First of all, the ownership issue and the policy issue are not directly connected.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruling overturned the earlier ruling by a lesser court that considered domain names property, but only under certain legal circumstances (in this case the plaintiff was attempting to use the garnishment laws to force NSI to transfer a domain), and deriving from a 1997 dispute. Be aware that this ruling will almost certainly be appealed to Federal court.
The US laws have changed since 1997 (in particular, S.1948 was passed Nov. 19, 1999) and in 1999 ICANN promulgated a Uniform Dispute Resolution Process for all registrars. This UDRP change is why NSI changed its contract, NOT the court case, even if they appear to be in concert. ICANN's goal is to get registrars out of the middle of lawsuits like this, unless they act in "bad faith", for instance by ignoring a court order.
It's an open question whether the courts will continue along the path of perceiving domain names as property, or follow the lead of the Virginians and define them narrowly as the "product of a service contract". ICANN and Congress have stayed out of this question, preferring to call domain-name "owners" by the terms holder or registrant -- while unquestionably acknowledging "owner" as the term for a trademark holder. Certainly the Virginia case is not only limited to a single state supreme court's interpretation (albeit the state where NSI is based, and whose authority is acceded to in the NSI contract), but it's based on a narrow case where the registrar was being forced to take action contrary to its policies then in effect. The new legislation and the new UDRP policy may nullify any need for placing registrars in such an awkward position. Even the VA decision notes that this question is unresolved and declines to rule on it, while stating that
"Initially, we must point out that NSI acknowledged during oral argument before this Court that the right to use a domain name is a form of intangible personal property. That position is consistent with the one NSI took in Network Solutions, Inc. v. Clue Computing, Inc..... However... we do not believe that it is essential to the outcome of this case to decide whether the circuit court correctly characterized a domain name as a "form of intellectual property."
Bottom line? The ownership of domain names, while acknowledge implicitly by the VA supreme court and even NSI, is not fully recognized under US law at this time... although that had been the clear trend until this particular ruling.
It's illegal under federal law (Title 47, Sec. 223:
"Whoever... makes or causes the telephone of another repeatedly or continuously to ring, with intent to harass any person at the called number; or... makes repeated telephone calls or repeatedly initiates communication with a telecommunications device, during which conversation or communication ensues, solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
This was passed in response to people war-dialing Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition 800 numbers. And don't believe you're protected by caller ID: 800 numbers are equipped with ANI (Automatic Number Identification), which gives the person you just called your name, telephone number, <b>and street address</b>. This is for the convenience of the retail operators of most 800 numbers (i.e. the people paying for the service), and is <b>not</b> blocked by whatever Caller ID service you're using.
If you war-dial, they not only have the right to sue you, they know exactly where to deliver the subpoena.
There's nothing illegal about each person getting a piece of spam dialing that 800 number, though. The only problem is the risk of giving up your home address for the purposes of junk mail or telemarketing. ----
bmicomp asks: >This sounds like another anti-trust suit to me. Not only does AOL have the largest number of IM >users(and own another large one!), one of the largest ISPs, and a whole bunch of other >monopolies... they're going to probably buy out the whole domain name process. When I heard of >this around a year ago, it was five different companies that were going to be able to this, one >of which was AOL. Although, its very concerning to learn that AOL will have an exclusive >agreement with NSI. > This begs the question, can AOL buyout the process of selling domains too?
In a word, no. Domain registration is controlled by <a href="http://www.icann.net">ICANN {Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)</a> by international agreement, which has final authority over most TLDs (Top Level Domains). Any qualified company may become an accredited registrar, equal to NSI. Most important is the ability to become a reseller; many ISPs now do this for a small fee, and the end-user has no idea whether their registrar was NSI, CORE, or any of the other dozens of accredited registrars.
This is why NSI is partnering with AOL. AOL -- which is <a href="http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-l ist.html">already an accredited registrar</a> -- has a guaranteed audience larger than anyone else, and NSI needs to continue pushing their brand name; otherwise they'll disappear into the morass of equivalent companies selling a commodity. ----
This is actually a very common situation, and the legal battles took place mostly in the late eighties and early nineties. The employer pays for the equipment and resources, and they have the right to designate appropriate usage guidelines as well as monitor.
Partly this absolves systems people like me if we happen to come across your e-mail by accident (trust me on this one: I was working on a mail server yesterday and I could see the addresses EVERYONE was sending to, including some verrrry interesting domains), but also in case they have to investigate for any reason. Let's say another employee claimed you sexually harassed them in sending e-mail (let's also assume that this is serious, not just random dirty jokes, talking about the other person's anatomy for example). The company has the right to look at the victim's computer, your computer, the server, even SEARCH THROUGH DESKS looking for floppy disks on which anything relevant may have been saved. I've seen it happen.
As a systems administrator I have to install monitoring and blocking software. I can track every site you visit with your browser, stick it in a database and e-mail it to your manager by 8am Monday morning. He can see that Joe was surfing business-related sites, maybe too much, but within acceptable limitations; Mary was spending all day long at eBay; Dave was recklessly looking at p0rn on his lunch hour; and so on. As long as there's an upfront disclaimer, all such monitoring has been upheld by the courts. It doesn't even have to appear at login; you could have signed a blanket disclaimer when you were hired, and it was just one of a dozen sheets of paper you John-Hancocked and forgot about.
One employer determined that a married woman had transferred to another location in order to conduct an affair with a man there. They fired both of them, not so much for the affair, but for falsifying time sheets and so on, based on e-mails where they set up hotel rendezvous during work hours. They almost fired another woman who was the first woman's confidant in this situation because she had failed to report it.
Another employer requested printouts of all e-mail sent by an employee during his last week, as well as all outside mail sent and received by his friends in the department, in order to prevent disclosure of client trade secrets.
Another employer found that pornography was passing through the e-mail system and before any of the employees were notified, I and another individual had to check for anything illegal. If we had found anything, we were to call in the police.
When I worked on a help desk, I never knew whether my calls were being monitored silently by my boss. My internet usage at work then was via dial-up and this came to the attention of the telephony group, who reported it to my boss, and my boss then required me to justify time spent. (I was able to do so, it was mainly research.)
Bottom line: when you're at work, don't ever assume you have privacy. The employer has broad rights to monitor you for not only illegal activities, but for violations of your employment agreement, for slacking, for slandering, for sexual harassment. Some of the posts here speak of your government employment as a unique situation, but it really isn't. Out in the Real World you may, in fact, have FEWER rights to privacy than in your present situation. ----
The only problem with this principle is that copyright law is NOT criminal law. A copyright violation leaves you open for a civil suit and damages, not jail. ----
The other prominent example is the terrorists involved in the Achille Lauro ship take-over. They were lured into a trap in Malta, I think, and wound up on a NATO airbase instead of where they thought they were going. And the US has put out feelers for people involved in other terrorist acts, distributing thousands of matchbooks with the picture of wanted men in Pakistan, for example. ----
I put HREF links in that post, but they got completely eliminated. I used Extrans. I dunno what's going on with Slashdot, but I hate having Extrans f**ked up like this. When's it going to be fixed? Huh? ----
The Soviet Union acceded to the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973, and the Russian Federation inherited those treaty responsibilities. In addition, Russia on its own signed the Berne Convention in 1995.
The Berne Convention is as close as anything comes to a world copyright, with 144 countries signed on [Word97 doc, sorry]. These 144 countries represent well over 85% of the world's population; the only countries remaining to sign are mainly disorganized ones like Somalia or rogue states like Afghanistan. The Berne Convention permits the same people who sued the Lyrics Database before to file suit in Russia.
Now, it may be true that there is a certain degree of corruption or even lawlessness in Russia, but from a legal standpoint, it is not true that US law means "nothing" there. A copyright filed in the US must be recognized by the other signatories, including Russia. ----
Actually, there's been a TREMENDOUS amount of planning that has gone into this project. (After all, they had 20 years of space station plans laying around before they got greenlighted for ISS!)
The problem lies not with planning, not even with NASA, but in the fact that ISS is a foreign-policy tool intended to help the Russians keep their technical class employed and explicitly NOT selling nukes to Iraq. All other considerations are really secondary. As for your points:
1. What-Ifs? NASA has made detailed consideration of the what-ifs, but they are bound here not by the technically feasible but by the politically possible. It was suspected years ago that the Russians might fail to launch their module, but NASA was prevented again and again from doing anything about it by the political ramifications of embarrassing the Russians.
2. Slipped schedules are practically CAUSED by the diplomatic requirements of the mission. Since NASA delivered a plan that had the Russians as a critical mission component, which is exactly what Congress did NOT want but what the Clinton administration DID, the Russians were in the catbird seat as far as schedule. Slip slip slip... who cares? They CAN'T say anything.
3. You're right about the improvisational nature here, except that the people going had already trained for a FULL 2A mission, now they will merely do part of what they had trained for. Space flight is less routine this year than in any year since Return to Flight, with just 4 or maybe 5 missions, mainly because post-Challenger, the shuttle was (sensibly) stripped of its satellite-launch mission; and now, with ISS, it has become pretty much the ISS van line. From a space science standpoint, this is an enormous waste of money and resources that could be better spent on... say... probes to Mars that don't crash and burn.
Don't look to NASA to provide that ride to space. Look at the new launch concepts being developed (www.rotaryrocket.com, www.kistler.com) and what they might achieve in reduced launch costs. This is the way that the average joe might get to space one day. ----
The first lifecam. Don't make this into something it's not, and the people who are flaming back with "fishcam" and "coffeecam" are also missing the unique aspects of Ms. Ringley's innovation. ----
Surely everyone realises that webcams have been around for a lot longer than this. The Cambridge Coffee pot claims to be the first, dating back to 1991.
And I was strongly affected by the bravery of that little coffee pot in baring its every waking moment to the world.
No duh. Nobody said that Jenni was the first "webcam". There were even peoplecams long before her -- I remember there was some lady programmer who had one at her desk, and people watching THAT one crashed her work server, so she got rid of it. (Men with deskcams didn't seem to have the same problem....) Jenni was the first webcam subject to go online 24/7. There still aren't many... at least, many who do this for personal reasons and aren't hired by Seth Breidbart. ----
Anybody who thinks that "giving to charity" is what a truly socially responsible investor wants to see has to have his head examined. Giving to charity is a sop, a PR stunt. What matters is how the workers are treated, how the company cares about its manufacturing effects on the environment, the overall safety of its products, and other concrete things.
On the other hand, some companies, like Ben & Jerry's, really believe that they have a responsibility to recycle their profits back into the community or society, hence the 1% to charity standard. ----
Perhaps not, but investors are under no obligation to invest in companies that maximize efficiency by breaking the law, or even obeying the law in less-than-admirable ways, such as paying workers too little, working them too hard, hiring them too young, dumping pollutants in rivers, creating products that are dangerous, bribing and stealing, and so forth.
Unocal says in all innocence they have no idea that <a href="http://jinx.sistm.unsw.edu.au/~greenlft/1995 /187/187p21b.htm">the Burmese government is forcing villagers at gunpoint to clear the way for their new pipeline</a>. Yet they have every incentive to look the other way on a deal literally decades in the making. Is that what an investor likes to hear, that they are making profit on the backs of slaves?
Investors who stick with companies that are socially <b>irresponsible</b> deserve criticism. ----
I've heard all the arguments in this thread before (I used to be a regular on Usenet). Voyager sucks, DS9 sucks, Paramount should let it die, yadda yadda yadda. Look, it's a property. As long as they can make money from it, they'll keep trying new series. Nobody's forcing you to watch.
The basic problem I have with Star Trek, though, speaking as a loyal fan who thought that the best of TNG (e.g. Yesterday's Enterprise) measured up to the best of TOS, is that DS9 to some extent (which I initially liked very much for its somewhat darker world view) and Voyager much much more had this enormous problem with their fourth acts. They'd set up some wildly original premise, take you through a decent three acts of learning about it, then wrap it all up in lightning fashion, always too neat, always restoring the status quo ante, and bam! the show's over. I eventually stopped watching DS9 because I was tired of the war with the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager because every time I still liked a particular episode by the 45 minute mark, they would pull the rug out from under me and make me hate it in the last fifteen minutes.
I think it's born of the paint-by-numbers script teams they use. I know writing for television is hard, and I know writing SF that's 100% consistent with 400 pre-existing episodes is a professional impossibility, but building a story formula/framework that's obvious as the scaffold around the Washington Monument isn't the answer. (Well, it made money, so I guess it was at some level.) I appreciate that they insisted that every story was in fact a human story, even if this tended to weaken the SF elements. Really, the stories weren't true SF; the SF elements were always inserted later. They'd use "tech tech tech" in the early drafts before Okuda or someone could insert appropriate polysyllabic words, but especially towards the end you could also see them inserting human emotions the same way. As a bit of a writer myself, I didn't appreciate being able to see the puppeteer's strings so easily. ----
A reminder that the news from NASA is about a planet outside our solar system.
There have been several hypothetical planets that did not turn out to be real, but none specifically between Earth and Mars. The term Planet X was used by Percival Lowell around a hundred years ago to refer to a specific mass beyond the orbit of Neptune that seemed to be causing its orbital inconsistencies. The search for Planet X took decades (really beginning in 1841), finally ending with the discovery of Pluto in 1930. To some extent, this search continues, with the discovery in the last decade of hundreds of so-called "Transneptunian" asteroids, representative of a great cloud of small rocks. While it's not impossible that there is still a large planet-sized body far out there, it's unlikely. There have been numerous non-scientific books and articles that have used terms like "Planet X" or "Planet Ten" to refer to other imagined planets, but these works aren't scientifically supported. ----
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 2
Three or four thousand dollars? Where are they making you buy laptops?
You can get an operational Pentium III laptop for as little as $999. With an educational discount...
The school is already paying for a very high computer-to-student ratio in labs. An excellent argument can be made for making the ratio one-to-one and that computer should then be portable. ----
Actually, mirroring is probably perfectly safe from a financial standpoint. Realistically, you will have several opportunities to comply with any attempts by MegaCorp, Inc., to shut you down: an initial cease and desist lawyer letter, an injunction hearing subpoena, subsequent to the judge's granting injunction... only after all these steps are taken will they really be able to sue you for damages. Particularly if you've taken the mirror down by that point, they'll have a hard time proving monetary damages. A jury might award them a token $1. Most likely they won't consider it worth going to trial. All they really want is for you to stop.
In the meantime, there are other mirrors elsewhere, probably at places even more difficult for MegaCorp's legal arms to reach. ----
Well, SeaLaunch is the name of the company, not just the launch method. Any failure would reflect badly on them and make it more difficult for them to get customers. This will definitely do nothing to decrease the insurance rates for using SeaLaunch! The risk vs. low-cost factor is the real question here, not "bad press". Only a string of successful launches will keep SeaLaunch, er, afloat.
Yes, it's a neat way to do it, but as long as they rely on the Zenit (one of the most failure-prone rockets in the business -- Zenit-2 was 81%), they will be a risky way to launch.
Remember, the customer didn't select their own rocket for launch on this platform, they bought an entire launch package. SeaLaunch has to deliver the goods... literally deliver them to orbit... or it has failed.
I have high hopes, too, but their customers are fully aware of the risks in the launch business, and are going to evaluate those risks closely. I don't think we need to worry about misinterpreted news articles. ----
No question that Firewire/IEEE 1394 was built from the ground up for these kinds of applications:
http://www.pavo.com/ieee1394/faq/1394faq.htm#how Fast
Presently the fastest implementation is S400, which runs 393.216Mbits/s (megabaud). Future standard extensions may run up to 1200Mbits/s! And like SCSI, these are only effective over very short distances.
Just like USB will soon completely replace serial connections, Firewire will probably eventually replace all parallel, SCSI, and video connections, not to mention its potential for things like home networks combining data, telephone, and video interfaces. It's already becoming a standard for full-motion video interfaces. ----
>Remember, Adams has an MBA and has always worked in the business world, and HAS NO ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE. >He's not a geek. I don't think he's ever claimed to be.
I would say that's a huge overinterpretation of the evidence. It's pretty clear that he has a strong understanding of computers, the internet, product engineering, project management, and other disciplines gained from a career working deep within a telecommunications corporation. I find it surprising that a slashdotter would insist on an engineering degree as evidence of competence in the profession.
I don't think he's ever claimed to be a trained electronics or telecom engineer.... but he's most certainly a geek/par excellence/.
It is true that he's much more brazen about making money than your average geek. Big deal; I don't care whether he lives in a hut on a mountaintop, or has a Hollywood mansion full of naked women, as long as the strip's funny. ----
>i think of it now as the pinnacle of consumer internet business model madness....R.I.P. >Theses types of companies really will not make it in the long term that just try to get users >with no idea of what value they provide or why anyone should use them...
I don't know that you're right, there. I think they did have a good idea, they just got out-competed. Outfits like NetZero or Altavista are proving that better-financed operations will probably succeed using similar (some would say opposite) financing methods. And as far as I'm concerned, I had no beef with them (sheesh, why not have some advertiser I've never met pay for my internet? They pay for my TV). There's probably still room for more variations on this business model as PCs get stripped down to "internet appliance" levels and the cost of buying and keeping paying customers becomes prohibitive.
The overweening commercialism AOL model may grate on Slashdotters, but it's been very successful. And there seem to be millions of potential customers who are perfectly happy with that model. Let 'em have it... ----
In a decision reached early this morning, the editors of The Onion have decided to buy the New York Times.
"We were at Starbucks standing in line for donuts and coffee, and there was some discussion of sitting around afterward. At this impromptu meeting the decision was made," said one of the editors.
Stock observers were skeptical that the Onion management team could effectively improve the situation at the Times. "They really don't have any managerial authority with this purchase. They basically paid about a dollar for one copy. They may think that gives them editorial control, but I'm sure they'll be quite surprised when they come to the Big Apple and start trying to fire people," said one analyst, who declined to be identified.
But the Onion editors believe there is unique synergy between the two media properties. "By bringing the quality journalism of the New York Times under our wing, we gain access to the stories of the day, some editorial content, even a world-renowned crossword puzzle," said Onion chief editor Dikkers when questioned. He continued to vigorously defend the purchase, saying, "These will be invaluable to our branding dialogue, even if we get powdered sugar on some of the pages."
Independent observers cautioned that this might prove to be a financial minefield. "They may not get the full dollar-twenty-five worth of the paper. They may as well have spent half as much and bought a Wisconsin State Journal instead," suggested Vera Mateja, a woman sitting in the corner sipping a frothy cappuccino.
"Really, look at them just talking, not even reading it," said Mark McCown, a local sanitation consultant standing in line waiting for the barista to prepare his grande latte. "Buying a newspaper like the New York Times is a momentous undertaking. If you're just going to skim the headlines, I guarantee you won't get your money's worth." Mr. McCown then returned his latte, which he had ordered with whipped cream on top.
Dikkers remained adamant that the newspaper would continue to be managed as it always had been. "We're not interfering purchasers. We know the value of this property and we believe in time that we'll develop the synergy we need. The one certainty we have is that our Onion satires will have improved verisimilitude for our readership, which is the main concern we had in making this purchase."
As for Onion readers, they seem nonchalant. "It's still the same Onion," said Raj Suharda, who was picking up a copy from the Starbucks lobby without buying coffee. "I don't care if they model it on the New York Times or the Beloit Daily News." ----
>Has anyone else noticed that the last 10 weeks or so [of The Onion] have been pretty poor?
Frankly, the quality of the posts at Slashdot has been declining lately. Everything was fine in the Good Old Days, but we all know those ended around 10 o'clock this morning. Around noon the decline became precipitous, with a spate of Phirst Posts and Natalie Portman headlines, and at 2pm pure spam began to arrive by the bucketful. At this point, slightly past midnight Sunday, any astute person can see that post quality has reached a new all-time low.
Actually, it's decliend even as I'm writing this p0st. First post! Natalie Portman! It's reaching another new low right now. <a href="http://www.regisphilbin.com/">click here to win a million bucks!</a>
Fortunately, I've recognized this trend and halted it. By posting substantively I believe I can tip the balance. This post already has some pretty stupid things in it, though; I think I can save things if I don't submit it...
Slashdot Mirror
The Virginia Supreme Court ruling overturned the earlier ruling by a lesser court that considered domain names property, but only under certain legal circumstances (in this case the plaintiff was attempting to use the garnishment laws to force NSI to transfer a domain), and deriving from a 1997 dispute. Be aware that this ruling will almost certainly be appealed to Federal court.
The US laws have changed since 1997 (in particular, S.1948 was passed Nov. 19, 1999) and in 1999 ICANN promulgated a Uniform Dispute Resolution Process for all registrars. This UDRP change is why NSI changed its contract, NOT the court case, even if they appear to be in concert. ICANN's goal is to get registrars out of the middle of lawsuits like this, unless they act in "bad faith", for instance by ignoring a court order.
It's an open question whether the courts will continue along the path of perceiving domain names as property, or follow the lead of the Virginians and define them narrowly as the "product of a service contract". ICANN and Congress have stayed out of this question, preferring to call domain-name "owners" by the terms holder or registrant -- while unquestionably acknowledging "owner" as the term for a trademark holder. Certainly the Virginia case is not only limited to a single state supreme court's interpretation (albeit the state where NSI is based, and whose authority is acceded to in the NSI contract), but it's based on a narrow case where the registrar was being forced to take action contrary to its policies then in effect. The new legislation and the new UDRP policy may nullify any need for placing registrars in such an awkward position. Even the VA decision notes that this question is unresolved and declines to rule on it, while stating that
Bottom line? The ownership of domain names, while acknowledge implicitly by the VA supreme court and even NSI, is not fully recognized under US law at this time
Choose your registrar carefully.
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There is an ----
It's illegal under federal law (Title 47, Sec. 223:
... makes or causes the telephone of another repeatedly or continuously to ring, with intent to harass any person at the called number; or ... makes repeated telephone calls or repeatedly initiates communication with a telecommunications device, during which conversation or communication ensues, solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication ... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
"Whoever
This was passed in response to people war-dialing Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition 800 numbers. And don't believe you're protected by caller ID: 800 numbers are equipped with ANI (Automatic Number Identification), which gives the person you just called your name, telephone number, <b>and street address</b>. This is for the convenience of the retail operators of most 800 numbers (i.e. the people paying for the service), and is <b>not</b> blocked by whatever Caller ID service you're using.
If you war-dial, they not only have the right to sue you, they know exactly where to deliver the subpoena.
There's nothing illegal about each person getting a piece of spam dialing that 800 number, though. The only problem is the risk of giving up your home address for the purposes of junk mail or telemarketing.
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bmicomp asks:
l ist.html">already an accredited registrar</a> -- has a guaranteed audience larger than anyone else, and NSI needs to continue pushing their brand name; otherwise they'll disappear into the morass of equivalent companies selling a commodity.
>This sounds like another anti-trust suit to me. Not only does AOL have the largest number of IM
>users(and own another large one!), one of the largest ISPs, and a whole bunch of other
>monopolies... they're going to probably buy out the whole domain name process. When I heard of
>this around a year ago, it was five different companies that were going to be able to this, one
>of which was AOL. Although, its very concerning to learn that AOL will have an exclusive
>agreement with NSI.
> This begs the question, can AOL buyout the process of selling domains too?
In a word, no. Domain registration is controlled by <a href="http://www.icann.net">ICANN {Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)</a> by international agreement, which has final authority over most TLDs (Top Level Domains). Any qualified company may become an accredited registrar, equal to NSI. Most important is the ability to become a reseller; many ISPs now do this for a small fee, and the end-user has no idea whether their registrar was NSI, CORE, or any of the other dozens of accredited registrars.
This is why NSI is partnering with AOL. AOL -- which is <a href="http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-
----
This is actually a very common situation, and the legal battles took place mostly in the late eighties and early nineties. The employer pays for the equipment and resources, and they have the right to designate appropriate usage guidelines as well as monitor.
Partly this absolves systems people like me if we happen to come across your e-mail by accident (trust me on this one: I was working on a mail server yesterday and I could see the addresses EVERYONE was sending to, including some verrrry interesting domains), but also in case they have to investigate for any reason. Let's say another employee claimed you sexually harassed them in sending e-mail (let's also assume that this is serious, not just random dirty jokes, talking about the other person's anatomy for example). The company has the right to look at the victim's computer, your computer, the server, even SEARCH THROUGH DESKS looking for floppy disks on which anything relevant may have been saved. I've seen it happen.
As a systems administrator I have to install monitoring and blocking software. I can track every site you visit with your browser, stick it in a database and e-mail it to your manager by 8am Monday morning. He can see that Joe was surfing business-related sites, maybe too much, but within acceptable limitations; Mary was spending all day long at eBay; Dave was recklessly looking at p0rn on his lunch hour; and so on. As long as there's an upfront disclaimer, all such monitoring has been upheld by the courts. It doesn't even have to appear at login; you could have signed a blanket disclaimer when you were hired, and it was just one of a dozen sheets of paper you John-Hancocked and forgot about.
One employer determined that a married woman had transferred to another location in order to conduct an affair with a man there. They fired both of them, not so much for the affair, but for falsifying time sheets and so on, based on e-mails where they set up hotel rendezvous during work hours. They almost fired another woman who was the first woman's confidant in this situation because she had failed to report it.
Another employer requested printouts of all e-mail sent by an employee during his last week, as well as all outside mail sent and received by his friends in the department, in order to prevent disclosure of client trade secrets.
Another employer found that pornography was passing through the e-mail system and before any of the employees were notified, I and another individual had to check for anything illegal. If we had found anything, we were to call in the police.
When I worked on a help desk, I never knew whether my calls were being monitored silently by my boss. My internet usage at work then was via dial-up and this came to the attention of the telephony group, who reported it to my boss, and my boss then required me to justify time spent. (I was able to do so, it was mainly research.)
Bottom line: when you're at work, don't ever assume you have privacy. The employer has broad rights to monitor you for not only illegal activities, but for violations of your employment agreement, for slacking, for slandering, for sexual harassment. Some of the posts here speak of your government employment as a unique situation, but it really isn't. Out in the Real World you may, in fact, have FEWER rights to privacy than in your present situation.
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The only problem with this principle is that copyright law is NOT criminal law. A copyright violation leaves you open for a civil suit and damages, not jail.
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The other prominent example is the terrorists involved in the Achille Lauro ship take-over. They were lured into a trap in Malta, I think, and wound up on a NATO airbase instead of where they thought they were going. And the US has put out feelers for people involved in other terrorist acts, distributing thousands of matchbooks with the picture of wanted men in Pakistan, for example.
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I put HREF links in that post, but they got completely eliminated. I used Extrans. I dunno what's going on with Slashdot, but I hate having Extrans f**ked up like this. When's it going to be fixed? Huh?
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The Soviet Union acceded to the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973, and the Russian Federation inherited those treaty responsibilities. In addition, Russia on its own signed the Berne Convention in 1995.
The Berne Convention is as close as anything comes to a world copyright, with 144 countries signed on [Word97 doc, sorry]. These 144 countries represent well over 85% of the world's population; the only countries remaining to sign are mainly disorganized ones like Somalia or rogue states like Afghanistan. The Berne Convention permits the same people who sued the Lyrics Database before to file suit in Russia.
Now, it may be true that there is a certain degree of corruption or even lawlessness in Russia, but from a legal standpoint, it is not true that US law means "nothing" there. A copyright filed in the US must be recognized by the other signatories, including Russia.
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Actually, there's been a TREMENDOUS amount of planning that has gone into this project. (After all, they had 20 years of space station plans laying around before they got greenlighted for ISS!)
... who cares? They CAN'T say anything.
... say ... probes to Mars that don't crash and burn.
The problem lies not with planning, not even with NASA, but in the fact that ISS is a foreign-policy tool intended to help the Russians keep their technical class employed and explicitly NOT selling nukes to Iraq. All other considerations are really secondary. As for your points:
1. What-Ifs? NASA has made detailed consideration of the what-ifs, but they are bound here not by the technically feasible but by the politically possible. It was suspected years ago that the Russians might fail to launch their module, but NASA was prevented again and again from doing anything about it by the political ramifications of embarrassing the Russians.
2. Slipped schedules are practically CAUSED by the diplomatic requirements of the mission. Since NASA delivered a plan that had the Russians as a critical mission component, which is exactly what Congress did NOT want but what the Clinton administration DID, the Russians were in the catbird seat as far as schedule. Slip slip slip
3. You're right about the improvisational nature here, except that the people going had already trained for a FULL 2A mission, now they will merely do part of what they had trained for. Space flight is less routine this year than in any year since Return to Flight, with just 4 or maybe 5 missions, mainly because post-Challenger, the shuttle was (sensibly) stripped of its satellite-launch mission; and now, with ISS, it has become pretty much the ISS van line. From a space science standpoint, this is an enormous waste of money and resources that could be better spent on
Don't look to NASA to provide that ride to space. Look at the new launch concepts being developed (www.rotaryrocket.com, www.kistler.com) and what they might achieve in reduced launch costs. This is the way that the average joe might get to space one day.
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Not the first webcam site.
The first lifecam. Don't make this into something it's not, and the people who are flaming back with "fishcam" and "coffeecam" are also missing the unique aspects of Ms. Ringley's innovation.
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Surely everyone realises that webcams have been around for a lot longer than this. The Cambridge Coffee pot claims to be the first, dating back to 1991.
... at least, many who do this for personal reasons and aren't hired by Seth Breidbart.
And I was strongly affected by the bravery of that little coffee pot in baring its every waking moment to the world.
No duh. Nobody said that Jenni was the first "webcam". There were even peoplecams long before her -- I remember there was some lady programmer who had one at her desk, and people watching THAT one crashed her work server, so she got rid of it. (Men with deskcams didn't seem to have the same problem....) Jenni was the first webcam subject to go online 24/7. There still aren't many
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Uh, he said "the web wasn't around then". Not "the Internet". The web wouldn't be invented for two more years.
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Anybody who thinks that "giving to charity" is what a truly socially responsible investor wants to see has to have his head examined. Giving to charity is a sop, a PR stunt. What matters is how the workers are treated, how the company cares about its manufacturing effects on the environment, the overall safety of its products, and other concrete things.
On the other hand, some companies, like Ben & Jerry's, really believe that they have a responsibility to recycle their profits back into the community or society, hence the 1% to charity standard.
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Perhaps not, but investors are under no obligation to invest in companies that maximize efficiency by breaking the law, or even obeying the law in less-than-admirable ways, such as paying workers too little, working them too hard, hiring them too young, dumping pollutants in rivers, creating products that are dangerous, bribing and stealing, and so forth.
5 /187/187p21b.htm">the Burmese government is forcing villagers at gunpoint to clear the way for their new pipeline</a>. Yet they have every incentive to look the other way on a deal literally decades in the making. Is that what an investor likes to hear, that they are making profit on the backs of slaves?
Unocal says in all innocence they have no idea that <a href="http://jinx.sistm.unsw.edu.au/~greenlft/199
Investors who stick with companies that are socially <b>irresponsible</b> deserve criticism.
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I've heard all the arguments in this thread before (I used to be a regular on Usenet). Voyager sucks, DS9 sucks, Paramount should let it die, yadda yadda yadda. Look, it's a property. As long as they can make money from it, they'll keep trying new series. Nobody's forcing you to watch.
The basic problem I have with Star Trek, though, speaking as a loyal fan who thought that the best of TNG (e.g. Yesterday's Enterprise) measured up to the best of TOS, is that DS9 to some extent (which I initially liked very much for its somewhat darker world view) and Voyager much much more had this enormous problem with their fourth acts. They'd set up some wildly original premise, take you through a decent three acts of learning about it, then wrap it all up in lightning fashion, always too neat, always restoring the status quo ante, and bam! the show's over. I eventually stopped watching DS9 because I was tired of the war with the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager because every time I still liked a particular episode by the 45 minute mark, they would pull the rug out from under me and make me hate it in the last fifteen minutes.
I think it's born of the paint-by-numbers script teams they use. I know writing for television is hard, and I know writing SF that's 100% consistent with 400 pre-existing episodes is a professional impossibility, but building a story formula/framework that's obvious as the scaffold around the Washington Monument isn't the answer. (Well, it made money, so I guess it was at some level.) I appreciate that they insisted that every story was in fact a human story, even if this tended to weaken the SF elements. Really, the stories weren't true SF; the SF elements were always inserted later. They'd use "tech tech tech" in the early drafts before Okuda or someone could insert appropriate polysyllabic words, but especially towards the end you could also see them inserting human emotions the same way. As a bit of a writer myself, I didn't appreciate being able to see the puppeteer's strings so easily.
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There have been several hypothetical planets that did not turn out to be real, but none specifically between Earth and Mars. The term Planet X was used by Percival Lowell around a hundred years ago to refer to a specific mass beyond the orbit of Neptune that seemed to be causing its orbital inconsistencies. The search for Planet X took decades (really beginning in 1841), finally ending with the discovery of Pluto in 1930. To some extent, this search continues, with the discovery in the last decade of hundreds of so-called "Transneptunian" asteroids, representative of a great cloud of small rocks. While it's not impossible that there is still a large planet-sized body far out there, it's unlikely. There have been numerous non-scientific books and articles that have used terms like "Planet X" or "Planet Ten" to refer to other imagined planets, but these works aren't scientifically supported.
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Three or four thousand dollars? Where are they making you buy laptops?
...
You can get an operational Pentium III laptop for as little as $999. With an educational discount
The school is already paying for a very high computer-to-student ratio in labs. An excellent argument can be made for making the ratio one-to-one and that computer should then be portable.
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Actually, mirroring is probably perfectly safe from a financial standpoint. Realistically, you will have several opportunities to comply with any attempts by MegaCorp, Inc., to shut you down: an initial cease and desist lawyer letter, an injunction hearing subpoena, subsequent to the judge's granting injunction ... only after all these steps are taken will they really be able to sue you for damages. Particularly if you've taken the mirror down by that point, they'll have a hard time proving monetary damages. A jury might award them a token $1. Most likely they won't consider it worth going to trial. All they really want is for you to stop.
In the meantime, there are other mirrors elsewhere, probably at places even more difficult for MegaCorp's legal arms to reach.
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Well, SeaLaunch is the name of the company, not just the launch method. Any failure would reflect badly on them and make it more difficult for them to get customers. This will definitely do nothing to decrease the insurance rates for using SeaLaunch! The risk vs. low-cost factor is the real question here, not "bad press". Only a string of successful launches will keep SeaLaunch, er, afloat.
... literally deliver them to orbit ... or it has failed.
Yes, it's a neat way to do it, but as long as they rely on the Zenit (one of the most failure-prone rockets in the business -- Zenit-2 was 81%), they will be a risky way to launch.
Remember, the customer didn't select their own rocket for launch on this platform, they bought an entire launch package. SeaLaunch has to deliver the goods
I have high hopes, too, but their customers are fully aware of the risks in the launch business, and are going to evaluate those risks closely. I don't think we need to worry about misinterpreted news articles.
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No question that Firewire/IEEE 1394 was built from the ground up for these kinds of applications:
w Fast
http://www.pavo.com/ieee1394/faq/1394faq.htm#ho
Presently the fastest implementation is S400, which runs 393.216Mbits/s (megabaud). Future standard extensions may run up to 1200Mbits/s! And like SCSI, these are only effective over very short distances.
Just like USB will soon completely replace serial connections, Firewire will probably eventually replace all parallel, SCSI, and video connections, not to mention its potential for things like home networks combining data, telephone, and video interfaces. It's already becoming a standard for full-motion video interfaces.
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>Remember, Adams has an MBA and has always worked in the business world, and HAS NO ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE.
.... but he's most certainly a geek /par excellence/.
>He's not a geek. I don't think he's ever claimed to be.
I would say that's a huge overinterpretation of the evidence. It's pretty clear that he has a strong understanding of computers, the internet, product engineering, project management, and other disciplines gained from a career working deep within a telecommunications corporation. I find it surprising that a slashdotter would insist on an engineering degree as evidence of competence in the profession.
I don't think he's ever claimed to be a trained electronics or telecom engineer
It is true that he's much more brazen about making money than your average geek. Big deal; I don't care whether he lives in a hut on a mountaintop, or has a Hollywood mansion full of naked women, as long as the strip's funny.
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>i think of it now as the pinnacle of consumer internet business model madness....R.I.P.
>Theses types of companies really will not make it in the long term that just try to get users
>with no idea of what value they provide or why anyone should use them...
I don't know that you're right, there. I think they did have a good idea, they just got out-competed. Outfits like NetZero or Altavista are proving that better-financed operations will probably succeed using similar (some would say opposite) financing methods. And as far as I'm concerned, I had no beef with them (sheesh, why not have some advertiser I've never met pay for my internet? They pay for my TV). There's probably still room for more variations on this business model as PCs get stripped down to "internet appliance" levels and the cost of buying and keeping paying customers becomes prohibitive.
The overweening commercialism AOL model may grate on Slashdotters, but it's been very successful. And there seem to be millions of potential customers who are perfectly happy with that model. Let 'em have it...
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In a decision reached early this morning, the editors of The Onion have decided to buy the New York Times.
"We were at Starbucks standing in line for donuts and coffee, and there was some discussion of sitting around afterward. At this impromptu meeting the decision was made," said one of the editors.
Stock observers were skeptical that the Onion management team could effectively improve the situation at the Times. "They really don't have any managerial authority with this purchase. They basically paid about a dollar for one copy. They may think that gives them editorial control, but I'm sure they'll be quite surprised when they come to the Big Apple and start trying to fire people," said one analyst, who declined to be identified.
But the Onion editors believe there is unique synergy between the two media properties. "By bringing the quality journalism of the New York Times under our wing, we gain access to the stories of the day, some editorial content, even a world-renowned crossword puzzle," said Onion chief editor Dikkers when questioned. He continued to vigorously defend the purchase, saying, "These will be invaluable to our branding dialogue, even if we get powdered sugar on some of the pages."
Independent observers cautioned that this might prove to be a financial minefield. "They may not get the full dollar-twenty-five worth of the paper. They may as well have spent half as much and bought a Wisconsin State Journal instead," suggested Vera Mateja, a woman sitting in the corner sipping a frothy cappuccino.
"Really, look at them just talking, not even reading it," said Mark McCown, a local sanitation consultant standing in line waiting for the barista to prepare his grande latte. "Buying a newspaper like the New York Times is a momentous undertaking. If you're just going to skim the headlines, I guarantee you won't get your money's worth." Mr. McCown then returned his latte, which he had ordered with whipped cream on top.
Dikkers remained adamant that the newspaper would continue to be managed as it always had been. "We're not interfering purchasers. We know the value of this property and we believe in time that we'll develop the synergy we need. The one certainty we have is that our Onion satires will have improved verisimilitude for our readership, which is the main concern we had in making this purchase."
As for Onion readers, they seem nonchalant. "It's still the same Onion," said Raj Suharda, who was picking up a copy from the Starbucks lobby without buying coffee. "I don't care if they model it on the New York Times or the Beloit Daily News."
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>Has anyone else noticed that the last 10 weeks or so [of The Onion] have been pretty poor?
...
Frankly, the quality of the posts at Slashdot has been declining lately. Everything was fine in the Good Old Days, but we all know those ended around 10 o'clock this morning. Around noon the decline became precipitous, with a spate of Phirst Posts and Natalie Portman headlines, and at 2pm pure spam began to arrive by the bucketful. At this point, slightly past midnight Sunday, any astute person can see that post quality has reached a new all-time low.
Actually, it's decliend even as I'm writing this p0st. First post! Natalie Portman! It's reaching another new low right now. <a href="http://www.regisphilbin.com/">click here to win a million bucks!</a>
Fortunately, I've recognized this trend and halted it. By posting substantively I believe I can tip the balance. This post already has some pretty stupid things in it, though; I think I can save things if I don't submit it
Too late.
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