I forgot to add: The other day on NPR they had a story about immigrant businesses in California being extorted by "consumer rights" groups citing "health violations". The threat was that if they didn't pay $1000 they would be taken to court over these "health violations". These legal threats would be mailed out en masse to 200-300 businesses. Being small businesses they could not afford the thousands of dollars it would take to defend such threats so the obvious choice is to give in. $1000 x 300 = $300,000 for little more than sending out a letter.
SBC's move is the same. They put the hook out in the water and see if they get a bite and if they do the letters start going out in bulk. Think about how many small businesses on the web us SBC's supposed IP? The main difference between this situation and the one in CA is that SBC is a large established company with a stable of lawyers. In CA the extortionists are unheard of consumer rights groups with no addresses and maybe one or two lawyers. The CA groups have found a lucrative enterprise - how much more so lucrative will it be for SBC?
These companies don't 'win' in the traditional sense but they do make some not so small monetary gains that they are not legally bound to refund. This means that quite a few small companies will pay large sums of money to not get taken to court. But when the first large company busts the patent claim in court then those small companies have to hire lawyers to get the money back or more likely just count it as a wash. Companies like SBC make a few hundred thousand to a couple of million - enough to show that pursuing claims like these are 'worthwhile' - and then move on to the next claim.
So not one cease and desist, not one request for monitary compensation, not a "Hi, nice to see you're using our technology", not an entry on a technical site. Nothing in 3~4 years worth of holding the patent and nothing in 6 years since filing the patent. To me that's submarining. While it might be 'legal' remember who gets the advantage in with this part of the law. There should be some clause that the IP holder should have to perform SOME actions during that time to secure the IP. While it's fine to say that they can wait 6 years to file suit they should be doing SOMETHING in that time to let others know who owns the IP.
Like other commentors said - part of the patent reform would be getting the patent officers to do a proper job. Too much is getting past them and they are leaving it to an already overflowing court system. This leaves big businesses more room to extort via threat of lawsuit. There should also be a mechanism put in place for the public as a whole to submit prior art findings and help facilitate the patent offices job. People are more than willing lately to put a little effort in to get things done right. The patent office is a government facility after all why shouldn't the people be involved in how it oporates?
What we really need now is patent reform. Companies should not be allowed to sit on IP while it gains broad adoption and then come back and extort companies in order to generate profits. We've seen too many companies do this, it's unethical, they know it, when are we going to stop them from continuing the practice.
What I'm trying to say is that here is a market, an additional area that these supposedly cash strapped networks have known about for years now. This same market has an extremely low cost of entry. As you said $500 for the equipment. It's an area where the networks can do some "value added" services for their customers the "sponsors" and possibly steal away some business from competitors who don't offer the "service". The point really is that instead of the networks themselves jumping into a new growth market, they continue to combat each other over the same demographics in the prime time crowd. They also wait for someone else to make the break into internet broadcasting and yet sue anyone attempting to break in using their content. Right now it's a lose lose situation for the networks because they're too focused on sitting back and waiting for something to happen, for someone else to do something.
Yes there are people out there willing to steal others stuff to make a buck - they learned that behavior from the networks, just take a look at programming. It's just the internet crowd is a little more blatent and a little less defensive about what they do and how they do it.
So what I'm hearing is that for $500 dollars ANYONE could get into a new market distributing television over the internet... interesting that. So there's a whole market out there of eyeballs that can be reached on the cheap and the geniuses at the major networks are wasting their time influencing government instead of doing their due diligence and capitalist duty by exploiting that market. They should all be shot.
Ammiano also said Segway's campaign rubbed officials the wrong way. "Segway didn't help themselves by hiring very expensive lobbyists," he said. "I think that backfired on them, too."
New Hampshire-based Segway hired lobbying firms but has made no contributions to any public officials or candidates, said Matt Dailida, the company's director of state government affairs.
The Segway's campaign with high priced lobbyists rubbed officials the wrong way while the high priced lobbyists from groups that DID contribute to public officials seemed to work just fine... hmmmmm...
I'm sure it's to solidify in everyones head to be safe you have to act safe. After all wearing a helmet doesn't help you much when you jump from an unsafe height. As well the segway's not going to save your ass if you're acting like an idiot. Intuitive and safe by nature doesn't account for the operator. Plus there's training for maintenance and some advocacy stuff in there from what I hear. Who better to be an advocate than a satisfied customer... beats the hell out of a multibillion dollar ad compaign any day.
When given lemons make lemonade
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't think that Mitnick has ever suggested that he didn't deserve to be punished or that he didn't break the law in some way. The issue is with the way he was handled by the justice system and those companies. Both wanting to make an example out of him, the handling was disproportionate to the crime.
Mitnick has knowledge and skills that will make him a productive part of society. The area he's promoting himself in is a legitimate legal business so why shouldn't we get behind him and support him. This would constitute a "regular job" - unless you mean flipping burgers or selling clothes at the gap, or maybe insurance salesperson. There are plenty of former criminals in areas of expertise that relate directly to their original crimes. Their knowledge is often very helpful in stopping future crimes and in showing how people can reform and rebuild their lives after having made mistakes.
Mitnick served out the punishment given by the state and now he should be allowed to live his life unencumbered by that "criminal" title. This includes seeking ANY gainful employment he can find.
I feel that society does have an obligation to help people who we've allowed to be mistreated.
The problem with the justice system today is:
1. They bend a little too much to the corporate will.
2. Punishment is never really centered around "correction" even though people are remanded to the "Department of Corrections".
3. There's no procedure for quick and fair correction of mistakes (i.e. false imprisonment, misshandling, etc.) Most compensation has to be gained via lawsuit. False judgements can stay with a person for life, damaging not only their mental health but their future job prospects and personal relationships.
4. Too much stock is put into conviction rates and not enough in to quality of prosecution and/or honesty in prosecution.
5. Justices allow stretching the word and spirit of the law in order to help prosecutions of people not exactly covered under existing laws. I.E. Some people get prosecuted under RICO when their crime has nothing to do with it.
6. Prosecutors withholding charges in order to pursue additional charges should they lose in the first round - an attempt to circumvent double jeopardy rules. (i.e. I murder someone during a robbery - the evidence is fairly thin, so I'm prosecuted for Murder (alone). When I'm acquitted the prosecution charges on attempted robbery, weapons charges or one of the many other charges that they can dig out that might have stronger evidence. The possibility of prosecution might loom for years, along with the stigma of "suspect".)
7. The ability to punish/pursue a suspect through (ab)use of the media. ("person of interest"). Placing pressure on a subject via media "leaks" or press releases that lead the public to believe certain things about a person. While not exactly lies we all know that it's the prosecution using the media to manipulate the public against a SUSPECTED criminal. (defense and prosecution should be barred (ethics) from using the media as a tool against the other side.) Remember INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.
I just want MythTV ported to XP. Call me sick and twisted and flame me for not running Debian... but my home entertainment center PC right now is an XP box. Runs all the programs I want and I never (ever) have a problem with it.
While Guide++ with ATI's player/scheduler is okay, and PowerDVD works well for DVD's, and Winamp is great, I really really want to get one interface for all of it. No more mucking in 4 different apps/gui styles. The only other thing I can think of doing is making some custom skins for the whole of them to make them look unified. I'd just wrather have MythTV on windows though.
For a digital convergence box Yoshi at techTV put every console I can think of into a server case along with an awesome PC. I can't remember what the OS of choice was...
NPR reported this on my way to work this morning. The gist of the conversation is "Hey we won't demand hardware copy protection if you hardware makers help us strip or block every bit of consumer rights legislation that comes through". The goal is that RIAA stops lobbying for mandatory hardware controls and the hardware groups join to lobby against any possible consumer bill of rights. Great "trade".
I hope we can buy a few senators back some day and have groups like the RIAA permanently banned from doing that special kind of business they do. They should have just stuck to certifying gold records.
I would say that having the DMCA in place makes these companies feel more empowered to enact copy protection than before the DMCA. Therefore the DMCA is involved just not as directly. Additionally they will be using the DMCA and not standard copyright law to prossecute circumventions. While at present companies are targetting larger file sharers it's not unforseen that they would want to also crack down on those copying for personal use and set a few "examples" (although this hasn't happened quite yet).
Step 1. is the file sharers Step 2. is the software cracker vendors Step 3. is the programmers sharing programs with there friends and family Step 4. is the individual
Arguably 1,2, 3 have happened and 4 is just waiting to happen.
I wouldn't say that's exactly true. While Joe Sixpack hasn't been sued under the DMCA or lost business because of the DMCA I wouldn't say that there are zero effects.
For instance copy protection is being pushed pretty heavily now. My wife was effected by this recently when she wanted to make a copy of her favorite christian artist CD to use in the car and our burner kacked and choked on it multiple times. When she asked me what was wrong with the computer I let her know that it wasn't the computer it was the music disc that wasn't a CD at all (no CD Logo or Compact Disc markings anywhere on the material). She wanted to know how they could do that I just let her know it was copyright protections and that we'd be seeing much more of that kind of behavior with the DMCA in place.
Everyone that I've spoken with explaining how the DMCA will help content distributors control every aspect of how you interact with their content has been disgusted. When I told them that content distributors might make their TiVo's or VCR's useless, they frowned. Then they asked when it became law and who put it there and how they could get it out.
We need to start buying some senators and judges. How about the american people start taking some senators and lawyers and judges on some junkets eh... I mean we're supposed to be the ones really paying their salaries shouldn't we have more of a voice with them than Hillary Rosen or Eisner?
I say we start putting their names out on e-bay and see if we can't get Jerry Lewis or better Billy Crystal, Whoopie and Robin Williams to drive up some donations to buy our own senators. It should be relatively cheap. I know Carnahan was about a couple 100,000. I'm sure some other states have senators we can get on a budget maybe 50-60,000.
WinLIRC and Girder also are available remote control products and can work with many remotes and IR devices.
I am using Girder now (Girder and LIRC/WinLIRC can also work in concert). I have girder on WinXP Pro using an ATI AIW128pro hooked to my living room TV. I built a $9.00 IR receiver (parts all from RadioShack) so that I could use my One-for-all programmable/learning/pc programable remote to play DVD/CD/Winamp without needing to touch the wireless kb/mouse.
The setup is pretty painless, I can schedule shows or use a transmitter to send DVD broadcasts to my kids' or wife's room, if someone is watching something else on the TV. I can watch something on cable, record something on the PC, and record something else on the VCR if need be. The One-for-all is a great remote for the price and has good punch through and macro features so I don't have to do alot of key mashing just to watch a DVD or play the VCR (i.e. First turn off the cable then hit VCR then change to channel 00 then hit tv/vcr then hit DVD then power then play - JUST HIT MACRO1). After I get the IR transmitter built I won't have to use the MACRO1 button GIRDER or LIRC will take care of manipulating the VCR/CableBox.
The other nice thing about this setup is that I can watch TV while someone else plays a game on the PC or browses the net(with the headphones on). Unfortunately if I want to use the "live TV mode" of the computer it has to be free from other users.
I was using the wrong part of my brain during that part of the statement. I didn't stop to think of the actual math I just threw something out there assuming people would understand the basic idea.
How about this: Initial cost of the car: 7000 Downpayment: 500 Financed: 6500 Interest: 9% Term: 3 years/ 36 months Monthly payment: 229.31 Total cost: 8255
I think the poster has a valid point. Take a look at what you put in your statement. "15k for car, including payments" If you are spending 15,000 a year for a car you are overspending and could downsize your life to get by a little easier. There's public transportation (~$30 per month), car pooling ($negligible), a $1000 used car, or SUPER-SIZE it and get a $7,000 car for $199 a month for two years.
People just don't think of VOLUNTARILY downsizing their lifestyles. Once they get to 40-50-60-75-100 k a year any regression means pain. It all has to get stripped away via reposession or bankruptcy. Which usually happens after they've lost their jobs and blew through their limite savings trying to find that next 'perfect' job. They never think: "I'll get something to fill that gap until I can something good comes along". Meanwhile people in bahrain work for 30-50 bucks a week and will travel hundreds of miles on foot to get jobs like that. People here complain about walking a quarter mile, they get in their damn SUV's to go two blocks to the store.
When a CEO takes a 20% pay cut so that employees don't have to take a 100% pay cut I think that's a big deal. Especially considering that most people could give a shit about what happens to their coworkers much less what happens to the below way below them on the corporate ladder.
When people get to a certain lifestyle they forget how to rewind and downsize to their previous lifestyle. They forget that they can go without that dinner out, those nice clothes, that 20+k SUV, that nice house. They forget that at one point they struggled in a $24k job and before that they struggle under a $14k job. They think they should just keep continuing to struggle under a $40 or $50k job. They forget that they once lived in a shithole with roaches and peeling walpaper and no cable. They forget that they worked flipped burgers or mopped floors. They forget working two jobs. They forget that they used to spend so much time with work and family and friends that the electricity bill for the month was the same as a dinner out. They forget that McDonald's is a convenience not a necessity. They forget that they could feed a family of 6 on ~$300 a month. They forget that they once didn't have a cell phone/pager or the internet. They forget that way back when wasn't really that bad.
People forget that their ancestors (voluntarily or otherwise) travelled thousands of miles in the worst conditions to make it somewhere for work. Again I'll say it, some people bitch about walking less than a mile to get somewhere.
It has a lot less to do with geography than it does with perspective. I'm sure that if you looked where you live you could find plenty of people nearby living on substantially LESS than what you make. Be thankful you have the OPTION of going from 50-40k instead of possibly being a $18-0k person.
People look at the CEO and say "BFD he's already overpaid so what if he takes a cut". The fact is that he didn't have to, he could have cut some employees, hell he could have done like most CEO's and jumped ship to another company, or just taken the 6% pay cut every other employee got. He could have just covered his own ass but he didn't. Think about how many people here would take a pay cut so that others could stay employed or a company succeed. How many people here would think "hmmm.... maybe it's time to start looking for something else" or "well if they just got rid of 'John' that's enough for people to not have to take a cut".
If a thief breaks into your home and steals your CD/DVD collection should it be the MPAA/RIAA that files the report with the police. After all it's the MPAA/RIAA property that you are just licensing. Should it not then be their responsibility to replace your media since you still license it.
The Chinese have picked the perfect plan. 1) Develop a weapon out in the open. 2) Desguise the weapon as something people will like or might find useful and that's trendy(robot). 3) Program the robot to fight in a style that most people think is very slow, thoughtful, and for old people. 4) Mass produce and SELL SELL SELL. 5) Send millions to a wearhouses all over the United States for "storage". 6) Send the signal for FULL SPEED MODE. 7) Mass destruction and KILL KILL KILL.
I say we nuke them before they get their "weapons of mass destruction" plan under full steam.
Just thoughts... my thoughts... yes I know they'll be unpopular... who cares...
I always understood that NeXT languished because of it being tied to proprietary hardware (ala Apple) and that by the time it ported to x86 the damage was done. Eventually it was bought by Apple and later incorporated to some extent into what is today's OS X. OS X is what some people blame for the failure of BeOS. Some say that BeOS not NeXT should have been the underpinning of OS X. If that would have happened it would have been saved. But Jobs baby was always NeXT. Similar to MS, Apple has never fully fulfilled their promises when it comes to the functionality of their OS. Additionally BeOS spent quite a bit of capital developing proprietary hardware that never panned out as well as marketing to the wrong people (geeks). I'd hardly blame these failures on MS. As for MS stealing from Apple, Apples ideas as it's been said before weren't exactly original (XEROX).
MS did co-develop OS/2 with IBM. The contract was based on KLOC's (Thousand Lines of Code) payment system. Gates thought it unfair that they should get paid less for more efficient "tighter" code. But this is the way that IBM had been doing business for years and no young punk was going to tell them otherwise. OS/2 per contract got released in two forms MS OS/2 and IBM OS/2. Both companies were allowed to distribute the end result. Eventually the partnership disbanded and both companies mutated OS/2 into different directions one becoming NT and the other eventually OS/2 Warp. IBM did most of the damage to OS/2. Mismarketing mostly as well as the fact that early versions took 12 disks to install and couldn't be installed over the network. Win31 however could be installed via a network and with disks was like 6 or 8 disks I think. People then just like today were more interested in convenience and Win31 happened to fulfill that. The real shame though was that IBM failed to show confidence in it's own product, so instead of installing OS/2 to all of their hardware they came preinstalled Windows. That was a major blow. Everytime I heard someone ask "What about OS/2" someone else would chuckle "Are you kidding, IBM won't even put it on their machines."
SUN licensed Java to MS, MS made proprietary extensions similar in form to MFC and some other conveniences they added to other languages. That part is not really debatable. The kind of FUD part that SUN has been spreading is the "FACT" that MS was required to distribute Java. The agreement that they signed in 1998 stated that MS was allowed to continue carrying all Java developed products created prior to that date. Additionally they were given the OPTION to carry newer Java products should those products conform to the guidelines set by SUN. MS decided not to carry that OPTION and therefore for many years JVM 1.1 was the distributed JVM for MS's OS line. SUN failed to effectively correct this matter through marketing/partnerships. Then as the JVM became more work than it was worth and in light of it's age and MS's own work on a competitor product it was going to be abandoned. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there that like some of the features of JAVA and hated others while still liking a lot of the features of C++, thus the market for C# was born, not created. Then people eager to bash MS were more interested in what MS had to gain from ditching the old worthless JVM than they were interested in why SUN had sat on it's thumbs for four long years. Conspiracy theorists unite.
My thought was that SUN should have made a plugin like Macromedia's Flash/Shockwave and Apple's Quicktime. Any computer I've ever been on if it was missing either product I would get redirected to where the plugin would install and within a few minutes I'm ready to go. I've yet to see this happen in regards to Java. Other companies have been doing it for years, what is SUN doing?
Remember SUN, ORACLE, AOL, IBM, Netscape all these big companies want to be/beat MS. They all have their own agendas, their own FUD machines. And don't delude yourself to think that their FUD machines are any less efficient than MS's FUD machines. They'll lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. They'll fish for evidence, plant it, steal it, engineer it, and hide it when necessary. At the end of the day each company is going to try to make you see that they are the ones being mistreated and stepped on. Each company is going to try to woo you to their side and show you the "evidence" of their mistreatment by someone else. At the end of the day you have to see the things they are trying to distract you from. At the end of the day you have to see that NONE OF THEM give a shit about you or your loyalty. The only thing they care about is that you hate Company-X enough to buy Company-Y's product. It doesn't even matter anymore if Company-Y's product is better - you just have to know that Company-X is evil.
I try to take a more balanced approach. Is MS evil... maybe... in the long run at least as evil as IBM or SUN but not quite as evil as AOL. Is MS responsible for the demise of some companies and or products... maybe... but it's probably closer to 20%MS - 80%Company/Products when it comes to fault. I've seen more ham-handed marketing and ignorant assumptions as well as just shear laziness to think that MS is the cause of ALL these companies woes. These companies should all be trying to better themselves instead of running on personal vendettas. They should be looking inward not outward for improvements. So while we're handing out lawsuits against MS for it's shitty business practices should we be handing out lawsuits against Apple for their shitty business practices during the nineties, or SUN for thumb twidling, or ORACLE for years of vaporware, or Amazon for not making money all those years, or how about suing all those OEMS like Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Acer, NEC, HP, Packard Bell, etc. for making the poor business decisions that gave MS so much power to begin with. Maybe if we taught all those companies the same lesson we want to teach MS, MS wouldn't be such a problem in the future?
The real problem here is with the overflow specification. Overflow is show, hide, scroll, or auto. There's no reflow/resize option. IE I believe resizes the parent container as the contents expand unless told otherwise.
Moz on the other hand spills the text outside of the parent container. Two entirely different interpretations of the specification.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot to add:
The other day on NPR they had a story about immigrant businesses in California being extorted by "consumer rights" groups citing "health violations". The threat was that if they didn't pay $1000 they would be taken to court over these "health violations". These legal threats would be mailed out en masse to 200-300 businesses. Being small businesses they could not afford the thousands of dollars it would take to defend such threats so the obvious choice is to give in. $1000 x 300 = $300,000 for little more than sending out a letter.
SBC's move is the same. They put the hook out in the water and see if they get a bite and if they do the letters start going out in bulk. Think about how many small businesses on the web us SBC's supposed IP? The main difference between this situation and the one in CA is that SBC is a large established company with a stable of lawyers. In CA the extortionists are unheard of consumer rights groups with no addresses and maybe one or two lawyers. The CA groups have found a lucrative enterprise - how much more so lucrative will it be for SBC?
These companies don't 'win' in the traditional sense but they do make some not so small monetary gains that they are not legally bound to refund. This means that quite a few small companies will pay large sums of money to not get taken to court. But when the first large company busts the patent claim in court then those small companies have to hire lawyers to get the money back or more likely just count it as a wash. Companies like SBC make a few hundred thousand to a couple of million - enough to show that pursuing claims like these are 'worthwhile' - and then move on to the next claim.
So not one cease and desist, not one request for monitary compensation, not a "Hi, nice to see you're using our technology", not an entry on a technical site. Nothing in 3~4 years worth of holding the patent and nothing in 6 years since filing the patent. To me that's submarining. While it might be 'legal' remember who gets the advantage in with this part of the law. There should be some clause that the IP holder should have to perform SOME actions during that time to secure the IP. While it's fine to say that they can wait 6 years to file suit they should be doing SOMETHING in that time to let others know who owns the IP.
Like other commentors said - part of the patent reform would be getting the patent officers to do a proper job. Too much is getting past them and they are leaving it to an already overflowing court system. This leaves big businesses more room to extort via threat of lawsuit. There should also be a mechanism put in place for the public as a whole to submit prior art findings and help facilitate the patent offices job. People are more than willing lately to put a little effort in to get things done right. The patent office is a government facility after all why shouldn't the people be involved in how it oporates?
What we really need now is patent reform. Companies should not be allowed to sit on IP while it gains broad adoption and then come back and extort companies in order to generate profits. We've seen too many companies do this, it's unethical, they know it, when are we going to stop them from continuing the practice.
So then what you're really saying is that C programmers are better than Java programmers. :)
No I did understand your point and I agree.
What I'm trying to say is that here is a market, an additional area that these supposedly cash strapped networks have known about for years now. This same market has an extremely low cost of entry. As you said $500 for the equipment. It's an area where the networks can do some "value added" services for their customers the "sponsors" and possibly steal away some business from competitors who don't offer the "service". The point really is that instead of the networks themselves jumping into a new growth market, they continue to combat each other over the same demographics in the prime time crowd. They also wait for someone else to make the break into internet broadcasting and yet sue anyone attempting to break in using their content. Right now it's a lose lose situation for the networks because they're too focused on sitting back and waiting for something to happen, for someone else to do something.
Yes there are people out there willing to steal others stuff to make a buck - they learned that behavior from the networks, just take a look at programming. It's just the internet crowd is a little more blatent and a little less defensive about what they do and how they do it.
So what I'm hearing is that for $500 dollars ANYONE could get into a new market distributing television over the internet... interesting that. So there's a whole market out there of eyeballs that can be reached on the cheap and the geniuses at the major networks are wasting their time influencing government instead of doing their due diligence and capitalist duty by exploiting that market. They should all be shot.
Ammiano also said Segway's campaign rubbed officials the wrong way. "Segway didn't help themselves by hiring very expensive lobbyists," he said. "I think that backfired on them, too."
0 .html?
New Hampshire-based Segway hired lobbying firms but has made no contributions to any public officials or candidates, said Matt Dailida, the company's director of state government affairs.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,450027616,0
The Segway's campaign with high priced lobbyists rubbed officials the wrong way while the high priced lobbyists from groups that DID contribute to public officials seemed to work just fine... hmmmmm...
I'm sure it's to solidify in everyones head to be safe you have to act safe. After all wearing a helmet doesn't help you much when you jump from an unsafe height. As well the segway's not going to save your ass if you're acting like an idiot. Intuitive and safe by nature doesn't account for the operator. Plus there's training for maintenance and some advocacy stuff in there from what I hear. Who better to be an advocate than a satisfied customer... beats the hell out of a multibillion dollar ad compaign any day.
I don't think that Mitnick has ever suggested that he didn't deserve to be punished or that he didn't break the law in some way. The issue is with the way he was handled by the justice system and those companies. Both wanting to make an example out of him, the handling was disproportionate to the crime.
Mitnick has knowledge and skills that will make him a productive part of society. The area he's promoting himself in is a legitimate legal business so why shouldn't we get behind him and support him. This would constitute a "regular job" - unless you mean flipping burgers or selling clothes at the gap, or maybe insurance salesperson. There are plenty of former criminals in areas of expertise that relate directly to their original crimes. Their knowledge is often very helpful in stopping future crimes and in showing how people can reform and rebuild their lives after having made mistakes.
Mitnick served out the punishment given by the state and now he should be allowed to live his life unencumbered by that "criminal" title. This includes seeking ANY gainful employment he can find.
I feel that society does have an obligation to help people who we've allowed to be mistreated.
The problem with the justice system today is:
1. They bend a little too much to the corporate will.
2. Punishment is never really centered around "correction" even though people are remanded to the "Department of Corrections".
3. There's no procedure for quick and fair correction of mistakes (i.e. false imprisonment, misshandling, etc.) Most compensation has to be gained via lawsuit. False judgements can stay with a person for life, damaging not only their mental health but their future job prospects and personal relationships.
4. Too much stock is put into conviction rates and not enough in to quality of prosecution and/or honesty in prosecution.
5. Justices allow stretching the word and spirit of the law in order to help prosecutions of people not exactly covered under existing laws. I.E. Some people get prosecuted under RICO when their crime has nothing to do with it.
6. Prosecutors withholding charges in order to pursue additional charges should they lose in the first round - an attempt to circumvent double jeopardy rules. (i.e. I murder someone during a robbery - the evidence is fairly thin, so I'm prosecuted for Murder (alone). When I'm acquitted the prosecution charges on attempted robbery, weapons charges or one of the many other charges that they can dig out that might have stronger evidence. The possibility of prosecution might loom for years, along with the stigma of "suspect".)
7. The ability to punish/pursue a suspect through (ab)use of the media. ("person of interest"). Placing pressure on a subject via media "leaks" or press releases that lead the public to believe certain things about a person. While not exactly lies we all know that it's the prosecution using the media to manipulate the public against a SUSPECTED criminal. (defense and prosecution should be barred (ethics) from using the media as a tool against the other side.) Remember INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.
I just want MythTV ported to XP. Call me sick and twisted and flame me for not running Debian... but my home entertainment center PC right now is an XP box. Runs all the programs I want and I never (ever) have a problem with it.
While Guide++ with ATI's player/scheduler is okay, and PowerDVD works well for DVD's, and Winamp is great, I really really want to get one interface for all of it. No more mucking in 4 different apps/gui styles. The only other thing I can think of doing is making some custom skins for the whole of them to make them look unified. I'd just wrather have MythTV on windows though.
For a digital convergence box Yoshi at techTV put every console I can think of into a server case along with an awesome PC. I can't remember what the OS of choice was...
NPR reported this on my way to work this morning. The gist of the conversation is "Hey we won't demand hardware copy protection if you hardware makers help us strip or block every bit of consumer rights legislation that comes through". The goal is that RIAA stops lobbying for mandatory hardware controls and the hardware groups join to lobby against any possible consumer bill of rights. Great "trade".
I hope we can buy a few senators back some day and have groups like the RIAA permanently banned from doing that special kind of business they do. They should have just stuck to certifying gold records.
I would say that having the DMCA in place makes these companies feel more empowered to enact copy protection than before the DMCA. Therefore the DMCA is involved just not as directly. Additionally they will be using the DMCA and not standard copyright law to prossecute circumventions. While at present companies are targetting larger file sharers it's not unforseen that they would want to also crack down on those copying for personal use and set a few "examples" (although this hasn't happened quite yet).
Step 1. is the file sharers
Step 2. is the software cracker vendors
Step 3. is the programmers sharing programs with there friends and family
Step 4. is the individual
Arguably 1,2, 3 have happened and 4 is just waiting to happen.
I wouldn't say that's exactly true. While Joe Sixpack hasn't been sued under the DMCA or lost business because of the DMCA I wouldn't say that there are zero effects.
For instance copy protection is being pushed pretty heavily now. My wife was effected by this recently when she wanted to make a copy of her favorite christian artist CD to use in the car and our burner kacked and choked on it multiple times. When she asked me what was wrong with the computer I let her know that it wasn't the computer it was the music disc that wasn't a CD at all (no CD Logo or Compact Disc markings anywhere on the material). She wanted to know how they could do that I just let her know it was copyright protections and that we'd be seeing much more of that kind of behavior with the DMCA in place.
Everyone that I've spoken with explaining how the DMCA will help content distributors control every aspect of how you interact with their content has been disgusted. When I told them that content distributors might make their TiVo's or VCR's useless, they frowned. Then they asked when it became law and who put it there and how they could get it out.
We need to start buying some senators and judges. How about the american people start taking some senators and lawyers and judges on some junkets eh... I mean we're supposed to be the ones really paying their salaries shouldn't we have more of a voice with them than Hillary Rosen or Eisner?
I say we start putting their names out on e-bay and see if we can't get Jerry Lewis or better Billy Crystal, Whoopie and Robin Williams to drive up some donations to buy our own senators. It should be relatively cheap. I know Carnahan was about a couple 100,000. I'm sure some other states have senators we can get on a budget maybe 50-60,000.
WinLIRC and Girder also are available remote control products and can work with many remotes and IR devices.
I am using Girder now (Girder and LIRC/WinLIRC can also work in concert). I have girder on WinXP Pro using an ATI AIW128pro hooked to my living room TV. I built a $9.00 IR receiver (parts all from RadioShack) so that I could use my One-for-all programmable/learning/pc programable remote to play DVD/CD/Winamp without needing to touch the wireless kb/mouse.
The setup is pretty painless, I can schedule shows or use a transmitter to send DVD broadcasts to my kids' or wife's room, if someone is watching something else on the TV. I can watch something on cable, record something on the PC, and record something else on the VCR if need be. The One-for-all is a great remote for the price and has good punch through and macro features so I don't have to do alot of key mashing just to watch a DVD or play the VCR (i.e. First turn off the cable then hit VCR then change to channel 00 then hit tv/vcr then hit DVD then power then play - JUST HIT MACRO1). After I get the IR transmitter built I won't have to use the MACRO1 button GIRDER or LIRC will take care of manipulating the VCR/CableBox.
The other nice thing about this setup is that I can watch TV while someone else plays a game on the PC or browses the net(with the headphones on). Unfortunately if I want to use the "live TV mode" of the computer it has to be free from other users.
I was using the wrong part of my brain during that part of the statement. I didn't stop to think of the actual math I just threw something out there assuming people would understand the basic idea.
How about this:
Initial cost of the car: 7000
Downpayment: 500
Financed: 6500
Interest: 9%
Term: 3 years/ 36 months
Monthly payment: 229.31
Total cost: 8255
better?
I think the poster has a valid point. Take a look at what you put in your statement.
"15k for car, including payments" If you are spending 15,000 a year for a car you are overspending and could downsize your life to get by a little easier. There's public transportation (~$30 per month), car pooling ($negligible), a $1000 used car, or SUPER-SIZE it and get a $7,000 car for $199 a month for two years.
People just don't think of VOLUNTARILY downsizing their lifestyles. Once they get to 40-50-60-75-100 k a year any regression means pain. It all has to get stripped away via reposession or bankruptcy. Which usually happens after they've lost their jobs and blew through their limite savings trying to find that next 'perfect' job. They never think: "I'll get something to fill that gap until I can something good comes along". Meanwhile people in bahrain work for 30-50 bucks a week and will travel hundreds of miles on foot to get jobs like that. People here complain about walking a quarter mile, they get in their damn SUV's to go two blocks to the store.
When a CEO takes a 20% pay cut so that employees don't have to take a 100% pay cut I think that's a big deal. Especially considering that most people could give a shit about what happens to their coworkers much less what happens to the below way below them on the corporate ladder.
When people get to a certain lifestyle they forget how to rewind and downsize to their previous lifestyle. They forget that they can go without that dinner out, those nice clothes, that 20+k SUV, that nice house. They forget that at one point they struggled in a $24k job and before that they struggle under a $14k job. They think they should just keep continuing to struggle under a $40 or $50k job. They forget that they once lived in a shithole with roaches and peeling walpaper and no cable. They forget that they worked flipped burgers or mopped floors. They forget working two jobs. They forget that they used to spend so much time with work and family and friends that the electricity bill for the month was the same as a dinner out. They forget that McDonald's is a convenience not a necessity. They forget that they could feed a family of 6 on ~$300 a month. They forget that they once didn't have a cell phone/pager or the internet. They forget that way back when wasn't really that bad.
People forget that their ancestors (voluntarily or otherwise) travelled thousands of miles in the worst conditions to make it somewhere for work. Again I'll say it, some people bitch about walking less than a mile to get somewhere.
It has a lot less to do with geography than it does with perspective. I'm sure that if you looked where you live you could find plenty of people nearby living on substantially LESS than what you make. Be thankful you have the OPTION of going from 50-40k instead of possibly being a $18-0k person.
People look at the CEO and say "BFD he's already overpaid so what if he takes a cut". The fact is that he didn't have to, he could have cut some employees, hell he could have done like most CEO's and jumped ship to another company, or just taken the 6% pay cut every other employee got. He could have just covered his own ass but he didn't. Think about how many people here would take a pay cut so that others could stay employed or a company succeed. How many people here would think "hmmm.... maybe it's time to start looking for something else" or "well if they just got rid of 'John' that's enough for people to not have to take a cut".
If the thief is stealing music/movies then he's automatically elevated to 'pirate' status.
'I am de dwed piwate woberts!'
If a thief breaks into your home and steals your CD/DVD collection should it be the MPAA/RIAA that files the report with the police. After all it's the MPAA/RIAA property that you are just licensing. Should it not then be their responsibility to replace your media since you still license it.
It helps to cut down on waste, reduces storage costs/space and allows more individually taylored dosages to a particular patients needs.
The Chinese have picked the perfect plan.
1) Develop a weapon out in the open.
2) Desguise the weapon as something people will like or might find useful and that's trendy(robot).
3) Program the robot to fight in a style that most people think is very slow, thoughtful, and for old people.
4) Mass produce and SELL SELL SELL.
5) Send millions to a wearhouses all over the United States for "storage".
6) Send the signal for FULL SPEED MODE.
7) Mass destruction and KILL KILL KILL.
I say we nuke them before they get their "weapons of mass destruction" plan under full steam.
Just thoughts... my thoughts... yes I know they'll be unpopular... who cares...
I always understood that NeXT languished because of it being tied to proprietary hardware (ala Apple) and that by the time it ported to x86 the damage was done. Eventually it was bought by Apple and later incorporated to some extent into what is today's OS X. OS X is what some people blame for the failure of BeOS. Some say that BeOS not NeXT should have been the underpinning of OS X. If that would have happened it would have been saved. But Jobs baby was always NeXT. Similar to MS, Apple has never fully fulfilled their promises when it comes to the functionality of their OS. Additionally BeOS spent quite a bit of capital developing proprietary hardware that never panned out as well as marketing to the wrong people (geeks). I'd hardly blame these failures on MS. As for MS stealing from Apple, Apples ideas as it's been said before weren't exactly original (XEROX).
MS did co-develop OS/2 with IBM. The contract was based on KLOC's (Thousand Lines of Code) payment system. Gates thought it unfair that they should get paid less for more efficient "tighter" code. But this is the way that IBM had been doing business for years and no young punk was going to tell them otherwise. OS/2 per contract got released in two forms MS OS/2 and IBM OS/2. Both companies were allowed to distribute the end result. Eventually the partnership disbanded and both companies mutated OS/2 into different directions one becoming NT and the other eventually OS/2 Warp.
IBM did most of the damage to OS/2. Mismarketing mostly as well as the fact that early versions took 12 disks to install and couldn't be installed over the network. Win31 however could be installed via a network and with disks was like 6 or 8 disks I think. People then just like today were more interested in convenience and Win31 happened to fulfill that. The real shame though was that IBM failed to show confidence in it's own product, so instead of installing OS/2 to all of their hardware they came preinstalled Windows. That was a major blow. Everytime I heard someone ask "What about OS/2" someone else would chuckle "Are you kidding, IBM won't even put it on their machines."
SUN licensed Java to MS, MS made proprietary extensions similar in form to MFC and some other conveniences they added to other languages. That part is not really debatable. The kind of FUD part that SUN has been spreading is the "FACT" that MS was required to distribute Java. The agreement that they signed in 1998 stated that MS was allowed to continue carrying all Java developed products created prior to that date. Additionally they were given the OPTION to carry newer Java products should those products conform to the guidelines set by SUN. MS decided not to carry that OPTION and therefore for many years JVM 1.1 was the distributed JVM for MS's OS line. SUN failed to effectively correct this matter through marketing/partnerships. Then as the JVM became more work than it was worth and in light of it's age and MS's own work on a competitor product it was going to be abandoned. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there that like some of the features of JAVA and hated others while still liking a lot of the features of C++, thus the market for C# was born, not created. Then people eager to bash MS were more interested in what MS had to gain from ditching the old worthless JVM than they were interested in why SUN had sat on it's thumbs for four long years. Conspiracy theorists unite.
My thought was that SUN should have made a plugin like Macromedia's Flash/Shockwave and Apple's Quicktime. Any computer I've ever been on if it was missing either product I would get redirected to where the plugin would install and within a few minutes I'm ready to go. I've yet to see this happen in regards to Java. Other companies have been doing it for years, what is SUN doing?
Remember SUN, ORACLE, AOL, IBM, Netscape all these big companies want to be/beat MS. They all have their own agendas, their own FUD machines. And don't delude yourself to think that their FUD machines are any less efficient than MS's FUD machines. They'll lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. They'll fish for evidence, plant it, steal it, engineer it, and hide it when necessary. At the end of the day each company is going to try to make you see that they are the ones being mistreated and stepped on. Each company is going to try to woo you to their side and show you the "evidence" of their mistreatment by someone else. At the end of the day you have to see the things they are trying to distract you from. At the end of the day you have to see that NONE OF THEM give a shit about you or your loyalty. The only thing they care about is that you hate Company-X enough to buy Company-Y's product. It doesn't even matter anymore if Company-Y's product is better - you just have to know that Company-X is evil.
I try to take a more balanced approach. Is MS evil... maybe... in the long run at least as evil as IBM or SUN but not quite as evil as AOL. Is MS responsible for the demise of some companies and or products... maybe... but it's probably closer to 20%MS - 80%Company/Products when it comes to fault. I've seen more ham-handed marketing and ignorant assumptions as well as just shear laziness to think that MS is the cause of ALL these companies woes. These companies should all be trying to better themselves instead of running on personal vendettas. They should be looking inward not outward for improvements. So while we're handing out lawsuits against MS for it's shitty business practices should we be handing out lawsuits against Apple for their shitty business practices during the nineties, or SUN for thumb twidling, or ORACLE for years of vaporware, or Amazon for not making money all those years, or how about suing all those OEMS like Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Acer, NEC, HP, Packard Bell, etc. for making the poor business decisions that gave MS so much power to begin with. Maybe if we taught all those companies the same lesson we want to teach MS, MS wouldn't be such a problem in the future?
Just a thought...
Could you elaborate on these for those of us who are ignorant to the facts of each case.
If Hillary would stop waxing the thing for a day or two you might get your handle bar mustache.
The real problem here is with the overflow specification. Overflow is show, hide, scroll, or auto. There's no reflow/resize option. IE I believe resizes the parent container as the contents expand unless told otherwise.
Moz on the other hand spills the text outside of the parent container. Two entirely different interpretations of the specification.