my take, electronic devices with prominent cameras running unknown software were voluntarily allowed on and open in the home. No real 4th amendment issue. Of course I would probably have made it connect to my network on it's own net, with all traffic logged and fed into an IDS. If after a week or two it seems to be behaving then maybe, maybe i let it into my real network. It is a UNIX computer with admin access allowed to a third party, and it has a web cam, enough said. Don't want pics taken don't use it. There really isn't a 4th amendment issue here. How many of you would take a computer (with cam/mic) that is being maintained by the police into you home?
I would hope that any company that does something like that has it's own internal DNS server that will resolve internal hosts first. The problem would be more likely when the employee wants to get to Hewlet Packards website and not the internal HP site.
so for a guess at a CD, i haven't gotten new music in years, 12 songs at an average of 3 minutes. so thats 36 minutes of music, is $12. A blockbuster movie new release on dvd is $15-$20(we'll use 20), so cost/minute on the CD is 12 songs at $0.99 per song(your number), thats $11.88/36 or, $0.33 per minute. A dvd, just the special feature, is around 1.5-2 hours (I'll use 1.5, well lets use 1.25 as the running times include the credits, and who watches those?) so we get $20/75 minutes, or $0.26/minute. Granted music does have more replay value than a movie usually. but still the cost per minute of music is higher, and thats not counting things like the bonus features on the DVD. The CD is more of a marketing tool for the band than the dvd is for the studio, no studio has the option of playing in the local bar.
The entire reason i ripped all of mine, i lost 2 or 3 disks to the kids, and had enough, went and bought a 1TB harddrive, and set my cdrom driver to RPC1, and have written a script to batch rip, and another to batch encode stuff so that it can be copied to or streamed to my PS3. Only difference for me was that there were "two-year-old remixed" :P
I've found that the rips are more useful as well. take for example Firefly, I bought the dvd version, to play an episode there are two noisy and animated menus to click though to watch one. After the episode ends, you then need to go back to the main menu and back though the two menus to watch the next episode. There is no watch all option. my ripped copies can play back to back to back, no menus in between. it's a much nicer watching experience.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Copying and lending are different.
What if a perfect(implies working) replica of a lawnmower could be made for not more than a few watts of electricity? Would you then make one for your neighbor who asked nicely? how about just about anyone else who asked? What if you then needed a break puller for a '06 VW Jetta(special tool), and your neighbor had one, would you ask if you get get a duplicate?
Really thats the problem, digital goods are not the same as physical, treating them as such doesn't work. At least until the cost of duplication of physical goods in the in the range of a few cents per unit, or less and can be done by grandma.
Too use a car example:
1) Buy new car
2) Make copy of new car to drive around protecting the original car. maybe this car doesn't have as fancy of a paint job but in all other ways is the same.
3) Get t-Boned by drunk driver. luckily sustain no injury.
4) Make a new working copy of your still good "real" car.
Now I'm sure that Ford would love for you to buy a second car as a "backup" car. but if in a few hours and for $1 you could have a backup car which do you choose?
Short answer "rules" from the physical needn't apply to the digital world, and people understand that there is a difference between them.
I block anything that moves, is animated, is flash based, or not relevant to the content on the page/site I'm on. I reloaded this artical without my adblocker in place and found an ad for Dice that was flashing(background kept changing between 2-3 colors) and things were moving on it.
The reason I use an adblocker is that 95% of these ads seem to served on a slow connection, they then sit there running consuming my CPU cycles. Now if it had been a static picture or some text I would have probably left the adblocker off for techdirt. The reason i have issues with the animated ads, is mostly because i tend to leave the computer on and the web browser open with what ever i was last looking at. Things moving in the browser keep my CPU from getting throttled back by the "on-Demand" governor.
Also how many times have we seen legit sites who's ad partners get hacked or just distribute ads with malware embeded in them to do drive by installs of crap. So this is also done for security on my windows boxes, and to some extent on my linux boxes too. Would Ars have an issue with users using a local CSS file to change the look of the site? how about using a script to download the html and remove all the tags and output only text? how about browsing the site with lynx, dillo, iPhone(no flash there), any other platform without JS and flash?
Anyways, Mike, I'll turn ads back on for this site if they stop being animated for reasons above.
Yep, i'd love to get it streamed via say 1 of 3-4 dozen places on launch. Hell i'll give you 3-4 dollars to view it over a week. TBH there is a large market being missed by the MPAA, Parents. Hmm pay baby sitter, leave kids with baby sitter, pay $20 for prime hours tickets, and then $20 for drinks, then some dumbasses phone goes off, or the teenyboppers in the front row are being loud, My wife has to get up to pee, but i can't pause it for her, etc. So yes, for the most part movie theaters cannot compete, seeing as you can get a decent entry level system for around $2000(100 movies a year or 50 over 2 years, or 25 over 4) and i'm willing to bet that you can keep at least 90% of that for several years. $1800/6years = $300/year now if a movie costs $40 + $40(babysitting) thats $80 a movie(ignoring gas, and car repairs). so less than 1 movie every 3 months, or it's cheaper(hypotheticly) to just stay home. That is ignoring things like, being able to pause, not having anyone else's cell phone go off.
if the schools AUP says something along the lines of "at no time is the use of this computer to be used for anything other than school related functions" how else is that to be enforced? hmmm... again, don't use hardware that you don't control.
Also it could have been a simple cron that took a photo at specified intervals. As i noted above, these were handed out for doing school work on, not chatting away and updating your facebook status on.
the people that authorized this system need to be punished, and those that paid for it, and those that wrote it(btw it's ARD+apature, so apple), those that used the laptops with out ensuring the laptops were being "good". so every one in the country(that pays taxes).
Just calling for the removal of IT isn't right, someone wanted some remote tracking feature, and handed it down on IT to use. that someone at least should have issues
Re: Re: if I own a computer and lend it to somebody to use
"If the school loans out the computer with the policy that nothing on the computer should be considered private, and that they can and will monitor the computer, then that is fine. There is no expectation of privacy here"
but it's not your computer, you don't own it. It was give out for the use of doing school related things, not for you kid to be sitting in front of chatting on facebook eating candy.
If it was my house, the damn thing wouldn't have had network access, or it would have been on it's own network, with only port 80 open and only to known sites. Not because i'm worried about what my kid is doing, but that a piece of hardware running something installed by someone else is hanging around on my network. It would also have a throttled bandwidth, low enough to make things like VNC/ARD etc a no go.
"However, when one starts spying on stuff that has nothing to do with what is going on with the computer using a webcam, they are now spying on someone when there is an expectation of privacy."
Whats going on with the computer includes who is using it. It's meant for student use, not use by the parents/friends/drunken uncle.
Also it very easily could be set to automatically VPN "home" when it's off campus, effectively putting it on the schools network again(see above about how that wouldn't work on my network).
I'm willing to bet that all of the layout and typesetting for a book is done digitally now. So is it is difficult to make a digital version, that sounds like a great opportunity for a feature to be added to an existing product, or one that translates the industry typeset standard into epub or pdf or ?. If it is digital and laid out already why can't the computer just make one? right publishers aren't programmers, but i'm betting there are a bunch out of work atm that would take it as a contract.
it gets worse than that, watch a dvd that uses CSS on linux. Unless someone has started selling a dvd player for linux in the last 4+ years, you have to start by cracking the encryption (DMCA violation) to watch the shiny disk. So at that point i might as well rip it to the hard disk.
I think the GP was meaning that unlike some things (drugs, pimping, etc) the police don't show up and inspect your computer hard drive to see if it has ripped movies on it. While still illegal it has a very very low enforcement rate. so low in fact that I'm willing to bet that if a cop came into my house and saw the matix playing he/she would not even ask if it's a legal copy. They would simply ignore it or ask for it to be turned off, or say, hey cool movie.
because uptime is paid for in a big way, want 99%? pay up, hell my linksys router + Qwest dsl modem have a fight about 2x a week that causes me too loose internet for several minutes while i reboot both. 100% reliable internet should not be required for offline play. Not that i was going to buying this with out official WINE support or a proper linux port.
Just lock the laptops to the desks then. I'm sure the library has a computer that can connect to google docs if they need one out side of class. All home privacy issues disappear then.
to be fair, i couldn't tell if they got to take the computers home, or if they were only for use in the classrooms. A good network login and google docs should make the use of a different computer very easy.
Mike,
1) You seem to be under the dilusion that the university is there to help out the students. Anything it can not do that would cause students to stay long or spend more is a good thing to them(makes them more money).
2) As far as some alumni that no one had heard of before trying to make an iPhone app that would make things easier for students, see point 1, all things related to the university need to go though them. When I say all I mean ALL.
Now if i recall the University of Texas is a major football(handegg) school. Thats where the money is. So the real issue is that this app doesn't promote the football team(by paying to do so), and could make students on time to classes, and able to find out their professors contact info for assistance outside of class. Yep I'm cynical, but i graduated 2 years ago from a much much smaller university who was doing things like renaming programs every 3 years or so. Causing everyone to then need to appeal that IS104 was the same as IT104, and those that didn't or didn't try hard enough got to pay out extra.
So see this for what it is, a pure money grab from the university. I'm willing to bet that if they offered 90% of the earning from the app to UT this would have been a non issue.
On the post: Laptop Spy Scandal Administrator Just "Loved" Violating Students' Fourth Amendment Rights
On the post: Canon Becomes The Online Equivalent Of Madonna Or Prince, Becoming The First Single Word Domain Holder
Re: Just wondering...
On the post: Metallica Sued Napster For This?
Re:
On the post: Peeling The Layers Off 'Piracy'
Re: Re: Peel back some pro-copying arguments, too
I've found that the rips are more useful as well. take for example Firefly, I bought the dvd version, to play an episode there are two noisy and animated menus to click though to watch one. After the episode ends, you then need to go back to the main menu and back though the two menus to watch the next episode. There is no watch all option. my ripped copies can play back to back to back, no menus in between. it's a much nicer watching experience.
On the post: Peeling The Layers Off 'Piracy'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Copying and lending are different.
Really thats the problem, digital goods are not the same as physical, treating them as such doesn't work. At least until the cost of duplication of physical goods in the in the range of a few cents per unit, or less and can be done by grandma.
Too use a car example:
1) Buy new car
2) Make copy of new car to drive around protecting the original car. maybe this car doesn't have as fancy of a paint job but in all other ways is the same.
3) Get t-Boned by drunk driver. luckily sustain no injury.
4) Make a new working copy of your still good "real" car.
Now I'm sure that Ford would love for you to buy a second car as a "backup" car. but if in a few hours and for $1 you could have a backup car which do you choose?
Short answer "rules" from the physical needn't apply to the digital world, and people understand that there is a difference between them.
On the post: Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites
types of ads I use an adblocker for...
The reason I use an adblocker is that 95% of these ads seem to served on a slow connection, they then sit there running consuming my CPU cycles. Now if it had been a static picture or some text I would have probably left the adblocker off for techdirt. The reason i have issues with the animated ads, is mostly because i tend to leave the computer on and the web browser open with what ever i was last looking at. Things moving in the browser keep my CPU from getting throttled back by the "on-Demand" governor.
Also how many times have we seen legit sites who's ad partners get hacked or just distribute ads with malware embeded in them to do drive by installs of crap. So this is also done for security on my windows boxes, and to some extent on my linux boxes too. Would Ars have an issue with users using a local CSS file to change the look of the site? how about using a script to download the html and remove all the tags and output only text? how about browsing the site with lynx, dillo, iPhone(no flash there), any other platform without JS and flash?
Anyways, Mike, I'll turn ads back on for this site if they stop being animated for reasons above.
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RSS feed
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Re:
On the post: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre: Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy
Re: Reminds of Orwell's 1984
On the post: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre: Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy
Re: Duct Tape
On the post: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre: Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy
Re: Re: Duct Tape
On the post: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre: Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy
Re: Student Displine
the people that authorized this system need to be punished, and those that paid for it, and those that wrote it(btw it's ARD+apature, so apple), those that used the laptops with out ensuring the laptops were being "good". so every one in the country(that pays taxes).
Just calling for the removal of IT isn't right, someone wanted some remote tracking feature, and handed it down on IT to use. that someone at least should have issues
On the post: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre: Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy
Re: Re: if I own a computer and lend it to somebody to use
"If the school loans out the computer with the policy that nothing on the computer should be considered private, and that they can and will monitor the computer, then that is fine. There is no expectation of privacy here"
but it's not your computer, you don't own it. It was give out for the use of doing school related things, not for you kid to be sitting in front of chatting on facebook eating candy.
If it was my house, the damn thing wouldn't have had network access, or it would have been on it's own network, with only port 80 open and only to known sites. Not because i'm worried about what my kid is doing, but that a piece of hardware running something installed by someone else is hanging around on my network. It would also have a throttled bandwidth, low enough to make things like VNC/ARD etc a no go.
"However, when one starts spying on stuff that has nothing to do with what is going on with the computer using a webcam, they are now spying on someone when there is an expectation of privacy."
Whats going on with the computer includes who is using it. It's meant for student use, not use by the parents/friends/drunken uncle.
Also it very easily could be set to automatically VPN "home" when it's off campus, effectively putting it on the schools network again(see above about how that wouldn't work on my network).
On the post: Author Who Claimed $9.99 Not A Real Price For Books Admits Comments Were A Mistake
Re:
On the post: Reminder: You Don't Compete With Piracy By Being Lame, The DVD Edition
Re: Re: (rip it yourself)
On the post: Reminder: You Don't Compete With Piracy By Being Lame, The DVD Edition
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Ubisoft DRM Gets Worse And Worse: Kicks You Out Of Game If You Have A Flakey WiFi Connection
Re: Excuses, Excuses
On the post: School Accused Of Spying On Kids In Their Homes With Spyware That Secretly Activated Webcams
Re: Remote Desktop
On the post: School Accused Of Spying On Kids In Their Homes With Spyware That Secretly Activated Webcams
Re: Video of something similar
On the post: University Of Texas Claims Trademark Over 'Texas'; Wants Useful iPhone App Blocked
Students not the priority
1) You seem to be under the dilusion that the university is there to help out the students. Anything it can not do that would cause students to stay long or spend more is a good thing to them(makes them more money).
2) As far as some alumni that no one had heard of before trying to make an iPhone app that would make things easier for students, see point 1, all things related to the university need to go though them. When I say all I mean ALL.
Now if i recall the University of Texas is a major football(handegg) school. Thats where the money is. So the real issue is that this app doesn't promote the football team(by paying to do so), and could make students on time to classes, and able to find out their professors contact info for assistance outside of class. Yep I'm cynical, but i graduated 2 years ago from a much much smaller university who was doing things like renaming programs every 3 years or so. Causing everyone to then need to appeal that IS104 was the same as IT104, and those that didn't or didn't try hard enough got to pay out extra.
So see this for what it is, a pure money grab from the university. I'm willing to bet that if they offered 90% of the earning from the app to UT this would have been a non issue.
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