Anyone with money and a product or service (to some extent) has something to fear from patent trolls. The only defense is to have enough money to last through a trial, and that's only sometimes successful. I think we have a problem here in that patents are not screened well enough at the patent office. If I had a patent, I'd want to feel extremely confidant that it won't be invalidated by a court. And if I avoid infringing others patents, I'd want to be very confident that I'm not just avoiding invalid patents (waste of time and effort). But most of all (as a consumer), I'd want to be very confident that patents are actually promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. I have little to no confidence that any of these things are true now.
I take the other approach. I think we need to work to make things much worse for the average user (and not so average). We need to push for laws that make IP infringement a mandatory capital offense. And then we need to make sure sons of politicians get caught, daughters of RIAA execs get caught, spouses of MPAA execs get caught. Only then will we see some change that isn't awful.
Exactly. Or take that access away from you. This whole things seems to have reached a debate akin to religious debate, and just as pointless. Whatever people's reasons are for defending him at this point it isn't based upon logic, but emotion, and no one is going to change any opinions.
On a side node -- do you really not have access on Cisco equipment if you have physical access? There's no equivalent to booting a PC into single user mode and just changing the root password?
You'll lose all config settings if you do that if the settings are not saved to nvram. Some of the settings can be very complex and sometimes you really don't want to do that unless you really have to do it.
Changing the rules isn't always the same as breaking the law. If you boss tells you to never give out passwords, and then asks you for a password, and when you refuse says he's changing that rule, it is whole different thing than your boss ordering you to break a law regarding financial accounting laws. Especially if that boss was the owner of the company (which isn't the case in either your example or Childs, of course.
Though I've seen so many different things on this case I'm not sure where I stand. It seems to depend on the specifics. If the rules were such that it actually said he couldn't release the passwords except to the Mayor himself in person then I'm probably on his side. But otherwise someone like the Mayor likely does many things by proxy, so he may have just been acting the fool (to quote Judge Joe Brown). The devil's in the details I guess.
I'm more curious about the whole box, though you do bring up a good point. Surely they all said the same thing? And from the articles I've read I don't think it actually had to say that specifically) in California (one of the articles mentions a CA case where the same rights were extended to online journalists, who I think (could be wrong) would rarely actually use that specific word as many are geeks and tend to be more specific (IME)).
But a box (as opposed to one)? And besides, if the finder (or thief depending on who you believe) had one in his possession it has the information on it to point to whoever it refers to (generally being the point of a business card, I think). It just sounds odd, though you are probably right.
With one exception that I know of, Weird Al gets permission for all of his parodies (though not legally required, he does it anyway). In an interview many, many years ago when someone asked him about that he said with that one exception (can't recall who it was now) he said the usual response when he asks is something along the lines of them being upset that he took this long to make one of them.
I think it is often because of experiences where people within a company forgot about the customers and just started thinking about the money. You can't make money if you don't have any customers, and when customers start leaving some managers start panicking and make things even worse. We've all seen it happen at one time or another. Your favorite store stops stocking the items you really want. They start refusing to special order items (when they never had a problem in the past). They stop calling you by name, or even smiling when they see you. And then one day you notice the store is empty and there's a for lease sign. Sometimes it is just a sign of a difficult economy. But sometimes it is a sign the management lost sight of what was really important. Personally, I usually find the management was turned over to someone else (often a family member) and that time usually clearly marks the time it started going downhill. Now this isn't always the case, and this could be a good thing for Canonical (I'm hoping it is) but once bitten, twice shy and all.
All the time, or just occasionally? I'm west coast and for me that would be 5 to 7pm, which is quite common for me to watch things from the night before. I'm not defending them since I've heard this complaint from many sources before, I'm just wondering how wide spread it is since I've never seen it myself.
What time do you find the most difficult? I've yet to see a this buffering problem so I'm guess it must be the times I watch, but since I tend to watch in the morning and early afternoon. But I've watched at other times and haven't seen a problem then, either, so maybe it is regional?
What if he has multiple personality disorder? Or maybe like many car salesmen I know, he openly lies to himself so he can sleep at night? I wouldn't be so quick to assume there's no deception here.
On a more serious note, I was wondering something along those lines myself. I have T-Mobile and I could have sworn that mine used to do caller ID with name years ago. Now it only does it if the number's in my address book, and I was trying to figure out when that changed, or if I'm just insane (strong possibility some days).
More people need to seriously consider things like this: What if your worst enemy had access to this info? The way governments work here in the US, generally in 4 to 12 years you'll have someone completely different in office (who still seems the same (wrong) in the areas I care about, damn it!) and they have at least as much authority as the previous guy (power creep tends to make it more). So whatever your political bent is, chances are you won't like someone in power pretty soon. Yet the fanatics over here never seem to consider that. I'm not sure how anyone can be a fanatic for either side of a coin, but that's another argument.
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Well, for the first part we'd just need to make sure we got enough of them. For the second, at least nepotism would be lowered?
Anyone with money and a product or service (to some extent) has something to fear from patent trolls. The only defense is to have enough money to last through a trial, and that's only sometimes successful. I think we have a problem here in that patents are not screened well enough at the patent office. If I had a patent, I'd want to feel extremely confidant that it won't be invalidated by a court. And if I avoid infringing others patents, I'd want to be very confident that I'm not just avoiding invalid patents (waste of time and effort). But most of all (as a consumer), I'd want to be very confident that patents are actually promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. I have little to no confidence that any of these things are true now.
I take the other approach. I think we need to work to make things much worse for the average user (and not so average). We need to push for laws that make IP infringement a mandatory capital offense. And then we need to make sure sons of politicians get caught, daughters of RIAA execs get caught, spouses of MPAA execs get caught. Only then will we see some change that isn't awful.
Did they patent it yet then?
Exactly. Or take that access away from you. This whole things seems to have reached a debate akin to religious debate, and just as pointless. Whatever people's reasons are for defending him at this point it isn't based upon logic, but emotion, and no one is going to change any opinions.
On a side node -- do you really not have access on Cisco equipment if you have physical access? There's no equivalent to booting a PC into single user mode and just changing the root password?
You'll lose all config settings if you do that if the settings are not saved to nvram. Some of the settings can be very complex and sometimes you really don't want to do that unless you really have to do it.
I think gabereiser meant being barred from using a computer (ala Mitnick), though I could be wrong.
Yeah, but you'd probably still have to have your receipt, and many people won't. So you'd probably get the ebay price (whatever that is now).
Changing the rules isn't always the same as breaking the law. If you boss tells you to never give out passwords, and then asks you for a password, and when you refuse says he's changing that rule, it is whole different thing than your boss ordering you to break a law regarding financial accounting laws. Especially if that boss was the owner of the company (which isn't the case in either your example or Childs, of course.
Though I've seen so many different things on this case I'm not sure where I stand. It seems to depend on the specifics. If the rules were such that it actually said he couldn't release the passwords except to the Mayor himself in person then I'm probably on his side. But otherwise someone like the Mayor likely does many things by proxy, so he may have just been acting the fool (to quote Judge Joe Brown). The devil's in the details I guess.
I'm more curious about the whole box, though you do bring up a good point. Surely they all said the same thing? And from the articles I've read I don't think it actually had to say that specifically) in California (one of the articles mentions a CA case where the same rights were extended to online journalists, who I think (could be wrong) would rarely actually use that specific word as many are geeks and tend to be more specific (IME)).
That wouldn't really surprise me all that much.
But a box (as opposed to one)? And besides, if the finder (or thief depending on who you believe) had one in his possession it has the information on it to point to whoever it refers to (generally being the point of a business card, I think). It just sounds odd, though you are probably right.
They took a box of business cards, too (first item in the inventory). I'm still trying to figure that one out.
With one exception that I know of, Weird Al gets permission for all of his parodies (though not legally required, he does it anyway). In an interview many, many years ago when someone asked him about that he said with that one exception (can't recall who it was now) he said the usual response when he asks is something along the lines of them being upset that he took this long to make one of them.
So you're thinking it's either socialism, nuclear war, or sharks with friggin lasers on their heads?
I think it is often because of experiences where people within a company forgot about the customers and just started thinking about the money. You can't make money if you don't have any customers, and when customers start leaving some managers start panicking and make things even worse. We've all seen it happen at one time or another. Your favorite store stops stocking the items you really want. They start refusing to special order items (when they never had a problem in the past). They stop calling you by name, or even smiling when they see you. And then one day you notice the store is empty and there's a for lease sign. Sometimes it is just a sign of a difficult economy. But sometimes it is a sign the management lost sight of what was really important. Personally, I usually find the management was turned over to someone else (often a family member) and that time usually clearly marks the time it started going downhill. Now this isn't always the case, and this could be a good thing for Canonical (I'm hoping it is) but once bitten, twice shy and all.
So that would be nottrademarked?
Notbook? Is that trademarked?
Bah! Decadence! I have no tongue.
All the time, or just occasionally? I'm west coast and for me that would be 5 to 7pm, which is quite common for me to watch things from the night before. I'm not defending them since I've heard this complaint from many sources before, I'm just wondering how wide spread it is since I've never seen it myself.
What time do you find the most difficult? I've yet to see a this buffering problem so I'm guess it must be the times I watch, but since I tend to watch in the morning and early afternoon. But I've watched at other times and haven't seen a problem then, either, so maybe it is regional?
Saying they have a monopoly over and over doesn't make it so.
Well, that and the microchip.
What if he has multiple personality disorder? Or maybe like many car salesmen I know, he openly lies to himself so he can sleep at night? I wouldn't be so quick to assume there's no deception here.
On a more serious note, I was wondering something along those lines myself. I have T-Mobile and I could have sworn that mine used to do caller ID with name years ago. Now it only does it if the number's in my address book, and I was trying to figure out when that changed, or if I'm just insane (strong possibility some days).
More people need to seriously consider things like this: What if your worst enemy had access to this info? The way governments work here in the US, generally in 4 to 12 years you'll have someone completely different in office (who still seems the same (wrong) in the areas I care about, damn it!) and they have at least as much authority as the previous guy (power creep tends to make it more). So whatever your political bent is, chances are you won't like someone in power pretty soon. Yet the fanatics over here never seem to consider that. I'm not sure how anyone can be a fanatic for either side of a coin, but that's another argument.