One of the early comments alluded to this, but didn't quite take it far enough.

If userA leases a drive and fills it with illegal content (child pornography, Snowdon's files, whatever) and then leaves and the hosting company the re-leases the drive to userB without clearing out the drive properly, who gets arrested? Who should get arrested?

userA is long gone. Could potentially be tracked down. Need to prove they put the files there and not userB or hosting company.
userB has access (but potentially not ownership) of said files. This is still arrest-able offence.
Hosting company has ownership of files (possibly) in a leased environment??? If this is the case, should the hosting company be responsible not only for clearing the files from userA before putting userB in jeopardy from the law but also responsible for monitoring their drives for illegal activity and content.

Now we are on a slippery slope...

Maybe different now, but when I went to University in the UK, the banks were falling over themselves trying to give me a 1000GBP credit card...They would even pay me 250GBP or a free Apple iPod just to open a line of credit. And I had only just moved back to my home country from 6 years in Europe...

While a number of German, French and US persons/companies were responsible for the on-card chip, the first mass use was as a telephone card in France for pay-phones. And now are everywhere, including many mobile/smart phones.

Oh, and they do identify you to whatever you push them into...whether it be a vending machine or your local grocery store. You think tracking phones is bad...

Google Apps for Goverments... GAG...Classic Acronym

Works something like this:

1) ISP Customer receives Strike 1
2) ISP receives Strike 1
3) ...
4) ISP Customer receives Strike 5
5) ISP is "let go" and customer find other supplier of said Internet.

Any request from ISP for a review would entail a charge of not more than 6 months ISP service contract, refundable only if ISP can prove that they did not provide customer with a Strike.

How does betting my money on the results of a card deal any different than gambling on a stock market? It's all gambling...why is stock market ok, but not cards?

Even betting on currency fluctuations is gambling...And if you want to see about criminal activity due to gambling...Look at the BANKS...

Some of you probably know, but I was BLOWN away when I found out that HP region code their ink cartridges. When I move to the US from Europe, my printer would not accept the US equivalent and, luckily, my printer still had 1 week of warranty left so they had to swap my European printer with a new (refurbished) one...You set up your region when you first plug it in, the printer is identical.

HP can increase the cost of the already inflated prices of ink...Or make their cartridges even smaller, hold less ink and make us all have to buy new cartridges every other day...

We employ a Rackspace IDS (Intrusion Detection System) which all our servers sit behind. We also have a firewall at Rackspace. The IDS detects sql injection attempts, brute forces, DDoS etc and stops them, alerts us and, in our case, we have a pre-arranged agreement for Rackspace to immediately block said IP in our firewall.

We can then determine whether or not that IP is malicious and remove it if necessary. I can't give you any prices, but for a stable and protected environment, it is a requirement these days.

If in the middle of an attack, check if you can still get an ssh onto the box. If so, netstat to find out what is hitting it (or look at the apache logs etc) and stick a block in the iptables to reject the request from said IP.

There is a number of other techniques that you can employ also if you are being attacked by bots (multiple IPs), but the IDS does a good job.

Can they make it longer? Maybe 1 minute 30 seconds in total? Just about enough to make a cup of coffee, prep some popcorn and visit the bathroom?

I was sitting here reading everyone's comments and something struck me...(Apart from my wife telling me to come to bed)...

This is great for shareholders:

I guess it is now possible for Sony to put a firmware patch (required for PSN and New Games) that would effectively put your Blue Ray and DVD player into an alternative REGION code, thus rendering use of the device to watch movies useless, maybe along with a new "Streaming Service"...You choose, PSN+Streaming Service or Play your own DVD/Blue Ray movies...If you choose the latter, you also forego, from this point on, your rights to play any new Games released.

How about an update that requires a subscription of $9.99 for PSN. Don't upgrade if you don't want to pay, the choice is yours...But you can't play new games either...

How about an update that renders the current controllers useless requiring the purchase of new controllers...Update or no new games...

How about an update that removes the use of third-party TV's and only allows connection to SONY BRAVIA TV's...Update or no new games or PSN...

The choices are endless to squeeze consumers into making more necessary purchases to just use their device...

That's about right for a British person... :D

to be honest, no, I didn't read the article, I googled it after remembering the statistic and must have got a bad google match...or rather, it was reported by another paper in not such shining lights...

soz

Welcome to the UK...well, for the cameras anyway: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5834725.ece

300 times a day...

Oh, and I know that this information is collected in squad cars and transmitted wirelessly every time the car docks at the station, both video and audio...

Erm, if the fact of increasing payments towards fixing you car because you were over the speed limit reduces the cost of insurance, then that is a benefit to the careful driver.

What it is more likely do is improve lawyers income with people arguing with insurance companies over the fact that just because I was speeding earlier, at the point of the accident I was driving within the parameters of the law...

What gets me is if they can put these blackboxes in, and my gps does this anyway, why can't they regulate the speeds of the vehicle on the roads. If you are on the limit, the accelerator doesn't allow further acceleration, except in short bursts (which is needed for accident avoidance in certain situations). Oh wait...the police department won't be able to fine any more.

This is merely a revenue generation type black box. If you're going to do it on the premise of saving lives, go the whole way or don't do it at all...

Stupid Question:

1) Most DVD players these days can be made region-free easily.
2) Converting Blue Rays to upload to Pirate Bay is much harder and needs more beef.
3) Blue-Rays are too expensive...Reduced cost DVDs has only made them more popular.
4) Blue-Ray is Sony...They are destined to fail in a format war...forever.
5) Based on 1) above, I can't watch my Blue-Rays I bought in the UK for my PS3 on my US bought PS3...why? Stupid.
6) Blue-Ray content different per region...Unfair...Won't buy because of this.

I hire my blue-rays...I have no need to buy them...hiring becomes more interesting due to high purchase price. However a good movie I want to keep I will buy on DVD for 1/4 the price...Sit far enough from the TV you can't really tell that much of a difference (maybe in sound yes).