Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 1 May 2018 @ 3:25pm
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Are there any chances that the Russian (Soviet is a bit dated) are either a better design, or cheaper, or both?
Which doesn't diminish the premise that Congress might be buying things the Armed Forces neither want or need, for economic (a.k.a. political) reasons.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 1 May 2018 @ 12:26pm
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Actually, I think the DoD has plenty of oversight. They know exactly how much they have and need to get this equipment off their books so they can buy new stuff. They have contracts to fulfill and a budget to spend, so they can ask for more money next year, cause we ran out this year. And new contracts to negotiate, of course.
Thank you for the response. I am not a programmer, so to some degree I was guessing. In the end though, I do think that in instances like these there might be some way to 'nerd harder' rather than going to court. I don't know the answer, but this isn't like breaking encryption either, where there is no 'nerd harder' answer. There might not be here either. But I wonder about how player identification takes place, and if there isn't an opportunity there. That is, in such a way that one does not piss off their entire community.
I only 'played' one online 'game', and it wasn't a game so much. There were hundreds of thousands users, worldwide for this game, but politics came into the middle and I lost interest. While I miss the worldwide community that was formed around this 'game', my leaving was their loss, not mine. I could have created another ID and rejoined, but...
Algorithms, however convoluted the math is, in the end merely answers a set of yes/no questions. Things that humans do all the time, with varying results. So, answer y/n questions...on a computer?
Then again, how are we to insure that such algorithms don't have bias? Is bias also patentable?
It will be a long, long time, well actually long, long after my death, that I would consider AI algorithms (that might be redundant, but maybe not) to be of significance. Take them into consideration, maybe, but then I would be looking for algorithms that say the other thing and trying to work through the maths that made the both of them up. Not much different than listening to a lying politician for one side as compared to a lying politician for the other side, but they aren't patentable either. Are they?
Accurate? Maybe. Patentable? No. Believable? No. Especially when one considers that once it is 'intellectual property' one is never going to see the spaghetti inside. Of course that might be the case now as they are considered trade secrets. An oxymoron waiting to be unveiled.
Hmm, considering that, wouldn't patenting algorithms make the spaghetti public?
OK, not the AC you relied to, but rather than a lawsuit why not an algorithm that 'dumps' people who are using the 'cheat'? The cheat must have some characteristics that are recognizable, so recognize them and log them off. Let them log back in as often as the can find a new ID and/or IP, but then just dump them when the 'cheat' is recognized. This company has some programmers...right? Put them to work, instead of the courts.
U.S. Constitution - Amendment 7 - Trial by Jury in Civil Cases
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Notes for this amendment: Proposed 9/25/1789
Ratified 12/15/1791
In light of the 7th Amendment, and most likely others, how could this law be considered Constitutional?
Possibly a better question is why the EFF didn't bring this up? Or did they, and it was just not mentioned?
Something that has not been mentioned yet is ISP related usage caps. If one person needs those files but has run up against some spurious usage cap, having a DVD available to them that does not consume usage, a small charge for the disc might be OK for them. What was Lundgren charging for the discs? I have heard several numbers. $25 for the Microsoft licensed disc and $.25 for the Lundgren disc. What was Lundgren actually going to charge for his discs? And, wasn't his intent to sell them to other refurbishers, rather than end users? Does this make some difference? Well, not to Microsoft, and the court is clueless about those ramifications.
"A requirement that you know what's in a bill and are at least moderately knowledgeable about the subject before voting strikes me as a good one(and one I dearly wish was already a requirement), but it also opens up some serious problems that would need addressing less it turn into something even worse than what we already have."
I heartily concur. But there are additional problems. Some bills are thousands of pages long. Any legislator that said publicly that they had read the whole thing, I might call a liar. Then, let's say I'm wrong, and they did read the whole thing, weeks in advance. Having fulfilled their responsibility, and the vote coming next week, they return home for some fundraising. Any Congresscritter has to spend a majority of their time fundraising or they won't get re-elected. In the mean time, 7 riders are added to the bill. The responsible Congresscritter returns and without re-reading it, votes. What were those 7 riders for? Could they be important? Could they be devastating?
I suggest that the whole concept of riders be eliminated. Make legislative bills about one idea and the ways to enact that, no addons. In addition, if we remove the concept of money from politics, maybe our Congresscritters could spent their time, you know, doing their jobs instead of fundraising.
How do we remove money from politics? Simple. Take 1% of the intelligence agencies budget and there will be more than enough to pay for every campaign. And no outside influences, which should be illegal. Money equals speech, some say, it also equals bribery. When does it cross the line?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "I don't get it, why don't they trust us?"
Parties are not necessarily inevitable. Like minded people may band together, but the concept of political parties stand for something has already been quashed, the parties have reversed themselves, more than once. Lincoln was a republican, then. Today he might be a democrat, or maybe an independent. The label is the problem, it doesn't define a platform. It defines, as you point out, what the leaders want, at the time expressed.
This is why I have and will continue to express a desire to remove the concept of political parties, as well as platform from the parties/candidates. There should be a pre-election debate where the people define what the platform for the upcoming election will be, via a debate via the Internets, and maybe an actual pre-election election. Months, maybe a year or more in advance. The people propose platform issues, and then decide on, say the top ten, or twenty. Then the candidates get to put their positions with regard to that platform agenda on the table, creating an electoral platform agenda. The populace gets to decide which candidates meet their requirements on the majority of positions on the electoral platform. There should also be some ability to hold elected officials to their campaign rhetoric. Don't stand up to what you said in your campaign...lose power, exponentially until one is, oh how do we say it, un-elected. Maybe votes of confidence in political leaders would be a good idea. It exists in some parliamentary processes, but it might make us as unstable as some other countries are. Not that we are stable now.
The whole idea of platform created by political parties is what I think a number of the Founders found abhorrent to the idea of political parties. They made a mistake in allowing them. Would things be different now without political parties from the beginning? Most certainly. Would the be better? I am not sure, as the allure of power is powerful, and I think there would be a way to get corrupted even with this control.
>"Copyright is basically the definition of a law that needs modernized."
Except that it was modernization that brought upon the current mess. Maybe rationalization, or public benefitization, or something else would be a better way to express the thought.
How easily politician fall for this quip. Their desire to be seen as caring, while actually pursuing some political agenda (that does not necessarily comport with the desires of their constituents), but achieves something their political leaders think is important to their, often moral, cause.
Made up statistics (a.k.a. excuses) are not the only problem. I wonder what a poll of legislators asking who actually read the bill before voting for it would show? The second question of the poll would be what financial or other support was 'suggested' (promised, whether it gets fulfilled or not) to get compliance? And the third question would be what 'threats' (lack of support of other bills, lack of support during reelection process, etc.) were proffered?
They should be suing librarians. They have been suggesting related reading material to me for over half a century, and somehow I am quite certain that it was happening long before that.
Oh, they said electronic text. Didn't we settle that whole 'on a computer' thingy a while back?
Re: So...do we yet have a measure for excessive persecution?
As you point out, 'suspicious behavior' is very, very subjective. What we need are standards that are more objective, or only very, very slightly subjective as the former may not be reasonable (another very subjective word). What we want is evidence. Evidence that is not made up or planted. Evidence in sufficient quantity to remove subjectivity from the equation.
If the end user downloaded the software from Microsoft, as Microsoft allows, and it didn't work it would be exactly the same result as your bootleg software story.
I do agree that Lundgren made a mistake by including the Microsoft/Dell logos on his disks, though I do not think that inclusion is worth 15 months in jail. The content of the disk is freely available, and (at least so far as I can tell from the article) exactly the same as what can be downloaded from Microsoft. It would be more like he provided a service to someone who did not have an internet connection, and needed that free software.
Two negatives do not make a positive, except in some math problems. However, in Ohio three positives make a negative. Which doesn't work in any math problem.
One would think that law enforcement these days has had sufficient experience lying in court to be able to come up with, at least, semi-credible lies. Maybe they are just lacking in creativity.
Creativity is a skill set required by law enforcement, isn't it?
CBP is also probably including instances of name calling. That could be considered assault, but I think one has to get pretty close to someone else and then call the names for it to be considered assault. Beyond that, they are surely, deliberately conflating (as others have pointed out) assault and battery.
This, I think, is how they intend to get the money for that useless wall.
On the post: Two-Man Police Department Acquires $1 Million In Military Gear
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Which doesn't diminish the premise that Congress might be buying things the Armed Forces neither want or need, for economic (a.k.a. political) reasons.
On the post: Two-Man Police Department Acquires $1 Million In Military Gear
Re:
On the post: Germany's Supreme Court Confirms That Adblocking Is Legal, In Sixth Consecutive Defeat For Publishers
Re: Re: 'Not giving me money is violating my freedoms!'
On the post: Epic Decides To Double Down On Copyright For Cheating Lawsuit Against 14 Year Old By Taking On Mom
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Blocking users
I only 'played' one online 'game', and it wasn't a game so much. There were hundreds of thousands users, worldwide for this game, but politics came into the middle and I lost interest. While I miss the worldwide community that was formed around this 'game', my leaving was their loss, not mine. I could have created another ID and rejoined, but...
On the post: USPTO Suggests That AI Algorithms Are Patentable, Leading To A Whole Host Of IP And Ethics Questions
Question, who's lies should we believe?
Then again, how are we to insure that such algorithms don't have bias? Is bias also patentable?
It will be a long, long time, well actually long, long after my death, that I would consider AI algorithms (that might be redundant, but maybe not) to be of significance. Take them into consideration, maybe, but then I would be looking for algorithms that say the other thing and trying to work through the maths that made the both of them up. Not much different than listening to a lying politician for one side as compared to a lying politician for the other side, but they aren't patentable either. Are they?
Accurate? Maybe. Patentable? No. Believable? No. Especially when one considers that once it is 'intellectual property' one is never going to see the spaghetti inside. Of course that might be the case now as they are considered trade secrets. An oxymoron waiting to be unveiled.
Hmm, considering that, wouldn't patenting algorithms make the spaghetti public?
On the post: Epic Decides To Double Down On Copyright For Cheating Lawsuit Against 14 Year Old By Taking On Mom
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Blocking users
On the post: Congress And The CASE Of The Proposed Bill That Helps Copyright Trolls
Keep pushing and one gets what one wants
In light of the 7th Amendment, and most likely others, how could this law be considered Constitutional?
Possibly a better question is why the EFF didn't bring this up? Or did they, and it was just not mentioned?
On the post: Microsoft Defends Putting A Computer Recycler In Jail With Misleading Statement
Re: Where is the crime?
On the post: FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Truth? Facts? so?
I heartily concur. But there are additional problems. Some bills are thousands of pages long. Any legislator that said publicly that they had read the whole thing, I might call a liar. Then, let's say I'm wrong, and they did read the whole thing, weeks in advance. Having fulfilled their responsibility, and the vote coming next week, they return home for some fundraising. Any Congresscritter has to spend a majority of their time fundraising or they won't get re-elected. In the mean time, 7 riders are added to the bill. The responsible Congresscritter returns and without re-reading it, votes. What were those 7 riders for? Could they be important? Could they be devastating?
I suggest that the whole concept of riders be eliminated. Make legislative bills about one idea and the ways to enact that, no addons. In addition, if we remove the concept of money from politics, maybe our Congresscritters could spent their time, you know, doing their jobs instead of fundraising.
How do we remove money from politics? Simple. Take 1% of the intelligence agencies budget and there will be more than enough to pay for every campaign. And no outside influences, which should be illegal. Money equals speech, some say, it also equals bribery. When does it cross the line?
On the post: International Standards Body Rejects Weakened IOT Encryption Methods Pushed By The NSA
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "I don't get it, why don't they trust us?"
Parties are not necessarily inevitable. Like minded people may band together, but the concept of political parties stand for something has already been quashed, the parties have reversed themselves, more than once. Lincoln was a republican, then. Today he might be a democrat, or maybe an independent. The label is the problem, it doesn't define a platform. It defines, as you point out, what the leaders want, at the time expressed.
This is why I have and will continue to express a desire to remove the concept of political parties, as well as platform from the parties/candidates. There should be a pre-election debate where the people define what the platform for the upcoming election will be, via a debate via the Internets, and maybe an actual pre-election election. Months, maybe a year or more in advance. The people propose platform issues, and then decide on, say the top ten, or twenty. Then the candidates get to put their positions with regard to that platform agenda on the table, creating an electoral platform agenda. The populace gets to decide which candidates meet their requirements on the majority of positions on the electoral platform. There should also be some ability to hold elected officials to their campaign rhetoric. Don't stand up to what you said in your campaign...lose power, exponentially until one is, oh how do we say it, un-elected. Maybe votes of confidence in political leaders would be a good idea. It exists in some parliamentary processes, but it might make us as unstable as some other countries are. Not that we are stable now.
The whole idea of platform created by political parties is what I think a number of the Founders found abhorrent to the idea of political parties. They made a mistake in allowing them. Would things be different now without political parties from the beginning? Most certainly. Would the be better? I am not sure, as the allure of power is powerful, and I think there would be a way to get corrupted even with this control.
On the post: International Standards Body Rejects Weakened IOT Encryption Methods Pushed By The NSA
What the NSA looks for on IoT
On the post: FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking
Re: Re:
Except that it was modernization that brought upon the current mess. Maybe rationalization, or public benefitization, or something else would be a better way to express the thought.
On the post: FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking
See something do something
Made up statistics (a.k.a. excuses) are not the only problem. I wonder what a poll of legislators asking who actually read the bill before voting for it would show? The second question of the poll would be what financial or other support was 'suggested' (promised, whether it gets fulfilled or not) to get compliance? And the third question would be what 'threats' (lack of support of other bills, lack of support during reelection process, etc.) were proffered?
On the post: Stupid Patent Of The Month: Suggesting Reading Material
Re: 'How much are you willing to spend to prove that you're right?'
Or some of those being sued could go through whatever process it takes and send it to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
On the post: Stupid Patent Of The Month: Suggesting Reading Material
Prior Art
Oh, they said electronic text. Didn't we settle that whole 'on a computer' thingy a while back?
On the post: Appeals Court: Driving Attentively While Black Isn't Probable Cause For A Traffic Stop
Re: So...do we yet have a measure for excessive persecution?
On the post: How Microsoft Convinced Clueless Judges To Send A Man To Jail For Copying Software It Gives Out For Free
Re: Re: Re:
I do agree that Lundgren made a mistake by including the Microsoft/Dell logos on his disks, though I do not think that inclusion is worth 15 months in jail. The content of the disk is freely available, and (at least so far as I can tell from the article) exactly the same as what can be downloaded from Microsoft. It would be more like he provided a service to someone who did not have an internet connection, and needed that free software.
On the post: Appeals Court: Driving Attentively While Black Isn't Probable Cause For A Traffic Stop
Facinating
Two negatives do not make a positive, except in some math problems. However, in Ohio three positives make a negative. Which doesn't work in any math problem.
One would think that law enforcement these days has had sufficient experience lying in court to be able to come up with, at least, semi-credible lies. Maybe they are just lacking in creativity.
Creativity is a skill set required by law enforcement, isn't it?
On the post: How Microsoft Convinced Clueless Judges To Send A Man To Jail For Copying Software It Gives Out For Free
Re:
On the post: CBP Using Fake Math To Greatly Inflate Number Of Assaults On Border Patrol Officers
Waaaaaa, he called me a )&%@#
This, I think, is how they intend to get the money for that useless wall.
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