The
FCC's justification for existing does not intersect this issue at all. Perhaps they have the right to dictate
how stuff is broadcasted, but they shouldn't have any say at all as to what goes into television sets,
except in regard to stuff like RF leaks.
The FCC has been regulating the design of television sets for a long, long time.
It might be too late, but take a look at this article on the legal issues surrounding engagement rings. In many states, you have the right to get the ring back.
Just look at Slashdot for a great example of this. Plenty of like-minded people and a lack of tolerance for
alternative opinions. Indeed, moderation provides a wonderful mechanism to encourage conformity at the
price of healthy argument.
The problem is that a felony conviction doesn't mean as much as it used to. When most people think of felonies, they think of rape, murder and armed robbery. Today, a wide swath of crimes are considered felonies, and politicians and so-called activists for various causes, lobby for the reclassification of misdemeanor crimes as felonies, to "prove" they are serious about fighting crime or to advance some agenda. Some animal rights groups are trying to get "animal cruelty" reclassified as a felony, and some of them have very broad ideas about what constitutes "animal cruelty".
AppleTalk was pretty cool for its time. I saw people networking Macs and laser printers with AppleTalk long before Ethernet became common on PCs. Even with Ethernet, the PCs are still using proprietary protocols for printing and file sharing.
For a box like this, you don't bother trying to repair it. Just toss it in the dumpster and give the customer a new box.
The trick with hard drives is balancing the cost of quality control and testing against the cost of failed drives. If every drive lasts for five years, you are doing something wrong:-).
You suffer from a chronic lack of imagination if you can't imagine the 2001 CES
(Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas will feature a dozen imitations of TiVo.
Simple, inexpensive and a natural for southeast asian factories.
It is easy enough to clone the hardware and software. The tough part is providing the program guide service. Without the program guide, the box is much less useful.
If you want to get a feel for the probabilities, you might want to read Rain of Iron and Ice by John S. Lewis. A section of the book gives the results of multiple computer simulations of the chances of the Earth being struck by various size objects as fictionalized descriptions of the results. Many large objects can hit the ocean without being noticed, except by any sailors unlucky enough to be in the area.
How does "lengthy subscriber contract" affect my cell phone? I mean, I go to the shop, buy
a new phone and put in my SIM-card..Voila, changed phone and kept subscription.
I know cell-phones work differently in the US/Japan...but isn't it SIM-based too?
My first phone (GSM-1900) had a SIM card. It was replaced with a CDMA phone that did not have a SIM card when the service provider switched from GSM to CDMA. Activation of the new phone was a pain in the butt. I had to spend 30 minutes talking to a customer service representative who had me enter long sequences of undocumented commands that configured the phone. I doubt that I could swap phones without a lot of grief.
When the phone is small enough to
embed into a shirt button, who will carry around the now-considered-small zippo sized
phones? The only obstacle is price, and that too is dropping fast.
There are limits to how small the phone can be. You need a certain level of transmitter power to communicate with the cell site. Higher bit rates require higher transmitter power. You need a battery large enough to power the phone for a reasonable period of time. The phone needs enough surface area for a usable user interface.
The history of English copyright law doesn't seem to have much to do with the rights of authors. The Crown was interested in exerting control over a limited group of publishers to suppress subversive literature. The publishers wanted exclusive rights to publish books that they had purchased, and to make big piles of money. The only money an author received was when he sold his manuscript to a publisher.
I've read of similar situations in other European countries. The governments wanted to control what was published and the publishers wanted protection from competition.
It is more complicated than that. The subject came up in a discussion about compulsory licensing on a mailing list that I belong to and I got a good explanation of the situation from Kilroy Hughes:
There is a compulsory license with the guy that wrote the sheet music (like
Barry Manilow), but the performer (like Rod Stewart), the Phonogram (the
copyrighted "Rod Sings Barry" album), the AFofM musician's union (the boys
in the band), AFTRA (talent), and mechanical royalties (Harry Fox agency)... don't get a nickel for air play. I guess you would say that the radio
stations "give away their stuff".
The ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. performance royalties for publishers run about
5% of station revenue.
This structure is basically an historical accident based on the original
business model of the music business where composers made money by selling
sheet music to live musicians. When recordings and radios cut into sheet
music sales, composers/publishers were given the right by the congressional
copyright tribunal to negotiate a royalty for mechanical copying and air
play. I think the Great Radio Strike of 1930 had something to do with it.
The theory was that the record companies made their money selling plastic.
It wasn't until 1976 (if I recall correctly) that the copyright tribunal (in
their 20 year meeting cycle) recognized recordings as a copyrighted work (a
phonogram), like a book or sheet music. The visionaries in the record biz
at the time tried to get congress to let them charge broadcasters for the
rights of the performer and phonogram publisher; recognizing that they
weren't going to be in the plastic business much longer. They missed that
boat and the next one; but there will be another in 20 years; probably
around the time direct cortical transmission replaces whatever they'll be
prepared to legislate.
So the composer gets paid, but everyone else is out of luck. The record companies go along with it because radio airplay promotes sales of recordings.
To get the ISP logs, presumably, you need a subpeona, which means it's a criminal issue. If they are backtracking from an emailed document, couldn't use the recipient's server info, to backtrack the email to your ISP, and then to you.
A lawyer can get a subpoena for a civil case, which covers a lot of territory. Plus, the ISP can release information from their logs without having received a subpoena. A subpoena is just a way of forcing them to disclose the information.
Besides the advantages that have already been mentioned, Ultra160 supports much longer cables (12 meters) than any variety of IDE. Assuming you had enough IDE controller chips, how are you going to connect 8 hard drives to a PC with 18" cables?
From what I've read, a black hole is a singularity with mass. That is, it has mass but not size, it is a one-dimensional point. The only measurable property that a black hole has is mass.
We are special. The Internet was funded and developed by the United States. That isn't imperialism, just a fact. If it had been funded and developed in Russia, everyone would be whining about a similar set of problems, only it would be Russia's "fault".
If you think the residents of.gov and.mil are going to move without a fight, dream on. It would be extremely expensive and complicated. The USA.com residents would fight a move by keeping it in court for the next 20 years.
Some of them used to be free. I obtained n3dmc.svr.md.us for free. I just emailed someone a domain registration request. That was back when people were running UUCP over Telebit Trailblazers and uunet was just getting started.
Back then, there was a lot more cooperation and a lot less commercialism.
A real-time operating system is an operating system that can offer guarantees about the scheduling of processes.
Real-time systems are usually divided into hard real-time systems and soft real-time systems. With a hard real-time system, a late result has zero or negative value. With a soft real-time system, a late result has a positive value that becomes smaller as the time interval between the deadline and result increases.
Real-time does not mean "real fast", it means predictable. A batch payroll system could be considered a real-time system if there are deadlines that must be met.
A second language, except for possibly Spanish, isn't that useful in the United States. If I wanted to talk to my coworkers in their native languages, I would have to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Hindi and probably others. Every one of them can speak English.
Re:If Im not mistaken, Customers do own Phone nume
on
URLs Aren't Property?
·
· Score: 2
The purpose of number portability is to increase competition, by reducing the barriers to switching between phone companies. It was not intended to grant property rights to subscribers.
The phone company can change your local number without your permission. There are good technical reasons for them to be able to do this.
I don't know the law concerning the practice, but desirable 800 numbers have been sold for huge amounts of money. This has also happened with the call signs for radio stations. Someone with a radio station badly wants KROK, and pays the existing station to swap call signs.
If a vendor in East Podunk, IA sells a system to me in Oaks, PA, and I find it a lemon, PA
state law is irrelevant. PA law has no bearing on anyone in any other state.
Are you sure about that?
I was recently reading some material on "long-arm statutes" that can result in state law and jurisdiction being applied to out-of-state businesses.
One example given was shooting someone in another state, across a state line. Is the shooter subject to the jurisdiction of the state where the bullet hit someone?
You sound like you were brain-washed in your economics class.
Consumers have rights under common law and the Uniform Commercial Code that are not overridden by the worthless little piece of paper that the manufacturer's warranty is printed on.
You can tell people that the warranty lasts for 3 hours, 15 minutes and 7 seconds. That doesn't mean that it is a fact. That is up to a judge to decide. Many contracts/warranties contain unenforcable bullshit that is strictly there for intimidation value.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC has been regulating the design of television sets for a long, long time.
It might be too late, but take a look at this article on the legal issues surrounding engagement rings. In many states, you have the right to get the ring back.
The "penis bird" is not an alternative opinion.
Aren't these the same two geniuses who wrote several books about how to survive and get rich during the (then) impending economic apocalypse?
The problem is that a felony conviction doesn't mean as much as it used to. When most people think of felonies, they think of rape, murder and armed robbery. Today, a wide swath of crimes are considered felonies, and politicians and so-called activists for various causes, lobby for the reclassification of misdemeanor crimes as felonies, to "prove" they are serious about fighting crime or to advance some agenda. Some animal rights groups are trying to get "animal cruelty" reclassified as a felony, and some of them have very broad ideas about what constitutes "animal cruelty".
AppleTalk was pretty cool for its time. I saw people networking Macs and laser printers with AppleTalk long before Ethernet became common on PCs. Even with Ethernet, the PCs are still using proprietary protocols for printing and file sharing.
The trick with hard drives is balancing the cost of quality control and testing against the cost of failed drives. If every drive lasts for five years, you are doing something wrong :-).
It is easy enough to clone the hardware and software. The tough part is providing the program guide service. Without the program guide, the box is much less useful.
If you want to get a feel for the probabilities, you might want to read Rain of Iron and Ice by John S. Lewis. A section of the book gives the results of multiple computer simulations of the chances of the Earth being struck by various size objects as fictionalized descriptions of the results. Many large objects can hit the ocean without being noticed, except by any sailors unlucky enough to be in the area.
My first phone (GSM-1900) had a SIM card. It was replaced with a CDMA phone that did not have a SIM card when the service provider switched from GSM to CDMA. Activation of the new phone was a pain in the butt. I had to spend 30 minutes talking to a customer service representative who had me enter long sequences of undocumented commands that configured the phone. I doubt that I could swap phones without a lot of grief.
There are limits to how small the phone can be. You need a certain level of transmitter power to communicate with the cell site. Higher bit rates require higher transmitter power. You need a battery large enough to power the phone for a reasonable period of time. The phone needs enough surface area for a usable user interface.
I've read of similar situations in other European countries. The governments wanted to control what was published and the publishers wanted protection from competition.
So the composer gets paid, but everyone else is out of luck. The record companies go along with it because radio airplay promotes sales of recordings.
A lawyer can get a subpoena for a civil case, which covers a lot of territory. Plus, the ISP can release information from their logs without having received a subpoena. A subpoena is just a way of forcing them to disclose the information.
NAT is evil. Kill it before it multiplies.
NAT breaks end-to-end transparency and IPSEC. If you want a firewall, buy or build a real firewall.
Besides the advantages that have already been mentioned, Ultra160 supports much longer cables (12 meters) than any variety of IDE. Assuming you had enough IDE controller chips, how are you going to connect 8 hard drives to a PC with 18" cables?
From what I've read, a black hole is a singularity with mass. That is, it has mass but not size, it is a one-dimensional point. The only measurable property that a black hole has is mass.
If you think the residents of .gov and .mil are going to move without a fight, dream on. It would be extremely expensive and complicated. The USA .com residents would fight a move by keeping it in court for the next 20 years.
Back then, there was a lot more cooperation and a lot less commercialism.
Real-time systems are usually divided into hard real-time systems and soft real-time systems. With a hard real-time system, a late result has zero or negative value. With a soft real-time system, a late result has a positive value that becomes smaller as the time interval between the deadline and result increases.
Real-time does not mean "real fast", it means predictable. A batch payroll system could be considered a real-time system if there are deadlines that must be met.
A second language, except for possibly Spanish, isn't that useful in the United States. If I wanted to talk to my coworkers in their native languages, I would have to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Hindi and probably others. Every one of them can speak English.
The phone company can change your local number without your permission. There are good technical reasons for them to be able to do this.
I don't know the law concerning the practice, but desirable 800 numbers have been sold for huge amounts of money. This has also happened with the call signs for radio stations. Someone with a radio station badly wants KROK, and pays the existing station to swap call signs.
Are you sure about that?
I was recently reading some material on "long-arm statutes" that can result in state law and jurisdiction being applied to out-of-state businesses.
One example given was shooting someone in another state, across a state line. Is the shooter subject to the jurisdiction of the state where the bullet hit someone?
Consumers have rights under common law and the Uniform Commercial Code that are not overridden by the worthless little piece of paper that the manufacturer's warranty is printed on.
You can tell people that the warranty lasts for 3 hours, 15 minutes and 7 seconds. That doesn't mean that it is a fact. That is up to a judge to decide. Many contracts/warranties contain unenforcable bullshit that is strictly there for intimidation value.