At the risk of being labeled a troll, the parent post completely misses three very important points:
1) S/he has absolutely no understanding about what motivates people to buy the cars that they buy. It has very, very little to do with ongoing operating costs and almost everything to do with what fulfilling an emotional desire (coolness, percieved (but not actual) safety, convenience, etc.). The number of people that do a full life cost analysis of their car purchase could probably be counted on two hands.
2) For those that do think of cost, a $1000 increase in the price of a car has a much greater impact on the purchasing decision than $2000 increase in operating costs over a year. Pain now is almost always more important than pain later.
3) The impact of higher fuel costs will disporportionately impact the lower economic classes. Commuting costs to their jobs is a proportionately higher percentage of their income and they can less afford the extra expenses. Regardless of whether they are taking a bus or driving a car, they need to get to their job and raising fuel costs will raise that expense. Environmental issues are the classic network externalities problem that a pure capitalistic approach fails at. Why set a public policy on this point that would punish the lower classes just so the middle and upper classes can continue to waste the remaining gasoline driving unnecessary SUVs and high-performance sports cars. That just doesn't make social sense.
The CAFE approach seems to be the best one, but the govt doesn't have the guts to actually do it right. Set the total average fleet MPG requirement, ratchet it up.25 MPG per year, and tell the auto manufacturers that they have to meet it, no excuses. If they fall under, they have to stop selling all models with less economy than their target until they get back into balance. People that really have to have that 16mpg Tahoe will be able to get it (capitalism will make sure that they pay whatever premium is appropriate considering how hard it'll be to get one) and those that can get by with a smaller vehicle will have the great incentive to do so (faster delivery times because the source will be unconstrained).
No, I am alluding to the fact that antilock brakes keep you from skidding which increases your likelihood of flipping your car which is much more fatal than skidding into something.
I don't follow that part. What part of skidding decreases your likelihood of flipping? It appears to me that as long as I'm not skidding, its more likely that my car is actually going forward rather than sideways and its awfully hard to flip a car that is travelling forward. But, I may be missing something.
Oooh, oooh. OK, this reminds me of a short story by . . . . Bradbury? Aliens show up and are willing to give us advanced technology, one is a teleporter that will teleport you across the galaxy, but we have to learn how to use it first. It makes an exact duplicate of you on the other side of the galaxy using something similar to quantum teleportation. They only problem is now, there's two copies of you. The Alien's solution is to keep the original in stasis until receipt of a message (delayed by 30 seconds or so) that the copy is up and functioning, then destroying the original. Well, there was an error in the ACK and they couldn't destroy the original w/o knowning that the copy was good. So, they had to wait around for a day or so to figure out what happened, and since stasis was only good for a couple of minutes, they had to let the original out. So, she's sitting around wondering why everyone is on pins and needles. The next day, the find out the copy is alive and well, and it comes down to the human trainee to explain it to the original that she was suppose to be killed, and if she'd just walk into this little room here, we can complete the process. . . . . much angst, etc. ensued. . ...
signature: The execution of any symbol upon a writing with intent to authenticate the instrument as one made or put into effect by him. . . .
Ballentine's Law Dictionary, Third Edition, 1969, p. 1179.
The Notary should be barred from practice for such a comment. Why do you think we have Notaries who confirm that the person actually making the mark is the person he or she claims to be. Next time just make an "X".
The technical way would be to place the passwords in an encrypted file and share the password with your coworkers with a "n of m" password splitting scheme -- one that would allow "n" of the "m" people with fragments of the password to recreate the password to the password file. Keep 1 fragment, share one with each of your remaining coworkers that you trust. If "n" is 3 and "m" is 4, as long as 1 of your three coworkers is honest and follows directions (ie., don't use this fragment until I'm outtahere), the file is safe. Actually, there are commercial key recovery systems based on that scheme.
If I bring my CDs into work, I can play them on a boombox loud enough for the whole office to hear. That's called "fair use".
I realize that I might be in the minority here, but your assumption is not necessarily correct. One of the exclusive rights provided under the copyright act is "public performance". Playing your boombox "in public", for public consumption can be prohibited by the copyright owner.
For example, stores that play music for their customers' listening pleasure have to pay. (I understand that there is an exception for a music store's sampling room.)
So, I see the argument about "personal" spaceshifting, but anything beyond that is really, really questionable.
ISTM that this technology would only work when there is very little information per byte in the original data. Text, for example, has a little more than one bit of information per byte. That is why compression functions work so well, they compress the actual information. How would this technology fare on efficiently compressed data or data that appears truly random (as well encrypted data is suppose to appear)? All of the Information Theory that I learned in college indicates that there is a minimum number of bits that represent any information. Once compressed to that point, you can't go any further.
You are right that piercing the corporate veil is not common. However, it isn't really rare either. In a situation as described in the article, it is a real risk. In the U.S., at least, courts tend to look at a number of factors in determining whether to pierce or not to pierce:
Whether all of the corporate formalities have been observed over time. For a small corporation, it is very hard to keep everything straight. You have to have separate books, regular board meetings, stockholder meetings, official minutes, . ... Any failure to do these things may be used to justify a claim that the corporation isn't being operated as an independent entity.
Whether the corporation has been funded sufficiently. Part of the "bargain" for the limited liability is that the founders have to make it a good faith effort to operate a business. If the corp is woefully underfunded, it is seen as an attempt to deflect liability into a worthless corporate shell. Courts hate that.
Whether the corporate acts as an independent entity. This is very hard to do when there is only a single person involved in running the corporation. What's in the corporate best interest is not always the same as what is in the individual's best interest.
So, it seems to me that there is a large risk in these circumstances that the corporate structure wouldn't insulate the individual from civil liability.
But then again, I'm not sure why this is relevant. Civil liability is the least of this person's worries. Since he is under the jurisdiction of a Canadian court, the court could just ORDER him to shut down the server, which after the RIAA make a preliminary showing, it just might be willing to do. Failure to follow that order would put him in contempt of court. The good thing, from the court's view, of a civil contempt order is that the judge gets to put you in a cell until you comply with the order.
Also, there are criminal provisions in the U.S. copyright act. (I don't know about Canada.) No corporate veil will help you here if you are the person actually performing the act on behalf of the corporation.
>But currently libraries already pay royalty fees for items that they lend out to people. See this article for details.
I'm certain that this is a minor oversight, but the charges discussed in the article are for "copies" made of materials, not materials loa ned. The loaning of the physical printed matter is not a royalty bearing event.
So far, I haven't seen anyone address why trying to force the #2 guy to be the manager would make sense to mgmt. They are losing the guy in charge of the IT Dept. Believe it or not, some managers actually contribute, rather than detract, from the department's abilities. If that was the case, then they want another manager who knows the department, knows the company, and knows how to keep the department working. They have two basic choices.
1. Hire from outside the department. No matter how good they guy is he'll take time learning the ropes and getting to know the employees. And until that guy gets up to speed, he'll be useless.
2. Promote from within the department. The new manager will already know the technical ropes and the learning curve on the mgmt ropes wouldn't take as long as with a new guy. Then you hire a low level new guy and everybody moves up a notch.
#2 certainly seems the better option for the business as long as the person tapped is willing to do it.
> Maybe the actors can act in their street clothes and have the wardrobe added later.
Read, if you haven't already, Diamond Age by Stephenson. Actors and actresses get sensor nets imbedded in their skin to allow the computer to detect every movement, including facial expressions. The actor acts and the computer adds everything else (e.g., skin, hair, clothes, scenery, etc.). Great concept.
I agree that the best method is to retain good relations with your neighboring countries, but if relations go sour, what technologies are you implementing to ensure that no other country can sever your connectivity to the rest of the world?
This reminds me of a story my uncle told me. Twenty years ago he lived in the former Soviet Union and at the time, his town was experimenting with democratic-like processes like voting. The government announced that they would have a secret ballot vote for mayor. When my uncle showed up to vote, the voting official handed him an envelope. My uncle looked at it and asked why it was already sealed. The official replied, "Because it's a secret ballot, of course."
I haven't read the full Californian report, but I can understand from a security perspective why going slow would be a good idea. Online voting is much more complicated than online shopping. A good online voting system will have to:
1. Only allow registered voters to vote.
2. Only allow voters to vote once.
3. Ensure that those votes are truly anonymous.
4. Ensure that all valid votes are accurately counted.
If you think about it, requirements 1 and 3 seem almost mutually exclusive. I know that there are algorithms that purport to be able to handle this in theory, but rolling on-line voting out to people that don't know how to program their VCR isn't going to be easy. Applied Cryptography by whats-his-name has a fairly good section on voting protocols.
Yes and No. Even if you sign your own tarballs, a user needs to verify that the key used to sign it was owned by you. Key databases are often used to verify ownership and seem to be relatively secure. However, for SSL transactions, a database lookup takes too long. Browsers depend on a key "tree" with a known valid root. With Verisign, you can buy a code signing key that is signed by the known, published, presumably secured, Verisign root (one version of which just expired, btw).
As I understand it, both Verisign and Thawte (and a few others) have been in the industry long enough that almost all browsers come with a Verisign and a Thawte root certificate. When the browser wants to open an SSL transaction, it can verify the server's certificate by tracing it back to the known and presumed valid Verisign or Thawte certificate. No database lookup and no problem.
Where the yes and no comes in is if the root is invalid or otherwise not recognized, the user can still proceed with the SSL session, she'll just get an error message about an untrusted certificate.
I don't know how many other trusted root certificates normally ship with browsers these days. My copy of Netscape has 63, six of which are Verisign and four of which are Thawte.
I don't know if I would call it rude. Inconvenient, certainly. The court may have had an emergency crop up. A scheduled hearing may have run long, etc. In any event, court's tend to try to manage their schedule as to not cause injury to anybody. In this case, a delay in the hearing only serves to preserve the status quo. The fact that the court is willing to delay the hearing means to me that the court doesn't view the DVD CCA as making out a strong case of irreparable harm. Good news in my book.
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At the risk of being labeled a troll, the parent post completely misses three very important points:
.25 MPG per year, and tell the auto manufacturers that they have to meet it, no excuses. If they fall under, they have to stop selling all models with less economy than their target until they get back into balance. People that really have to have that 16mpg Tahoe will be able to get it (capitalism will make sure that they pay whatever premium is appropriate considering how hard it'll be to get one) and those that can get by with a smaller vehicle will have the great incentive to do so (faster delivery times because the source will be unconstrained).
1) S/he has absolutely no understanding about what motivates people to buy the cars that they buy. It has very, very little to do with ongoing operating costs and almost everything to do with what fulfilling an emotional desire (coolness, percieved (but not actual) safety, convenience, etc.). The number of people that do a full life cost analysis of their car purchase could probably be counted on two hands.
2) For those that do think of cost, a $1000 increase in the price of a car has a much greater impact on the purchasing decision than $2000 increase in operating costs over a year. Pain now is almost always more important than pain later.
3) The impact of higher fuel costs will disporportionately impact the lower economic classes. Commuting costs to their jobs is a proportionately higher percentage of their income and they can less afford the extra expenses. Regardless of whether they are taking a bus or driving a car, they need to get to their job and raising fuel costs will raise that expense. Environmental issues are the classic network externalities problem that a pure capitalistic approach fails at. Why set a public policy on this point that would punish the lower classes just so the middle and upper classes can continue to waste the remaining gasoline driving unnecessary SUVs and high-performance sports cars. That just doesn't make social sense.
The CAFE approach seems to be the best one, but the govt doesn't have the guts to actually do it right. Set the total average fleet MPG requirement, ratchet it up
OK, rant over.
I don't follow that part. What part of skidding decreases your likelihood of flipping? It appears to me that as long as I'm not skidding, its more likely that my car is actually going forward rather than sideways and its awfully hard to flip a car that is travelling forward. But, I may be missing something.
Anyone else remember this story? The name?
OK, back to your regularly scheduled program.
signature: The execution of any symbol upon a writing with intent to authenticate the instrument as one made or put into effect by him. . . .
Ballentine's Law Dictionary, Third Edition, 1969, p. 1179.
The Notary should be barred from practice for such a comment. Why do you think we have Notaries who confirm that the person actually making the mark is the person he or she claims to be. Next time just make an "X".
The technical way would be to place the passwords in an encrypted file and share the password with your coworkers with a "n of m" password splitting scheme -- one that would allow "n" of the "m" people with fragments of the password to recreate the password to the password file. Keep 1 fragment, share one with each of your remaining coworkers that you trust. If "n" is 3 and "m" is 4, as long as 1 of your three coworkers is honest and follows directions (ie., don't use this fragment until I'm outtahere), the file is safe. Actually, there are commercial key recovery systems based on that scheme.
For example, stores that play music for their customers' listening pleasure have to pay. (I understand that there is an exception for a music store's sampling room.)
So, I see the argument about "personal" spaceshifting, but anything beyond that is really, really questionable.
ISTM that this technology would only work when there is very little information per byte in the original data. Text, for example, has a little more than one bit of information per byte. That is why compression functions work so well, they compress the actual information. How would this technology fare on efficiently compressed data or data that appears truly random (as well encrypted data is suppose to appear)? All of the Information Theory that I learned in college indicates that there is a minimum number of bits that represent any information. Once compressed to that point, you can't go any further.
So, it seems to me that there is a large risk in these circumstances that the corporate structure wouldn't insulate the individual from civil liability.
But then again, I'm not sure why this is relevant. Civil liability is the least of this person's worries. Since he is under the jurisdiction of a Canadian court, the court could just ORDER him to shut down the server, which after the RIAA make a preliminary showing, it just might be willing to do. Failure to follow that order would put him in contempt of court. The good thing, from the court's view, of a civil contempt order is that the judge gets to put you in a cell until you comply with the order.
Also, there are criminal provisions in the U.S. copyright act. (I don't know about Canada.) No corporate veil will help you here if you are the person actually performing the act on behalf of the corporation.
>But currently libraries already pay royalty fees for items that they lend out to people. See this article for details. I'm certain that this is a minor oversight, but the charges discussed in the article are for "copies" made of materials, not materials loa ned. The loaning of the physical printed matter is not a royalty bearing event.
1. Hire from outside the department. No matter how good they guy is he'll take time learning the ropes and getting to know the employees. And until that guy gets up to speed, he'll be useless.
2. Promote from within the department. The new manager will already know the technical ropes and the learning curve on the mgmt ropes wouldn't take as long as with a new guy. Then you hire a low level new guy and everybody moves up a notch.
#2 certainly seems the better option for the business as long as the person tapped is willing to do it.
> Maybe the actors can act in their street clothes and have the wardrobe added later.
Read, if you haven't already, Diamond Age by Stephenson. Actors and actresses get sensor nets imbedded in their skin to allow the computer to detect every movement, including facial expressions. The actor acts and the computer adds everything else (e.g., skin, hair, clothes, scenery, etc.). Great concept.
I agree that the best method is to retain good relations with your neighboring countries, but if relations go sour, what technologies are you implementing to ensure that no other country can sever your connectivity to the rest of the world?
This reminds me of a story my uncle told me. Twenty years ago he lived in the former Soviet Union and at the time, his town was experimenting with democratic-like processes like voting. The government announced that they would have a secret ballot vote for mayor. When my uncle showed up to vote, the voting official handed him an envelope. My uncle looked at it and asked why it was already sealed. The official replied, "Because it's a secret ballot, of course."
1. Only allow registered voters to vote.
2. Only allow voters to vote once.
3. Ensure that those votes are truly anonymous.
4. Ensure that all valid votes are accurately counted.
If you think about it, requirements 1 and 3 seem almost mutually exclusive. I know that there are algorithms that purport to be able to handle this in theory, but rolling on-line voting out to people that don't know how to program their VCR isn't going to be easy. Applied Cryptography by whats-his-name has a fairly good section on voting protocols.
As I understand it, both Verisign and Thawte (and a few others) have been in the industry long enough that almost all browsers come with a Verisign and a Thawte root certificate. When the browser wants to open an SSL transaction, it can verify the server's certificate by tracing it back to the known and presumed valid Verisign or Thawte certificate. No database lookup and no problem.
Where the yes and no comes in is if the root is invalid or otherwise not recognized, the user can still proceed with the SSL session, she'll just get an error message about an untrusted certificate.
I don't know how many other trusted root certificates normally ship with browsers these days. My copy of Netscape has 63, six of which are Verisign and four of which are Thawte.
I don't know if I would call it rude. Inconvenient, certainly. The court may have had an emergency crop up. A scheduled hearing may have run long, etc. In any event, court's tend to try to manage their schedule as to not cause injury to anybody. In this case, a delay in the hearing only serves to preserve the status quo. The fact that the court is willing to delay the hearing means to me that the court doesn't view the DVD CCA as making out a strong case of irreparable harm. Good news in my book.