...the Indian technical-support representatives are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents......will instead be handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee...
Looks like they might encounter the same problems;)
While I can't speak for Texas and Tennessee, I do know that there are a ton of call centers in Southern Idaho and one of the primary reasons is because the residents have a very neutral accent...they are easy to understand. There are other reasons, political and such, but the lack of a perceived accent brings plenty of call center business here.
I think that in the context of 18th century america, our founding fathers expected a certain level of privacy from monitoring and didn't bother writing it down because they couldn't imagine how it could be taken away.
Privacy rights in the 18th century were virtually nonexistent, at best. Remember, in America, this was a country that was rebelling against a monarchy that was very nearly dictatorial in its treatment of its colonies. Far from expecting a certain level of privacy from monitoring, the founding fathers had to be constantly aware of the potential of the British-controlled government monitoring of their every move, without any redress available. The very reason that the Bill of Rights reads as it does was because the founders were extraordinarily distrustful of government - they knew that it had to exist for a country to work, but that it must be limited in nature for freedom to flourish. Thus, the created a Constitution that placed significant limits upon the government. You'd better believe that they knew that privacy could be taken away - it is one of the chief tools of a repressive government, and the founders of this nation had gone through a war to throw off the yoke of a very repressive government. But these were extremely smart guys...and fortunate for us. They knew that formulating a Bill of Rights that was very specific in what it granted would just allow the government to work around the specificity. So they framed the 12 Amendments very broadly, without making any reference to privacy as such, and in the end, they had enumerated rules for a government in its dealing with its citizens in such a way that their privacy was guaranteed, without specifically guaranteeing their privacy. That, to me, is extraordinary.
They didn't have to envision incredible technological advances. The wording of the Bill of Rights is so broad that it encompasses them. It's not necessary to consider the context of the Constitution's era. It truely is an ageless document because the founders did not strive to address specific issues, but concerned themselves with broad, sweeping concepts. They allowed their descendents to place specific issues against the broad concepts of the Constitution. And that shows exceptional forsight...and trust.
The Fourth Amendment does not guarantee the right to privacy. It specifically protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. As with most of the other twelve amendments that compose the Bill of Rights, it provides a portion of the shield of privacy that we enjoy. In and of itself, however, it doe not provide a guarantee of privacy. It only protects against an aspect of our privacy.
Do none of you get it? I never said that we have no protection of our privacy! I said that the Bill of Rights enumerates no specific right of privacy, but that as a whole, it provides the privacy that most of you seem to think it enumerates as a right. Open your eyes, for heaven's sake. The Framers could have simply made a single Amendment to the Constitution that specifically enumerated a right to privacy. But, in being so specific, they would have allowed the opportunity for the government to worm its way around the Amendment. Instead, we got a series of Amendments that are somewhat general in scope, against which specific situations must be gauged. Good fortune for us, I would say.
You are on the mark about the relationship between the FBI and criminals. I guess that's a debate that's been going on for ages - how do you maintain a sense of righteousness, ethics and morality by following the rules, when the guys you're chasing have no qualms about cheating the rules? Can you cheat a little? How much is a little?
Nothing happens in a vacuum, including orders in the military. There really is no such thing as blindly following orders. When I served, we knew what was going on, we knew why the orders were issued and we carried them out because, strategically and tactically, they made sense. Now, perhaps politically they did not make sense, but we were not politicians.
You ask if I carry the thought that I brained someone from 50 yards or if I pass it off as second nature? In the Navy, I was part of a surface to surface missile action that ended up sinking an Iranian ship and killing most of its crew, perhaps as many as a hundred men. I was part of the team that fired the missiles. Do I think about it? Yes, every single day, for the past 15 years. I have dreams about it several times a week. Do I wish that it wouldn't have happened? Damn right, I do. Would I have done anything differently? No.
I have friends from the Navy who served in river boats in Vietnam and who were Seals in the Middle east. I have buddies who were in the Army in Desert Storm. They've killed people in battle. And every single one of them was changed for it. Every single one of them carries the thought that they ended somebody's life. Every single one of them is sorry that it happened and wished that it wouldn't have happened. And every single one of them knows that he was doing his duty, just as the man that he killed was.
It's unfortunate that there are segments of society who view veterans like me and my friends as either trained killers or complete mental cases. The reality lies in between. Yes, in many cases, the military tought us to kill. But it did not make us killers.
Perhaps it is just as important to realize that those of us who served were just as ready to lay our lives down as we were to take a life. 15 years ago, I came within a whisker of laying down mine. I'm sorry about the other guys, and it obviously still affects me, but I, and the other men around me, knew exactly why we were there, what we were doing and how to best carry out those orders. Nobody on the battlefield was mindless then, nobody on the battlefield is mindless now, and anyone who suggests that the opposite is true is simply speaking from ignorance.
"Handling data in a secure manner" does not mean "having the communications company seal the bag they put the tapes in before they drop it in the FedEx box". It means certifying a chain of custody, the accuracy of the recording equipment, the source of the data...there is a myriad of things that have to go right in data collection. That's why defense attornies attack those methods so vigorously.
The FBI can do the job better, from the point of view of doing it right legally, themselves than by using a third party.
Please. Put your tinfoil hat on and get on with life.
The warrant is the crux of the issue. The FBI complied with the law to obtain a warrant for a wiretap. They didn't use the Patriot Act because it didn't apply.
OK, I'm going to reply to my own comment to point out that a bunch of people seem to be unable to read an entire posting before jerking their knees.
The Bill of Rights does not specifically enumerate a right to privacy. It does, when taken as a whole, provide a shield of privacy to the population of this country. One of the ways that law enforcement agencies can pierce that shield is by obtaining a warrant to conduct a specific surveillance task.
In this case, according to the article, the FBI obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance of an individual through his car's communication system. That means that they had to show probable cause that the individual in question had committed a crime and that the wiretap was necessary in order to conduct the investigation.
What is not said in the article is whether or not the FBI was aware that by using the communications system, they would be disable some of its functionality. The carrier of the system filed a suit to invalidate the warrant because the surveillance disabled some of its functionality.
The judge ruled against them, incorrectly, as it turns out.
That's all there is to this story. There's no erosion of our rights, there's no crippling of the constitution and, from the information available in the story, there is no indication that the FBI knowingly did anything wrong.
You can toss out the 9th Amendment all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the Bill of Rights does not specifically grant the "right" of privacy. In summation, the Bill of Rights gives us rights that protect our privacy, but Scalia was right - there is no right of privacy, but there is a collection of rights that, taken in aggregate, give us privacy. And it appears that, at least as far as the article tells us, the government followed the rules.
They have to get a warrant, meaning that they have to establish probable cause to a judge. Then they have to serve the warrant to the service provider. Then they have to arrange to handle the data in a secure manner.
Something easier? Sure, they could just get a warrant and slap a bug on the car.
What's most disturbing is that they only passed this because it prevented the saftey features from working, and not because it was infringing on rights of privacy. Crap, if they have a bug order anyway, can't they just bug the car?
How is it infringing on their "right" to privacy if the FBI had obtained a warrant to listen in on the service? For starters, there is no "right to privacy". The Bill of Rights enumerates a number of rights that, taken in summary, give what amounts to a "right" of privacy, but no specific right to privacy itself. But those rights compel a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant if it wants to listen in on your private conversations. And that's what the FBI did here. They appear to have done everything by the book. Now, if you want to blame somebody for doing it wrong, blame the judge for not coming to the same conclusion that the appeals judge came to, that is, that the FBI is not in the business of responding to emergencies (assuming that the agents would even know what the tone coming through the speaker meant).
Really, the only difference between a wiretap or a bug is that the FBI used different technology in this case. Nothing has changed. The FBI identified a suspect in a crime, got a warrant for a wiretap and executed the warrant. I don't find it disturbing. Now, if they had just hijacked the signal without going through the legal hoops, THAT would be disturbing news.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I won't say it as a matter of fact, but I suspect that you didn't read the article.
I guess it's not your fault. You go where the jobs are, regardless of the moral implications of said job. It really should be up to the American people to decide that they shouldn't have to spend $500 billion a year to KILL PEOPLE.
The American people decide how to allocate the federal budget (and every other budget, right down to your local government) every year through the votes of their elected representatives. Now maybe it's not spent the way that YOU wanted it spent, but that's the luck of the draw in a republic. Now if we had a dictatorship with Mozumder in charge, then things would be different!
And to be fair, I spent 10 years in the Navy. It tought me some valuable lessons (not just how to kill people). First among them was the fact that the ability to express yourself in the face of opposition is a precious right that far too many people in the US do not appreciate enough. Oh, and it also helped pay for my electrical engineering degree so that I could get a good job and afford the $130 Nikes. -just kidding, I bought Addidas.
That doesn't really make sense - it would mean that if an Apple employee write a photo retoucher or a recipe database, or anything that ran on a Mac, Apple would own it. You have to be more specific, such as relating it to a specific product that Appple produces, such as iTunes or system extensions.
No, it doesn't mean that Apple would own it. It means (as I said) that Apple would have a legitimate claim to it. That's not the same thing. Apple would then have to prove the claim. Of course (sad to say), if you're a programmer in a depressed tech economy, the level of proof that Apple needs to provide to convince said programmer of Apple's claim may be pretty low.
Incidently, as far as the call making machine goes, it's an excellent example. If, as you say, the automated message machines are illegal, then what if I, as a telemarketing employee (perish the thought), were to invent a new machine that circumvented the law, then marketed it as my own? Dollars to donuts, my employer would stake a claim to it. Now, setting aside the fact that we all probably consider telemarketers to be the scum of the earth, that employer may have a legitimate claim to the device. But, unless I was willing to knuckle under, they would have to prove that claim.
And as far as starting a paper while working at another job being patently ridiculous, history suggests that you may have a misunderstanding of what the phrase "patently ridiculous" means.
If you're a writer at your day-job does that mean that any other work you might do would prohibit the usage of the written word, lest you cede ownership to your employer?
If you're a writer for a newspaper, it may prevent you from starting your own newspaper.
If you're a telemarketer, does that prevent you from using the telephone in the course of any outside business?
If you're a telemarketer, it may prevent you from creating some super-whamodyne call-making machine to sell on your own.
I suspect a judge would not find restraints on any of the above to be acceptible, and, if not, writing code on a computer at both your day job and on the weekend should follow the pattern.
You're right, a judge would agree with you, because the examples you cite are much broader than the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that the individual appears to be a programmer for Apple. Thus, Apple may have a legitimate claim to programs that he develops that run under an Apple OS.
So, interpreting the law narrowly would put the employee in a position pretty close to indentured servitude.
Hardly. What debt is the employee working off? What period of time is the employee obligated to remain in employ? I think that what you mean to say is that it's not fair for Apple to be able to take a program that he's written on his own time without paying something extra for it. Now, that I'd agree to. It's not fair. The problem is that it may be legal. The pat answer is to say that it was probably in the intellectual property agreement that he signed when he went to work for Apple. But, like most things, pat answers are an oversimplistic approach to solving the problem. He's probably going to end up having to negotiate with some part of management over whether or not he's going to get some sort of bonus for creating the program. It's unfortunate that he didn't approach Apple's legal department and his attorney ahead of time.
I work for a large high tech company that is very clear about what constitutes IP that the company can and cannot claim. There aren't any secrets or sneaky business on the side of the company and everyone that I know who has had some sort of idea that they wanted to pursue outside of the company has checked with the company first. In some cases, the company signed off and gave the go ahead. In some cases they didn't and said that they could claim the invention. Now, maybe that's a difference between an engineer and a programmer, I don't know...but we are very conscious of making sure, ahead of time, just what belongs to whom.
Actually, in comuter systems with real security, administrator access just grants you the rights to adminster the system.
The best computer you can get only has class C-D security. I have worked on a class A top secret secure computer and it had so much security that the administrator could only add people, and other people had to approve who he added, they didn't have the rights to add people. And the adminstrator couldn't access the contents of any of the data files. Very strange system.
Oh yeah, and you can't be hooked to an external network, and the room the computer system was in had metal walls and an air chamber like thing to trap it's electronic emissions inside. Even the power system was scrubbed to keep from leaking any information outside.
Oh yeah? Well I worked on a class A+ Super Ultra Extra Mega Secret secure computer and it had so much security that we couldn't even look at it. It had laser beams that would burn out your eyes if you even glanced at it and high frequency ultrasound rays that would selectively gel portions of your brain if you managed to actually see it. It wasn't connected to the power system. It had solid diamond walls and insulation made out of passenger pigeon feathers. The administrator could touch the door to the room, but the key was inside, just for extra security. It couldn't even be hooked to an internal network and it had to be kept in a vacuum just in case the network connection could cause the air to break down and create an electrical connection. We weren't even allowed to know that it existed!
Vidal is one of America's sharpest social critics, although he only operates as a critic. He ran for office once but I suspect he would be a failure as a career politician despite his family ties.
Gore Vidal is indeed a critic, but a critic of the worst kind - he finds plenty to criticize, but offers little in the way of solutions (which may be what you are saying). I don't contest that there is and always will be plenty of grist for the criticism mill, but the most effective social critics also offer alternatives to go along with the criticism.
The fact that he doesn't offer alternatives is not lost on that portion of society that cares - you'll note that although plenty of people will offer him up as an erudite social critic, very few of them will promote his criticism because, in the end, he doesn't offer anything but complaints.
Also are you aware that 3*350W = 1/kWh = 24/kWh per day = (roughly) average household electricity usage
The wattage numbers on a power supply are a rating, not the amount of power that they use. Power supplies aren't like light bulbs. The total power usage in watts, during normal operation, is less. It doesn't take much energy to keep a hard drive moving...it's the starting that requires more power.
It wouldn't be the first time. But that was a lot of money for a "budget" server.
I have a storage server here at home that I built from a Sun Ultra1 that I bought on Ebay for $50. It's got ~800MB of RAM and two 100Mb NICs and two wide SCSI controllers. I bought 12 18GB 10krpm SCA drives and 80 pin to 68 pin adapters, three el-cheapo four device external boxes and put the works together. The drives cost something like $18 each with the adapters, the cases were ~$30 each. I had the cables and terminators sitting around, but three cables and two terminators should be under a hundred bucks. So, 216GB for about $450. A half a terabyte for about $850. A terabyte for $1650. The system runs Aurora Linux, yes, it uses software RAID, but I've used Linux software RAID for years with no trouble. And I've run this old Sun stuff for a long time, too...with no failures. No, it's not world class power, but it is world class engineering.
Just to be fair, twelve 10krpm drives are noisy. And I suppose that that the four boxes take up more space and may use more electricity. And it probably could have been done cheaper with PC compnents and fewer large IDE drives. But based on my personal experience, I think that the way I did it was a good compromise between price, performance and reliability. Your mileage may vary.
I could have bought a single 250GB IDE drive for less money, but then I'd have a single point of failure...no thanks. And I'm with everyone else here who wonders why in the world it took $3000 to build a "server" if "budget" was the goal. Of course, I think that we all know that they weren't really building a server;-).
You want to know why were in a recession? Its simple, really. The people earning that money don't spend it. Not because they're malicious, but because you *can't* spend $700M, not unless you're buying solid gold toilets every day, or something equally silly. Since the money doesn't get spent, it simply vanishes from the economy. The truth is that trickle down would work, if the upper 1% spent all (or even most) of their money. Since they can't, trickle down is doomed to fail, as is the economy unless money starts flowing *out* of Eisner et al, and into the general economy...
There is no simple reason for why this recession started, but yours is incorrect. Perhaps the most significant reason was what Alan Greenspan called the "irrational exuberance" of investors in horrendously overvalued stocks and of the hordes of investors who chased businesses with pointless plans that just didn't stand a chance of success. The collapse of the "dot com bubble" was one domino of many that led to the last recession. Companies that appeared to be successful, but really weren't caused investors to lose faith in the market...suddenly many people didn't know whom to trust. I suppose the WTC attack also played a role as well. Those are a few.
Consumer spending, which is what you're talking about, is only one part of what drives the economy. In fact, it's what's brought the economy out of the recession. Another part is corporate spending. And that's where the bulk of the nation's gazillionaire's money goes. You're right, it's pretty damn hard to run through a few hundred million dollars quickly, but that's not how things work. Michael Eisner doesn't have hundreds of millions sitting in a room in his house. His money is in the bank, in stocks, in bonds...in investments. It's kind of like the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". The money isn't sitting in a pile somewhere...it's part of the loan that built some houses, part of the bonds that built the school down the road, part of the venture capital that created jobs in a startup, part of the stock issue that enabled a company to expand into a new market.
The money doesn't get spent on consumer goods, but it certainly gets spent...several times over. Because part of the money that Eisner put in the bank went into that home loan that employed a contractor who bought a pickup from a car dealer that bought new computers from the local computer store that paid its utility bill to the electric company that paid a lineman to install a new transformer... If that's not trickle down, then what is? Economics is a system with a ton of parts. It ain't simple. Shucks, it isn't so hard to figure this out...just note that the amount of money in circulation is a small fraction of the total US GDP.
...what the critics say? Or perhaps that should be, I don't care what the critics say. I can make up my own mind about whether or not I think that a movie is good or not. Most of the time, I agree with the RT rating, but not always. And a bad review isn't going to keep me from seeing a movie.
I thought that The Matrix sequel was a good movie, in two parts. It didn't end the way that wanted it to, but then again, I didn't make the movie. Yeah, for the most part, the reviewers didn't like it. Apparently, for the most part, the/. crowd didn't like it. But I did. What does that mean? Diddly squat, I guess. Well, except that it just reinforces my point. And if you don't like the movie? Well, that's OK...unlike a reviewer (or a self-righteous reader of this blog), I'm not going to try to change your mind.
If they're so successful, why does a $2000 Opteron system outperform a $10000 Sun system?
For what it's worth, I use both a Sun Blade 1000 (2x950MHz) and a dual processor (146) white box Opteron. Both of 'em have 8 GB of RAM and fast wide SCSI drives. The Blade 1000 churns through a SpecctraQuest transmission line simulation about 40% faster than the AMD system.
The Sun system cost a lot more than the AMD system, but the payoff is that the time that I have to spend waiting for a simulation to complete is nonproductive time. Thus, over time, the cost to my company of an engineer's time is better spent by purchasing the Blade 1000.
And the price difference between the two computers is not all that great over the course of a system's life. We have hundreds (if not thousands) of Sun workstations and servers at my company and they are virtually bulletproof. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of commodity PC hardware, even with 64 bit processors.
But, of course, this is a specific case. I can't speak for its applicability to the masses.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, so we'll prevail in, what, 3000 years? Rats.
On the other hand, I think that IBM is visiting a plague of lawyers upon SCO, so maybe that's 3000 years in computer time.
I have a hard time picturing ESR or RMS as the angel of death, though.
-h-
Looks like they might encounter the same problems
While I can't speak for Texas and Tennessee, I do know that there are a ton of call centers in Southern Idaho and one of the primary reasons is because the residents have a very neutral accent...they are easy to understand. There are other reasons, political and such, but the lack of a perceived accent brings plenty of call center business here.
-h-
Privacy rights in the 18th century were virtually nonexistent, at best. Remember, in America, this was a country that was rebelling against a monarchy that was very nearly dictatorial in its treatment of its colonies. Far from expecting a certain level of privacy from monitoring, the founding fathers had to be constantly aware of the potential of the British-controlled government monitoring of their every move, without any redress available. The very reason that the Bill of Rights reads as it does was because the founders were extraordinarily distrustful of government - they knew that it had to exist for a country to work, but that it must be limited in nature for freedom to flourish. Thus, the created a Constitution that placed significant limits upon the government. You'd better believe that they knew that privacy could be taken away - it is one of the chief tools of a repressive government, and the founders of this nation had gone through a war to throw off the yoke of a very repressive government. But these were extremely smart guys...and fortunate for us. They knew that formulating a Bill of Rights that was very specific in what it granted would just allow the government to work around the specificity. So they framed the 12 Amendments very broadly, without making any reference to privacy as such, and in the end, they had enumerated rules for a government in its dealing with its citizens in such a way that their privacy was guaranteed, without specifically guaranteeing their privacy. That, to me, is extraordinary.
They didn't have to envision incredible technological advances. The wording of the Bill of Rights is so broad that it encompasses them. It's not necessary to consider the context of the Constitution's era. It truely is an ageless document because the founders did not strive to address specific issues, but concerned themselves with broad, sweeping concepts. They allowed their descendents to place specific issues against the broad concepts of the Constitution. And that shows exceptional forsight...and trust.
-h-
Do none of you get it? I never said that we have no protection of our privacy! I said that the Bill of Rights enumerates no specific right of privacy, but that as a whole, it provides the privacy that most of you seem to think it enumerates as a right. Open your eyes, for heaven's sake. The Framers could have simply made a single Amendment to the Constitution that specifically enumerated a right to privacy. But, in being so specific, they would have allowed the opportunity for the government to worm its way around the Amendment. Instead, we got a series of Amendments that are somewhat general in scope, against which specific situations must be gauged. Good fortune for us, I would say.
-h-
Thanks! My wife says keep it stock, so I guess it stays stock...
Well...my sarcasm detector was turned off
You are on the mark about the relationship between the FBI and criminals. I guess that's a debate that's been going on for ages - how do you maintain a sense of righteousness, ethics and morality by following the rules, when the guys you're chasing have no qualms about cheating the rules? Can you cheat a little? How much is a little?
-h-
You ask if I carry the thought that I brained someone from 50 yards or if I pass it off as second nature? In the Navy, I was part of a surface to surface missile action that ended up sinking an Iranian ship and killing most of its crew, perhaps as many as a hundred men. I was part of the team that fired the missiles. Do I think about it? Yes, every single day, for the past 15 years. I have dreams about it several times a week. Do I wish that it wouldn't have happened? Damn right, I do. Would I have done anything differently? No.
I have friends from the Navy who served in river boats in Vietnam and who were Seals in the Middle east. I have buddies who were in the Army in Desert Storm. They've killed people in battle. And every single one of them was changed for it. Every single one of them carries the thought that they ended somebody's life. Every single one of them is sorry that it happened and wished that it wouldn't have happened. And every single one of them knows that he was doing his duty, just as the man that he killed was.
It's unfortunate that there are segments of society who view veterans like me and my friends as either trained killers or complete mental cases. The reality lies in between. Yes, in many cases, the military tought us to kill. But it did not make us killers.
Perhaps it is just as important to realize that those of us who served were just as ready to lay our lives down as we were to take a life. 15 years ago, I came within a whisker of laying down mine. I'm sorry about the other guys, and it obviously still affects me, but I, and the other men around me, knew exactly why we were there, what we were doing and how to best carry out those orders. Nobody on the battlefield was mindless then, nobody on the battlefield is mindless now, and anyone who suggests that the opposite is true is simply speaking from ignorance.
-h-
The FBI can do the job better, from the point of view of doing it right legally, themselves than by using a third party.
-h-
The warrant is the crux of the issue. The FBI complied with the law to obtain a warrant for a wiretap. They didn't use the Patriot Act because it didn't apply.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Nice try.
-h-
The Bill of Rights does not specifically enumerate a right to privacy. It does, when taken as a whole, provide a shield of privacy to the population of this country. One of the ways that law enforcement agencies can pierce that shield is by obtaining a warrant to conduct a specific surveillance task.
In this case, according to the article, the FBI obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance of an individual through his car's communication system. That means that they had to show probable cause that the individual in question had committed a crime and that the wiretap was necessary in order to conduct the investigation.
What is not said in the article is whether or not the FBI was aware that by using the communications system, they would be disable some of its functionality. The carrier of the system filed a suit to invalidate the warrant because the surveillance disabled some of its functionality.
The judge ruled against them, incorrectly, as it turns out.
That's all there is to this story. There's no erosion of our rights, there's no crippling of the constitution and, from the information available in the story, there is no indication that the FBI knowingly did anything wrong.
You can toss out the 9th Amendment all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the Bill of Rights does not specifically grant the "right" of privacy. In summation, the Bill of Rights gives us rights that protect our privacy, but Scalia was right - there is no right of privacy, but there is a collection of rights that, taken in aggregate, give us privacy. And it appears that, at least as far as the article tells us, the government followed the rules.
-h-
Thanks for making my argument for me. As I said, the Bill of Rights provides for no specific right of privacy.
They have to get a warrant, meaning that they have to establish probable cause to a judge. Then they have to serve the warrant to the service provider. Then they have to arrange to handle the data in a secure manner.
Something easier? Sure, they could just get a warrant and slap a bug on the car.
-h-
How is it infringing on their "right" to privacy if the FBI had obtained a warrant to listen in on the service? For starters, there is no "right to privacy". The Bill of Rights enumerates a number of rights that, taken in summary, give what amounts to a "right" of privacy, but no specific right to privacy itself. But those rights compel a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant if it wants to listen in on your private conversations. And that's what the FBI did here. They appear to have done everything by the book. Now, if you want to blame somebody for doing it wrong, blame the judge for not coming to the same conclusion that the appeals judge came to, that is, that the FBI is not in the business of responding to emergencies (assuming that the agents would even know what the tone coming through the speaker meant).
Really, the only difference between a wiretap or a bug is that the FBI used different technology in this case. Nothing has changed. The FBI identified a suspect in a crime, got a warrant for a wiretap and executed the warrant. I don't find it disturbing. Now, if they had just hijacked the signal without going through the legal hoops, THAT would be disturbing news.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I won't say it as a matter of fact, but I suspect that you didn't read the article.
-h-
The American people decide how to allocate the federal budget (and every other budget, right down to your local government) every year through the votes of their elected representatives. Now maybe it's not spent the way that YOU wanted it spent, but that's the luck of the draw in a republic. Now if we had a dictatorship with Mozumder in charge, then things would be different!
And to be fair, I spent 10 years in the Navy. It tought me some valuable lessons (not just how to kill people). First among them was the fact that the ability to express yourself in the face of opposition is a precious right that far too many people in the US do not appreciate enough. Oh, and it also helped pay for my electrical engineering degree so that I could get a good job and afford the $130 Nikes. -just kidding, I bought Addidas.
-h-
No, it doesn't mean that Apple would own it. It means (as I said) that Apple would have a legitimate claim to it. That's not the same thing. Apple would then have to prove the claim. Of course (sad to say), if you're a programmer in a depressed tech economy, the level of proof that Apple needs to provide to convince said programmer of Apple's claim may be pretty low.
Incidently, as far as the call making machine goes, it's an excellent example. If, as you say, the automated message machines are illegal, then what if I, as a telemarketing employee (perish the thought), were to invent a new machine that circumvented the law, then marketed it as my own? Dollars to donuts, my employer would stake a claim to it. Now, setting aside the fact that we all probably consider telemarketers to be the scum of the earth, that employer may have a legitimate claim to the device. But, unless I was willing to knuckle under, they would have to prove that claim.
And as far as starting a paper while working at another job being patently ridiculous, history suggests that you may have a misunderstanding of what the phrase "patently ridiculous" means.
-h-
If you're a writer for a newspaper, it may prevent you from starting your own newspaper.
If you're a telemarketer, does that prevent you from using the telephone in the course of any outside business?
If you're a telemarketer, it may prevent you from creating some super-whamodyne call-making machine to sell on your own.
I suspect a judge would not find restraints on any of the above to be acceptible, and, if not, writing code on a computer at both your day job and on the weekend should follow the pattern.
You're right, a judge would agree with you, because the examples you cite are much broader than the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that the individual appears to be a programmer for Apple. Thus, Apple may have a legitimate claim to programs that he develops that run under an Apple OS.
So, interpreting the law narrowly would put the employee in a position pretty close to indentured servitude.
Hardly. What debt is the employee working off? What period of time is the employee obligated to remain in employ? I think that what you mean to say is that it's not fair for Apple to be able to take a program that he's written on his own time without paying something extra for it. Now, that I'd agree to. It's not fair. The problem is that it may be legal. The pat answer is to say that it was probably in the intellectual property agreement that he signed when he went to work for Apple. But, like most things, pat answers are an oversimplistic approach to solving the problem. He's probably going to end up having to negotiate with some part of management over whether or not he's going to get some sort of bonus for creating the program. It's unfortunate that he didn't approach Apple's legal department and his attorney ahead of time.
I work for a large high tech company that is very clear about what constitutes IP that the company can and cannot claim. There aren't any secrets or sneaky business on the side of the company and everyone that I know who has had some sort of idea that they wanted to pursue outside of the company has checked with the company first. In some cases, the company signed off and gave the go ahead. In some cases they didn't and said that they could claim the invention. Now, maybe that's a difference between an engineer and a programmer, I don't know...but we are very conscious of making sure, ahead of time, just what belongs to whom.
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Actually, in comuter systems with real security, administrator access just grants you the rights to adminster the system.
The best computer you can get only has class C-D security. I have worked on a class A top secret secure computer and it had so much security that the administrator could only add people, and other people had to approve who he added, they didn't have the rights to add people. And the adminstrator couldn't access the contents of any of the data files. Very strange system.
Oh yeah, and you can't be hooked to an external network, and the room the computer system was in had metal walls and an air chamber like thing to trap it's electronic emissions inside. Even the power system was scrubbed to keep from leaking any information outside.
Oh yeah? Well I worked on a class A+ Super Ultra Extra Mega Secret secure computer and it had so much security that we couldn't even look at it. It had laser beams that would burn out your eyes if you even glanced at it and high frequency ultrasound rays that would selectively gel portions of your brain if you managed to actually see it. It wasn't connected to the power system. It had solid diamond walls and insulation made out of passenger pigeon feathers. The administrator could touch the door to the room, but the key was inside, just for extra security. It couldn't even be hooked to an internal network and it had to be kept in a vacuum just in case the network connection could cause the air to break down and create an electrical connection. We weren't even allowed to know that it existed!
Very strange system.
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Gore Vidal is indeed a critic, but a critic of the worst kind - he finds plenty to criticize, but offers little in the way of solutions (which may be what you are saying). I don't contest that there is and always will be plenty of grist for the criticism mill, but the most effective social critics also offer alternatives to go along with the criticism.
The fact that he doesn't offer alternatives is not lost on that portion of society that cares - you'll note that although plenty of people will offer him up as an erudite social critic, very few of them will promote his criticism because, in the end, he doesn't offer anything but complaints.
He has written some awfully good books, though.
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That way I'll get the best seat...and I won't have to wait in line!
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The wattage numbers on a power supply are a rating, not the amount of power that they use. Power supplies aren't like light bulbs. The total power usage in watts, during normal operation, is less. It doesn't take much energy to keep a hard drive moving...it's the starting that requires more power.
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I have a storage server here at home that I built from a Sun Ultra1 that I bought on Ebay for $50. It's got ~800MB of RAM and two 100Mb NICs and two wide SCSI controllers. I bought 12 18GB 10krpm SCA drives and 80 pin to 68 pin adapters, three el-cheapo four device external boxes and put the works together. The drives cost something like $18 each with the adapters, the cases were ~$30 each. I had the cables and terminators sitting around, but three cables and two terminators should be under a hundred bucks. So, 216GB for about $450. A half a terabyte for about $850. A terabyte for $1650. The system runs Aurora Linux, yes, it uses software RAID, but I've used Linux software RAID for years with no trouble. And I've run this old Sun stuff for a long time, too...with no failures. No, it's not world class power, but it is world class engineering.
Just to be fair, twelve 10krpm drives are noisy. And I suppose that that the four boxes take up more space and may use more electricity. And it probably could have been done cheaper with PC compnents and fewer large IDE drives. But based on my personal experience, I think that the way I did it was a good compromise between price, performance and reliability. Your mileage may vary.
I could have bought a single 250GB IDE drive for less money, but then I'd have a single point of failure...no thanks. And I'm with everyone else here who wonders why in the world it took $3000 to build a "server" if "budget" was the goal. Of course, I think that we all know that they weren't really building a server
There is no simple reason for why this recession started, but yours is incorrect. Perhaps the most significant reason was what Alan Greenspan called the "irrational exuberance" of investors in horrendously overvalued stocks and of the hordes of investors who chased businesses with pointless plans that just didn't stand a chance of success. The collapse of the "dot com bubble" was one domino of many that led to the last recession. Companies that appeared to be successful, but really weren't caused investors to lose faith in the market...suddenly many people didn't know whom to trust. I suppose the WTC attack also played a role as well. Those are a few.
Consumer spending, which is what you're talking about, is only one part of what drives the economy. In fact, it's what's brought the economy out of the recession. Another part is corporate spending. And that's where the bulk of the nation's gazillionaire's money goes. You're right, it's pretty damn hard to run through a few hundred million dollars quickly, but that's not how things work. Michael Eisner doesn't have hundreds of millions sitting in a room in his house. His money is in the bank, in stocks, in bonds...in investments. It's kind of like the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". The money isn't sitting in a pile somewhere...it's part of the loan that built some houses, part of the bonds that built the school down the road, part of the venture capital that created jobs in a startup, part of the stock issue that enabled a company to expand into a new market.
The money doesn't get spent on consumer goods, but it certainly gets spent...several times over. Because part of the money that Eisner put in the bank went into that home loan that employed a contractor who bought a pickup from a car dealer that bought new computers from the local computer store that paid its utility bill to the electric company that paid a lineman to install a new transformer... If that's not trickle down, then what is? Economics is a system with a ton of parts. It ain't simple. Shucks, it isn't so hard to figure this out...just note that the amount of money in circulation is a small fraction of the total US GDP.
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Well, as the article said, "They sure don't want to have a situation where an Xbox can be turned into a PC."
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I thought that The Matrix sequel was a good movie, in two parts. It didn't end the way that wanted it to, but then again, I didn't make the movie. Yeah, for the most part, the reviewers didn't like it. Apparently, for the most part, the
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For what it's worth, I use both a Sun Blade 1000 (2x950MHz) and a dual processor (146) white box Opteron. Both of 'em have 8 GB of RAM and fast wide SCSI drives. The Blade 1000 churns through a SpecctraQuest transmission line simulation about 40% faster than the AMD system.
The Sun system cost a lot more than the AMD system, but the payoff is that the time that I have to spend waiting for a simulation to complete is nonproductive time. Thus, over time, the cost to my company of an engineer's time is better spent by purchasing the Blade 1000.
And the price difference between the two computers is not all that great over the course of a system's life. We have hundreds (if not thousands) of Sun workstations and servers at my company and they are virtually bulletproof. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of commodity PC hardware, even with 64 bit processors.
But, of course, this is a specific case. I can't speak for its applicability to the masses.
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