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Comment Re:These terms should be considered unconscionable (Score 4, Insightful) 147

Without class actions, how can a company be punished for, for example, cheating a million people out of $10 each?

I suppose that the government could step in, but a class action has the advantage of providing a market-based solution to the problem. A greedy law firm can determine that the payoff will be profitable, and then invest their own resources to punish the offender. The fear of being on the receiving end of a suit helps keep big corporations in line, and this explains why they hate them so much.

Comment Re:That's nothing (Score 2) 232

Here in America we jail people just for making bad movies!

The fact that we don't jail people for making bad movies is the reason that there have been riots around the Muslim world the past week. Many of the people in those countries just cannot comprehend that the government can do nothing about the film other then issuing statements.

Comment Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's (Score 5, Insightful) 734

I don't think it's that they are trying to nickel and dime you. I think they were trying to reduce cost of the base OS, by not including the licensing fees for MPEG2.

If so, that may be a good thing if it exposes end users to the patent craziness that is screwing up the industry. As the best way to get rid of a bad law is to strictly enforce it, unbundling the MPEG licenses will annoy end users.

Comment Re:Why do they need a warrant? (Score 1) 85

The point needs to be made that, absent probable cause or reasonable articulable suspicion, the police/government has no authority to track anyone. So instead of you and I "hoping" that they can't follow us without a good reason (and thus, by extension, "hoping" that they won't abuse the privilege), they are first required to have a good reason before being allowed to follow us.

I was referring to that case where a police officer follows someone out in the open, on public streets. In that case, the cops have as much freedom of movement as anyone else does. If they were to trespass on private property, or take any other action that would be illegal for a normal civilian to take (wiretaps, access to any non-public corporate data, tampering with someone vehicle to attach a tracking device, etc.) then yes, they should have to get a warrant.

Comment Re:Why do they need a warrant? (Score 3, Insightful) 85

They never needed a warrant to "tail" a guy driving round in his car, or "shadow" him walking down the street, so why need one to tail/shadow a cellphone? I don't think any of these events is unreasonable.

The best argument against this is that trailing a person requires resources (the cop), and has an opportunity cost for the police. They are not going to tail someone without a (hopefully good) reason. If, on the other hand, they engage in mass surveillance with minimal cost cost per victim, that eliminates the cost for the police to engage in such behavior.

Comment Re:Paper Money w/ Digital signatures (Score 4, Insightful) 528

... The government just needs a private key and digitally sign each paper bill it produces (similar to the current serial numbers but with PKI powers) and then when you accept paper money for payment you will need a computer to read and verify the digital signature is valid. ...

Nice thought, but it won't work. You just need a bill, and you can copy the serial number, signature and all.

What might work is the following: Manufacture each bill with a random "fingerprint", and and sign that. This fingerprint would need to be something that is impossible to create in given configuration (it must be random, and there cannot be any alternative non-random way to make it.) It should also be easy to verify. I do not know of anything that meets these criteria, but there may be something.

Comment Re:First post!! (Score 2) 378

I cannot say for the C standard, but in my work, we do some standards development under ISO. None of this work is funded by ISO -- it is either funded by my employer, or government agencies, commercial end-users, or others that have in interest in the technology getting standardized. This process can be quite expensive -- salaries, travel, meetings, but none of that is paid by ISO. It is all paid by the participants (or funding they can acquire from other interested parties.).

ISO basically acts as a middleman. They collect their fee on the work done by others, and do not provide any value add other than blessing the standard as an International Standard.

Comment Re:Google shouldn't had given them such right (Score 3, Interesting) 220

One problem with the perjury remedy is it a criminal matter, and thus takes a the government to initiate litigation. There is no private right of action, and you are pretty much SOL unless you can convince the US Department of Justice to prosecute someone fora false DMCA take-down request. The way I always thought this should work, is that if an infringement claim is made and the poster does not contest, the material is taken down and the issue is closed, if the poster does contest the remains accessible, but the person who posted it accepts liability is the alleged content owner decides to sue, and the material will remain visible until the poster or a court orders it removed. This way, anyone can post anything without fear of a takedown, as long as they are willing to defend their actions in court.

Comment And liquids are still banned (Score 1) 277

So they go through all the trouble of banning liquids on flights, and other security theater, while allowing provably dangerous electronics onto the planes without any question. What happens when some terrorist is able to reprogram a phone or computer to overheat on command? Perhaps they could even "forget" the phone on a plane, and arrange for it to cause some mischief after the bad guy deplanes.

I would love to see them ban computers and cellphones because that would effect frequent business travelers, and perhaps cause some pushback against the insanity of airline security.

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