizens graduating and failing students who enrolled between 1984-2014, program to end by 2019
-- subsidize by corporate division of student pool the college or continuing education costs of students enrolling in 2013-2060
-- IRS/Uncle Sam DO NOT get to tax the students on any of the subsidy or tuition paid for by the corporations
-- The IRS/USA do NOT get to "offset downward" the obligated support to school districts
-- The corporations DO NOT get to write off the subsidies on the tuitions/grants/etc., since they are getting the right to repatriate income at a very reduced tax rate and because they will benefit from having a US education population treated the way high school students are accorded in some European countries
-- The US Dept of Education gets a number of years to fund the increase in wages/salaries to deserving and continually-educating teachers. Unions would be stripped of rights/powers to protect laggard teachers, helping to further divert funds to increase the salaries of remaining teachers.
Corporations and billionaires could just create some sort of lobby for "participatory tax application" and just tell Congress EFFYOO.
Something HAS GOT to be done about the US education system. It's broken, disproportionately funded, weak, and in need of updating.
Posted in Bing uncloaks Klingon translator
Kam-chehh chimeechek!
Earther: KAM-CHEHH ChimeeCHEK!
Gowron: You swear WELL in Klingon, Picard.
(I think he offered him Klingon Blood Wine, or maybe the scene cut to a commercial break/ad insertion, hehehe).......
No Google phone without data plan
No Google phone without data plan...
Since Google is already has my contacts, I wish that Google provided a phone client/tool/app that did not try to verify my phone by phone number, since I do not have a live phone number and do not have a data plan.
I tried installing (what is it? Talk?), but it wanted to verify me by my phone number. I entered my old, expired number on a lark, and of course it failed.
I once wanted to use Kakao, back in late 2011 or early 2012, but the damned app tore through my contact list, without giving me a chance to cherry-pick what contacts Kakao would be able to see. Then, in 2012, when I went to Korea and met up with a friend who either interns in Kakao or knows some one reasonably well-placed in Kakao, I told him how infuriated I was that Kakao combed my contact list, and probably scooped up all sorts of non-phone contacts whom I entered and to which I appended personal notes. Nothing ever became of it, to my awareness.
Just days ago, I was going to try another phone app, but it wanted permission to review and modify my contacts and other things.
WTF is google so goddamned reticent about giving users a private, maximum security vault so as to deny apps from going through our phone lists?
Suppose one keeps several friends or contacts in the phone, one of whom has a permanent restraining order to stay away from another contact in my list. Now, if one of these apps, including google and facebook, start meta analyzing these people and determines we have not listed either on our friends list, but one or both of them has a fb or g+ account but has not told the other, and both set themselves up to be diffficult for the other to be found, then one of these frackin' phoning or chatting apps might one day say, "So and so is a friend of soo an soo.... Why not connect?
This is fu*king dangerous, and there needs to be a powerful lobby to once and for all put an end to this, no matter what the telcos, fb, google, or anyone else thinks or says.
What Kakao and these other apps are doing is akin to peering over the shoulder of someone opening his or her wheelbook (flip-open paper contact/note pad/tablet), and then being quasi-vulnerable to being an agent of a snoop who wants to scan that book of contacts.
Just infuriating.
In the words of Morrisssey...
"Meat is Murder"...
These URLs might interest some: "5 CEOs that truly deserve being fired"
These URLs might interest some: "5 CEOs that truly deserve being fired":
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/05/12/oops-5-ceos-that-should-have-already-been-fired-cisco-ge-walmart-sears-microsoft/
"On Steve Ballmere's Gravestone"
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-230468/
Not taking sides one way or the other... Just sharing the URLs since one is in a Sunday paper I am reading now.
They wanted to exceed 99
Bottles of Beer on the Wall...
Hahahaha
WTF is writing these Govt drafts? Interns? UNIMAGINATIVE Interns?
WTF is writing these Govt drafts? Interns? UNIMAGINATIVE Interns?
"If enacted, the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 would ensure that any software and firmware that comes with a device can be modified legally by its owner, so long as they have the device physically (or via an agent) under their control, and have a legitimate contract to use a wireless provider's network – and that it isn't used for piracy."
And,
"The need for such legislation stems from a curious decision in October last year to amend the terms of the DMCA to effectively block the unlocking of devices and jailbreaking tablets, which had been legal since 2010. Unlocking's fine if your network provider says so – but so far their attitude is that they'll agree when your contract's up."
I take extremely prejudicial exceptioin to the first para because it forgets to allow for those whose contracts 1) lapsed properly, and 2) also continued month-to-month with no required contractual re-signing (which mine did).
I take exception to the second para because it assumes we have to WAIT for the carrier to ACKNOWLEDGE that our contracts expired, when their damned database should automatically do that without fail, without hesitation, without prejudice, without us having to do a GOD-damned further step to be legally in the clear.
I don't have the connections to ram home, bleedingly so, my terse position, so I hope someone is reading this and has the ability to coerce an emergency re-write of the draft, and who has the connections to tell the wireless telco providers/carrriers that they'll hang by the loins if they obstruct our implicit, no-explanation-needed RIGHT to have our contract-expired phones be in a safe harbor for owner-unlocking and rooting, etc. If the user breaks the law with an unlocked phone, it should not matter whether the phone was legally unlocked, illegally unlocked, or used once or regularly in the commisssion of a crime. Those should be separate events, and the unlocking bit should -- if carried out during the existence of a contract --- an ORIGINAL contract, not a renewed one --- cause only a cancellation of the phone's access to THAT carrier's network.
Severe Competition
DD is probably just doing this because their asses are being kicked by, singly or collectively:
- Krispy Kreme
- Tom-n-Tom's (Tom-Toms, colloquially locally)
- Holly's
- Homestead Coffee
- Caffeine Gurunaru
- Angel in Us
- Angel in You (maybe it is only in Wangshimni, where I drank a few times after it became AiY, probably a location bought out after AiU's lease expired or was bought out)
- Nestle's
- Starbucks
- etc, etc.
I have seen only a few Starbucks in my 6 months there, and only drank at 2 of them only because one of my Korean friends who used to work at one in his early college days thinks fondly of Starbucks.
Other than that, I used the ones I mentioned (Tom-Tom's the most), except Nestles and DD. I used KK once, but found the donuts lacking compared to the US version. Maybe they are healthier -- umm, less unhealthy due to the smaller sizes and lighter ingredients, I dunno.
Mostly, I think the DD and KK use smaller stores (as does one of the Korean shops I mentioned above) because the land costs are so prohibitively pricey. But, most of them are corporate owned, and since Koreans take their coffee SERIOUSLY, having dumped or recently shunned tea), the Ferengi ROA stating "Expand or Die" seems to have gripped the corporates.
DD probably is using this as an intense gimmick. But, too many Koreans eating fattening donuts are going to get fat and have "endtense" experiences. One of my Korean friends in Wangshimni laughed when I lamented, while staring at a woman carting off 3 or 4 boxes of western donuts, around 4PM or so on a Saturday, IIRC), "There are going to be a LOT of FFFFAT Korean pretty soon...."
But, it is funny (and correspondingly sad) to see a young, skinny Korean carrying a strap-banded stack of 3 or 4 boxes....
Booking hotels and hostels in China, Japan, S Korea. etc
Require foreigners to surrender (temporarily, for immigration and law enforcement reasons) one's passport during the on-site registration/room assignment process.
In all three of those locations, even in Vietnam, I had to.
I am not stating this to defend AirBnB, as they've got other issues, such as not prominently or at all stating on their site that the renter or owner of the rental property must pay local taxes (in SF, the Hotel Tax is 14%, which would savage AirBnB if locally compelled to pay the tax all the other legit hotels must pay, even in SROs, I think), and currently, AirBnB is not being made to pay those required taxes locally. IIRC, New York has outright banned AirBnB from operating in NY until they make reparations and until they collect and remit taxes moving forward.
But, there is another thought: I think that (given the number of spammings of AirBnB on my fb wall about "your friend (name) likes AirBnB", as if i really give a flying frack) fb and airbnb are entering the top-bottom ritual dance to join at the hip. I suspect that one approached the other for courtship, but that fb probably said, "Bend OVER if you want to be on our platform.
Instead of retro-rules that *seem* well-intentioned for the users
How about giving us VAULTS to keep voice apps from raiding our contact lists? If we only want a voice app so we can try to compensate for no longer having a phone plan, then, why the hell does a phone app need one-time approval to plunder our contact list? Sometimes, those names in the contact list are not people we talk to but people about whom we make flags/tags/personal notes, and we DAMNED SURE do NOT want 3rd party types being privvy to that stuff.
How about giving us the ability to install and tweak firewalls without having to be root or without having to deal with restrictions imposed by the carrier?
How about making carrier-locked phones become non-carrier-locked when our contracts formally expire? If we do not remain with the carrier, WHY the HELL should their custom ROM impositions remain in force on our phones? For instance, I am no longer with my carrier, but when I installed Google Talk, Google told me it was installing a version customized just for my phone by my carrier, which has not been my carrier for over 11 months. I have not had a phone account in all that time, and yet, Android does not know how to unenslave itself.
I a phone contract expires, and the user does not reactivate it before the number is recycled, and if a Google phone number verification fails, then obviously, the phone contract lapsed and the carrier should no long impose upon the phone, especially if the phone has been month-to-month for a 6 months or a year prior to any other reason the phone is not part of the carrier any more.
Gods, google. You guys and girls need to be more creative and more user-considerate.
Not takings sides one way or the other, but
For all sales involving credit cards or processed via a Visa/MC-like infrastructure, those two companies already KNOW the local tax rates. All they have to do is implement a "VPOS" or "Virtual Point-of-Sale", and assign to the recipient's address the tax the state is after.
If the shipper is required to collec information about the ultimate recipient and use, say:
Business -- Personal Property of Business/Depreciated on a Schedule
Person/Individual/Non-Business -- Personal Property/Gift/Donation
Non-Profit/School/Trust Account -- blah blah blah
then the local jurisdiction would get the money or get the stats/metadata about the taxes they are exempting.
I imagine that that bill will have some clause (and, "claws") about keeping tabs on the flow of money.
As a shipper, shippers might want to collect the info just as a hedge against governments demanding they pay or collect more taxes from the declared (under threat of perjury) destination so that the businesses can say, "THAT tax is NOT ours -- you allowed the below-cutoff-line businesses and individuals to not pay this/that tax...."
Just some thoughts...
Left Hand-Right Hand Probably in Play, to the Benefit of the
Telcos.
With their lobbyists - in a closed session with the Senate/et al), they'll just claim that too-frequent updates (ROMs, Cyanogen, etc.) will disrupt the ability to collect timely info that (they'll claim) helped to avert numerous terrorist acts otherwise likely to occur.
Of course, this assumes the Senate is lame enough to believe the the most hardened terrorists are not smart enough to mod their phones or use evasive, elusive intermediaries.
Yeh, as with ......
Capricorn One
Of Apes and Men? Dinosaurs?
http://www.necn.com/04/11/13/Ancient-creature-mixed-human-apelike-tra/landing_scitech.html?&apID=ad866428c3ce44239b62189d1761851d
"NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have gained new insights into an extinct South African creature with an intriguing mix of human and apelike traits, and apparently an unusual way of walking. But they still haven't pinned down where it fits on our evolutionary family tree.
It will take more fossil discoveries to sort that out.
The human branch of the evolutionary tree, called Homo, is thought to have arisen from a group of ancient species called australopithecines. The newly studied species is a member of this group, and so its similarities to humans are enticing for tackling the riddle of how Homo appeared.
It's called Australopithecus sediba (aw-STRAL-oh-PITH-uh-kus se-DEE-bah), which means "southern ape, wellspring." It lived some 2 million years ago, and it both climbed in trees and walked upright. Its remains were discovered in 2008 when the 9-year-old son of a paleoanthropologist accidently came across a bone in South Africa.
A 2011 analysis of some of A. sediba's bones showed a combination of human and more apelike traits, like a snapshot of evolution in action. That theme continues in six papers published online Thursday by the journal Science, which complete the initial examination of two partial skeletons and an isolated shinbone."
A small article about the investors dumping ms stock...
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/investors-dump-microsoft-pc-stocks-bleak-news-18934120
One way to boost computer sales...
One way to boost computer sales...
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/04/11/gartner_microsoft_intel_profits
Scaring the shit out of gamers, and admonishing them to buy a "dedicated machine for gaming" would be ONE truthful way to do it. I've for years suspected that games were hacked/cracked. I posited that the longer you are online, the more you'll experience crashes, and some of those crashes will be related to malicious activity of SOME sort -- either to steal data or to steal resources, or both. Now, if the hardware and gaming companies want to live, they might end up doing a combination of subsidized phones and gaming parlor royalties combos to move hardware and renew licensing.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2013/04/134_132570.html
But, we'll see. It'll all depend on the depth of the pockets of gamers, their abiity to value isolation of games from other software, and the ability to carry multiple laptops or have multiple machines in their rooms if they do not already do so.
Gaming/PC Bang Analogy?
In Korea, Nexon, a gaming company of significant note, is reducing the royalties owed by gaming shops. The high royalties were killing some of the PC Bangs (pronounced pee-shee-ppohng, in Korean). Some, in good locattions are very busy, daily. In in Itaewon, observed a dying gaming parlor being transformed into a pool hall. Took a few weeks to make the conversion. It had to -- it was devoid of significant gamer counts for months on end. Others just faded away.
If the computer maker do not see a reason for improvement, and consumers don't buy in decent quantities, then some of these companies will wither or adapt in ways not necessarily good for ms, Intel, et al.
For me, most of the hardware available looks uninspiring and some of it ugly. HP's envy looks almost as nice as MacBook Pros, but both are wayyyyy out of my pricing band. I am so sick of idiotic designs where the USB ports are where one's hand and mouse would be on a desk, especially on a tight desk. I am sick and tired of the idiotic company behind making all power plugs straight out instead of 90-degrees. This is a problem on planes (where AC outlets now exist on 2 out of 3 abreast headrests (I had an AC outlet on Air Canada, in economy!). It is also stupid that so many laptops are so THICK. They are competing for space inside backpacks that look stupid when approaching camping size but are not actually on a camping ground.
Attractive laptops are not made by shifting keys around and repurposing the Function keys to be subservient to media keys. Stupid keyboard rearrangement just forces me to have a second reason to buy a thin external keyboard.
Anyway, I digress. If PC makers want to boost sales, maybe they should try selling systems that can dual boot Linux and Windows. But, make sure that stuff ms wants to be windows-only is not the only hardware in the chassis/laptop. IF a different NIC works better for Linux, then install that one, too, but just wire it up such that Linux sees and uses it first, so the user need not futz around looking for placating, useless drivers or non-existent drivers that won't work with PCLinux OS -- at the release I'm using, from 2012 -- (Belkin, I'm looking at you and your Model: F9L1101v2. Luckily, the retailer selling it mistakenly marked it at $15 vs the $45 or $60 it was supposed to be. Luckily for them, I did not get greedy and buy their remaining 3 and wiped them out of $90 - $155 potential sales/profit.
There are ways to sell more laptops, but it will take creativity, some losses, and risks. Well, aside from existing laptops just dying out.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2013/04/134_132570.html
Singaporeans canlog in and file or update in...
FIVE MINUTES.
The US IRS needs to get with the times. Intuit and hr block are outdated as the newspapers. The IRS rules can be set up such that ADP or other payroll companies can matche by line the income types and distributions at the employee and single/married level. Every payroll period, those so concerned could review their adjustments and cashflows so that by year's end, all filings could be complete, awaiting only pre-late February amendments or adjustments. There is no valid reason that this stuff could not be near-real-time.
If a taxpayer vanishes or neglects filing for 2 or 4 years, but owes nothing, and probably has money waiting, the IRS could and should be able to process it without belching about skipped years. As long as the taxpayer appears to be alive and collecting payroll and paying pay period taxes, the taxe return/filing season could be, as a cultural institution, could and should be drawn, quartered, and removed from the list of annual chores.
Oh, and yes, it should be integrated with states. Voluntary payers could get discounts or forgiveness if owing less than $200. Stallwarts could make up for the shortfall for insistence on privilege to game the system.
Well, to be fair to the researcher...
Well, to be fair to the researcher, the article did state that authorities were apprised before the conference.
This is just yet another example of the airlines and the FAA to some extent putting profit or budgets above safety and security. Until and unless researchers do what that one did, the flying public is safe only as long as the security holes are not exploited.
As for the pilot being able to manually regain control, that all depends on whether the in-flight or on-ground manipulator did not in advance figure out how to command the circuits to short out or overrun equipment into an overheat and shutdown mode just prior to commanding a fatal dive or stall-inducing climb.
Astonishing and nice!
Astonishing, and a great time saver. Since it is claimed to be scalable, imagine what it might do for other mission types.
Imagine it as a way to grab a sled of exotic asteroid belt minerals, etc, and slingshotting them to earth. The rv could be designed to survive by shielding and parachutes. The engine part could be set up to enter a semi orbit and then shove the rv into a proper descent, and the engin returns to the asteroid belt. If profits and mining are successful and steady, a chain of automated sleds and engines could be synchronized.
We might become a rep-Warp civilization in under 200 years, maybe even 100...
On the contrary...
Logic suggests it works on hearts and minds....
Re: Misleading Headline?
This missive is long, so please, if you like 'em short, don't read it and downvote me on that basis. Please?
Maybe Google can band with larger companies to buy raw food in a HUGE bulk discount, then make the employees "club members", a la Costco, and then charge the employees just one penney above or one penny below the lowest price that be demonstrated as the final "price" of the food.
That might be cheaper than just paying for all the employee's provided/subsidized, current-price meal costs.
As for restaurants providing free (or, low-cost in some cases) meals to employees, for convenience, and exempted because the meals are a matter of convenience to the employee and are eaten on premises, well, those meals are a convenience for the employer, too. If employees go eat off premises, they may return late, and mess up meal and rest break cycles. I once worked in a restaurant in SF, and on my first day, I was EXHAUSTED. So, on my 1-hour lunch, I took a 45-minute nap in the car I borrowed from a housemate. When I returned, the manager and asst manager told me I could NEVER take my lunch or take a nap away from the diner. I was like "WTF", that ought to be grounds for lawsuit and termination of their operating permit.
As for the cost of the food, it doesn't kill the restaurants. It's cheaper because it is a cost differential to lure and retain employees who often take shitty wages in return. Some restaurants DO charge employees, however.
But, in the case of hi-tech, why cannot the IRS just give it a rest? It is bad enough that "subjec...", umm, tax-duty-bound citizens and residents of the USA are subject to income and other taxes WORLDWIDE. I hate that, because not only does it "legally" affirm/confirm/demant that we have to accept being "subjects" of a country, we cannot just be "stateless" and pay taxes to where ever we happen to reside. To be intellectually honest, I do know that in the case of a country having reciprocal reporting proceduress with the USA, a USA (and vice versa) citizen who pays local taxes up to a certain wage/salary level can or usually is exempted from simultaneously being taxed in the USA, in effect, the subjec... Umm, citizen is spared from being speared by double-taxation.
If the IRS wants to do the public and itself a favor, CLEAN UP the FUCKING TAX CODE!!! Look at Singapore. One of my friends residing in the US and paying taxes in the US on his US-based income had to report to Singapore. He logged in, reported, and was finished in about 5 MINUTES! I've read online in other cases, that even for domestic Singaporeans, filing taxes is a 5-minute event. Maybe it is due to the tax authorities having a more sane level of knowledge and stiffer repercussions for tax cheats. But, the current USA tax system is shitty, broken, and is mostly nowadays a cottage/chattel industry-maker for tax preparers who really for the most part should not be needed.
I want to have my return be something like:
-- Log in with my credentials, whether from home, a bank, a library, the DMV, wherever my identiy is verifiable.
-- Authenticate with my thumb print
-- Verify that I 1, 2, or whatever number of joobs
-- Verify that I agree with the tax levied based on the allowed exemptions/claims/deductions/etc
-- Confirm agreement and accept perjury warnings
-- Verify my bank or Pay-Pal-like non-bank debit card (why cannot such a card exist for verified individuals?)
-- Sign off
-- Two hours later, find my tax returns or tax debt deposited or removed (or levied against me to be deducted from future income or payroll)
SOOOO goddamned easy. At least for people who have zero or some small number of simple investments that effectively produced no large differential in base income to investment income.
Oh, and when the government miscalculates and over-refunds people or fails to properly collect on taxes due, too bad. Take the good with the bad.
I want it to get to the point where I do not even have to THINK about filling. But, see, along with mandatory filing (even if no tax is owed), just as with global taxation, such policies make it possible for:
-- governments to control their "subjects"
-- keep a quasi census of at least employed or income-generating people
-- mounting expeditions to "rescue" "taxpayers/citizens" who voluntarily CHOSE/CHOOSE to work abroad
I know there are easy tax forms (1040 EZ, 540 EZ, etc), but to force people to go through this when many may not want to audit the IRS' work just makes them "feel as if" the government is not "watching too closely". I don't dodge owed taxes, and though I'm deep in debt, I don't dodge or seek dodgy tax havens. My picture should be siimple enought thumbprint in, say yes or no to the numbers and fact/assumptions, and be done in FIVE minutes if no glaring mistakes are present.
Now, if only 272 million taxpayers all in unison DEMANDED what I just wrote, then the fat, lazy, corrupt obstructionists in office would have to listen. As long as people don't, then many will buy and play with tax preparation software to feel good or to monitor their portfolios and status.
Re: outsourcing or off-loading
AC 0944
As for your last question/scenario, I sometimes pondered it heavily. My solution, which I suspect is in play in many places, is to set up the license sales agreement that in exchange for not only a price for the sale, you as the patent/idea owner get a perpetual, fully-paid-up, usable-throughout-the-universe license and right to use the patent you are selling. Further, you get to improve upon it and own the improvements, without having to offer first right of refusal to the patent buyer.
Of course, if you let on that you DO know of an improvement, the buyer might walk if s/he thinks s/he can figure out the improvements. OTOH, for fear of losing the chance to own the product/patent/idea, s/he may just make a counter offer, or just shut up and buy the rights while the offer still is available.
I think we need to see a heavier shift into idea owners refusing to sell out 100%, and that they need to retain SOME significant rights. Look at how authors -- veteran and new -- are brazenly/bravely standing up to the publishing industry and demanding more royalties, or they retain worldwide e-publishing rights as a hedge against the publisher just "shelving" the book as a way to avoid paying royalties to an author, or as a hedge against a sloppy/lazy publisher not mazimizing the availability of the physical materials. Interestingly, some paper publishers indicate, grudgingly, sometimes positively, that the e-sales did not adversely impact the sales of their physical books.
Inventors need to think about that and stop selling out at 100% unlesss the offer is EXTRAordinarilay too good to quibble over. There is a risk, though, in that if there is a flaw in the patent or the basis of the patent, any and all co-owners might be severally and jointly liable for litigation or damages.
Well, we'll see!
Always-On Risk to Inventiveness
So, for those Sim City players, forget about master plans of privately-developed cities, right?
Imagine if you're using Sim City to scheme up real development plans for, say, a New Palm Springs. You cannot have the risk that some outside wanker gets early, unprivileged, but otherwise full access to your designs. What happens when, say, crackers break into the Sim City servers and disclose some hot, cool designs that might be competitive designs not to be released to the public in advance of being seen by judging panels.
Is this a legit concern?
Re: practicalities... Smackticalities
Re: practicalities... Smackticalities
Such a demand could spark a mild insurrection. If my .com blogs that already -- thanks to google -- have other countries' .country domain extensions end up with .uk domains, and the GL/GL demands access to my screenplays, databases, scripts, manuscripts, drawings, doodlings, and more, it can KISS my ASS. This is the same rights-violating bullshit foisted on desperate authors by shysters/crooks who claimed to be verifying the true lineage of works presented for publication in the early 2000s. Such companies demanded this info so they could "protect themselves and be indemnified" from law suits in the event the material was in fact stolen or plagiarized.
But, for a government to demand the same, that deserves a smackdown. Thieves are EVERYWHERE, and once a government employee misappropriates content that is then re-misappropriated to his or her business buddies or creditors, you can bet your ass that the employee's government, YOUR government, would whip out a clause or codicil saying it is indemnified from the damages you suffer/suffered.
Not, the government should only demand the author signs or attests that he/she is the true, correct, creator or owner or authorized distributor.
I suppose I'd have a HELLUVA frackin' hard time living in the UK if I started encountering laws and precepts and proclamations that laid non-worked-for claim over *my* inventions or ideas. How long before people say, "Theft of my work by ANYONE or ANY AGENCY will result in unpredictable behaivor on my part"?
OK, maybe I'm overreacting. But, it sure is nice to be under the current copright system where I am -- wait -- that is changing, too... Ohhh nohsssss...
Re: UK-created websites in the non-.uk domain-- or blogpot.uk?
Re: UK-created websites in the non-.uk domain-- or blogpot.uk?
If your audience is in a certain country, and you use Blogger/Blogspot, and people in that country start accessing your content, even if it starts out as .com (say, in the USA), then that country's domain will be on a blogger/blogspot page of your audience. Google says this is to speed up access to the content. I don't completely buy it. If the site has a very small amount of dynamic content, and if most of it is text and small images, then probably javascript crap and browser settings conflicts will slow the page loading down more than it being. 6,780 miles from the reader.
However, IIRC, you an ask Google/Blogger/Blogspot to disallow per-country domain appending or whatever it is they call it.
Also, you can set the page to be readable only by invited or white-listed people or email addresses. So, even if you ARE in the UK, if you publish content under TOCs that state the readers are special, private, invited, non-public guests, then that might legally be enough to disallow a grab-bagging/copyright-vacuuming library system from scarfing up content its author intents to keep in limited, private circulation. Of course, it would get nasty if a TOCs-violating subscriber/invitee just screen scrapes and then republishes the content on a legit .uk page that is harveste-- umm, archived before a takedown notice could be issued.
Also, if an author laces his or her content with ungainly working making it offensive to the public and not satisfactory to introduce to schools, then would the government redact/black out such words if the remaining content is somehow worthy of archiving and representation to the public? How non-sensical would an author need to become to virtually guarantee the UK copyright czars back off? (IIRC, UK parody, libel, and freedom of speech concepts are different than in the USA and some other countries...)
Re: Thoughts THEREin lies the problem
Well, for some people. OK, so I'm trying to "deconstruct" , this to understand it...
Does a government think that it "created the concept of copyright"? Why cannot this be just a mere recognition that inventiveness deserves some protection?
If a author writes a story, publishes it, and people pay for it (assuming it is that good), then, if government wants a copy, does it then get in line and PAY for a copy just like anyone else paying for a legit copy? (Doesn't the author have to pay just to obtain recognition of the copyright?) Otherwise, TAKING a copy could be seen as tantamount to theft. (If I just said "arrrestable words", then, kindly remind me not to dare step foot in the UK or on soil from where I can be extradicted to the UK...) I could see huge problems in the future if the UK library law were allowed to perpetuate on distant human colonies. Colonists might throw an insurrection unless it is the PEOPLE who collectively say that it is an okay thing. I am not saying *hide* or deny the preservation of published materials of worth or note, but that each published work preserved by a library should first be done so with the permission of the author or rightful rights holder. Government doesn't publish fiction, cooking guides, comics, porn, or love stories. So, it doesn't deserve to "own" the copyright in those works. Fortunately, it seems, things are different in the states. Well, to an extent. Here, it's getting to the point where the public may end up paying to access court documents and "public records".
Would it be unreasonable to hear someone say "The real fact behind such a proclamation is that it allows powerful men to shut down and jail/imprison those it deams a threat"? If government "grants" rather than "recognizes" copyright of an other's works, then it means government can shut down a voice it doesn't want heard. Copyright may be a "human construct", but it should not be a right for any damned government to think it can just take and shut down works.
Yes, I get it, the story is not about copyright and government profiting financially.
BTW, do I understand that in the UK, if a person in the UK publishes a work, and makes only ONE physical copy, and the government library system wants a copy, it can *demand* a copy? What if the author says, "You must pay me for time, materials, and labor", and marks it up above street price? Would that be legal? Can the English/UK library system demand the author provide a free copy? I am assuming that an author or publisher or copyright owner must pay at the government toll gate to initially get that piece of paper stating "you're the proud owner of this government-issued/authorizied/revokable copyright"...
Timelines
Are an integral component of screenplay applications.
Now, if, TimeLinesInc and fb and others want to drag it into the software realm, they'd better prepare to pay for exit strategies or profit increasing to screenplay application developers, as well as Time Magazine, and others.
A timeline is as basic as a bar chart, or a pie chart, a line chart, or a series of flags, notes, and connecting lines. NO company should be able to trademark the generic term to the exclusion of others including it in their own products. I am not favoring fb, nor denying them the use, but if their usage is too close to and trampling on the look and feel of TimelinesInc or any other app, they should be curtailed. However, to critique my own position, at some point, as more people use "timelines" by name or by visual representation, there are only so many ways it can be done without obscuring the very information being presented. Glowing orbs, slide in/out, fade in/out, and other materialization/dematerialization effects are only limited by imagination and ability of the authors/designers and the app makers.
I wonder what the Judge will say...
Gives a whole new meaning to "Insta(nt)Gram"...
Gives a whole new meaning to "Insta(nt)Gram"...
FaceGram? InstaBook, anyone?
A new world of "telegram" activity. Imagine the looks on the faces of Bell, Edison, and others from way back when if they could be reanimated to face today's world. Imagine now rich they'd be if they were alive to reap patents that might have flowed -- assuming US Patent laws were different.
FB will probably have a real-time, live-streaming camera server running with the messenger/chat feature embedded, enabling almost-live global image-feeding. Now, the news papers might be able to make money getting right-of-first-refusal access to fb users' photos. Wouldn't be too bad a deal as long as the photo authors get nice compensation, and maybe royalties, too, if the papers want to own the photo and all rights to the photo.
The papers probably won't even have to increase staff too much, either, since FB and other companies have object recognition, meaning news papers and even intel agencies might want to remote-command snapping of locales by random cameras since they can access or tease out the location of the phone. If so, expect some countries to REALLY clamp down on FB if they are paranoid...
Playing Political Games?
Playing Political Games?
Not all that different from Honda, Toyota, and various European companies opening plants in the USA...
It would be interesting to see what kind of games China could play.
-- Open a Jobs Development center in SF, DC, SeaTac, Portland, etc and collect resumes info
-- Open an Unemployment Compensation program for laid-off people, and then build shelters for them, even help them set up their tax returns and clean off their debts
-- Hire them as employees of a locally-started, Chinese-run entity
-- Create an incubator for entrepreneurs, but actually FUND them, instead of the entrepreneur (especially those with bad credit) having to grovel to the SBA, which then says "we don't (or rarely EVER do we) directly fund start-ups; you must contact a bank that works with the SBA...."
-- Now, the Chinese Jobs Assistance/Entrepreneur Incubator OWNS any IP, or has a great level of ownership in it. They can export it, reimport it, re-export it, or even create a factory here, in a low-cost state, and finger their noses at protectionism by must making sure that the domestic plants are open to "backdoor existence" inspection. Then, they can even brand it "Made In the USA", and export it.
Not sure of the economic costs. But, the political costs could be staggering.
Protectionism IS costly. It should be painful to be excessively protectionist. If Europe and other countries are not going to purge their PRC-based electronics, how well can the US isolate itself against infrastructure attack?
Re: Bad English?
Lol...
I, too, was going to comment. I was going to suggest:
"Please do not respond to it. However, report it to the police."
That unassailably removes all doubt.
But, in the name of economy, Western Haiku, and authoritarian language, all too many directives or instructions hurt my brain when I parse them as I I were a lawyer looking to help a client weasle out a corner though crafty exploitation of misplaced commas, missing commas/comma splices, faulty sentence structure.... Usually written by the brightest in society, hehehe...
A shcool... Umm, school I walk by every few days has posted on one of its doors a similarly grammatically confusing message to parents, something about not parking in the street and somesuch. I'll have to photograph the note. It would have been handy had I done so just 3 days ago... Sigh...
Speaking of Luxuries and Disallowances and Haves/Have-Nots...
Speaking of Luxuries and Disallowances and Haves/Have-Nots...
http://sfbay.ca/2013/03/27/santa-clara-free-wi-fi-piggybacks-smart-meters/
Santa Clara Calif is a city of 118,000 or so, sitting surrounded by Alviso, San Jose, Cupertino, & Sunnyvale, in the middle of the South Bay.
ANYbody now walking in Santa Clara has access to FREE WIFI. Granted, it may not be suitable for watching YouTube, Hulu, etc, but for those who pay out the ass to download news, texts, and low-content (the content being dwarfed by the adverts in the pages), this is something to slam-dunk your cities, burroughs, towns, and hamlets with. MAKE them justify all the huge expenses. Ask them why there is not (other than politics) something such as what Santa Clara has.
Wait for their response. Wait for the lobbyists to start hiring hit-men... Or the legal equivalent... Fillibusters, obstructions, stall jobs, rate hikes, and so on.
Imagine the day when automobile owners volunter to be wifi mesh nodes, as long as the device doesn't drain the vehicle's battery.
Yes, privacy will have to be maintained on these meters, and some hacks will probably start tinkering and poking to see what fun can be had. But, so long as they don't crash the party, people might end up cancelling their xfinity and comcast accounts in droves....
Re: Just downloaded it.
"Why does it matter?"
I wasn't being snarky or posting "meee to". I think it is good thatt Google is doing this. What I forgot to or neglected to include was that I dowloaded it from a popular coffee shop, and it took around 30 minutes. Had I tried it in SF Public Library, the way things are here, in this wannab-world-class-city, it would likely have taken 1.5 hours due to spotty, iffy, unstable connectivity. My lappy does not drop every 2 minutes at other places like it does at SFPL, and I get full bars and sit near the wifi node.
Anyway, Translate is useful as an app. But, that should not entitle google to gain globla access to the inner workings or silliness (could be profitable or very harmful to any individual who wants to restrict his or her thoughts from being exploited). The reason many people buy physical off-line translators without wi-fi in them is to avoid private translations being stored on somebody's server. It's the reason I bought a translator, in Korea, that HAD no wi-fi, even tho my purchase is old-school and one-of-a-kind in the display case.
As for the -1 someone slammed up my ass, my question about whether or not it phones home the off-line translations IS a valid question. After all, how many times here and in other forums have we seen, read, and complained about surreptitious call-home "bugs" and "features" in code. How many times have we read about earlier versions of ms world embarrasing companies when "previous time-saved versions" were preserving content that was damaging because the recipient of a document only needed open the document's version history? How many times have we heard about call-home features that companies denied?
Can/may I have my -1 reversed now?
Just downloaded it.
But,
Does anyone with a rooted system, or has it connected to a monitored network, know whether this app "calls home" with a compressed or stealthily-submitted report of what the user translated?
Re: Asian language support in XP is superb?
I'm using:
Linux 3.2.18-pclos2.pae.bfs (i686)
#1 SMP PREEMPT Thur May 24 05:33:57 CES 2012
But, I've updated apps and libraries along the way, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, some apps, basic ones, don't recognize or play well with Korean. Libre Office and Calligra a so KDE-dependent they demand that I fully upgrade KDE to 2013. I'm not ready to do that, since occasionally, and invariably, I end up doing 2-3 reinstalls to restabilize things. I can only afford to do that in absoute emergencies and when I have time and money so I can do a new-disk install and have an emergency fall-back disk.
Even Libre Office won't correctly get started to download, and I have the repos updated. So, I've never seen what LO can do. Given all the spare hard drive space I have, I'm gettting pretty sick of "one-file-to-do-one-thing-well" when that mantra demans updating the entire systems for one frickin' app or suite. I want apps sequestered, sandbagged, isolated, even if I have to pay 1 GB in library files space. If I were better, I could probably link the libs, trick out my system, but that is too much for me to do and then remember months later what I did.
Asian fonts in OO.o work, but then when my systems goes wonky, I have to turn off Korean. Wonky how? Well, the space between English letters doubles in consoles. Some shortcuts I use in English go misbehaving, and rather than play detective for more than 10-20 minutes, I just uninstall or do some limited reversion.
Re: why xp is ubiquitous
Tell me about it! Just trying to make Korean work and work CORRECTLY in PCLOS is a royal PITA. Just when I think it is about to work, something, some dep is missing, or it works - -a while, then the system bogs down. But, within W7 in VBox it it "just works". It works fine on an android tablet, which has years younger than Linux distros...
It sorta works, IIRC, in Abi Word. I cannot get the latest KDE-based office suites in unless I upgrade my entire base install, and past experience has told me to not do that unless I buy a new disk and do a fresh install (I don't do system clones; I preserve the last working disk, then start afresh with a new drive -- WHEN I have money...).
Linux, though, advertises that you an install now or later a number of other languages. I do understand that some distros work flawlessly. Unfortunately, I'm hung up on Mandrake/Mandriva's impression upon me, and PCLOS won me over in 2007. Just some nigglling litte text file complication I read about in 2011 being the culprit for PCLOS' Korean language hang-ups.
Anyway, maybe there should be H-1V (Vietnam-originating Developer Instructors) visas in the USA, with the instructors taking shcool.... Umm, school admin and teaching posts. hehehehe....
Re: That's OK...
As for the "guns" think, Hudson didn't mention "guns", hehehe. But, then, I botched it by throwing in "That's ok... the USA is still #1...", good catch!
And, how right you are about that. I was in Yongsan last year, at the Korea War Memorial. I was somewhat shocked and humored at how efficient, crafty, "devious", and cunning the VC were with their tunnels. Sure, I've seen of them in movies, but the dioramas and plexiglas display models in the Memorial really hit home. My first thoughts were "SO, THIS is how the USA got its ass handed to it on a plate in Vietnam...." It was sobering. Result: napalm, tunnel bombs, and carpet bombing. And, STILL the USA had to retreat.
Fast Forward decades later, and we see that for all the freedoms and freedom of choice we have here, Vietnam is probably producing more QUALITY programmers than many countries.
It would be interesting, though to compare Chinese programmers or teens to the Vietnamese of the same schooling and age ranges. Then, compare Indian programmers. I understand that Indian programmers have HUGE egos. A female dev exposing bugs and flaws in Indian male coders' work can touch off a mild hemispherical war. I wonder how Vietnamese male and female devs in the work place (in any country where male and female Vietnamese devs predominate) play out in offices.
Now, juxtapose that to the US H-1B Visa thing. Decades, ago, the USA was trying to liberate Vietnamese. Nowa, the USA may need Vietnamese to liberate or "survivarate" the USA. Interesting....
Re: Clever people make. Clever people break!
Do that and the headend's ad insertion team will just lag-out or introduce jitter, artefacts, and ghosting to your show at algorithm-calculated intervals. They'll just Pavlov you. Good behavior gets you a doggie treat. Bad behavior punishes you doggie style.
As for targetted, embeded advertising, I actually thought this story was about the viewer's name being inserted in a portion of the screen, serving the dual purpose of deterring copying and distributing of the show, although there could be watermarking and IP addressing and content subscriber's names for court case purposes...
As for advert-free DVDs, they'll probably someday require a minimum monthly connection to a live server, so that push-adverts can change the disc's unlock code, which won't unlock until the user's cam and mic are on, demanding interactive feedback before the featured program is allowed to play. Ah, but you only watch your DVDs on a plane? Well, your media-playing device will have to be equipped with a barometer, pitot tube, and sextant to prove it, 2 of which most passengers will not be allowed to carry onboard into the seating area...
That's OK...
The USA is still #1 in:
Nukes
Knives
Sharp Sticks
(Homage to Aliens, hehehehe)
MS now releasing info...
This might interest some:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416905,00.asp
"Microsoft Reveals Law Enforcement Data Requests"
"Like Google and Twitter, Microsoft is releasing the total number of requests for information it received and the number of accounts those requests covered.
But the company is also releasing data about how many disclosures included customer content, "such as the subject line and body of an email exchanged through Outlook.com; or a picture stored on SkyDrive," Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. "We similarly are reporting on the number of law enforcement requests that result in disclosure only of 'non-content' data, which includes account information such as an email address, a person's name, country of residence, or gender, or system-generated data such as IP addresses and traffic data."
So what does the data say? Of the 75,378 law enforcement requests for customer information, about 2.1 percent, or 1,558 requests, resulted in the disclosure of that content, Smith said. More than 99 percent of those disclosures were made in response to warrants from U.S. courts. Fourteen disclosures were to governments in Brazil, Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand.
About 56,388 cases resulted in the disclosure of non-customer content, not including Skype, and more than 66 percent of those were to agencies in the U.S., the U.K., Turkey, Germany, and France.
Eleven law enforcement requests focused on Microsoft enterprise customers. "In general, we believe that law enforcement requests for information from an enterprise customer are best directed to that customer rather than a tech company that happens to host that customer's data," Smith said.
On Skype alone, there were 4,713 requests from law enforcement covering 15,409 accounts or other identifiers, such as a PSTN number.
"Skype produced no content in response to these requests, but did provide non-content data, such as a SkypeID, name, email account, billing information and call detail records if a user subscribed to the Skype In/Online service, which connects to a telephone number," Smith wrote.
Microsoft separated Skype because Skype collected data differently than Microsoft in accordance with Luxembourg law prior to its 2011 acquisition. "Skype reporting policies and practices have now been brought in line with Microsoft reporting policies and going forward all data will be provided in a consistent format," Microsoft said."
More is at the URL.
Laptop vs Laptops....
What is his proficiency with English? Maybe he said, "I have laptop....", which in some languages COULD be plural or singular. Now, if the questioning agent asked "HOW many laptops?" and the man replied "ONE", then he's lying.
Do we know whether they identified themselves properly? If on an ordinary city street well-dressed thugs chose to question a target/mark about his or her bag and types of electronics, most sane people would and SHOULD lie in response. Even if someone wears boots, a belted badge, has a holstered gun, and wears a polo shirt and a jacket saying "FBI" and hops out of a car with flashing lights, one STILL should say nothing unless hearing "FEDERAL AGENT". Flashing a damned badges means nothing, and seeing papers that are purportedly a warrant mean nothing. These days, people can pretend to be federal agents, and then get arrested, and be walking the streets the next few hours!
Doubt me? See:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2013/03/warrant-issued-san-francisco-man-accused-posing-fbi-agent
Deviant...
Lol: "to identify deviant consumption of display advertising media."
Deviant as skewed, but not as "having bothered to entertain the advert"....
As Spock would say, "Sophisticated in their methods..."
Now, i am sure that the botnet writers will just make sure their bots crash more gracefully and more virtually, not taking down whole machines and causing them to re-request an IP, which by time lag, would be easy to pick if an investigative team had permission to dig into target domains and subnetss....
Astonishing, that the list of 20 controls was FOUO/Classified!
Just astonishing!
(This is long, and not really catering to the "sound-bite-minded"...)
I read the first 16 pages, and when I looked at the list 2-3 times, it increasingly seemed reminiscent of what any sysadmin taking Netware System Administration from 1996 might conjure up.
When I was a temp assigned to a Lockheed office in Sunnyvale, I was assigned to work in a "cage" (more of an inventory control room, not a sensitive area like other DOD contractors' "cages"). When not roaming doing installs of Win95, updaing .dot files, or removing the "I love you" crap, or installing or tweaking Resumex, etc., I was in my cage playing with Lotus Approach. I was teaching myself databases, and decided to enhance my inventory of what I was told to inventory. I thus included EVERYTHING that contained an ID, serial number, MAC hardware address, or other form of info that would help my various managers not only monitor costs, but monitor how much junk or obsolete hardware was sitting around, what types the hardware were, to whom they were assigned, how old they were, how many times they'd been looked at or suspected as trouble hardware, what OS version and so on were on what machines, in which rooms, on what tables, and more. All the NICs, hard drives, mice, keyboards, CRTs, modems (only a very few people in that building of around 80 people had a modem, hehehe), and sos on were in my database.
Theoretically, this would form the basis for implementing a secure and robust IT filter system to monitor traffic, employees, entry and exit of information, and more, not just relying on the then-available MS server and domain related monitoring tools. Netware and other tools of the day were in place, too. But, I only did that to maximize my non-programming use of Lotus Approach, learning to create forms, views, charts, reports, and master-detail views to get at relationships between hardware and assignment.
Later, when seting up an Internet Cafe business plan, I did something similar, starting out with the intent to create a receipts tracker in the event I were ever audited, I ended up creating a prototype fraud-sleuthing database. That's just playing around.
I don't see how that list of 20 items would be so useful to obscure. Security through obscurity at the highest of levels - in a security-conscious working group! Those individual items are everything any due-diligence IT manager of even 1999 would pursue, and it would have been casual conversation in those IT trainers we were sent to for something like $99 to $400 per day.
Am I overreacting?
It seems to me that the top users among the commercial entitiess are just trying to avoid spending money. If they all follow the typical topology, layers, protocols, filtering, and other standards, and implement dynamic access controls that tie in with customers and customer's plans, a boatload of attacks could have been prevented over the last 15 years -- or would have spurred the attackers of the time frame to innovate around the 20 measusres/controls. To their credit, though, the ATTBIs and Comcasts of the early 2000 inadvertently helped with security in some limited way: via the use of their "branded" IE browser CDs, they could keystroke or otherwise monitor their customers and detect early signs of malicious or hijack activity, and by manipulating the routers they provided, could deprive the customer of exceeding the 3-count limit of devices.
But, when I figured out their game, and figure they just wanted to extract more money for no work, or to limit me, I my own routers and switches and attached all my test machines on my side of the demarc and defied them to do a damned thing about it. I wasn't increasing bandwith, since I only had two hands and was not using automated process on all 8 or 9 machines, and what happened on my side of the demarc that was not a disruption to the network outside was NONE of THEIR damned business. They also hated that I used Linux, and no IE disk they customized was going to run on my LAN. So, I regularly was on their shitlist and regulary had connectivity issues, invariably being blamed on some drunk driver slamming into a green service box off the freeway. Liars. Or so I think they were being.
But, though that list was "secret" or FOUO for around 2 years doesn't mean that most companies lacked any of their own intelligence to implement the same effects. They probably just didn't want to spend the money.
Re: It's not that Windows is not selling well
At this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
See (about 1/3 way down) "Financial Difficulties and Restructuring"
There is a graph showing ms' declining presence....
Lots of interesting tidbits about this Samsung competitor. I didn't know that Nokia's official language was English.
They were into rubber, TVs, and computers...
Samsung Group:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung
Is an interesting story, too. Started out as delivering groceries and selling own-made noodles.
Re: NSL's Hells's Bells?
Well, in the case of speeders, they do the speeding willfully, wantonly, and wholly deserving of losing their vehicles when caught. Enabling them to speed and avoid speed traps is tantamount to letting them have open season to commit reckless manslaughter.
OTOH, most businesses that are caught up in these NSL probably are not front operations for AQ or other terror organizations. Issuing an NSL to a company, and then threatening the hell out of it could rightly make some subjected business owners extraordinarily peeved and make them challenge the legality of such letters. Theoretically, any company hit with an NSL might go into paranoia mode, unnecessarily do its own investigations, and then fire people, or it might just fire people and say it is related to an investigation into the company and they cannot talk about it. Assuming, that is, "performance" or "downsizing" are not used as excuses (which, really, would be the safer cover stories).
Now, I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt that 70% of NSL went to scam/illegit import/export operations, marriage arrangements and visa fraud operations, and so on, and that maybe 30$ went to firms that unwittinly hired undetected terror agents.
Now, I would dare say, again, it is time to biometricallly identify every last man, woman, and child in the USA (South Korea is a "democratic nation", and it does so) to verify nationality, to verify work eligibility, and to verify tax-payment or compliance. Those who cannot establish validity to be in the US could enter an appeals process, and various options toward provisional residency might be political, religious, or sexual, or health persecution reasons. However, I suspect that a lot of people not validly here in the USA might have such illegal connections as to complicate things for a LOT of polical party leaders who are on the take. Hence, all the judicial and legislative ass-covering decisions over legality and constitutionality of various rulings and letters. Just my take on things...
NSL's Hells's Bells?
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/03/05/google_national_security_letters/
Maybe someone showed the Judge my solution, which I had posited around 2001 or 2002, when writing a business plan for a coffee shop:
“ Here is how to find out the numbers, some day...
Get on the board of a company. BEFORE the company is formed, and therefor, theoreticallly has had no known reason to be sent an NSL:
First, ensure that prospective and new hires are squeaky clean and can pass a TWIC or at least get a passport, pass a bonding insurance background check, and has no criminal record that would trigger an NSL. It's discrimminatory, but, oh whelllll.
Demand that everyday, when factual, the web site counter shows:
-- Number of NSLs received today/yesterday: 0/0
When there is a day one is received, just don't put a number. Skip that day.
-- Number of NSLs received applying to citizens/non-citizens: 0/0
When there is a day one is received, just don't put a number. Skip that day.
-- Number of NSLs received applying to exec types/non-exec types: 0/0
When there is a day one is received, just don't put a number. Skip that day. Could be trouble, tho, if there are only a few in that category, they vanish, and people start talking and confirming theories....
-- Number of NSLs received today/yesterday/in advance of business formation, telling us to take down this site counter: >1/1/1”
I am not suggesting divulve the specifics of an NSL, but, nobody can expect the existence to remain secret.
Next task: find out how many people were economically harmed or bankrupted, and how many violated potentially harmless portions of an NSL, but ended up in prison.
How different is cloud from download?
I'm curious, Snake, as I sort of feel the same as you on this.
But, suppose I sell e-books and the customers are in China, and my servers are outside of China. Technically, every person (at least in the USA) who purchases or sells something is supposed to report it for taxation purposes. Generally, the seller collects the tax, escrows it, and forwards it to the various cognizant tax bodies. The buyer usually doesn't get involved after the sale. But, if the seller were discovered to be not collecting the taxes, and were not paying or forwarding the taxes, a government might pursue any identifiable, related consumer for any due taxes, say, in the event the seller/company went bust and had no assets.
So, theoretically, China could leave ms alone, but then squeeze the consumers of 365, the offices and any support companies linked to training and so on.
