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The correct way to solve this is to de-classify corporations as individuals, and create a new category for "corporate speech". This may very well require a consitutional ammendment. There are clear distinctions between the things an individual says and the things a corporation says and the law needs to reflect that.

"Corporate speech" laws could easily cover telemarketing as well. The same issue is closely tied to issues of campaign finance as well. Corporations simply should not have equal rights with citizens because they do not have equal responsibilities or abilities.

The solution to telemarketing is to remove first ammendment protection for corporations.

• References:
• Nike's corporate speech: overwhelming the voice of citizens
• Nike settlement leaves corporate speech unresolved
• ACLU & Nike vs. Reason
• A proposal for a consitutional ammendment

-- Bob

In a very real way, both of these problems are indicative but not proof of injustice by the oil companies. [This includes Chevron, one of Rockefeller's Standard Oil companies, but I'm not sure that Chevron is all it is.]

Point being, if Nigeria has had a huge poverty problem before, they'll likely have it afterwards, as well. Money typically gets spent at the behest of the powerful to make more money for the powerful.

So I really don't expect this to have benefits. But if it does, then I'm all for it.

There is an interesting story in the Atlanta Business Chronicle about Cingular getting hit with a $12M fine in California for the poor way that they ran their network and treated their customers.

If you're interested, you can read about the lawsuite here and here.

Wind River Systems made the following acquisitions and sales:

In May 2000, they bought AudeSi for $40,000,000 and Norwegian company ICESoft for $25,000,000

In April 2001, they bought the software assets of Berkeley Software Design Inc.

There's an interesting quote from Business Week at this time.

owning the assets of an open-source software company doesn't guarantee gaining access to the talent of programmers in the open-source community

Rather not surprisingly, in January 2002, they sold FreeBSD

From Algonet: Diab Data was bought by ISI who in turn were bought by Wind River Systems. EST Corporation were also bought out by Wind River Systems.

I guess Wind River Systems were just trying to expand to fill their niche market.

Wind River Systems made the following acquisitions and sales:

In May 2000, they bought AudeSi for $40,000,000 and Norwegian company ICESoft for $25,000,000

In April 2001, they bought the software assets of Berkeley Software Design Inc.

There's an interesting quote from Business Week at this time.

owning the assets of an open-source software company doesn't guarantee gaining access to the talent of programmers in the open-source community

Rather not surprisingly, in January 2002, they sold FreeBSD

From Algonet: Diab Data was bought by ISI who in turn were bought by Wind River Systems. EST Corporation were also bought out by Wind River Systems.

I guess Wind River Systems were just trying to expand to fill their niche market.

Electronic Arts was sued by ESPN because EA tried to create a fictional "EA Sports Network" to brand their videogames... they already did it with the EANN (electronic arts news network) spoofing CNN in the Desert Strike/Jungle Strike series for the Sega Genesis but in the case of EANN they came over clean.

Can't find historical pages about this lawsuit, but there comes some quotes from google and google groups :)

google post (need to get to the part where it quotes EASN and ESPN).
ESPN versus CSPN (need to get to page 3)

You find me one person, just one person who's lost their job because of a drop in CD sales

Well, music and movie retailer Tower Records has been closing stores, and in the DC area discounter Kemp Mill Records is closing as well.

Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation.

As somebody else stated, does this mean that buying any computer with an RJ45 connector will trigger a 9% sales tax? This is supposed to be a reform of Florida communications tax structure; they're probably trying to close up a tax loophole involving VoIP, but it sounds like they have DMCA-itis.

Hamster

Before giving kudos to the AC for not Karma Whoring, mods beware. There's at least two items in the text that don't belong:

"Most of Florida communications case law stems from the rotary dildo era," says David Bruns, spokesman for the state Department of Revenue.

The proposed rod pushes the definition of communications systems to include local area networks, or LANs, as well as wide area networks, or WANs, which connect computers across distances.

The original site isn't slowing down, so mod this puppy back down.

Read this, then tell me again how "their new fabs are all being built in other countries not the USA". Oh, I get it - you consider Oregon to be a different country???

- State sales tax is nowhere near 10%. In Los Angeles County it's 8.25% and I think ours is the highest. At least 1.5% of that is county tax. State sales tax is 6.something percent. That's closer to 5% than 10%.

- If state income tax was 10%, I would have owed another $6370.70 last year when I sold a house. I paid 7.77% in the highest possible tax bracket.

Feh! Home Despot employs mostly part-time henchmen and won't accept government contracts (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise). Plus, their web site is little more than a home page with links to blank pages, and worst of all, they don't have a favicon.ico! How can you take a site seriously without a favicon?

But seriously, folks... I did *not* expect villainsupply.com to be a real link! Too cool... in an evil sort of way, that is. Wonder if Amazon.com knows about their "Evil Amazon.com" link?

"ILOVEYOU" virus 2.6 - 15.0 Billion

BBC California-based IT consultancy Computer Economics estimated worldwide damage to be $2.6bn by the end of Thursday. It said that figure could soar to $10bn by next week.

USAToday

Lloyds of London put the estimate for Love Bug at $15 billion.

Melissa 1 Billion

USAToday

the economic damage from the Melissa virus in 1999 to be about $1 billion.

CodeRed 2.6 Billion

BizJournals.com

"Code Red, which started in mid-July, so far has cost the U.S. economy $2.6 billion."

Klez 9 Billion

The Register

"The Klez virus last year cost businesses $9 billion worldwide in lost productivity,"

SirCAM 1 Billion

BSTPierre.org

"SirCam", which also propagates through email, cost $1 billion.

TOTAL for these alone: at least 16.2 - 28.6 billion

Criticise them if they start trying to enforce this

They already did start enforcing it, they laid the smack down on Handspring for using a small, thumb-friendly keyboard.

http://www.workopolis.com/servlet/Content/fasttrac k/20030301/RNEWS-3?section=Technology

http://www.dieselnet.com/news/0106litex.html

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stori es/2003/03/31/newscolumn7.html

http://www.nordicwirelesswatch.com/wireless/story. html?story_id=2654

Why is it always inner city schools that are under-funded and big, while suburban schools are always good? Is no one in the suburban school districts overworked? Are there no overcrowding problems in small towns schools - they can afford all the classrooms and teachers they need? Are there not *any* desirable inner city schools?

Suburban schools can have money problems too. Even a rich suburb like Lake Oswego, OR can have serious budget problems.

And in Portland the "inner city" is expensive. The "poor" areas are mostly outside of the "inner city" area.

My small town highschool had no money and more than 30 kids per classroom. We had really old books, crappy computers shared amongst too many kids.
Yeah, us "white suburban" kids had it made. all gravy... (not)

Surely they would never do a thing like that!

Surely they would never do a thing like that!

I can dig competing for my labor costs on the strength of my skills, but I can't compete with developers who make $5,850 a year, because I can't even rent a hole in the wall in my city for that yearly income, let alone feed myself.

Do we really want to 'Flint, Michigan' the entire high-tech industry? At the very least, lets insist that only countries with similar social standards as ours can get looked at for this kind of expatriation of jobs.
Personally, I'm not interested in returning to the days of the Industrial Revolution where workers had no rights-- cause thats what it's like in many third-world countries.

What the hell, lets just expatriate everything... I'm sure we can find dollar-a-day workers for it all over there-- course by then they'll be nobody to pay the lawyers and buy the goods they want to sell to us-- at least the lawyers will all die of hunger too, thats should be a good thing.

I don't think Gillette or Bic would start suing people for making razor blades that happened to fit their razor handle. They'd probably try to make their blades better so no one would want to use the cometitions, or they change their business model.

And you'd be wrong. Gillette will sue you if you violate their patents (and even LOOK like their product, let alone interoperate). And they have patents like this one, and this one and many more pertaining to razors. Not to mention Gillette was the company that patented the original safety razor - so they've been at this for a while.

The problem with your analogy is that in Gillette's case they patent the razor blades AND the interface between the two. That means you can't clone their blades, and you can't connect without their handle violating a patent.

Imagine if Ford invents a new way to fill your gas tank. Only licensed gas stations can use this patented nozzle. You'd effectively be paying Ford for a percentage of your gas. Could they stop you from hacking the Explorer? As long as you don't use their IP, probably not. Compatibility is something people expect in their gas tanks, so that will never happen. But most people seem fine with it happening in razors, and ditto on consoles. Consoles obviously can't patent the execution of code, but they can copyright bootloaders and BIOSes.

As you could imagine, we also have a high concentration of people who don't know how to use cell phones that "use" cell phones here. (May be a southern redneck thing) Anyways, especially on late night Fridays (Saturday mornings at 2 -3am) I get an unknown data call. Several times, I have instantly tried to call the person back. Sometimes, I get no answer. Most times I get, "Oh I'm sorry, I was testing out my phone!" or "I was trin to mess my homies, bro"

Just recently, this activity is increased. I have alerted Cingular about it and they said there's nothing they can or will do.

The Philly Bus Journal ran an article [free registration required] on this last week. Basically says that Softmart didn't even try to offer the lowest price to the army, instead they offered technology that allows the army to track their software more easily. It tracks licenses, where the software was deployed, versions, upgrade info, etc. The article says that they do this through a web site that links to a portal the Army has for their people to access info. The claim is that by providing this automated process, the army can reduce its overall software costs.

Sounds like a larger version of the shake down the Trevor Law Group was pulling in L.A. before they got SMACKED by KFI radio. These guys were suing little businesses for small infractions in the "name of the people" or $X amount and we'll go away!

The average income for a programmer over there is about $5,850, might be worth a shot.

There are indeed.

"There is a horrible misconception that truckers are technologically incompetent people," says Robert P. May, PNV's CEO. "In truth, they are independent, smart people who like to figure things out." In fact, May says, close to 25 percent of the country's truck drivers have their own laptops and 50 percent have computers at home.

from Buddy for the Long Haul

July 1, 2000 Issue of CIO Magazine

and, a little more current

Based on 2001 data, about 20 percent of truckers carried laptops in their trucks and 54 percent of those who owned and operated their own trucks carried laptops.

from Company Trucks Along

Austin Business Journal, June 2, 2003

Some googling around finds:

* Re: "Double" Licenses--enforceability of shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses

* WASHINGTON COURT OF APPEALS UPHOLDS ENFORCABILITY OF "SHRINK-WRAP" SOFTWARE LICENSES

* Shrink-wrap software licenses upheld

* Contractor Denied Recovery for $1.95 Million Bidding Error Caused by Allegedly Defective Software

* CPT's Page on the Enforceability of Shrinkwrap Licenses

* ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3D 1447 (7th Cir., June 20, 1996). This
phone directory data case is important because it validates the legality of
"shrink wrap" software licenses for the first time. This case suggests that
similar "on screen acceptance" licenses, now commonly used on the Internet,
may also be upheld as legal someday. The phone directory database at issue
in this case was not protected by copyright, but was protected by contract.
So the person who published ProCD's phone directories on the Internet was
found to have breached the shrink wrap license agreement that came with the
software.

* In Bowers v. Baystate Technologies Inc., 64 USPQ2d 1065 (CA FC 2002), the Federal Circuit has upheld a contractual no-reverse engineering restriction in an agreement between two parties in a software license that was characterized by the court as shrink wrap.

See article here.

Thursday was Feb 6, 2003.

Land Warrior is still alive and well. According to this article, General Dynamics took a $500 million contract away from Raytheon to produce it.

Check it out.

Well, I guess you can backup your claim by giving us sources like this?

Not to secret organization.... the South Florida Business Journal has been doing some digging on EMarketersAmerica and have a good story on them at: http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/s tories/2003/05/12/story1.html

Furthermoe, the Koreans also viciously attempt to prevent non-Koreans from buying Korean businesses. Please read "Micron/Hynix Deal Dead".

The irony about the xenophobic Korean duplicity is that we Westerners actually subsidize the Koreans to destroy our own industries. Back in 1997, the Korean government subsidizing Korean firms to destroy Western competitors nearly bankrupted the Korean treasury. The kindhearted but naive Americans actually supported the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to give $19 billion to the Korean government to tie it over until the end of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

What we Westerners should have done was to refuse to give any financial aid to Korea. The Korean government would have then defaulted on its financial obligations. This default would have indirectly bankrupted many Korean companies. Then, companies like IBM, GM, Ford, Micron, etc. could have easily gone into Korea and forcibly bought companies like Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, etc.

we could EASILY afford to reconfigure the shuttles, design and build new ones, and solve most of our domestic (US) problems (education, etc) if we'd Stop giving so damn much money away in foreign aid!!!

U.S. Spending on Foreign Operations 2002: $17.9 Billion
Requested spending in 2003: $16.4 Billion
Requested spending in 2004: $18.8 Billion

Just so you know - those aid figures include a little over $4 billion a year in foreign military financing and a couple hundred million each for anti-drug efforts and peacekeeping efforts. But, to give you the benefit of the doubt, we'll lump it all in as "foreign aid."

In FY 2004, NASA's proposed budget is $15.4 Billion ( link).
Cost of the ISS (estimated, from Young Report): ~$30 billion (link)

Estimated costs of "other" domestic problems:
Medicare prescription drug benefit for elderly: $11-15 Billion (link).
Domestic port security needs: $2 billion (link).
Upgrade school technology: $100 billion (link).

I could go on, but I don't see much point in doing so. Foreign aid is a teeny tiny part of the federal budget, and cutting it won't do much of anything. A vast proportion of federal discretionary spending comes from Defense - if you want to cut, that's where you've got to cut.

HP would not even bother about Sun right now because it does not want to bite off more than it can chew. Investors would not at all take kindly to the acquistion of Sun by HP. HP right now is trying to fend off the dog that is Dell. HP does have about 13.2 billion $ in hand (Biz Journals) but it will probably not want to mess with it right now.

Sun has already brought in x86 systems in the lower end. Both Sun and IBM are adopting AMD's Opteron for lower and mid level systems.

People know that Sun is able to keep customers only by chanting the reliability and customer satisfaction song. Its Ultra Sparc's are falling behind in performance and it is probably only with the Sparc V's that it can gain any semblance of competitiveness. And when are the Sparc V's going to come out? 2005 at the earliest.( News)

What is Sun's market capitalisation? As of March 19, it was about 10.73 billion $.

If this story is indeed true then it would be the most talked about merger. Competition for customers paying money for big tin has only gotten worse after the tech meltdown.

Is McDonalds in Hawaii still serving Spam for breakfast? That sounds like a good meal to start the day! (In Canada they added "heathy" greenie stuff to their menu. If I wanted healthy, I doubt I'd eat there to start with. Come to think of it, I don't.)

Finest store I've ever been in, they just switched locations and look much less ghetto, although they have less space. Related story

Online Magazine Salon may be in its final days

"'Salon will very likely cease operations in its current form if it is unable to raise additional working capital during February,' Salon Media Group Inc. says in its 10Q filing."

Keep an eye on this one...this may really be the end this time.

In other news, Salon.com has stopped paying its rent. They're going to have to scale back their operations severely, or else go out of business. Let's hope Slashdot is able to keep operating in these tough times.

Hollywood.com's story

Bizjournal.com's story

Uemedia.com's story

Anyway, it IS going to (still) be called Lucasfilm Ltd.

WHOIS on the obviously bogus-named bookofseg.com:

Organization: phillip torrone 424 second ave west seattle, wa 98119 US Phone: 206-372-2651 Email: phillip@flashenabled.com

I note from a Google search that this is a Tony neighbourhood of Seattle, with one of "Puget Sound area's largest advertising agencies" located at 424 second ave west. So this seems like a hotspot for marketing companies.

And then he goes and leaves his regular advertising site URL unmasked in the header: www.flashenabled.com. Where he outs himself as a bigwig with Fallon Worldwide. And spends a lot of time pimping PocketPC gadgets.

Some of our other clients include; BMW of North America, Citibank, EDS, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., Holiday Inn, International Truck and Engine Corp., Lee Jeans, Microsoft, Nikon, Nordstrom, Nuveen Investments, PBS, Ralston Purina, Timberland, Timex, and United Airlines.

Come on, it's even written in obviously dumb marketing buzzwords futzed around a bit to look "cool" and "hip" and "with it". The same 206-372-2651 phone number is re-used for the POCKETPCMAGIC.COM website, registered to phillip torrone 627 broadway suite 504 new york, NY 10012. There are other interesting websites operating from this nice Manhattan location.

All right. I'll take the challenge. Four years ago: 1999... Lets ask google for some 'proof'.

You learn something new every day uh?

All right. I'll take the challenge. Four years ago: 1999... Lets ask google for some 'proof'.

You learn something new every day uh?

psxndc

You're referring to this.

No... Oring was purchased in 1992. Wing Commander 3 in 1994 was most definately produced when Origin was part of EA. Otherwise they wouldn't have had the needed cashflow to pay for the budget. Privateer was also released under EA (1993)

How come rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster John Poindexter gets a Pentagon job and a multimillion dollar program, while fellow rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster Richard Secord is being investigated for alleged stock fraud? Whatever happened to equal protection under the law??

The name Pacific Bell will soon cease to exist, thanks to father SBC.