I estimate renting over 1200 VCR tapes in my lifetime, and I've never had one unspool. The cassette problem was common enough that fixing it with a pencil was part of the zeitgeist, but I can't remember anything like that for VHS.
I grew up in the 80s, and was a prolific user of both video tapes (mostly VHS) and cassette tapes. I can't recall ever having a tape get eaten by any deck, either video or audio.
Not saying it never happens, but if it was common I absolutely would have encountered it many times over.
I think it happened more as the players aged and wore out. In the 90s and 2000s I remember it happening pretty commonly although cd or dvd skipping was way worse. A couple years ago we took the old family vcr player out of the parents attic and tested it out. It was a great vcr at the time, sony with all the bells and whistles. But it immediately at the tape and I mean ate it. Had to take it apart and route the tape out myself and I'm pretty sure its ruined the tape. We spent 2 hours on youtube with it taken apart and gave up the project indefinitely.
You could figure it out, but if you're the one getting sued, it's going to cost you a lot of money to pay their lawyers to prove that you didn't have the rights, and someone else did.
It's a possibility. Graphene has some traction though and if a potential high-importance target is running the OS, Cellebrite wouldn't want to be doing emergency vulnerability research to respond.
Perhaps there is an argument to be made that this is a reason "computer security" should not be delegated to a third party, such as an advertising services company like the ones in Silicon Valley, Redmond or Seattle
The reasoning is that the company, being concerned with online advertising and reach,^1 has the incentive to ensure that the software becomes popular with the largest possible number of users, perhaps even achieving monopoly power. According to traditional HN commentary, this makes the company and its software a preferred target for exploits by virtue of its popularity
1. Online surveillance practices to potentially support targeted advertising services, where the companies wantonly collect enormous quantities of data about millions of people, also makes them a target for exploits, e.g., "data breaches"
Consider an alternative status quo where computer owners, i.e., software users, have many options to choose from, including many operating systems, browsers, "app stores", "platforms", and so on
None of the options may be necessarily better choices for "security" for technical reasons^2 but the fact that those who target software from a small number of advertising services juggernauts with millions of users ("lucrative targets") are denied access to such lucrative targets, because the lucrative targets do not exist, is an improvement to "security" overall
2. But some may compete and attempt to distinguish themselves on this basis
In this alternative status quo there would likely be requirements that software be compliant with open standards and interoperable, allowing computer users to write, edit, compile, install and choose whatever software they desire, from any source, including their own brain, i.e., they might choose to write, compile and install their own software on their own computers
Seems appropriate to me. Person was holding a gun while doing a robbery which greatly amplifies the danger inherent in the crime they were doing.
On the flip side, I knew someone who interrupted a car burglary and was murdered by the burglar. Imagine what might happen if someone came upon the guy you know of who was doing a robbery while holding a stolen gun?
The person you knew made a lot of choices that led to this, any of which had they not chosen to do would have led to not being an armed robber: don't do a robbery, don't steal a gun, don't do a robbery while holding a gun.
IANAL, but my understanding is that breaking into an unoccupied car isn't robbery (but it might be theft and/or criminal damage). Wouldn't being convicted of armed robbery without committing a robbery be a serious injustice?
He stole the gun, so it was robbery. I feel like an armed robbery is one where you bring a weapon, which makes the robbery more dangerous. This guy was looking for cash and found a gun, so "armed robbery." The comment above claiming that the charge is justified does make sense, but I disagree with it. I'm also not a lawyer.
What I mean is that if no victim was present there couldn't have been the violence or threat of violence necessary to turn the theft/larceny into robbery:[0]
> Robbery, in turn, was simply a "compound" form of larceny. For Blackstone, "compound larciny is such as has all the properties of former, but is accompanied with one of, or both, the aggravations of a taking from one's house or person," id. at *240, and "[l]arciny from the person is either privately stealing; or by open and violent assault, which is usually called robbery,"
I'm not really making a judgement about the rights and wrongs of the actual case (because I'm not only not a lawyer, but also not a witness, juror, etc.), but as described it doesn't sound like robbery at all.
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