If they did something like that, they wouldn't be allowed to call their stuff USB (which they do)
This is not a problem. USB standard does not specify charging. It only requires that the [self-powered] hub can source up to 500 mA at 5V. Nowhere it says what the device should do with this power.
Specifically, I had a cell phone (Sanyo PM-xxxx IIRC) that won't charge over USB until a *driver* was loaded onto the PC. The driver sent a small command over the USB, and that command opened the switch and started charging. This can be easily implemented in any device if the manufacturer wants it.
This approach is not common, though. My current cell phone (LG CU515) charges without a driver (and it connects as a mass storage device anyway) and my cheap photo camera does the same.
In places like that, people still do open businesses, so everyone must be insane. Because it couldn't be possible that you are wrong.
I used to live in such a society. Rules like that force the economy underground, and all settlements between businessmen are done in hard, cold cash. Feel free to translate with Google if you can't read it.
And once you are on that path, your business contracts are all outside of legal protection. What will protect you? Only this. Do you want to live in such a world? Because that's what happens when laws are way beyond unreasonable.
I haven't seen anything about capital gains in there, and that's separate from salary now.
I do not know what the G*P wanted to tax at 90%. But we know that most people don't earn $5M salaries every year; however companies are bought and sold all the time. If you let the government to take an inch (90% of the ordinary income) it will take a mile (90% of capital gains) and you can't do anything because you opened the door to this development.
Don't sell the company.
And when you have an appendicitis don't go for a surgery. That makes just as much sense as what you proposed. The company that you built may have great technology, but no means to make it into a product. A large company may have means to make products, but no ideas. That's usually when you sell and they buy. It's not like people sell companies on a whim. And there are tons of other reasons to sell too.
Have the trust pay him out slowly, rather than a lump sum
Tons of problems with that. To begin with, you have a good chance of dying from old age before all the money is paid. Or another - you are denied use of the money that is rightfully yours. You can't buy a house, for example. Or another - who knows what will happen with the money in the future (inflation, that's what.)
All of these are just workarounds, dancing around the elephant in the room. And the elephant is the right of the government to take your money. Granted, the government needs to be paid for the services that it provided you to be able to earn your profit; you weren't conquered by New Zealand, you weren't killed by gangs, you didn't die from food poisoning. But that's a much smaller sum than what the government tries to take. The more it takes, the less is there to take.
Please, punish me with a paltry salary of $5 million per year!
You conveniently forget one common case. An entrepreneur creates a company, works for 10 or 15 years to build it up, lives on minimal salary himself... and finally he finds a buyer for his business. Now you propose to steal 90% of the money that he earned, but not cashed, in last 10 to 15 years. In your world no sane man would open a business if any large transaction is confiscatory.
Chances are good that the scanner's computer is just a Windows PC. How much money would it take to duplicate PC hardware and Windows, and what would be the purpose of such an expense? Sometimes you must go embedded - for example, when your computer flies to Mars. But when it's sitting in an airport there is no reason to go crazy. Get a PC, install a PCI (or USB nowadays) acquisition card, and get creative with the software. That's how things are done today, that's where the value is.
Some poor schlub gets castrated and then fitted with a horse-sized prosthetic full of bomb
There is no need to go that far. Slashdotters don't know it, of course, but there is a special type of people called "women." They are very well equipped for concealed transportation of a bomb material, and they can easily carry more than even a surgically augmented man can.
You might want to read NRS 651.080 yourself before making such broad (and false) claims.
The NRS 651.080 prohibits "Deprivation of, interference with and punishment for exercising rights and privileges" that are "secured by NRS 651.070 or 651.075".
While NRS 651.075 indeed deals with disabilities and such, the NRS 651.070 is very broad and applies to "all persons". Probably only a lawyer with knowledge of Nevada laws is qualified to comment further.
I assume the room contracts were between the small companies and the hotel.
I also thought so, being not a L. However someone above already corrected both of us. The hotel industry is regulated by the innkeeper statute. I remember seeing it posted in hotel rooms. This means that state laws control the hotel industry, and individual hotels have little say in what is and what isn't allowed. As the comment above points out, a guest is free to do pretty much anything that is legal.
It's possible that CEA had a contract with the hotel
As you say, it's irrelevant.
unless the hotel rewrote the contracts the small companies signed
Per the innkeeper statute, the hotel has no such right - see NRS 651.080 in the link above.
if they can't afford $10,000 for CES, they certainly can't afford the $10,000 a lawyer would require
a) Maybe they have the money; but floor space usually costs far more than $10K. I would guess a CES booth would be closer to $100K. It can be that the vendor just doesn't think this investment would pay for itself. Maybe they have only one product; maybe their market is very narrow; maybe their product can't be shown without an NDA in place; and so on.
b) The lawsuit has a chance to pay not just for the lawyer but for a few years of R&D. If a business has a good chance of winning $100K in court it will find $10K for a lawyer.
Besides, any company who can make a consumer product has some money. Maybe not in range of millions, but you certainly need to have tens of thousands of dollars to design and manufacture your product, even if it is only a prototype. Just the airline tickets from China to Las Vegas and back will cost you about that much.
If you could prove my intent was to take your money and then immediately exercise my right to kick you off my property for no particular reason other than my own whimsical desire to make money, then that would be fraud
There would be plenty of other examples of fraud that don't match your definition but are fraud nevertheless. For example, it is still a fraud if you don't have a monetary gain out of it but just want to hurt someone.
However, basically any business has the right to eject people for any reason except where it involves illegal discrimination based on protected minorities/groups.
And except where it involves a violation of a signed contract. Renting of a hotel room is certainly a contract, and if *you* violate it you will be fined or kicked out. But the hotel also can't violate this contract. If you rent a room for 3 nights you can't be kicked out after one night, unless you broke the rules first. The contract protects both participants.
So unless those hotels explicitly forbid doing business in rented rooms and make that restriction known to the guest when the contract is considered, they violated their contract. The rental fees need to be returned, and on top of that other fines may be involved. Loss of business opportunity during CES is not cheap.
Wi-fi and tables are available at the bookstore but they don't expect you to run your business, host clients, create displays on the tables
A book store is not renting the premises or the table to you, but a hotel does. You don't pay for walking into a book store, but you need to pay for every day of hotel room's use.
What makes "mobile" so different from the desktop?
Availability of the phone. A mobile phone is likely to be owned by large number of people, with all levels of computer knowledge. Many of phone owners neither own a computer nor know how to use it safely.
Availability of apps. A computer user is less likely to install random apps just because he is bored. That happens, but usually computer owners install apps because they need them. Mobile phone owners are likely to install apps just to see what they do - especially when the price is low or zero.
Availability of secrets. Many computers do not contain anything particularly secret. More and more computer owners use Web based email, that moves the contact list and emails off of the PC. Usually a computer can't be tied to any specific person. A computer usually runs a firewall and an antivirus / malware checker that is updated at least daily. However a mobile phone definitely has the contact list, and other important, personally identifying information is also available through a well known API. The phone has no antiviruses, so a trojan is perfectly safe on a phone.
A) The person who the claimant says made the agreement is in fact the person who entered into the agreement
The signature does nothing like that. You need a notary stamp, signature, a record in his book and your thumbprint there to certify your signature.
B) The person who made the agreement was in fact in a postition to make such agreement
The signature does nothing like that. It's up to courts to determine if you had authority to sign a certain document. If I sign a deployment order for the US Army it doesn't make me the President.
If the person who signed it wasn't the defendant or legal representation thereof, no lawsuit.
Unfortunately, if a company owns a computer then it is legally responsible for it, 100%. That applies to any company property, and even to your personal property somewhat.
It doesn't change because you add a computer to the scenario.
True. But consider this. Your company buys 10 tons of grain from a local farmer, and you send him the purchase order signed (with an illegible scratch) by "H. Bark". Your dog is called Happy Bark. The purchase order calls for Net 30, and you don't pay. The farmer sues you, and you point at your dog and say that you didn't sign anything.
Can you get away with that?
No, you can't. First of all, you accepted the delivery and made use of the product. That confirms your acceptance of the transaction. Otherwise you'd need to refuse the shipment, or at least contact the seller and attempt to return the product.
Once you accepted and used the product, the farmer's side of the deal is fulfilled and he is right in expecting the money. You, on the other hand, received the product, used it, and you expect to not pay for it? The claim that "your dog did it" will be only seen as further attempt to evade the payment, and you will dig yourself deeper into the hole.
To summarize, a business is responsible for everything that happens to its computers. If a software was installed illegally, you have several vulnerabilities:
a) an employee of the company, acting as an agent of the company, broke the law. The company is responsible for its agents.
b) the computer somehow got illegally installed software. The company proceeded to use that software, for profit and without pay. This demonstrates that the company was aware of the illegal act and supported it by not stopping the violation as soon as it learned about it.
c) even if neither (a) or (b) are sufficiently proven, the business is still at fault for having unlicensed software on your premises and under your control. The fine for that is about twice the retail cost, just what BSA usually charges, and the only evidence required to award that fine is the fact that an illegal software was installed. As I read here, that's what BSA usually aims for, since it's the easiest violation to prove and the smallest fine to pay.
"California". That means you must keep your guns disassembled and non-firing.
You are obviously not a gun owner in California. There is no such requirement. In fact, it is legal to carry loaded firearms on your property or in place of business, or in a hunting area. Clerks at my local gun store do that, and it is expected and normal. You can carry an unloaded gun openly anywhere in the state, even if you have ammo with you. You can also fire your guns at your property, as long as it is outside of a city (and there are a couple of other restrictions - being enclosed by the city, being near a school, having no safe place to shoot, etc.)
irst they have to prove I agreed to the EULA, and in order to do so they need to conduct the audit.
It's a Catch 22 only if you consistently pirate everything or pay for everything. If you mix, then they can use the legally bought product's EULA to audit all your computers.
Furthermore if some random schmoe just one day shows up on my door claiming to be from Microsoft and claiming he's here to do an audit he'd better have some pretty convincing proof or he isn't getting past the secretary
That would be a letter from Microsoft, and it will sail past the secretary right onto your desk. The copy of your volume licensing agreement, where you agree to the audit, will be attached.
"suprise inspections" usually aren't
And that is just fine because you will have to clean the mess and buy all the missing licenses. That's what they wanted all along - not necessarily to fine you. As you say, suing or fines aren't free to the software vendor.
The only ones who really get screwed are the smaller enterprises
Yes, not just because they are not as organized and don't have lawyers at the ready, but most often because they are too cheap to buy the software in the first place. A small business, having no volume licensing and living from hand to mouth, has a good chance of flying under the radar until some disgruntled employee calls the BSA.
hey have to show that the person who clicked accept was an authorized representative of the company (employee) and not an unauthorized user or cracker, and it is Windows, so good luck with that!
They don't need to show anything because it is natural and expected that an employee of the company installed some software on company's computers. For example, you seldom need to prove to anyone that you are human.
If you claim that somebody set you up the bomb then *you* need to prove that extraordinary claim. You need to make your evidence available (firewall and Snort logs, virus detection logs, meeting notes where you discussed the breach, etc.) You can't just wave your hand and have it all dismissed, especially if the company used the software on that computer for months or even years.
So that if the product "phoned home" to a specific IP instead of a hostname, the HOSTS file wouldn't even be taken into account?
True. There are other issues too. Some companies use activation servers that are spread around the namespace and are hard to block. There are other ways to go through your firewall too, and the software developers have far more time to invent those ways than the n00b pirate has to block them. As an old wisdom says, the software company needs only one method out of 100 to work, but the pirate needs to make sure that all 100 are blocked, all the time.
Not to mention if the product contains some sort of "if I can't phone home, stop working" contingency.
That is rare. There are many legitimate cases when software needs to be loaded on offline computers - either because there is no Internet, or because it is not connected for some reason. An Internet link on your yacht, or in your backpack, or in your car would be pretty expensive. Typically if the software can't phone home it will ask for an alternative way to get activated, often by asking *you* to phone its home and get the activation code.
And now they'll get nothing else, when the company could have been a good customer, along with bad publicity.
A comment on/. does not amount to "bad publicity." Besides, IT managers are not surprised when they read that Adobe shakes pirates down when said pirates use Adobe's top notch products. Every competent IT person who installed Adobe software in the last decade knows that it contains online activation.
About getting "nothing else" - it's not that easy. Say, CS4 was pirated (or CS3, which costs the same.) Each copy is about $800. The settlement was for $2M. That's 2,500 copies!!! What size the company must be that it needs 2,500 CS4 seats? Even IBM probably doesn't have that many. And if you use cheaper products, like Acrobat, then you are easily in the range of 10,000 seats.
Those would be huge deployments, done over years, and requiring technical support. But in this case all that money was collected almost overnight, and no technical support is needed. In a few years the managers who got burned will move on, and new managers will not have any qualms about buying Adobe products again.
Besides, if the business needs to edit, encrypt and sign PDFs, what are your options? You can buy the real stuff that is guaranteed to work (Adobe Acrobat, $150-250) or you can buy a second tier product (Nitro PDF, $99) and take your chances. You pay someone's else money, but if things break your personal behind will be in danger. What manager (who is not an owner) will choose the second option here?
Of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, is this really necessary on flights without allergic travelers?
It also had been pointed out that the airline needs to determine, with 100% certainty, that they don't have anyone allergic to $something_deadly_to_them on board. So far they can't even keep people with bombs away, what can they do if a passenger makes a mistake when he buys a ticket, or if someone else buys a ticket for him - which is a 99% certainty in all business travel. I recently worked at a company where you physically couldn't buy a ticket yourself, someone else (in Asia) would do that for you. Then there is the problem of residue of that $something_deadly_to_them substance left between flights - a quick cleaning is not a guarantee.
But most importantly, airplanes are not the only places where exposure to $something_deadly_to_them is possible. Any food court, any air terminal, any restaurant, any taxi or a friend's car, any movie theater, any home other than your own is a potential death trap. Some of those locations can be farther from medical help than an airplane (including "infinitely far" if the sufferer is alone.)
I personally believe that everyone will only benefit from switching to the least common denominator food - like fresh apples, for example, or salads, or some very well done meat. A 30g bag of peanuts is not that nutritious to begin with, and the salt that is gratuitously provided with them is of no help to anyone at all. The only advantage of peanuts is that they are easy to handle, and they can be stored forever. Airlines really love feeding passengers with stuff that even dogs won't eat.
Slashdot Mirror
If they did something like that, they wouldn't be allowed to call their stuff USB (which they do)
This is not a problem. USB standard does not specify charging. It only requires that the [self-powered] hub can source up to 500 mA at 5V. Nowhere it says what the device should do with this power.
Specifically, I had a cell phone (Sanyo PM-xxxx IIRC) that won't charge over USB until a *driver* was loaded onto the PC. The driver sent a small command over the USB, and that command opened the switch and started charging. This can be easily implemented in any device if the manufacturer wants it.
This approach is not common, though. My current cell phone (LG CU515) charges without a driver (and it connects as a mass storage device anyway) and my cheap photo camera does the same.
Taxes have been has high as 50-60% in the past on the wealthy. We seemed to do just fine.
What is your control set?
In places like that, people still do open businesses, so everyone must be insane. Because it couldn't be possible that you are wrong.
I used to live in such a society. Rules like that force the economy underground, and all settlements between businessmen are done in hard, cold cash. Feel free to translate with Google if you can't read it.
And once you are on that path, your business contracts are all outside of legal protection. What will protect you? Only this. Do you want to live in such a world? Because that's what happens when laws are way beyond unreasonable.
I haven't seen anything about capital gains in there, and that's separate from salary now.
I do not know what the G*P wanted to tax at 90%. But we know that most people don't earn $5M salaries every year; however companies are bought and sold all the time. If you let the government to take an inch (90% of the ordinary income) it will take a mile (90% of capital gains) and you can't do anything because you opened the door to this development.
Don't sell the company.
And when you have an appendicitis don't go for a surgery. That makes just as much sense as what you proposed. The company that you built may have great technology, but no means to make it into a product. A large company may have means to make products, but no ideas. That's usually when you sell and they buy. It's not like people sell companies on a whim. And there are tons of other reasons to sell too.
Have the trust pay him out slowly, rather than a lump sum
Tons of problems with that. To begin with, you have a good chance of dying from old age before all the money is paid. Or another - you are denied use of the money that is rightfully yours. You can't buy a house, for example. Or another - who knows what will happen with the money in the future (inflation, that's what.)
All of these are just workarounds, dancing around the elephant in the room. And the elephant is the right of the government to take your money. Granted, the government needs to be paid for the services that it provided you to be able to earn your profit; you weren't conquered by New Zealand, you weren't killed by gangs, you didn't die from food poisoning. But that's a much smaller sum than what the government tries to take. The more it takes, the less is there to take.
Please, punish me with a paltry salary of $5 million per year!
You conveniently forget one common case. An entrepreneur creates a company, works for 10 or 15 years to build it up, lives on minimal salary himself ... and finally he finds a buyer for his business. Now you propose to steal 90% of the money that he earned, but not cashed, in last 10 to 15 years. In your world no sane man would open a business if any large transaction is confiscatory.
Chances are good that the scanner's computer is just a Windows PC. How much money would it take to duplicate PC hardware and Windows, and what would be the purpose of such an expense? Sometimes you must go embedded - for example, when your computer flies to Mars. But when it's sitting in an airport there is no reason to go crazy. Get a PC, install a PCI (or USB nowadays) acquisition card, and get creative with the software. That's how things are done today, that's where the value is.
Some poor schlub gets castrated and then fitted with a horse-sized prosthetic full of bomb
There is no need to go that far. Slashdotters don't know it, of course, but there is a special type of people called "women." They are very well equipped for concealed transportation of a bomb material, and they can easily carry more than even a surgically augmented man can.
You might want to read NRS 651.080 yourself before making such broad (and false) claims.
The NRS 651.080 prohibits "Deprivation of, interference with and punishment for exercising rights and privileges" that are "secured by NRS 651.070 or 651.075".
While NRS 651.075 indeed deals with disabilities and such, the NRS 651.070 is very broad and applies to "all persons". Probably only a lawyer with knowledge of Nevada laws is qualified to comment further.
PS: wikipedia was complaint, its should applauded for its effort.
What have I done to deserve this pain?
I assume the room contracts were between the small companies and the hotel.
I also thought so, being not a L. However someone above already corrected both of us. The hotel industry is regulated by the innkeeper statute. I remember seeing it posted in hotel rooms. This means that state laws control the hotel industry, and individual hotels have little say in what is and what isn't allowed. As the comment above points out, a guest is free to do pretty much anything that is legal.
It's possible that CEA had a contract with the hotel
As you say, it's irrelevant.
unless the hotel rewrote the contracts the small companies signed
Per the innkeeper statute, the hotel has no such right - see NRS 651.080 in the link above.
if they can't afford $10,000 for CES, they certainly can't afford the $10,000 a lawyer would require
a) Maybe they have the money; but floor space usually costs far more than $10K. I would guess a CES booth would be closer to $100K. It can be that the vendor just doesn't think this investment would pay for itself. Maybe they have only one product; maybe their market is very narrow; maybe their product can't be shown without an NDA in place; and so on.
b) The lawsuit has a chance to pay not just for the lawyer but for a few years of R&D. If a business has a good chance of winning $100K in court it will find $10K for a lawyer.
Besides, any company who can make a consumer product has some money. Maybe not in range of millions, but you certainly need to have tens of thousands of dollars to design and manufacture your product, even if it is only a prototype. Just the airline tickets from China to Las Vegas and back will cost you about that much.
We are proud to announce that we will be holding a similar event in Lost Springs, WY
Your barn looks a tad small on the outside to host a CES size event, but if you have a dog town or two nearby that's all I need to know :-)
If you could prove my intent was to take your money and then immediately exercise my right to kick you off my property for no particular reason other than my own whimsical desire to make money, then that would be fraud
There would be plenty of other examples of fraud that don't match your definition but are fraud nevertheless. For example, it is still a fraud if you don't have a monetary gain out of it but just want to hurt someone.
However, basically any business has the right to eject people for any reason except where it involves illegal discrimination based on protected minorities/groups.
And except where it involves a violation of a signed contract. Renting of a hotel room is certainly a contract, and if *you* violate it you will be fined or kicked out. But the hotel also can't violate this contract. If you rent a room for 3 nights you can't be kicked out after one night, unless you broke the rules first. The contract protects both participants.
So unless those hotels explicitly forbid doing business in rented rooms and make that restriction known to the guest when the contract is considered, they violated their contract. The rental fees need to be returned, and on top of that other fines may be involved. Loss of business opportunity during CES is not cheap.
Wi-fi and tables are available at the bookstore but they don't expect you to run your business, host clients, create displays on the tables
A book store is not renting the premises or the table to you, but a hotel does. You don't pay for walking into a book store, but you need to pay for every day of hotel room's use.
What makes "mobile" so different from the desktop?
If Verizon does that [$5 a month,] AT&T will be quick to point it out in the ads.
If Verizon does that, AT&T will be quick to point out in the ads that it only charges $4.95 per month for the same "service."
If you believe in competition between major cellular providers, I have that bridge you might be interested in...
How shall a program deduce the existence of the computer on which it runs?
Cogito, ergo sum
The purpose if the signature is to verify that:
A) The person who the claimant says made the agreement is in fact the person who entered into the agreement
The signature does nothing like that. You need a notary stamp, signature, a record in his book and your thumbprint there to certify your signature.
B) The person who made the agreement was in fact in a postition to make such agreement
The signature does nothing like that. It's up to courts to determine if you had authority to sign a certain document. If I sign a deployment order for the US Army it doesn't make me the President.
If the person who signed it wasn't the defendant or legal representation thereof, no lawsuit.
Unfortunately, if a company owns a computer then it is legally responsible for it, 100%. That applies to any company property, and even to your personal property somewhat.
It doesn't change because you add a computer to the scenario.
True. But consider this. Your company buys 10 tons of grain from a local farmer, and you send him the purchase order signed (with an illegible scratch) by "H. Bark". Your dog is called Happy Bark. The purchase order calls for Net 30, and you don't pay. The farmer sues you, and you point at your dog and say that you didn't sign anything. Can you get away with that?
No, you can't. First of all, you accepted the delivery and made use of the product. That confirms your acceptance of the transaction. Otherwise you'd need to refuse the shipment, or at least contact the seller and attempt to return the product.
Once you accepted and used the product, the farmer's side of the deal is fulfilled and he is right in expecting the money. You, on the other hand, received the product, used it, and you expect to not pay for it? The claim that "your dog did it" will be only seen as further attempt to evade the payment, and you will dig yourself deeper into the hole.
To summarize, a business is responsible for everything that happens to its computers. If a software was installed illegally, you have several vulnerabilities:
a) an employee of the company, acting as an agent of the company, broke the law. The company is responsible for its agents.
b) the computer somehow got illegally installed software. The company proceeded to use that software, for profit and without pay. This demonstrates that the company was aware of the illegal act and supported it by not stopping the violation as soon as it learned about it.
c) even if neither (a) or (b) are sufficiently proven, the business is still at fault for having unlicensed software on your premises and under your control. The fine for that is about twice the retail cost, just what BSA usually charges, and the only evidence required to award that fine is the fact that an illegal software was installed. As I read here, that's what BSA usually aims for, since it's the easiest violation to prove and the smallest fine to pay.
"California". That means you must keep your guns disassembled and non-firing.
You are obviously not a gun owner in California. There is no such requirement. In fact, it is legal to carry loaded firearms on your property or in place of business, or in a hunting area. Clerks at my local gun store do that, and it is expected and normal. You can carry an unloaded gun openly anywhere in the state, even if you have ammo with you. You can also fire your guns at your property, as long as it is outside of a city (and there are a couple of other restrictions - being enclosed by the city, being near a school, having no safe place to shoot, etc.)
irst they have to prove I agreed to the EULA, and in order to do so they need to conduct the audit.
It's a Catch 22 only if you consistently pirate everything or pay for everything. If you mix, then they can use the legally bought product's EULA to audit all your computers.
Furthermore if some random schmoe just one day shows up on my door claiming to be from Microsoft and claiming he's here to do an audit he'd better have some pretty convincing proof or he isn't getting past the secretary
That would be a letter from Microsoft, and it will sail past the secretary right onto your desk. The copy of your volume licensing agreement, where you agree to the audit, will be attached.
"suprise inspections" usually aren't
And that is just fine because you will have to clean the mess and buy all the missing licenses. That's what they wanted all along - not necessarily to fine you. As you say, suing or fines aren't free to the software vendor.
The only ones who really get screwed are the smaller enterprises
Yes, not just because they are not as organized and don't have lawyers at the ready, but most often because they are too cheap to buy the software in the first place. A small business, having no volume licensing and living from hand to mouth, has a good chance of flying under the radar until some disgruntled employee calls the BSA.
hey have to show that the person who clicked accept was an authorized representative of the company (employee) and not an unauthorized user or cracker, and it is Windows, so good luck with that!
They don't need to show anything because it is natural and expected that an employee of the company installed some software on company's computers. For example, you seldom need to prove to anyone that you are human.
If you claim that somebody set you up the bomb then *you* need to prove that extraordinary claim. You need to make your evidence available (firewall and Snort logs, virus detection logs, meeting notes where you discussed the breach, etc.) You can't just wave your hand and have it all dismissed, especially if the company used the software on that computer for months or even years.
So that if the product "phoned home" to a specific IP instead of a hostname, the HOSTS file wouldn't even be taken into account?
True. There are other issues too. Some companies use activation servers that are spread around the namespace and are hard to block. There are other ways to go through your firewall too, and the software developers have far more time to invent those ways than the n00b pirate has to block them. As an old wisdom says, the software company needs only one method out of 100 to work, but the pirate needs to make sure that all 100 are blocked, all the time.
Not to mention if the product contains some sort of "if I can't phone home, stop working" contingency.
That is rare. There are many legitimate cases when software needs to be loaded on offline computers - either because there is no Internet, or because it is not connected for some reason. An Internet link on your yacht, or in your backpack, or in your car would be pretty expensive. Typically if the software can't phone home it will ask for an alternative way to get activated, often by asking *you* to phone its home and get the activation code.
And now they'll get nothing else, when the company could have been a good customer, along with bad publicity.
A comment on /. does not amount to "bad publicity." Besides, IT managers are not surprised when they read that Adobe shakes pirates down when said pirates use Adobe's top notch products. Every competent IT person who installed Adobe software in the last decade knows that it contains online activation.
About getting "nothing else" - it's not that easy. Say, CS4 was pirated (or CS3, which costs the same.) Each copy is about $800. The settlement was for $2M. That's 2,500 copies!!! What size the company must be that it needs 2,500 CS4 seats? Even IBM probably doesn't have that many. And if you use cheaper products, like Acrobat, then you are easily in the range of 10,000 seats.
Those would be huge deployments, done over years, and requiring technical support. But in this case all that money was collected almost overnight, and no technical support is needed. In a few years the managers who got burned will move on, and new managers will not have any qualms about buying Adobe products again.
Besides, if the business needs to edit, encrypt and sign PDFs, what are your options? You can buy the real stuff that is guaranteed to work (Adobe Acrobat, $150-250) or you can buy a second tier product (Nitro PDF, $99) and take your chances. You pay someone's else money, but if things break your personal behind will be in danger. What manager (who is not an owner) will choose the second option here?
Or you can, you know, make a product that hardly needs customer service...
You need customer service even if you sell shovels. There will always be a customer who needs a replacement handle.
Probably the only products that do not require customer service are commodities.
Of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, is this really necessary on flights without allergic travelers?
It also had been pointed out that the airline needs to determine, with 100% certainty, that they don't have anyone allergic to $something_deadly_to_them on board. So far they can't even keep people with bombs away, what can they do if a passenger makes a mistake when he buys a ticket, or if someone else buys a ticket for him - which is a 99% certainty in all business travel. I recently worked at a company where you physically couldn't buy a ticket yourself, someone else (in Asia) would do that for you. Then there is the problem of residue of that $something_deadly_to_them substance left between flights - a quick cleaning is not a guarantee.
But most importantly, airplanes are not the only places where exposure to $something_deadly_to_them is possible. Any food court, any air terminal, any restaurant, any taxi or a friend's car, any movie theater, any home other than your own is a potential death trap. Some of those locations can be farther from medical help than an airplane (including "infinitely far" if the sufferer is alone.)
I personally believe that everyone will only benefit from switching to the least common denominator food - like fresh apples, for example, or salads, or some very well done meat. A 30g bag of peanuts is not that nutritious to begin with, and the salt that is gratuitously provided with them is of no help to anyone at all. The only advantage of peanuts is that they are easy to handle, and they can be stored forever. Airlines really love feeding passengers with stuff that even dogs won't eat.