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The problem with this interpretation is that in the vast majority of cases, one cannot know whether downloading is authorized or not.

Virtually every video, audio or text file of works created in the past century, more or less, is copyrighted. That alone is not the relevant criterion. The criterion of infringement is whether the particular action is authorized by the copyright holder. But this, no one can routinely know in the course of internet activities.

There is no central or public database of works that would reveal even who the copyright owner is - and even if there were, it would have to also record the authorization status of everyone in relation to every work.

So you are looking around online and someone is offering a file - if you are subject to lawsuits, fines or whatever other interference for downloading, then in principle it's not safe to even look at a web page. What the new rule amounts to in practice is something like "well if you infer that the web page is intended to be retrieved, you're probably safe, but you can be penalized for guessing incorrectly about music or videos". (Note that movie companies have actually sued youtube/Google over files including some that the movie companies themselves published on youtube.)

It simultaneously keeps everyone continually vulnerable to selective enforcement by private companies (specifically, big copyright accumulators), and casts a chilling effect on the relationship of fans with artists who would like to release works on more liberal terms than Hollywood companies (can you trust a statement on a web page that something is authorized???).

transcript: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1403/S00108/edward-snowdens... , http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/edward-s...

Aren't HN titles supposed to be the original title? The h1 is "Krav til nettløsninger (WCAG)" / "Requirements for network solutions (WCAG)".

In this case a substitution may be necessary to giv an idea of what it's about, but let's please try to be accurate. The requirements apply only to business websites, not to all websites. Regulation of business to protect the public, or in this case to provide for disabled people, is a good thing. Imposing these requirements on non-commercial, civil-society websites would be a serious abridgement of freedom of speech.

The author points out that it's possible in some sense to have a world with less work, OK material standards, more leisure and less unhappiness. People would still work, social/technological advancement would still occur, but people would be more content and maybe many would move to jobs that would make more of their talents.

This, however, is looking only at big numbers on a macro level. It ignores all the things which have prevented this outcome from actually happening. These include (1) incentives (2) ideology.

1. If employer A allows less than 40 hour work weeks, or more vacation, he can be beaten out in the market by employer B which mandates longer hours and produces more per time period. Employees might prefer A over B, but they have so little bargaining power that this will not stop B. If the same requirements are imposed on all employers, then the country will be out-competed by others.

2. Conservatives criticize any such proposal with an argument like this: "You should be free to use your property as you wish, including by having people work as long as you can get them to agree to. And everything is already owned, so the only way to provide more for one person is to take away from another, and it's wrong to take money or other values from people who have earned them, to give to others who have not earned them."

Regardless of the merits of the argument, it is effective with the public, and politicians use it effectively to protect the owners. This can never change unless someone can present a contrary view that can be stated in equally pithy sound-bites and which is equally convincing for large numbers of voters (in democratic countries, basically W. Europe and parts of S. America) or unless a large enough segment commit to a revolution (in the rest of the countries which are not democratic).

It would be a very bad precedent if an owner of a domain name can gain rights to the same name in another tld just by his own site becoming popular.

US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.

Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.

This was one of the original arguments for patents. It is actually the reason they're called patents (opposed to "latent"). There had been, in UK, cases of formulas for making certain things, which had been lost because they were kept secret to preserve then-defacto monopolies.

Maybe I'm being daft here, but why don't would-be file-sharers just encrypt files and send their friends passwords along with the links? Neither the provider nor the copyright holders would be able to tell who was sharing what, unless they monitored IM, email etc..

Of course it does seem that anyone can abuse the DMCA with impunity, so strictly speaking this wouldn't stop the "notice and takedown" actions. It would however prevent the automated detection and might increase cost and difficulty for copyright complainers.

To be clear, I was only commenting on the neurodiversity thing in reply to the parent, not advocating for it. We agree that it is relevant for only a small percentile of ASD individuals.

And on second thought, it may make sense from a public health perspective to abandon labels for subtypes, unless the experts think the subtypes have different causes. But AFAIK the causes of ASD are unknown.

Many Asperger's people themselves have rejected the "disorder" label and ask to be thought of as different in a neutral, not necessarily bad way. For this reason they refer to non-Aspergers people as "neurotypical".

This is reasonable in regard to high-functioning Aspies, but remember that ASD covers a wide range. I think it would be better to retain the separate label for Asperger's, because it is distinguished by normal or better intelligence and language ability (while sharing other traits with classic autism) -- however, even within the Asperger's category there is a wide range.

Another aspect that is often underappreciated is that the HF aspie, if smart enough, can learn to adjust to normal society to such a degree that he/she can often pass for normal, so that a diagnostician would place him/her at a different point on the spectrum at different stages of life.

This is admirable and I wish the author well. His example may also help others.

It should not be taken as a signal that "outing" oneself is advisable for others in comparable situations. This guy is very fortunate that he is well established in a career and can point to good performance in his positions, unaffected (from the employer's point of view) by his condition.

Others are much more vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination, and might be better advised to stay closeted.

GIMP is great for editing photos, but a poor choice for creating bitmap (non vector) graphics. It's a big hassle even just to draw a straight line in GIMP. MS Paint is the reverse - easy for graphics, ill-suited for photos.

As I noted elsewhere on this page, Kolourpaint4 is the Linux equivalent of MS Paint. There are others which aim for the same niche, one called (MTPaint? or similar?) for example, but I found them harder to use.

I don't know about that particular feature, but after looking around I found that Kolourpaint (4?) has essentially the functionality of MS Paint, with better usability and without its annoying bugs.

Can anyone explain this line from commenter Darren Cook: "Once this enforcement is in place, browsers will simply refuse to connect to Google over an insecure or compromised connection. By shipping this setting in the browser itself, circumvention will become effectively impossible."

Some browsers are open source, and it seems to me that developers can never definitely rely on their behavior. Surely the enforcement depends ultimately not on the browsers but rather on the server refusing non-TLS connection attempts?

I was skeptical of that too - however, another part of the article implied another scenario, leaving it unclear whether the writer confused them or refers to both. The second scenario is, company may control its own gear well enough, but relies on a service provider that uses Huawei devices, and the Huawei support people can access comms thru the latter. Which begs questions about encryption, so the implications are murky.

Not that alone. They show that that is "practical", which may be semi-new, but the main trick:

" it is the de-authentication step in the wireless setup that represents a much more accessible entry point for an intruder with the appropriate hacking tools. As part of their purported security protocols routers using WPA2 must reconnect and re-authenticate devices periodically and share a new key each time. The team points out that the de-authentication step essentially leaves a backdoor unlocked albeit temporarily."

Does anyone know what court precedents there are for a site owner O. suing companies C. that present altered versions of O's site to third parties T, without consent from O? Arguably C. is interfering in the relationship of O. to T., wrongfully appropriating O's content for profit, and possibly defaming O by making O. appear (to T.) to be associated with C.

If such actions are not legally ruled out, this service may invite them.

I looked at mage like that in the 80s and even then they were never reliable sources for anything. They were influential just because they reached mass audiences, and had a quality of "newsiness" or what's now called "info-tainment", but were always worthless for knowing what was going on.

In particular, the so called "news" magazines - and later the web and television media associated with the same big companies and others like them - had a remarkable talent for writing a whole article, sometimes a long one, with an authoritative tone in the prose, -and always with a "spin" that you might or might not notice - yet somehow never including any verifiable facts or figures, nor identifiable sources. The reader would get a vague impression of the topic and some claims about it, but never any glimmer of knowledge (edit:)(except maybe "big media companies want me to believe 'x', hmmm, why is that?").

I stopped in here to say, I really like the idea of listing points for and against a proposition being true, in ambiguous cases like this.

Often in relation to, say news stories or other controversial claims or ideas, the public have an interest in knowing which of conflicting versions is true, but lack access to primary sources of info. Then people who need to make a "best guess" are forced to rather subjectively estimate the plausibility of various statements, based on more subjective factors including estimates of general credibility of sources.

In such cases, it's probably best to make explicit the grounds for any conclusion - it clarifies for oneself, and may enable improvement by allowing others to review the estimates.

It's true that most people leave the defaults. However, there may an easy solution for a subset of cases.

Do the browser defaults in any country include multiple language settings? It seems likely that in most countries, the default would be only one language. And if this is the case, then if multiple alternatives are present in the request headers, it's very likely the user or computer admin has deliberately changed it, and that in turn would mean that sites should respect the choices.

This might still be wrong in when the settings were made by someone other than the current user, or there are multiple languages default-configured, but it might be a step in the right direction.

I wouldn't mind a smartphone that was a little clunky and less functional, if it were really open.

SOPA would have given big copyright-accumulating companies the power to arbitrarily cut off revenue to sites of their choice, by making accusations of copyright infringement, with no penalty for false accusations and no compensation to victims of false accusations. In essence, Hollywould could have silenced or bankrupted any internet site or service at will, with impunity.

This new proposal would produce a similar effect by a different mechanism. It would empower big copyright-accumulating companies to impose on any site of their choice, a requirement to develop, install and maintain vastly expensive systems to detect, recognize and filter unauthorized files. The costs would prevent small operators from posting any user-sourced content, and the onerous interference with independent operations and new barrier to publishing would severely impair free-speech rights.

In a political system where lobbying is allowed, a wealthy special-interest group can demand changes to enhance its power and revenue, and succeed, even if the harm to the rest of society is astronomically worse than any benefit to the special interest group, because the harm is dispersed and the profit is concentated.

"What would you give for a retinal chip that let you see in the dark or for a next-generation cochlear implant ... a memory chip, wired directly into your brain's hippocampus, ... an implanted interface with the Internet ..."

As long as I don't have to "give" anything to remain free from implants, I'll watch the technology with interest, and maybe consider something when it's perfected and fully under the user's control.

If on the other hand, there is any effort to impose this sort of thing on unwilling people, there will be widespread violent resistance (a prediction, not a threat).

Interesting article - the title however is not only misleading but disturbing. I clicked because it implied that the FBI had dispensed with the inconvenient laws and judicial system and just started killing fugitives when it found them.

I mean, they sometimes do, but that's not what the article is about. If the author is reading, maybe change "will you survive" to "until you're found".

Right, I think this is referring to a technique described in some of the earlier info releases, where the agency intercepts requests and send a fake response before the real one arrives, and ditching the real response. I'm not clear on the details - it may rely on spoofing the server's IP, falsifying DNS replies and/or manipulating data in transit.

What interests me more, and what the above poster may be asking about is this part: "By concealing its malware within what looks like an ordinary Facebook page, the NSA is able to hack into the targeted computer".

This implies a true drive-by exploit - one not requiring any user interaction. Most of the Windows malware is actually installed by the user - they're tricked into clicking something, thinking it's anti-virus, funny video, "accelerate your internet" or some other innocuous thing. The no-user-action exploits generally have been workable only for plugins, particularly Flash or Java, which the user has allowed to run without any filters.

"Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders ... our population isn't motivated in the same way"

It doesn't take religion or "indoctrination since birth" for people to see an invading army as evil - it just takes an invasion.

If your country were occupied by foreign armies, you might want to fight back too - or at least you shouldn't be surprised if others do.

It's possible you may have misunderstood or misinterpreted posters here. There is no inconsistency in preferring a more pleasant workspace, while also pointing out to the employers that it makes software people more productive. One proposition does not make the other false or dishonest.

In fact, most tech professionals are ethical people who enjoy their work and prefer to be more productive. Posters here have been hoping, I think, to point out to employers that a cost savings on workspace, walls etc. may actually cost more in productivity, turnover, inefficiency.

There may be some dishonesty in management claims that open plans are beneficial for anything other than the short-term budget. Managers may have to make such decisions to produce numbers their bosses are demanding, because of the way corporations work. However, there is no apparent basis for the implication of some conflict between employee comfort and work-product benefit to the employer.

"Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are beneficial, its the fact that people who very recently WORKED to create the very thing you are benefiting from should be PAID for their work."

Why did the camera, props, lighting and other workers contribute to the movie, if they weren't getting paid? How could they afford to?

In reality, of course, only the movie companies, some writers and a few big stars rely on percentages - the rest work for wages or get up-front money.

So your argument comes down to the special case where A puts out a recorded work, counting on royalties to pay for it, then B makes unauthorized copies - then A suffers, in some sense, a loss of the hypothetical revenue.

But wait, did B agree to pay? If there was no contract between A and B, then the supposed moral/ethical case for making B pay is reduced to "because the legislators said so". And if tomorrow the legislators grant a private monopoly on air to Monsanto, then by your reasoning we all suddenly become thieves.

There is a natural-rights case for copyright, but it extends only to the actual creators, and covers basically only correct attribution (as per some European laws [1]).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

Most of the rest of the page is discussions of business models, the merits of 'piracy' (economic/service-wise and ethical) -- but the situation of the developers is the important issue.

If there is a legal decision that open-source devs can be held liable for enabling illegal actions on the part of users, there will be a big "chilling effect" on software in that country, and a danger of other nations imposing the same rule.

Consider the logical implications. Almost any software can be used illegally. If contributors are subject to liability even though their work is non-commercial and they do not encourage any illegal use, OSS will effectively become subject to a government permission regime, and development will go underground.

I posted similar comments before seeing yours.

Yes M-B is probably pseudo-science (and of course this poll is unscientific). However, I suspect that some moderate (better-than-chance) degree of validity has kept people using it all these years.

The MMPI supposedly was validated by assessing personality types independently by other methods and then empirically finding corresponding patterns of answers. I don't think that's viable for the M-B, however, as it's shorter, has been more exposed to the public and probably easy to game.

I took the test 3 times, at longish intervals, each sincerely and without much recollection of the questions (for informal workplace occassions) - and scored INTP, INTJ, INTP.

Remarkably, these patterns are found in a small percentile in the population, but (as of early 2014.03.08) are represented way out of proportion here. This is consistent with these types going into software and related (IT-ish) fields. (BTW I suspect these types also attract Aspergers/high-ASD individuals.)