Piracy has been used for the past 400 years to describe hijacking someone's right to profit off of their own printed materials. It is very much the correct term to use, and that has only been reinforced in the digital age (unlike other terms that tend to get hijacked).
It's definitely a better word than theft, as the theft is of a metaphysical nature.
And, if you forget about the peg-legs and eye-patches and think about what pirates actually do on the open ocean, it fits pretty well. Someone else does all the work of getting a ship together, making foreign contacts, and sending a ship full of goods for trade, and pirates take it all for themselves. Sometimes they use what they find, sometimes they just sell it to make a little bit of money for rum. Same thing with copyright infringement - really the only thing missing are the high seas;). Someone else did all the work, but joe schmuck decides to post it on YouTube for a quick buck. Very few people actually take the video and add new value to it, which is the non-piratical (aka fair use) way to hijack someone else's content and profit from it.
I believe the "evil" part was when one of the founders was posting copyright infringing videos and the other founders knew about it. The other founders chastised him, but I don't think any other action was taken (they may not have been able to do anything serious to him anyway) and I don't know if the guy stopped.
That was the part that Google said violated their "do no evil" policy.
I could certainly see them continuing with the purchase if this was the only case, as they would be more than capable of putting a stop to this particular case of infringement.
In all other cases, Google would have no knowledge that the poster of infringing material is not the copyright holder without the real copyright holder coming forward and saying so. Thus the DMCA take down notices (and copyright turf wars that potentially occur).
The onus is on the copyright holder to notify Google that someone is using YouTube to violate their copyrights. Frankly, Google would be far more likely to be sued and viewed as "evil" if they simply started taking down videos they thought might be infringing without actually knowing if they were or weren't.
It's not a trade secret when you share ratings with your clients several hours before you release information to the public.
Man, you should really read what you post.
The public has absolutely no right to receive a report requested and paid for by a private entity before that private entity receives the report themselves. This is especially true if that report will eventually be made public and is potentially damaging to said entity. It's like going to a car repair shop and asking for a quote, but instead of handing you a quote they go and post your quote in the newspaper and then hand you the quote. In the mean time 20 people have lined up ahead of you as a direct result of that quote because you didn't have a chance to make an informed decision. It's ass backwards. It's not market manipulation, it's providing the service to the person who paid for it, instead of everyone who didn't.
On the other hand, the reason theflyonthewall.com got the reports in the first place was because somebody gave them to TFOTW before they gave them to the client, so 100% of the blame rests on the analysts themselves. In my opinion the Judge should have just told them they needed to get their shit together. Instead the Judge told them they have 1 year to get their shit together (there are apparently laws that allow for this), after which TFOTW can request the injunction be lifted.
The breach here is giving the information to TFOTW, but it took the analysts to create such a breach, so frankly I think the injunction should be on the analysts and not TFOTW.
Yet, Google still doesn't pay much, if anything, to send data across another company's fiber.
Maintaining their own shit has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether or not it costs them money to send data across another person's lines.
The trade agreements basically say "I maintain my shit, you maintain your shit, and you can send all the data you want over my lines, and I can send all the data I want over your lines."
Value is gained on both sides, something is traded, yet it costs neither of them a dime to send the data on someone else's lines.
analogy (-nl-j) n. pl. analogies 1. a. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. b. A comparison based on such similarity
It is used to illuminate the similarities between two items. What the Parent was saying was that the Grand Parent's analogy was inaccurate - he was comparing apples and oranges, so to speak (another analogy).
See how it works? He wasn't making fun of anybody, he was making a better analogy, and was modded up for it.
In this case, Google does not pay for bandwidth traffic across other provider's networks. That's the point of the summary and the article. Saying they pay for the upkeep costs of their own fiber (no shit) does not in any way have anything to do with the fact that they pay virtually nothing when they send traffic across another ISP's lines (which ordinarily they would, that's why you have an internet bill).
A more accurate analogy than both, but is kinda weird as a car analogy, is to say: "I don't pay for gas when I use my neighbor's car, because I pay for the gas in my car whether he uses my car or not. I only buy gas for my own car."
I think you're looking at his "increasing" differently than he is. As Universal Improbability increases, the probability of the probable decreases. Given the action/reaction principle, this means that the probability of the improbable increases.
In other words, increasing improbability means a greater chance that the improbable will come to pass.
Otherwise it would be impossible for anything unlikely to ever happen at all.
Dude you have it backwards - a "shutdown" is when you shut-down the plant. It may not actually be 100% shut down, but it will not be producing anything. Now, WHY you do a shutdown could be scheduled maintenance, upgrade projects, or someone may have screwed up the logic in a PLC forcing the shutdown.
If you didn't notice, the name "shutdown" is incredibly descriptive about what exactly is happening. In the oil industry they call them "shut-ins" because that's exactly what they do. In either case, it doesn't describe in any way why you've shut down the plant.
Apparently scheduled shut downs for particle accelerators tend to be a year or more.
No no, WE are the lackeys for the editors. They are basically just like "What's this mean?" and the commenters argue about it for a while and the people who bothered to read, or are very funny, float to the top.
Also the touchscreen keyboards need calibration to work best. The little quick start guide tells you how, it's easy.
I found the HTC Hero to be much more accurate after calibration when compared to before calibration.
That said, I'd still expect to see a physical keyboard to be a little faster and more accurate than a touchscreen, because you can feel the keys before you type, lending a lot to confidence which helps accuracy and speed.
Still, using them out of the box is atrocious, it doesn't reflect the capabilities of the phone at all.
What there is a track record of is vendors building an entire software suite based on a bug in an API, and when Microsoft fixes the bugged API the software breaks. Except for the lead up to Vista, Microsoft has always been very good about working with software developers to put workaround code in the API so their incorrect usage would still work. Before you drone on about how many bugs there are, Linux has just as many, if not more. The bugs just affect fewer people, so you don't get the level of bitching as when it happens in Windows. Bugs are a fact of life, how you deal with them is what matters.
That is where any update breakage comes from, and the following patch usually has the workarounds for the software that broke (because it should never have worked in the first place).
You don't get that level of service with Linux. When similar cases come up it's "Sorry, you did it wrong, you fix it." That's why Repository based updates are so critical for a halfway usable desktop Linux distro.
I don't know if you know this, but parsing a file on a remote server and comparing a version number isn't exactly hard to code.
All software that is expected to update regularly does this, and at worst it says "Hey, there's a new version, would you like to install it?" "Why gosh golly yes, I'd love to install it!" Click. Done.
Not exactly a painful process. It happens to be a lot more granular, instead of relying on what someone else thinks your computer needs, you get to choose.
What can really suck is coming back to a Linux box after a week or two of major updates and having to wait for 45 minutes while a pile of updates you probably don't really care about are loaded up on your machine. Has Ubuntu figured out how to do that in the background yet? Last I used it they hadn't (even though Windows has been doing it for almost a decade now), but to be fair it has been almost a year since I switched from Ubuntu to Vista.
In the modern world, software doesn't need to rely on someone else maintaining a repository to get the latest updates. It doesn't take a whole lot of code to check for an updated version and install it if there is one.
Furthermore, I don't mind not having an executable, but a halfway decent install package would be nice. Not everything worth having is in the repo's, and it really sucks debugging someone else's make/compile scripts, which I'm sure work great on his machine, but not on mine because he left out a dependency, or points to an outdated library or whatever. Package it all up in a scripted container the way MSI's are in windows - it's a little more work for the developer but it ensures it will work on everything. If you made such containers ubiquitous, and then each of the repositories used them, you could get rid of a lot of extra work people have to do to get all of their stuff in the different repositories.
The fact that Linux is so flexible is awesome, but at the same time it is so disjointed and mish-mashed that it can be a real pain in the ass.
Updates were annoying 10 years ago. Now any company that expects to make any money at all in the market has a decent update and patching system built in. Hell Microsoft gives one to you for free if you choose to use it (it's part of the MSI toolkit). If the user hasn't approved auto-updates, well they've asked for the harassment, now haven't they? Those probably aren't the users who will be going out and buying a mass auto-update software (that probably needs its own regular updates, to boot!).
The only exception I could see is where the misguided anti-Microsoft geek has helpfully chosen "Ask me before installing" for updates on his mom's Windows box "because, you know, like, Micro$haft updates break more than they fix, 'n stuff. M$ suuuuucks!!".
Then the machines are turned into zombies within six months, because vulnerabilities never get patched.
How the hell do you know Microsoft hasn't disclosed the patents to the hardware manufacturers? Depending on what the patents cover, that's perfectly reasonable. They don't need to disclose them to YOU, YOU don't manufacture hardware and use software that potentially infringes on their patents. Since they are hammering out licensing terms, it seems infinitely more likely that they have disclosed the patents to IO Data, else why would IO Data bother? "Prove it or get out of my face" works extremely well in patent cases, MS could have the best lawyers in the world but even I (not a lawyer) could adequately defend myself if they don't even bother to disclose the patents.
The assumption that MS did not disclose the patent does not seem logical, and there is no proof to back it up. The natural assumption should be that if IO Data and MS are working on a licensing agreement, the IO Data knows exactly which patents they are licensing.
It also implies that IO Data believes Microsoft's patents are valid, and they are a hell of a lot closer to the situation than any armchair patent "experts" here on/. are.
They are less commonly referred to as ninjits, but I think you can get your heart ripped out of your chest for using the term in their general vicinity.
And yes, they are nasty as hell.
P.S., Best ninja pickup line ever: "Haven't you never seen me before?" *rimshot*
LTO-4 drives can be had for under $2k if you shop carefully, and a 1.6TB tape can be had for between $50 and $80.
Cheap, simple, and far more reliable long term than hard drives. They also support Write Once Read Many, which is a regulatory requirement for some industries. Getting WORM on a hard disk would be a really neat trick, particularly the part about guaranteeing that it cannot be written to more than once.
A better way to look at it, is disk is best for quick backup and quick recovery from failure (which is very important for enterprise environments). Tape is for archiving and as a last protection against catastrophic failure.
Granted, the question is sort of moot because most virtualized environments are going to SAN for storage, and that's one huge hardware RAID device, or is it a software RAID device?;)
It's hardware and firmware, conventionally speaking.
There is actually a well known case among journalism circles involving the US Government and the New York Times during WW2.
The gist of it is, the NYT had gotten a hold of troop movements that were to take place over the next few weeks. The NYT wanted to publish them, because it was a major scoop. The Government tried to get an injunction on the NYT on the grounds that it would put US soldiers at risk by exposing their movements to the enemy.
Basically, what the Judge ruled was that no, the Government could not get an injunction against the NYT to stop them from running the story. However, he also noted that knowingly putting US soldiers in harms way was tantamount to treason, and the editors, publishers, and journalists involved could face serious jail time in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison if they released the story and soldiers died directly because of it.
The NYT prudently waited until after the troop movements had completed to release their story.
In America, thanks to the Bill of Rights, Speech will always be Free. However, that does not mean speech doesn't have consequences either, and it would be good to bear that in mind.
Except for this little thing called fair use, which says that there are a number of ways in which you can use someone else's copyrighted material without their permission.
There is no real hard and fast criteria for fair use, it is determined on a case by case basis, but there are some guidlines for it that will allow you to pretty easily judge whether something is definitely fair use, borderline, or definitely not. For example, re-broadcasting the latest hit single without permission from the copyright owners is definitely not fair use. Making a ring tone of that single would be borderline - you would need to add something original (maybe mixing it a bit) to make it fair use for sure. Broadcasting a podcast where you go bit by bit, analyzing the latest hit single and show everyone exactly why it sucks, is definitely fair use. In that last example, you can play the entire thing if you want. It just had better not be a simple excuse to play the song, or you're back at not fair use again.
It's quite complicated, and part of the Copyright owner's job before sending a DMCA take-down notice is to look at the piece in its entirety and ask themselves "Could this be fair use?". If the answer is definitely no, send the notice. If the answer is maybe, have your lawyers do a little research. If the answer is yes, you shouldn't bother sending the notice.
It seems people are starting to get into trouble for either coming to the last conclusion and sending the DMCA notice anyway, or not bothering to check the possibility of fair use before sending the notice.
I think that's a very good thing. It's the accuser who needs to have proof of wrong-doing, not the accused proof of innocence.
Look, if we're completely full of shit, the only reason why IE is so tightly integrated with the OS in the first place is because Microsoft wanted to abuse its desktop OS monopoly by using it to dominate the browser market.
There, fixed that for you.
IE was originally just an extension of Windows Explorer to browse the web and read HTML. It was literally a small app that pointed to a few new dlls and a whole lot of dlls that were already there. Explorer already processed files for Windows, and HTML was basically just a text file that needed processing. The simple solution? Add a dll and an app to call it, and let Explorer do the rest. Remember IE was born when the internet was practically nothing, almost everyone used AOL or Prodigy or some other service, and they all had their own browsers. IE was more of an "Eh, it could be useful" add on for Windows. As such it didn't warrant investing a lot of time and effort into a separate app, especially when most of the functionality needed was already there.
The reason IE is integrated so tightly with the OS is because it is an offshoot of the OS, that's how it came about. It's like pointing to a branch and saying "Lets be honest, the only reason the branch is so tightly integrated into the tree in the first place is because the tree wanted to dominate the branch market. If not for that, the branch would be a standalone standalone plant and would be separate from any built-in circulatory system that's part of the core tree, like the roots." Any dumbass can see the branch came FROM the tree, and is used extensively by the tree to improve its ability to live.
Browsers that started as completely separate entities obviously don't have this problem, but Internet Explorer did not start this way. On the one hand it has helped them gain dominance in the browser market (and really, had it been a separate program they would still have the dominance, integration has nothing to do with that, inclusion with the OS does). On the other hand, being so tightly bound into core OS functions has led to a lot of security issues over the years, which has hurt their position in the browser market.
Oh, I dunno, could be the potentially voided warranty on a $600 item.
Or maybe it's Apple's habit of bricking jailbroken phones with updates?
Not to say that such things aren't possible with Android updates, but given the completely opposite culture the two come from, I feel much safer with my android.
Plus, as has been noted, rooting an android phone takes all of 20 seconds, and it gives less of an advantage for the simple fact that less is locked away from you in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Piracy has been used for the past 400 years to describe hijacking someone's right to profit off of their own printed materials. It is very much the correct term to use, and that has only been reinforced in the digital age (unlike other terms that tend to get hijacked).
It's definitely a better word than theft, as the theft is of a metaphysical nature.
And, if you forget about the peg-legs and eye-patches and think about what pirates actually do on the open ocean, it fits pretty well. Someone else does all the work of getting a ship together, making foreign contacts, and sending a ship full of goods for trade, and pirates take it all for themselves. Sometimes they use what they find, sometimes they just sell it to make a little bit of money for rum. Same thing with copyright infringement - really the only thing missing are the high seas ;). Someone else did all the work, but joe schmuck decides to post it on YouTube for a quick buck. Very few people actually take the video and add new value to it, which is the non-piratical (aka fair use) way to hijack someone else's content and profit from it.
I believe the "evil" part was when one of the founders was posting copyright infringing videos and the other founders knew about it. The other founders chastised him, but I don't think any other action was taken (they may not have been able to do anything serious to him anyway) and I don't know if the guy stopped.
That was the part that Google said violated their "do no evil" policy.
I could certainly see them continuing with the purchase if this was the only case, as they would be more than capable of putting a stop to this particular case of infringement.
In all other cases, Google would have no knowledge that the poster of infringing material is not the copyright holder without the real copyright holder coming forward and saying so. Thus the DMCA take down notices (and copyright turf wars that potentially occur).
The onus is on the copyright holder to notify Google that someone is using YouTube to violate their copyrights. Frankly, Google would be far more likely to be sued and viewed as "evil" if they simply started taking down videos they thought might be infringing without actually knowing if they were or weren't.
It's not a trade secret when you share ratings with your clients several hours before you release information to the public.
Man, you should really read what you post.
The public has absolutely no right to receive a report requested and paid for by a private entity before that private entity receives the report themselves. This is especially true if that report will eventually be made public and is potentially damaging to said entity. It's like going to a car repair shop and asking for a quote, but instead of handing you a quote they go and post your quote in the newspaper and then hand you the quote. In the mean time 20 people have lined up ahead of you as a direct result of that quote because you didn't have a chance to make an informed decision. It's ass backwards. It's not market manipulation, it's providing the service to the person who paid for it, instead of everyone who didn't.
On the other hand, the reason theflyonthewall.com got the reports in the first place was because somebody gave them to TFOTW before they gave them to the client, so 100% of the blame rests on the analysts themselves. In my opinion the Judge should have just told them they needed to get their shit together. Instead the Judge told them they have 1 year to get their shit together (there are apparently laws that allow for this), after which TFOTW can request the injunction be lifted.
The breach here is giving the information to TFOTW, but it took the analysts to create such a breach, so frankly I think the injunction should be on the analysts and not TFOTW.
Yet, Google still doesn't pay much, if anything, to send data across another company's fiber.
Maintaining their own shit has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether or not it costs them money to send data across another person's lines.
The trade agreements basically say "I maintain my shit, you maintain your shit, and you can send all the data you want over my lines, and I can send all the data I want over your lines."
Value is gained on both sides, something is traded, yet it costs neither of them a dime to send the data on someone else's lines.
It's called an analogy.
From the Free Online Dictionary:
analogy (-nl-j)
n. pl. analogies
1.
a. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
b. A comparison based on such similarity
It is used to illuminate the similarities between two items. What the Parent was saying was that the Grand Parent's analogy was inaccurate - he was comparing apples and oranges, so to speak (another analogy).
See how it works? He wasn't making fun of anybody, he was making a better analogy, and was modded up for it.
In this case, Google does not pay for bandwidth traffic across other provider's networks. That's the point of the summary and the article. Saying they pay for the upkeep costs of their own fiber (no shit) does not in any way have anything to do with the fact that they pay virtually nothing when they send traffic across another ISP's lines (which ordinarily they would, that's why you have an internet bill).
A more accurate analogy than both, but is kinda weird as a car analogy, is to say: "I don't pay for gas when I use my neighbor's car, because I pay for the gas in my car whether he uses my car or not. I only buy gas for my own car."
I'm pretty sure that if a person wanted to press the issue in a state that requires teaching credentials, it would be found to be unconstitutional.
The beautiful thing about America, is that the Government (whether state or federal) can, and often is, wrong.
I think you're looking at his "increasing" differently than he is. As Universal Improbability increases, the probability of the probable decreases. Given the action/reaction principle, this means that the probability of the improbable increases.
In other words, increasing improbability means a greater chance that the improbable will come to pass.
Otherwise it would be impossible for anything unlikely to ever happen at all.
Dude you have it backwards - a "shutdown" is when you shut-down the plant. It may not actually be 100% shut down, but it will not be producing anything. Now, WHY you do a shutdown could be scheduled maintenance, upgrade projects, or someone may have screwed up the logic in a PLC forcing the shutdown.
If you didn't notice, the name "shutdown" is incredibly descriptive about what exactly is happening. In the oil industry they call them "shut-ins" because that's exactly what they do. In either case, it doesn't describe in any way why you've shut down the plant.
Apparently scheduled shut downs for particle accelerators tend to be a year or more.
No no, WE are the lackeys for the editors. They are basically just like "What's this mean?" and the commenters argue about it for a while and the people who bothered to read, or are very funny, float to the top.
Very efficient for them, really.
Also the touchscreen keyboards need calibration to work best. The little quick start guide tells you how, it's easy.
I found the HTC Hero to be much more accurate after calibration when compared to before calibration.
That said, I'd still expect to see a physical keyboard to be a little faster and more accurate than a touchscreen, because you can feel the keys before you type, lending a lot to confidence which helps accuracy and speed.
Still, using them out of the box is atrocious, it doesn't reflect the capabilities of the phone at all.
That's bullshit.
What there is a track record of is vendors building an entire software suite based on a bug in an API, and when Microsoft fixes the bugged API the software breaks. Except for the lead up to Vista, Microsoft has always been very good about working with software developers to put workaround code in the API so their incorrect usage would still work. Before you drone on about how many bugs there are, Linux has just as many, if not more. The bugs just affect fewer people, so you don't get the level of bitching as when it happens in Windows. Bugs are a fact of life, how you deal with them is what matters.
That is where any update breakage comes from, and the following patch usually has the workarounds for the software that broke (because it should never have worked in the first place).
You don't get that level of service with Linux. When similar cases come up it's "Sorry, you did it wrong, you fix it." That's why Repository based updates are so critical for a halfway usable desktop Linux distro.
I don't know if you know this, but parsing a file on a remote server and comparing a version number isn't exactly hard to code.
All software that is expected to update regularly does this, and at worst it says "Hey, there's a new version, would you like to install it?" "Why gosh golly yes, I'd love to install it!" Click. Done.
Not exactly a painful process. It happens to be a lot more granular, instead of relying on what someone else thinks your computer needs, you get to choose.
What can really suck is coming back to a Linux box after a week or two of major updates and having to wait for 45 minutes while a pile of updates you probably don't really care about are loaded up on your machine. Has Ubuntu figured out how to do that in the background yet? Last I used it they hadn't (even though Windows has been doing it for almost a decade now), but to be fair it has been almost a year since I switched from Ubuntu to Vista.
In the modern world, software doesn't need to rely on someone else maintaining a repository to get the latest updates. It doesn't take a whole lot of code to check for an updated version and install it if there is one.
Furthermore, I don't mind not having an executable, but a halfway decent install package would be nice. Not everything worth having is in the repo's, and it really sucks debugging someone else's make/compile scripts, which I'm sure work great on his machine, but not on mine because he left out a dependency, or points to an outdated library or whatever. Package it all up in a scripted container the way MSI's are in windows - it's a little more work for the developer but it ensures it will work on everything. If you made such containers ubiquitous, and then each of the repositories used them, you could get rid of a lot of extra work people have to do to get all of their stuff in the different repositories.
The fact that Linux is so flexible is awesome, but at the same time it is so disjointed and mish-mashed that it can be a real pain in the ass.
Mod this man up.
Updates were annoying 10 years ago. Now any company that expects to make any money at all in the market has a decent update and patching system built in. Hell Microsoft gives one to you for free if you choose to use it (it's part of the MSI toolkit). If the user hasn't approved auto-updates, well they've asked for the harassment, now haven't they? Those probably aren't the users who will be going out and buying a mass auto-update software (that probably needs its own regular updates, to boot!).
The only exception I could see is where the misguided anti-Microsoft geek has helpfully chosen "Ask me before installing" for updates on his mom's Windows box "because, you know, like, Micro$haft updates break more than they fix, 'n stuff. M$ suuuuucks!!".
Then the machines are turned into zombies within six months, because vulnerabilities never get patched.
Sounds like you should set it to "Automatic".
Welcome to year 2000 technology man, you're at least a decade behind the curve!
Maybe because the lead developer for the Linux version decided he wasn't all that interested any more, and the project has been stale for two years?
Just guessing.
How the hell do you know Microsoft hasn't disclosed the patents to the hardware manufacturers? Depending on what the patents cover, that's perfectly reasonable. They don't need to disclose them to YOU, YOU don't manufacture hardware and use software that potentially infringes on their patents. Since they are hammering out licensing terms, it seems infinitely more likely that they have disclosed the patents to IO Data, else why would IO Data bother? "Prove it or get out of my face" works extremely well in patent cases, MS could have the best lawyers in the world but even I (not a lawyer) could adequately defend myself if they don't even bother to disclose the patents.
The assumption that MS did not disclose the patent does not seem logical, and there is no proof to back it up. The natural assumption should be that if IO Data and MS are working on a licensing agreement, the IO Data knows exactly which patents they are licensing.
It also implies that IO Data believes Microsoft's patents are valid, and they are a hell of a lot closer to the situation than any armchair patent "experts" here on /. are.
What if I send half a ninja?
I believe what you are looking for is a minja.
They are less commonly referred to as ninjits, but I think you can get your heart ripped out of your chest for using the term in their general vicinity.
And yes, they are nasty as hell.
P.S., Best ninja pickup line ever: "Haven't you never seen me before?" *rimshot*
LTO-4 drives can be had for under $2k if you shop carefully, and a 1.6TB tape can be had for between $50 and $80.
Cheap, simple, and far more reliable long term than hard drives. They also support Write Once Read Many, which is a regulatory requirement for some industries. Getting WORM on a hard disk would be a really neat trick, particularly the part about guaranteeing that it cannot be written to more than once.
A better way to look at it, is disk is best for quick backup and quick recovery from failure (which is very important for enterprise environments). Tape is for archiving and as a last protection against catastrophic failure.
Granted, the question is sort of moot because most virtualized environments are going to SAN for storage, and that's one huge hardware RAID device, or is it a software RAID device? ;)
It's hardware and firmware, conventionally speaking.
There is actually a well known case among journalism circles involving the US Government and the New York Times during WW2.
The gist of it is, the NYT had gotten a hold of troop movements that were to take place over the next few weeks. The NYT wanted to publish them, because it was a major scoop. The Government tried to get an injunction on the NYT on the grounds that it would put US soldiers at risk by exposing their movements to the enemy.
Basically, what the Judge ruled was that no, the Government could not get an injunction against the NYT to stop them from running the story. However, he also noted that knowingly putting US soldiers in harms way was tantamount to treason, and the editors, publishers, and journalists involved could face serious jail time in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison if they released the story and soldiers died directly because of it.
The NYT prudently waited until after the troop movements had completed to release their story.
In America, thanks to the Bill of Rights, Speech will always be Free. However, that does not mean speech doesn't have consequences either, and it would be good to bear that in mind.
No doubt, the MPAA is obviously too big to fail!
Since they can't adapt to the changing world, well by golly the government is going to force the changing world to adapt to them, damnit!
Except for this little thing called fair use, which says that there are a number of ways in which you can use someone else's copyrighted material without their permission.
There is no real hard and fast criteria for fair use, it is determined on a case by case basis, but there are some guidlines for it that will allow you to pretty easily judge whether something is definitely fair use, borderline, or definitely not. For example, re-broadcasting the latest hit single without permission from the copyright owners is definitely not fair use. Making a ring tone of that single would be borderline - you would need to add something original (maybe mixing it a bit) to make it fair use for sure. Broadcasting a podcast where you go bit by bit, analyzing the latest hit single and show everyone exactly why it sucks, is definitely fair use. In that last example, you can play the entire thing if you want. It just had better not be a simple excuse to play the song, or you're back at not fair use again.
It's quite complicated, and part of the Copyright owner's job before sending a DMCA take-down notice is to look at the piece in its entirety and ask themselves "Could this be fair use?". If the answer is definitely no, send the notice. If the answer is maybe, have your lawyers do a little research. If the answer is yes, you shouldn't bother sending the notice.
It seems people are starting to get into trouble for either coming to the last conclusion and sending the DMCA notice anyway, or not bothering to check the possibility of fair use before sending the notice.
I think that's a very good thing. It's the accuser who needs to have proof of wrong-doing, not the accused proof of innocence.
Look, if we're completely full of shit, the only reason why IE is so tightly integrated with the OS in the first place is because Microsoft wanted to abuse its desktop OS monopoly by using it to dominate the browser market.
There, fixed that for you.
IE was originally just an extension of Windows Explorer to browse the web and read HTML. It was literally a small app that pointed to a few new dlls and a whole lot of dlls that were already there. Explorer already processed files for Windows, and HTML was basically just a text file that needed processing. The simple solution? Add a dll and an app to call it, and let Explorer do the rest. Remember IE was born when the internet was practically nothing, almost everyone used AOL or Prodigy or some other service, and they all had their own browsers. IE was more of an "Eh, it could be useful" add on for Windows. As such it didn't warrant investing a lot of time and effort into a separate app, especially when most of the functionality needed was already there.
The reason IE is integrated so tightly with the OS is because it is an offshoot of the OS, that's how it came about. It's like pointing to a branch and saying "Lets be honest, the only reason the branch is so tightly integrated into the tree in the first place is because the tree wanted to dominate the branch market. If not for that, the branch would be a standalone standalone plant and would be separate from any built-in circulatory system that's part of the core tree, like the roots." Any dumbass can see the branch came FROM the tree, and is used extensively by the tree to improve its ability to live.
Browsers that started as completely separate entities obviously don't have this problem, but Internet Explorer did not start this way. On the one hand it has helped them gain dominance in the browser market (and really, had it been a separate program they would still have the dominance, integration has nothing to do with that, inclusion with the OS does). On the other hand, being so tightly bound into core OS functions has led to a lot of security issues over the years, which has hurt their position in the browser market.
Oh, I dunno, could be the potentially voided warranty on a $600 item.
Or maybe it's Apple's habit of bricking jailbroken phones with updates?
Not to say that such things aren't possible with Android updates, but given the completely opposite culture the two come from, I feel much safer with my android.
Plus, as has been noted, rooting an android phone takes all of 20 seconds, and it gives less of an advantage for the simple fact that less is locked away from you in the first place.