Cool! So I can physically search everyone who comes over for dinner. Obviously my rights to search someone at my house would be even greater then a retail store because my home is a completely private property. A retail store's purpose is to be a completely public location. (That is why you can't sit around in you underwear and scratch yourself.)
Your person is your ultimate possession. Searching your person is the ultimate invasion of privacy no matter where you are. Circuit City is going to pony up some cash because the law here is crystal clear. They can not search you. They can not detain you unless they perform what amounts to a citizens arrest. If they do this they must wait and have the police perform the search. Before a retail store goes down this path they need to be absolutely certain that their subject has stolen something. Suspicion isn't enough because if they get to court and they don't have a video or an eye witness the charges would be dropped and the lawsuits would begin.
If he pursues it Circuit City is going to end up paying for unlawful detainer and assault. It would take a bit more work but the police department will probably pay for false arrest and who knows what else.
You can't copyright a genre. To be a derivative work that is an infringement you need to make a fairly direct copy of some portion of the original work. I don't think you could say this about this example.
Additionally satire is a protected use of copyrighted material which could easily be said about this video. I don't think anyone at Lucas Arts would think any litigation against this work would be fruitful.
The real deal is: Yes, Viacom is being hypocritical. Yes, Viacom is most certainly in the wrong to take his complete work without permission. Yes, Viacom tends to be a big lumbering bully. But two wrongs don't make a right (three rights make a left) so his copying the whole surrounding portion of the news broadcast has the serious issue that any theory allowing him to use it requires that he prove they infringed him first and that requires that he go to court. Nothing here is going to fly.
The problem is unless you are loaded with large denominations of lawyers there isn't anything you can do with it other then post on the internet and try to make a large public stink about it. You aren't going to be able to get this on ANY news channel though because they are all owned by large media companies.
Seeing that MS controls the platform and the platform calls MAPI it seems like a silly battle to fight.
To go back and reiterate darkatom's comment: Microsoft has always taken 'standards' and extended them to break everyone else's version except theirs. Nothing has ever stopped them except a court order (like JAVA, maybe...) but if they don't dominate and control they always try to take their ball and go home. ("I'll see your JAVA and raise you an Active-X (who cares if it makes using the web uncontrollably dangerous!)")
Why exactly would Microsoft buy a company who's liabilities dwarf its assets 10-fold?
Especially when the company seems so confused about what exactly their assets even are. With confusion like that in a company it is even possible that they would pay over a billion dollars for a site that mostly hosts pirated video clips. That would have an incredible shroud of legal liability...
The comment above may be a bit like jumping out of your seat yelling with excitement when you figure out a problem in your accounting class but modding it "troll" is missing the point. (somebody with points should at least get this to +1)
The scheduling info is free. No one is trying to hide it from you because the people who operate the channels want you to watch their stuff and they even pay (advertising) to let you know when their shows are on in the hopes that you will watch. This info should be freely available for FREE.
I suspect the real reason for this being relegated to being a pay service is that the cable companies are usually setting the schedules and are in the business of selling Tevo. They have no interest in letting a line of revenue being cut. God love the corporations! Making life better for everyone!!!
I don't see the endless wave of venture capital buoying up a false economy. I sure things can go down but there isn't the huge percentage of businesses that exist on nothing except expensive pipe dreams, hopes of traffic revenue, and continuous injection of capitol from investors instead of commerce.
I'm not going to carry my umbrella because I don't see anything huge floating up there completely unsupported...
Have a link to that study? Sounds interesting. Sorry. Last time I saw it was pre-web. If someone can find an electronic copy of it I would like to get it.
I recall a friend saying he had seen a layman's analysis of it in Car and Driver. Maybe someone can come up with the exact title of the report so we can search for that.
Wow. What post were you reading? Obviously not mine. Yup. Yours...
I never mentioned speed cameras. These devices aren't currently being used to detect speeders. Never said you had mentioned speed cameras. It was an example of what the government does with automated law enforcement. It is an example of how they do things that are not in the interests of their constituents. If we don't put specific limits on how these types of systems are allowed to be used and how the information is accessed and stored we are building a world we won't want to live in.
Sure, that functionality could be added, but then it isn't much different than the many speed cameras already in place. That's a different argument altogether, and yes, I would agree that speed cameras and red-light cameras are primarily used for revenue generation. I personally drive at least 5mph over the speed limit (10+ on freeways) unless I know it is a heavily policed area, so I'm not concerned about being more 'safe'. (Also for the record, stating your personal opinions as absolute fact is not a good idea.) I never said it was my personal opinion. It is the results from the raw data from the NHTSA's report.
And as I mentioned in a reply to someone else, people who aren't trying to actively hide themselves are probably not going to be impacted by this. They won't need to catch them on the roads, they will just go to your home address if they catch you doing something like littering or jaywalking. A system like this can really only be effective/efficient to catch major offenders like the car thieves and people that cannot easily be located at a street address. This seems to be pointing to the concept of, "If you don't have anything to hide you won't mind me looking over your shoulder." This idea is just wrong. (just look over someone's shoulder for 5 minutes if you want to get an idea of why it is wrong.
The most important detail in these automated enforcement systems should be laid out first. It should not be recording ANYTHING about law abiding citizens. If they are going to do it then the camera should be loaded with a list of plates that would trigger storing and escalating of the action. This kind of methodology may be difficult but it is doable and will be easier in the future.
Also as I mentioned in my other reply, there is almost never a perfect solution. There will be pros and cons, and I personally think the number of car thieves and violent criminals that can be caught greatly outweighs the cons of such a system. It is always easy to come up with ways to justify the 'boiling frog syndrome' but I have watched things slide into such a level of repression because of a willingness to fritter away our freedom and privacy for what amounts to useless levels of protection. In this case when we weigh the pros and cons the decision MUST be weighted in the direction of non intrusion into peoples lives.
There needs to be a limit to how this information can be used before the government is allowed to implement these systems. Government has a long track record of having no ability to restraint itself from anything that can increase its control and revenue stream.
If you had any idea of how many laws are on the books you would realize it isn't possible to do ANYTHING without breaking some law. Also you KNOW that you have cut little corners each day and probably more serious corners when you were younger. Maybe you step out of the marked crosswalk before reaching the curb. (jaywalking $75) Possibly you dropped your receipt when you were trying to put it in your pocket. (littering $1000) Did you ever do something like egging a car when you were a kid? (we used snowballs)
Technology exists and is coming that will let every waking moment be scrutinized in a fashion that the laws never intended. (facial recognition, object recognition, biometric identification...) If you don't think the government will try to do it you haven't been paying attention. Automated enforcement isn't about safety. It is about generating revenue.
The big example: "But what about speed cameras?" you say. You have been brainwashed. Everyone runs around saying that going faster is dangerous. Do you have any proof. "Speed Kills", but at what speed do I suddenly die? In the 80's the NHTSA commissioned a study to show how many lives 10 years of the 55mph limit had saved. The release of the report was delayed 18 months.
Why?
Because they kept getting the 'wrong' results. After playing with the numbers for an additional 18 months the best they could spin the numbers were that if they completely ignored better safety technology, better tires, etc... and assumed that ALL reductions in fatalities were only because of reduced speed the grand total was: For every 150 man/years of time lost on the freeways they could come up with 1 life saved.
Now we all know that improved tires and improved car safety had to improve things more then that paltry sum so why didn't we get a better result? Because we had bred a generation of drivers that were so untalented (brain dead) that they were unsafe at 55. If you raised the tire pressure of all the tires on the road by less then 2 psi you would come up with a larger savings of lives!
So when you actually analyze the data in the report you find that the safest speed to drive on the freeway is 10 to 15 mph faster then the general flow of traffic. This won't improve revenue generation so they aren't going to advertise this. If they really wanted to improve safety they would become hardcore about little right-of-way violations or lack of attention, but they are too hard to enforce. Remember... Your government thinks you are their source of income. You are giving Them money instead of Them spending Your money. If as a group we don't stop them we will be living in a fascist state beyond anything that Orwell could have imagined.
Why? Because it will be economically possible for your government to do it.
Oh, and you still won't be safe. Safe is an illusion. Grow up. You are mortal and you are going to die. (God didn't screw up there.) Get over it. A 'safe' life isn't worth living. A lot of the experiences that people treasure over their lives are special BECAUSE they weren't 'safe'.
At least Linux gives you a choice of user interfaces...
The fact that Microsoft can't figure out that making a massive non intuitive change to the UI (when it isn't required for functionality) is insane. Business needs simple and straight forward solutions. It doesn't need a 'cartoon' interface.
BTW - How come their new, more secure OS lists EVERY USER NAME at login? (and you can't turn it off...)
Lets play "Guess which user has a weak password"! The game is much easier if you start with all of the user names.
You must be new here. These smucks never read the articals, they just feed off each other with poor grammer. Hmmm...
Let me help you with that a bit. This will take care of the spelling but I guess that isn't your issue with schmucks...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles, they just feed off each other with poor grammar."
Ok. Now that we have all those pesky letters in the correct order let's just tidy up the punctuation...
The comma just isn't correct. We could go this way...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles; they just feed off each other with poor grammar."
You could make the argument that using a semicolon is correct but I think most of us would agree that it isn't really what you would really want. (unless you are a "smuck" and you don't read the "articals"...)
I really think this is what you were shooting for...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles. They just feed off each other with poor grammar."
Jeeze... You must harbor a really odd Freudian self-loathing to slip that out.
I think it would be 01001000011000010110110001101100011001010110110001 110101011010100110000101101000.
Canadian Loons do this too. They can't take off without speed, so they run across the surface of the lake until they're going fast enough.
I used to sit around watching them when I was a kid. Funny as hell when they're tearing across the lake like the devils on their tail, then they trip over a wave, face plant and disappear. Loons speak binary? But they don't have enough MHZ to process it unless they run?
I think you might be a confused loon... (and I don't think you can speak binary no matter how fast you run.
Ok, then how about Alaska just keeping the hundreds of billions of Federal tax dollars that are continuously sucked out of it without even close to a reasonable quantity of reinvestment in federal funds? This isn't free money. This is trying to develop the state so it isn't just sucked dry by the lower 48. (There is a reason that there was a push for Alaska to secede from the union in 1972...)
Believe it or not the reason for federal funds is to do large projects that need to be done. Have you ever noticed all of that infrastructure that you rely on everyday? Federal funds at work. So you are using a museum as a comparison? Those sorts of things are kind of important but I fail to see anyone thinking that compares to this type of project. Job training programs? If there is a chance that the people involved will become taxpayers then hell yes, federal funds should be used.
The city in question is packed into the base of a mountain and the ocean. There are no roads that lead there. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane, and if you take a plane you will still have to take a boat to get to town.
I can understand why you would only want the available federal funds spent in your area. Being self centered is a fairly normal idea but that isn't the way it works. Alaska comprises 1/5th of the area of the US! Think about this. If you take the lower 48 and divide it into 4 pieces it would equal the the size of Alaska. And in all of that area there is less then 2,000 miles of road that can be categorized as "Highway". And this state shoulders an exceeding unfair percentage of the federal tax burden.
Federal funds for a bridge in this case is completely in line with the way federal transportation funds are SUPPOSED to be used. Find a different example if you want to showcase wasteful spending.
There may be things that Steven's has done wrong or that you don't like but the "BILLIONS of dollars to bridges to nowhere" bit is a commonly parroted bit of misinformation. Do you even know where the "bridge to nowhere" even is? What is the name of the city?
Anyone who has been to the area of the proposed bridge will agree that it needs to be built. It is in Ketchikan, Alaska. Ketchikan is completely out of space. Land prices have skyrocketed because there is no land. On the other side of the proposed bridge is land just waiting to be developed. Oh, and the AIRPORT is on the other side of the "bridge to nowhere". Do you think it might be nice if they could drive to the airport instead of having to take a ferry?
The project is totally reasonable and makes sense to anyone with even a small portion of the facts. Quit parroting the stupid rantings of national media "pundit" (read as a-hole with an axe to grind...) and come up with you own opinion.
Oh, and who cares what the politicians do on their own time. I really think the news media's constant need to entertain us and invent news stories has killed the political process in this country.
(At least they are protecting the corporations!)
My favorite tee shirt slogan hangs in a friends office...
"Winning is nothing.
Collecting is everything."
A law suit is either about being pissed off and trying to slap someone or it is about money.
The first one can be satisfying but there is something very 'school yard justice' about it.
The second one is business. (Maybe not good business but it is still business.)
And even if it was "carefully" dumped the problem is that we don't stop after getting it nice and diluted. We keep dumping a large quantity of carefully diluted pollutants into an extremely low energy ecosystem. In addition of sources of energy into a low energy ecosystem causes an extreme change in that ecosystem.
Oh, and if you 'carefully dilute' something into the ocean by what process do you propose that you keep it from becoming undiluted? Life forms are the most efficient way to aggregate dilute substances.
Actually this is one of the dumbest, "If I can't see anything it must not be happening" suggestions I have ever heard.
THINK! Did it work for landfills? 'But we did such a good job of hiding it under the dirt and I can't see it there!' (Of course my well is contaminated now and I have to pipe water in...)
Why does no one ever show love for LANTastic?! Lantastic was sneered at by all of the "Client-Server" trained techs as they looked down their noses at it.
Fast forward 15 years and Windows is all peer-to-peer. What happened there? At least we now have really cool screen savers on our graphical desktop optimized file servers!!!
Oh, wait... That's kind of a stupid waste of CPU cycles...
Slashdot Mirror
It means that Microsoft has gotten so big that it is starting to run out of other groups to battle so it is starting to battle itself!
Cool! So I can physically search everyone who comes over for dinner. Obviously my rights to search someone at my house would be even greater then a retail store because my home is a completely private property. A retail store's purpose is to be a completely public location. (That is why you can't sit around in you underwear and scratch yourself.)
Your person is your ultimate possession. Searching your person is the ultimate invasion of privacy no matter where you are. Circuit City is going to pony up some cash because the law here is crystal clear. They can not search you. They can not detain you unless they perform what amounts to a citizens arrest. If they do this they must wait and have the police perform the search. Before a retail store goes down this path they need to be absolutely certain that their subject has stolen something. Suspicion isn't enough because if they get to court and they don't have a video or an eye witness the charges would be dropped and the lawsuits would begin.
If he pursues it Circuit City is going to end up paying for unlawful detainer and assault. It would take a bit more work but the police department will probably pay for false arrest and who knows what else.
Looks like Ohio has a problem with their cops being a law unto themselves...
You can't copyright a genre. To be a derivative work that is an infringement you need to make a fairly direct copy of some portion of the original work. I don't think you could say this about this example.
Additionally satire is a protected use of copyrighted material which could easily be said about this video. I don't think anyone at Lucas Arts would think any litigation against this work would be fruitful.
The real deal is: Yes, Viacom is being hypocritical. Yes, Viacom is most certainly in the wrong to take his complete work without permission. Yes, Viacom tends to be a big lumbering bully. But two wrongs don't make a right (three rights make a left) so his copying the whole surrounding portion of the news broadcast has the serious issue that any theory allowing him to use it requires that he prove they infringed him first and that requires that he go to court. Nothing here is going to fly.
The problem is unless you are loaded with large denominations of lawyers there isn't anything you can do with it other then post on the internet and try to make a large public stink about it. You aren't going to be able to get this on ANY news channel though because they are all owned by large media companies.
Seeing that MS controls the platform and the platform calls MAPI it seems like a silly battle to fight.
To go back and reiterate darkatom's comment: Microsoft has always taken 'standards' and extended them to break everyone else's version except theirs. Nothing has ever stopped them except a court order (like JAVA, maybe...) but if they don't dominate and control they always try to take their ball and go home. ("I'll see your JAVA and raise you an Active-X (who cares if it makes using the web uncontrollably dangerous!)")
Oh BTW, the lights will be way to small to see...
Especially when the company seems so confused about what exactly their assets even are. With confusion like that in a company it is even possible that they would pay over a billion dollars for a site that mostly hosts pirated video clips. That would have an incredible shroud of legal liability...
Oops... Sorry, that was Google.
I'm just looking at this as a stock trading opportunity. Anything dropping like this just has to bounce!
The comment above may be a bit like jumping out of your seat yelling with excitement when you figure out a problem in your accounting class but modding it "troll" is missing the point. (somebody with points should at least get this to +1)
The scheduling info is free. No one is trying to hide it from you because the people who operate the channels want you to watch their stuff and they even pay (advertising) to let you know when their shows are on in the hopes that you will watch. This info should be freely available for FREE.
I suspect the real reason for this being relegated to being a pay service is that the cable companies are usually setting the schedules and are in the business of selling Tevo. They have no interest in letting a line of revenue being cut. God love the corporations! Making life better for everyone!!!
I don't see the endless wave of venture capital buoying up a false economy. I sure things can go down but there isn't the huge percentage of businesses that exist on nothing except expensive pipe dreams, hopes of traffic revenue, and continuous injection of capitol from investors instead of commerce.
I'm not going to carry my umbrella because I don't see anything huge floating up there completely unsupported...
So this was patented in 1991 and a patent is good for 17 years.
They sure waited a long time to be "irreparably harmed...
I recall a friend saying he had seen a layman's analysis of it in Car and Driver. Maybe someone can come up with the exact title of the report so we can search for that.
The most important detail in these automated enforcement systems should be laid out first. It should not be recording ANYTHING about law abiding citizens. If they are going to do it then the camera should be loaded with a list of plates that would trigger storing and escalating of the action. This kind of methodology may be difficult but it is doable and will be easier in the future. Also as I mentioned in my other reply, there is almost never a perfect solution. There will be pros and cons, and I personally think the number of car thieves and violent criminals that can be caught greatly outweighs the cons of such a system. It is always easy to come up with ways to justify the 'boiling frog syndrome' but I have watched things slide into such a level of repression because of a willingness to fritter away our freedom and privacy for what amounts to useless levels of protection. In this case when we weigh the pros and cons the decision MUST be weighted in the direction of non intrusion into peoples lives.
There needs to be a limit to how this information can be used before the government is allowed to implement these systems. Government has a long track record of having no ability to restraint itself from anything that can increase its control and revenue stream.
Uhhh, no.
If you had any idea of how many laws are on the books you would realize it isn't possible to do ANYTHING without breaking some law. Also you KNOW that you have cut little corners each day and probably more serious corners when you were younger. Maybe you step out of the marked crosswalk before reaching the curb. (jaywalking $75) Possibly you dropped your receipt when you were trying to put it in your pocket. (littering $1000) Did you ever do something like egging a car when you were a kid? (we used snowballs)
Technology exists and is coming that will let every waking moment be scrutinized in a fashion that the laws never intended. (facial recognition, object recognition, biometric identification...) If you don't think the government will try to do it you haven't been paying attention. Automated enforcement isn't about safety. It is about generating revenue.
The big example: "But what about speed cameras?" you say. You have been brainwashed. Everyone runs around saying that going faster is dangerous. Do you have any proof. "Speed Kills", but at what speed do I suddenly die? In the 80's the NHTSA commissioned a study to show how many lives 10 years of the 55mph limit had saved. The release of the report was delayed 18 months.
Why?
Because they kept getting the 'wrong' results. After playing with the numbers for an additional 18 months the best they could spin the numbers were that if they completely ignored better safety technology, better tires, etc... and assumed that ALL reductions in fatalities were only because of reduced speed the grand total was:
For every 150 man/years of time lost on the freeways they could come up with 1 life saved.
Now we all know that improved tires and improved car safety had to improve things more then that paltry sum so why didn't we get a better result? Because we had bred a generation of drivers that were so untalented (brain dead) that they were unsafe at 55. If you raised the tire pressure of all the tires on the road by less then 2 psi you would come up with a larger savings of lives!
So when you actually analyze the data in the report you find that the safest speed to drive on the freeway is 10 to 15 mph faster then the general flow of traffic. This won't improve revenue generation so they aren't going to advertise this. If they really wanted to improve safety they would become hardcore about little right-of-way violations or lack of attention, but they are too hard to enforce. Remember... Your government thinks you are their source of income. You are giving Them money instead of Them spending Your money. If as a group we don't stop them we will be living in a fascist state beyond anything that Orwell could have imagined.
Why? Because it will be economically possible for your government to do it.
Oh, and you still won't be safe. Safe is an illusion. Grow up. You are mortal and you are going to die. (God didn't screw up there.) Get over it. A 'safe' life isn't worth living. A lot of the experiences that people treasure over their lives are special BECAUSE they weren't 'safe'.
At least Linux gives you a choice of user interfaces...
The fact that Microsoft can't figure out that making a massive non intuitive change to the UI (when it isn't required for functionality) is insane. Business needs simple and straight forward solutions. It doesn't need a 'cartoon' interface.
BTW - How come their new, more secure OS lists EVERY USER NAME at login? (and you can't turn it off...)
Lets play "Guess which user has a weak password"! The game is much easier if you start with all of the user names.
Imagine how deep the personality problems must run in a person who gets all hot because of someone's DNA sequences!
Let me help you with that a bit. This will take care of the spelling but I guess that isn't your issue with schmucks...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles, they just feed off each other with poor grammar."
Ok. Now that we have all those pesky letters in the correct order let's just tidy up the punctuation...
The comma just isn't correct. We could go this way...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles; they just feed off each other with poor grammar."
You could make the argument that using a semicolon is correct but I think most of us would agree that it isn't really what you would really want. (unless you are a "smuck" and you don't read the "articals"...)
I really think this is what you were shooting for...
"You must be new here. These schmucks never read the articles. They just feed off each other with poor grammar."
Jeeze... You must harbor a really odd Freudian self-loathing to slip that out.
I used to sit around watching them when I was a kid. Funny as hell when they're tearing across the lake like the devils on their tail, then they trip over a wave, face plant and disappear. Loons speak binary? But they don't have enough MHZ to process it unless they run?
I think you might be a confused loon... (and I don't think you can speak binary no matter how fast you run.
48 61 6C 6C 65 6C 75 6A 61 68
Ok, then how about Alaska just keeping the hundreds of billions of Federal tax dollars that are continuously sucked out of it without even close to a reasonable quantity of reinvestment in federal funds? This isn't free money. This is trying to develop the state so it isn't just sucked dry by the lower 48. (There is a reason that there was a push for Alaska to secede from the union in 1972...)
Believe it or not the reason for federal funds is to do large projects that need to be done. Have you ever noticed all of that infrastructure that you rely on everyday? Federal funds at work. So you are using a museum as a comparison? Those sorts of things are kind of important but I fail to see anyone thinking that compares to this type of project. Job training programs? If there is a chance that the people involved will become taxpayers then hell yes, federal funds should be used.
The city in question is packed into the base of a mountain and the ocean. There are no roads that lead there. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane, and if you take a plane you will still have to take a boat to get to town.
I can understand why you would only want the available federal funds spent in your area. Being self centered is a fairly normal idea but that isn't the way it works. Alaska comprises 1/5th of the area of the US! Think about this. If you take the lower 48 and divide it into 4 pieces it would equal the the size of Alaska. And in all of that area there is less then 2,000 miles of road that can be categorized as "Highway". And this state shoulders an exceeding unfair percentage of the federal tax burden.
Federal funds for a bridge in this case is completely in line with the way federal transportation funds are SUPPOSED to be used. Find a different example if you want to showcase wasteful spending.
There may be things that Steven's has done wrong or that you don't like but the "BILLIONS of dollars to bridges to nowhere" bit is a commonly parroted bit of misinformation. Do you even know where the "bridge to nowhere" even is? What is the name of the city?
t chikan+Gateway,+Alaska,+United+States&ie=UTF8&cd=1 &sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=31.509065,59.765625&m pnum=0&ll=55.360966,-131.691055&spn=0.088206,0.233 459&z=12&om=1
Anyone who has been to the area of the proposed bridge will agree that it needs to be built. It is in Ketchikan, Alaska. Ketchikan is completely out of space. Land prices have skyrocketed because there is no land. On the other side of the proposed bridge is land just waiting to be developed. Oh, and the AIRPORT is on the other side of the "bridge to nowhere". Do you think it might be nice if they could drive to the airport instead of having to take a ferry?
Look at it on a map...
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=Ketchikan,+Ke
The project is totally reasonable and makes sense to anyone with even a small portion of the facts. Quit parroting the stupid rantings of national media "pundit" (read as a-hole with an axe to grind...) and come up with you own opinion.
Oh, and who cares what the politicians do on their own time. I really think the news media's constant need to entertain us and invent news stories has killed the political process in this country.
(At least they are protecting the corporations!)
My favorite tee shirt slogan hangs in a friends office...
"Winning is nothing.
Collecting is everything."
A law suit is either about being pissed off and trying to slap someone or it is about money.
The first one can be satisfying but there is something very 'school yard justice' about it.
The second one is business. (Maybe not good business but it is still business.)
The real point is why is this considered news that needs to be released to /. ?
They have released this quantity of patches before...
Often...
This is like walking outside and exclaiming in surprise, "Look everybody! There's still air out here!!!"
And even if it was "carefully" dumped the problem is that we don't stop after getting it nice and diluted. We keep dumping a large quantity of carefully diluted pollutants into an extremely low energy ecosystem. In addition of sources of energy into a low energy ecosystem causes an extreme change in that ecosystem.
Oh, and if you 'carefully dilute' something into the ocean by what process do you propose that you keep it from becoming undiluted? Life forms are the most efficient way to aggregate dilute substances.
Actually this is one of the dumbest, "If I can't see anything it must not be happening" suggestions I have ever heard.
THINK! Did it work for landfills? 'But we did such a good job of hiding it under the dirt and I can't see it there!' (Of course my well is contaminated now and I have to pipe water in...)
Fast forward 15 years and Windows is all peer-to-peer. What happened there? At least we now have really cool screen savers on our graphical desktop optimized file servers!!!
Oh, wait... That's kind of a stupid waste of CPU cycles...
No...
Brain!