The first scene is an establishing shot. It's a camera angle that might conceivably been used for a focus group. The camera angle is slightly high, with a wide depth of field. It captures most of the people at the table, but certainly not all of them. You don't notice it, but it's very steady.
Combined with the captioning, you now believe that it's a hidden camera at a focus group. Your stop thinking about the situation.
The next camera shot is a smooth cut while the woman is still speaking. If asked later, you probably remember it as the same shot. But this camera is centered on the "moderator" and "panel woman", with a shallow depth of field. The camera is subtly moving slightly, but never quickly or losing center. This is a video trick to keep your attention.
This was absolutely a staged scene, created by professionals. They thought carefully about the "feel" of the result when they selected the cameras, lenses and mounts. The second camera was carefully aimed, it was locked to a shallow depth of field -- something you wouldn't do in a unscripted situation. And the focus was locked on just the woman talking.
That was not "organic" original footage. Watch the camera work, and the angles. This was scripted and staged.
The words might have been the same as the original comments, and those actors might be actual customers, but I doubt that those were the same people that made the original comments.
I thought that this was the usual over-blown hang-wringing. But now that I've seen the commercial, it's hard to believe that there wasn't someone with a tiny bit of sense to stop them.
The jury should be made up of orchestra session musicians.
Three days later they would come back with "we can't decide if they copied more from 17th century music or ripped off those 18th century music pirates".
Errmmm, how do you inflict emotional distress to a corporation?
When a complaint includes such a bogus concept, or such exaggerated estimates of damage, it should color the credibility of the superficially-reasonable claims.
I also thought that an optical tracking, optical reading replacement for a stylus had fundamental advantages.
It turns out that physically pushing aside particulates with a hard stylus is important to detect the proper surface. Optics average all of the surface dirt and deformation, even in areas the stylus doesn't touch.
It's no surprise that the stylus geometry reads the proper two points, because it closely matches the tool on the cutting latch. Optical techniques read a pair of lines that are often a bit out-of-plane.
On the topic of geometry, it's very important that the record sit flat. Some high-end turntables even had vacuum pumps to pull a slightly warped record in-plane. A warped record not induces bogus low frequency sounds, but also results in geometry-induced tracking speed changes and changing off-axis stylus orientation.
Forbes would certainly like to disclaim all liability for their selected advertising network, but that doesn't make them a 3rd party. They are a "jointly liable party".
The advertisements are structured as part of the Forbes website. Forbes is insisting that they be received as part of viewing the stories. Forbes contracting out the sales of advertisement and failing to review the contents doesn't make them unrelated -- it just means that they abdicated their responsibility. An industry standard of abdicating responsibility doesn't transform the practice into reasonable behavior.
To use a tradition magazine analogy, Forbes sent out a magazine with poisoned ink and child pornography. They don't get to pass all responsibility onto the chemical company and photographer.
This is so far from being effective legislation that we can only analyze it as we would with cartoon physics.
First, what is a smartphone? Sure, we know one when we see it. Like my phone-shaped Android device.. that has only WiFi. But acts just like a phone with a VOIP application working over WiFi. But not my tablet with a cellular modem. Despite having the same chips, OS and applications as a smartphone, its slightly larger screen makes it a Completely Different Thing.
Even if you think you can draw a line, next year's smartwatch equivalent will make it laughably irrelevant.
Next, who is really responsible? Samsung, Apple and Google are clearly in the cross-hairs of this legislation. But can any of those parties ensure that Amazon's cached content be decrypted? Or any of the other almost-million applications?
Can a phone ship with latent encryption disabled by default? Hidden? Barely hidden? Enabled only when you set a password? Not shipped by default, but automatically downloaded and installed when you set a password?
I could spend hours poking holes into this proposal..
Do you know how housing developments are named after what they killed or destroyed to build them e.g. 'Fox Run', 'Oak Grove', 'Willow Glen', 'Back Bay'?
It's curious that every illustration of the gun is a computer rendering.
To me that suggests either
This is someone looking to raise money around this idea. They aren't serious enough to build a prototype. That suggests that they can't fabricate things (why would you fund them?) or will take the money and run (why would you fund them?)
It's a false-flag operation, where someone is trying to get in the news or provide a "see, it could exist" example.
I can't decide which is more likely. Before KickStarter, I wouldn't have believed that people are gullible enough to invest in someone with just a rendering, with no financial oversight. Or even a nominal fiduciary responsibility.
I think that it was here on techdirt that someone linked to the Officer Down Memorial Page, odmp.org.
I found their counting methodology rather... relaxed. They included police dogs in the count. In some cases you had to read the description carefully to figure out that it was a dog. And they included a wide variety of deaths, including heart attacks while on call or during off-duty work, a correction officer falling from a ladder during maintenance work, and several single-car accidents that may have been off-duty pursuits.
If you eliminate the single-car accidents, and regular car accidents (prisoner transport appears to be risky) the numbers are much lower.
It appears that Global Archery filed for and was granted a patent on the design of a product they were sourcing from someone else.
They didn't come up with the invention. They just patented the design here in the U.S., without the inventor's knowledge. Presumably they used the patent to attract investors, and obviously they used it to threaten competitors.
They dropped the patent from the lawsuit because they don't want it invalidated, and they certainly don't want discovery into the why they fraudulently filed for a patent on something they didn't invent.
The Nevis 'defined purpose trust' we know about (AF Holdings AKA AF Films) likely just holds copyrights to worthless films.
The Prenda guys are clever enough to not put any money into the single front entity. That trust was intended to be the sole public face of the scam.
Incidentally, in order to skirt around the laws about transferring assets out of the county, the copyright was nominally acquired by AF Holdings for $0. Yes, they were suing over a literally worthless film.
A Nevis Defined Purpose Trust is a pretty obscure construct. The Prenda guys must have scoured the ends of the earth to set up their scam. That makes it extremely likely they also researched much better known ways of hiding money in offshore accounts. It remains to be seen if the Trustee can sniff out the trail.
I agree that the issue isn't at all a technical one.
But I think most people here are under-estimating the expertise, time and effort it takes to push out even a zero-change key-signed update.
It takes the company I work for almost a year to go from fully-written code for a new feature to deploying that feature onto the machines of customers. There are rooms full of machines that build and test each night. Then unseen legions of internal testers, using a signing key that works only internally. Then a special room and designated priests that consecrate the release with the beta-test external signing key, usable only by 'early availability' external testers. Finally the people in the special room with air-gapped machines sign the validated binary with the final release key.
And still bugs show up immediate in the new release.
At best there are only a handful of people that have the broad knowledge to make a modification, rebuild the system, do all of the signing to make the result valid, and push the result onto a device. Perhaps there is no single person, and it would still take a small team. The people on such a team have all been around long enough to both deeply care about the system, and have enough stock+options to retire in luxury.
Apple is unlikely to summarily fire an employee for refusing to do this specific work. They might be placed on leave. Perhaps even unpaid leave. Some employees might volunteer to be terminated (e.g. with lucrative stock options immediately vesting, simply retiring early).
The FBI might have misjudged public sentiment earlier. But they certainly can see the PR disaster of Apple suspending and firing employees for refusing an immoral order. Apple has a lot of employee with cushy-retirement-magnitude stock options. At a dozen people a day, they might have an continuous supply.
What if the FBI just skips that embarrassment and asks for the source code, the signing key and the process to produce a valid signed update? First, that's a huge ask to the court That's the core of Apple's business. Can the government force the turn-over of the most critical trade secrets of a company that wasn't remotely involved in the crime?
And even if they get it, could they build a software update? It would be like asking a football to operate an aircraft carrier. They might be able to start it moving after a decade or two of study. But to use it as intended would be beyond them in this lifetime.
A message system limited to the known users a single machine isn't email. Calling it EMAIL doesn't make it email.
It's closest physical analogy is a single cork bulletin board with thumbtacks, or a wall of named cubbyholes, not the postal system.
Someone can send mail to a person in Eagle Alaska, even if they didn't know that there was town with that name until a few seconds ago. They don't need to know where Eagle is, or the directions to that address. The mail can get by truck, train, boat, plane or dogsled (and if to Eagle, perhaps all of those).
On the post: Sprint Customer Listening Tour Goes Sour, Company Has To Pull Ad Calling T-Mobile A 'Ghetto'
The first scene is an establishing shot. It's a camera angle that might conceivably been used for a focus group. The camera angle is slightly high, with a wide depth of field. It captures most of the people at the table, but certainly not all of them. You don't notice it, but it's very steady.
Combined with the captioning, you now believe that it's a hidden camera at a focus group. Your stop thinking about the situation.
The next camera shot is a smooth cut while the woman is still speaking. If asked later, you probably remember it as the same shot. But this camera is centered on the "moderator" and "panel woman", with a shallow depth of field. The camera is subtly moving slightly, but never quickly or losing center. This is a video trick to keep your attention.
This was absolutely a staged scene, created by professionals. They thought carefully about the "feel" of the result when they selected the cameras, lenses and mounts. The second camera was carefully aimed, it was locked to a shallow depth of field -- something you wouldn't do in a unscripted situation. And the focus was locked on just the woman talking.
On the post: Sprint Customer Listening Tour Goes Sour, Company Has To Pull Ad Calling T-Mobile A 'Ghetto'
The words might have been the same as the original comments, and those actors might be actual customers, but I doubt that those were the same people that made the original comments.
On the post: Sprint Customer Listening Tour Goes Sour, Company Has To Pull Ad Calling T-Mobile A 'Ghetto'
I thought that this was the usual over-blown hang-wringing. But now that I've seen the commercial, it's hard to believe that there wasn't someone with a tiny bit of sense to stop them.
On the post: Led Zeppelin 'Stairway To Heaven' Copyright Case Will Go To A Jury... Meaning Band Will Almost Certainly Lose
Three days later they would come back with "we can't decide if they copied more from 17th century music or ripped off those 18th century music pirates".
On the post: Game Studio's Plan To Deal With Critic Of Games: Sue Him To Hell
When a complaint includes such a bogus concept, or such exaggerated estimates of damage, it should color the credibility of the superficially-reasonable claims.
On the post: Lucasfilm Threatens And Threatens Non-Profit Over Lightsaber Battle Event
What about 37 C.F.R. � 202.1
That seems to pretty clearly say that a single word, or even a short phrase, is not eligible for copyright.
On the post: Lucasfilm Threatens And Threatens Non-Profit Over Lightsaber Battle Event
Do you use trademark to protect "concepts"? Do you patent the concept of a lightsaber? Do you copyright the single word itself?
On the post: Awesome Stuff: Play, Listen, Record
It turns out that physically pushing aside particulates with a hard stylus is important to detect the proper surface. Optics average all of the surface dirt and deformation, even in areas the stylus doesn't touch.
It's no surprise that the stylus geometry reads the proper two points, because it closely matches the tool on the cutting latch. Optical techniques read a pair of lines that are often a bit out-of-plane.
On the topic of geometry, it's very important that the record sit flat. Some high-end turntables even had vacuum pumps to pull a slightly warped record in-plane. A warped record not induces bogus low frequency sounds, but also results in geometry-induced tracking speed changes and changing off-axis stylus orientation.
On the post: Forbes Site, After Begging You To Turn Off Adblocker, Serves Up A Steaming Pile Of Malware 'Ads'
The advertisements aren't "3rd party content".
Forbes would certainly like to disclaim all liability for their selected advertising network, but that doesn't make them a 3rd party. They are a "jointly liable party".
The advertisements are structured as part of the Forbes website. Forbes is insisting that they be received as part of viewing the stories. Forbes contracting out the sales of advertisement and failing to review the contents doesn't make them unrelated -- it just means that they abdicated their responsibility. An industry standard of abdicating responsibility doesn't transform the practice into reasonable behavior.
To use a tradition magazine analogy, Forbes sent out a magazine with poisoned ink and child pornography. They don't get to pass all responsibility onto the chemical company and photographer.
On the post: California Lawmakers Manage To Turn Encrypted Phone Ban Legislation Into Encryption Backdoor Legislation
First, what is a smartphone? Sure, we know one when we see it. Like my phone-shaped Android device.. that has only WiFi. But acts just like a phone with a VOIP application working over WiFi. But not my tablet with a cellular modem. Despite having the same chips, OS and applications as a smartphone, its slightly larger screen makes it a Completely Different Thing.
Even if you think you can draw a line, next year's smartwatch equivalent will make it laughably irrelevant.
Next, who is really responsible? Samsung, Apple and Google are clearly in the cross-hairs of this legislation. But can any of those parties ensure that Amazon's cached content be decrypted? Or any of the other almost-million applications?
Can a phone ship with latent encryption disabled by default? Hidden? Barely hidden? Enabled only when you set a password? Not shipped by default, but automatically downloaded and installed when you set a password?
I could spend hours poking holes into this proposal..
On the post: Verizon's Attempt To Woo Millennials Is Equal Parts Creepy, Expensive And Sad
I present 'AwesomenessTV'
On the post: Startup Offers Citizens More Opportunities To Get Shot By/Have Their Smartphones Seized By Law Enforcement
To me that suggests either
This is someone looking to raise money around this idea. They aren't serious enough to build a prototype. That suggests that they can't fabricate things (why would you fund them?) or will take the money and run (why would you fund them?)
It's a false-flag operation, where someone is trying to get in the news or provide a "see, it could exist" example.
I can't decide which is more likely. Before KickStarter, I wouldn't have believed that people are gullible enough to invest in someone with just a rendering, with no financial oversight. Or even a nominal fiduciary responsibility.
On the post: Congressman Wants To Make Attacking A Cop A Federal 'Hate' Crime
I found their counting methodology rather... relaxed.
They included police dogs in the count. In some cases you had to read the description carefully to figure out that it was a dog. And they included a wide variety of deaths, including heart attacks while on call or during off-duty work, a correction officer falling from a ladder during maintenance work, and several single-car accidents that may have been off-duty pursuits.
If you eliminate the single-car accidents, and regular car accidents (prisoner transport appears to be risky) the numbers are much lower.
If
On the post: Rep. Speier Wants To Register Every Prepaid Phone Purchase, In Case Someone Bad Uses One As A Burner Phone
Yet they are still used to commit crimes.
How could registering and controlling cell phones possibly be successful.
On the post: Newegg Inserts Itself Into The Global Archery, LARPing.org Patent Tiff
They didn't come up with the invention. They just patented the design here in the U.S., without the inventor's knowledge. Presumably they used the patent to attract investors, and obviously they used it to threaten competitors.
They dropped the patent from the lawsuit because they don't want it invalidated, and they certainly don't want discovery into the why they fraudulently filed for a patent on something they didn't invent.
Now that they have
On the post: Prenda's Paul Hansmeier Continues To Win Enemies, Influence Legislators With His ADA Trolling, Hiding Of Assets
The Prenda guys are clever enough to not put any money into the single front entity. That trust was intended to be the sole public face of the scam.
Incidentally, in order to skirt around the laws about transferring assets out of the county, the copyright was nominally acquired by AF Holdings for $0. Yes, they were suing over a literally worthless film.
A Nevis Defined Purpose Trust is a pretty obscure construct. The Prenda guys must have scoured the ends of the earth to set up their scam. That makes it extremely likely they also researched much better known ways of hiding money in offshore accounts. It remains to be seen if the Trustee can sniff out the trail.
On the post: Apple Engineers Contemplate Refusing To Write Code Demanded By Justice Department
But I think most people here are under-estimating the expertise, time and effort it takes to push out even a zero-change key-signed update.
It takes the company I work for almost a year to go from fully-written code for a new feature to deploying that feature onto the machines of customers. There are rooms full of machines that build and test each night. Then unseen legions of internal testers, using a signing key that works only internally. Then a special room and designated priests that consecrate the release with the beta-test external signing key, usable only by 'early availability' external testers. Finally the people in the special room with air-gapped machines sign the validated binary with the final release key.
And still bugs show up immediate in the new release.
At best there are only a handful of people that have the broad knowledge to make a modification, rebuild the system, do all of the signing to make the result valid, and push the result onto a device. Perhaps there is no single person, and it would still take a small team. The people on such a team have all been around long enough to both deeply care about the system, and have enough stock+options to retire in luxury.
On the post: Apple Engineers Contemplate Refusing To Write Code Demanded By Justice Department
The FBI might have misjudged public sentiment earlier. But they certainly can see the PR disaster of Apple suspending and firing employees for refusing an immoral order. Apple has a lot of employee with cushy-retirement-magnitude stock options. At a dozen people a day, they might have an continuous supply.
What if the FBI just skips that embarrassment and asks for the source code, the signing key and the process to produce a valid signed update? First, that's a huge ask to the court That's the core of Apple's business. Can the government force the turn-over of the most critical trade secrets of a company that wasn't remotely involved in the crime?
And even if they get it, could they build a software update? It would be like asking a football to operate an aircraft carrier. They might be able to start it moving after a decade or two of study. But to use it as intended would be beyond them in this lifetime.
On the post: DEA's Definition Of Evidence Control Apparently Doesn't Include Recording Gross Weight Of Seized Substances
Why should they have to keep track of all of the extra?
On the post: Guy Who Pretends He Invented Email Whines At Every Journalist For Writing Obit Of Guy Who Actually Helped Create Email
It's closest physical analogy is a single cork bulletin board with thumbtacks, or a wall of named cubbyholes, not the postal system.
Someone can send mail to a person in Eagle Alaska, even if they didn't know that there was town with that name until a few seconds ago. They don't need to know where Eagle is, or the directions to that address. The mail can get by truck, train, boat, plane or dogsled (and if to Eagle, perhaps all of those).
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