Don't forget how unemployment is defined - the number is lower than it could be because many people have simply given up looking. Should the market start to recover, it's been theorized that unemployment will actually increase for a time, as the people who have given up will begin looking again.
This is an argument that I've had with a number of people (and I'm sure I'm not alone). Even with the number of people who are no longer seeking work, I believe that the unemployment rate is still quite low. If you turn the numbers around, consider that even with a 10% unemployment rate, that means that 90% of the people are working. It's pure speculation, but I wonder just how many people who have given up have done so because they just won't work in a low-paying job? I'm lucky - I avoided my company's layoff sweep, but if I hadn't, you can bet that I would have taken just about any job if it meant the difference between paying the bills or going bankrupt.
Now I'll grant that perhaps a number of people may be underemployed, but the point is that they are working - they are making money and at least able to pay the bills. Yes, times are tough right now, but not nearly as tough as they were in the past. I remember the horrible recession of the Nixon era. Inflation was rampant, unemployment was rampant and the government stepped in with draconian wage and price controls. What's happening now is not even close to that bad. I remember the early '80s when interest rates were shockingly high...if you had money, you could make money, but if you needed money, you were screwed!
I think that part of the problem with negativism about the economy is that an awful lot of people are comparing today with the economy of five years ago. That was an unsustainable, irresponsible period of growth that had no foundation to stand on. It simply had to collapse. The whole "new economy" was a sham. I don't mean Enron...companies that simply made stuff up (although they certainly carry their fair share of blame). I mean the whole dot-com gang and their ilk. A lot of money moved around, a lot of people had great, high paying jobs, but in the end, it all had to fall apart because there was no profitable production to keep the money flowing.
So right now, as the economy corrects itself, a lot of people are working to just get by and pay the bills. That's too bad...it really is, but many of them are the same people who went on the crazy ride of the 90's without stopping to think about just how that particular economic boom was supported. I don't say that anybody deserves what they got...I'm just saying that everyone is paying for the unsupportable growth of the economy during the 90's.
I believe that the point that he was trying to make was that the word "innovation" is becoming a rather tired and misused term. And I agree with that point. Microsoft doesn't "innovate". I don't think that they invent, either. In fact, I think that most companies that make a big deal about how they "innovate" really want to say that they invent cool and important things, but, in fact, really do neither.
At this point, I get cynical about any company that uses the word...it makes me wonder what they're hiding, even if they have nothing to hide.
But seriously, folks, business has ALWAYS been about this. That's the way capitalism is set up... you cut out your competitors through any means possible.
That's not capitalism. It's dirty business. And what Cringely calls "sharp business" isn't sharp business, it's sharp dealing. Sharp dealing, the way my grandfather used to use the term...as in, "He's a sharp dealer." It's not a nice thing to say about somebody.
Capitalism means that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door (grossly simplified, I know). It does not mean that it's open season on your competitors to do whatever you can to get them out of the market. What Cringely described in the first half of his article may not have been legal, but don't confuse it with capitalism. It was dirty business, nothing more, nothing less.
And usually I hold what Cringely says at arm's length, but his second to the last paragraph, the one about innovation is, at least to me, right on the mark. I almost can't stand the word anymore.
Do you work at Motorola in Schaumburg, IL? Airplanes overhead all the friggin time...
No, I work Micron Technology in Boise, Idaho. I suppose that there's a direct correlation to the number of factories near airports and the number of airports built in the desert on the edge of town...land is cheap out there!;-)
Now you're reaching. I don't know a serious programmer who will let *anybody* else "fix" his/her machine. I *might* let you babysit an OS install, as long as you promise not to touch anything.
My point exactly. No serious programmer would allow that. Of course, no serious programmer would install that malware on their system to begin with, would they?
Actually, the hour delay was because of lazy people who kick their network cables out of the wall, then insist that a technician hold their hand to plug it in. It doesn't take an hour to find the problem...in fact, if you listened to the nice help desk man, he would have asked you to look for the end of the plug lying on the carpet. Instead, you wasted 15 minutes of his time explaining to him that you're a programmer who just doesn't care.
What takes an hour is that the technician has to take care of the other 20 people who can't be bothered to plug a cable back into the wall on their own.
Oh, and, of course, the tech also has to take care of real work - like fixing the programmer's machine after he installs the latest Webshots and Gator software.
Me: "It took our technican an hour to get all of the malware off of Stratjakt's computer that he downloaded from the Internet."
CTO: "Didn't he read the email that I sent out every month for the last six months telling the employees not to install non-work-related software?"
Me: "Well, I asked him about that...he said that he was a programmer and just doesn't care."
CTO: "He's fired."
Oh, and, incidentally, when your self-administering software becomes proficient enough to keep your big foot from wrapping around the network cable and yanking it out of the wall, then I'd say you really had something worthwhile. At this point, though, I have my doubts.
No, what amazes me is that this is news. The IT industry is so full of idiots and morons and MCSEs that taking basic precautions earns you a six-figure salary and news coverage. These folks didn't even have off-site backups, it was luck that they were able to resume business operations (ie: billing) so soon.
I agree, although maybe not so vehemently. For the IT managers who need a clue, the article is evidence that a sound disaster recovery plan works. Obviously, in the case of the ISP, the plan wasn't completely sound, but the other, possibly more important, point of the article is that the ISP's management recognized that their recovery plan was incomplete. Based on the lessons they learned, they made changes.
I work for a large (~20,000 employees) company, with about 10,000 employees at one site. The IT department (actually the entire company as well) has a disaster recovery plan in place. But beyond having a plan, we also have drills. As an example, we are in the flight path of the local airport (possibly not the best place in the world for a manufacturing site). What happens if a plane crashes smack in the middle of the plant? Hopefully we'll never know for sure, but the drills that we've run showed strong and weak points of the disaster plan. The strong points were emphasized, the weak points were revised and the disaster plan continues as a work in progress.
Specifics aside, and maybe this is just stating the obvious, but considering a disaster recovery plan to be a continuously evolving procedure could be one of its strongest points.
I realize that slashdot is mostly populated by high-school educated "IT people", who give a shit about logs and backups and think plugging a PC and monitor into a powerbar is "computer science". To these people, the prospect of plugging in a bunch of computers and restoring backup tapes is exhillirating and exciting. The highlight of their lives.
But, as a programmer, I just dont care.
When I was a sophomore, working on my electrical engineering degree, I worked for a small, network-centric company that employed what seemed to be an abnormal number of snooty programmers and technical writers. Maybe it wasn't so abnormal.
Me: "Hi, IT support." Stratjakt: "Hey, I know you're just a high-school educated 'IT person', but you need to get one of your cable monkeys up here and find out why I can't see the network!" Me:: "OK, but let's check a couple of things quickly before I dispatch a technician. It may save some time." Stratjakt: "Hey, I'm a programmer! I just don't care!" Me: "I understand...I realize that my mundane existance doesn't have the exhilaration and exitedness of the thrilling, edge-of-your-seat world of a computer programmer, but there are just a few simple things that we could do to resolve this problem that will be faster than you waiting for a technician." Stratjakt: "I just don't care." Me: "No problem, I'll dispatch a technican."
An hour later...
Technician: "Stratjakt is all fixed up. I plugged his network cable back into the jack."
I live in Nampa, ID. There's a hospital/recreation center two blocks west from me, business center four blocks south, expensive developments to the east, and a university (NNU) to the north by three blocks.
Well, I live in Meridian, Idaho, about 12 miles to the east. I've got DSL and I've had it for over six years. I've got friends in south Nampa (just a couple of miles west of you) who have cable (CableOne).
On the other hand, I also have friends in Boise who can't get DSL because their neighborhoods are underprovisioned (multiplexed lines) and couldn't get cable until a year or so ago because CableOne had not upgraded their infrastructure in that area from analog.
I wouldn't be convinced that CableOne doesn't think that they need more customers. I think that a more likely theory is that because of the extraordinary amount of new house construction going on in this valley that they are devoting their resources to connecting new (and expensive) developments to their digital system - from a purely economic point of view, it's cheaper and gives them a better return on their money. I'm not saying it's right (or that I'm right)...it's just a theory.
You need not have liability insurance, you only need to prove fiscal responsibility to some limit. Most people do this by having insurance that will cover at least that amount, but there are otherways (such as certifying to your state DMV/DOT that you have that much money)
Agreed, but I suspect that you'll find the number of individuals and corporations that elect the self-insurance route is a vanishingly small proportion of the population. For all intents and purposes, liability insurance is a requirement.
But surely you know that, like a lottery, insurance works because on average people pay more money into it than they receive from it. Lotteries and insurance are both gambles... except that in a lottery, you bet on good fortune. With insurance, you bet against bad fortune. In both cases, the expectancy value is less than 1, but in both cases you'll be damn glad you subscribed when your number's up.
Yes, but the key difference between insurance and the lottery is that the dangers that you purchase insurance protection for are real and have a statistically significant chance of occuring to you. The lottery ticket that you buy provides you with a statistically insignificant chance to win a pile of money.
I agree that I would be pretty darn happy to have the winning ticket or an insurance policy if either one paid off, but my chances of needing the insurance are significantly greater (by orders of magnitude) than are my chances of winning the PowerBall.
That doesn't even consider the different insurances that we are required to have by law or by contract. Get pulled over by the police without liability insurance and see what happens. Try to get a mortgage on a house without homeowner's insurance. How about getting a bank to finance a car without comprehensive and collision coverage? They require that coverage, not because the chances of needing them are greater than zero but because the chances of needing them are significantly greater than zero.
Just food for thought, the Department of Transportation says that about 20 million vehicles are involved in accidents each year and an individual driver can expect to be in one, on the average, every six years. So, if I pay my $40 per month in liability insurance on my car, in 72 months I'll have paid $2880.00. Earlier this year, my wife got hit by a car in a low speed collision. After the medical bills, repair bills and rental car bills were paid, the grand total came out to be about $8000.00. Now, our insurance didn't pay, but you can bet that the other driver was damn glad to have a liability insurance policy.
The shuttle had limited fuel so could only stay up there so long, and couldn't reach the ISS. No other shuttle was prepped for launch, and that takes a LONG time. Flying some re-entry pattern designed to minimize heat on the damaged side would have only have improved their changes slightly. They didn't have the material or capability to fix the shuttle themselves. So what would have been done??
NASA has already released information that states that they could have put Columbia into a low resource consumption mode that would have extended the mission duration to over a month, enough time to do a very quick preparation of another space shuttle to launch with a minimal crew. NASA admitted that it would be a very risky mission and the amount of time that it would have taken was on the ragged edge of Columbia's endurance margin, but it could have been done.
Also, a spacewalk could have been done - there were two EVA suits on the shuttle. Some sort of makeshift repair was possible. What we don't know (and hopefully will never HAVE to know) is how well such a repair would have worked.
There is a good article about this at Spaceflight Now. There are some very good quotes regarding a previous shuttle damage incident and about the merits of rescues and repairs.
I think this is mostly just a FUD tactic. They can talk to the media about how their MD5 hashes prove so-and-so is a big mean pirate hacker. MD5 hash certainly sounds scary, especially when the technology is described by the media as a tool used by hackers.
I think that this paragraph cuts straight to the chase of the RIAA's case at this point. They are pursuing a few high-profile cases and using them as a springboard to keep attention focused in the areas that support their position the best.
Waging a war of press releases and FUD doesn't do diddley for them in a court case, but it does keep the issue alive in the minds of the (concerned) masses. By keeping the issue alive, slanted the direction that they desire, the RIAA can use the publicity to shape public opinion in a manner that portrays them in the best light and supports their positions and theories that they have proposed.
When it comes down to it, the actual court cases will probably be anticlimactic, much like the previous cases. The dollar damages that the RIAA can claim are so irrationally high that defendants are almost guaranteed to settle early to avoid the possibility of being on the hook for a small fortune. But the real win for the RIAA is that the teeming masses will see them as a victim of a concentrated effort to "steal" music from their clients.
Actually that's not true. They only care about the sharing because it leads to what they really care about: people listening to music that they didn't pay for. If everyone who shared mp3s had bought every CD of the songs they downloaded, no one would care because they would have already paid to listen to those songs.
True, in a painfully worded way.
The problem is that most people don't own all of the CDs for the songs they download, and the RIAA doesn't like it when you try to wriggle out of their money trap. If the actual sharing was the problem, the distribution itself, then we wouldn't have radio stations playing music either, because that also lets people listen to music they didn't pay for, but it's a bit different because you don't really get a choice of what you hear.
The radio stations play the music because they pay a licensing fee to be able to play them. In other words, they have a distribution agreement with organizations representing the record labels that allows them to distribute the music over the airwaves.
But now if you go and start recording songs you hear on the radio, so you could listen to them whenever you wanted, you're getting into that grey area. Of course the RIAA doesn't really care about that because they know that radio quality is shit, so there won't be widespread radio recording anyway.
It's not a gray area at all. It's perfectly legal to record broadcasts off the airwaves. This was addressed by the Supreme Court years ago! Now, if you want to take that recording from the radio and turn around and start giving or selling copies of it, then you are probably going to be in trouble (legally speaking).
Yep, our company (www.area17.nu) is pretty much all Linux by now. Of course, the entire outfit consists of me and two other people so it might not have quite the impact you have:)
Maybe not through brute force, but you are leading by example. Sometimes it's astonishing what a grassroots revolution can accomplish!
I'm with a 2.2 million employee Telecommunications/ CABLE TV etc.. company and we are accelerating the deployment and installation of linux in the enterprise.
I'm with you! We have about 20,000 employees worldwide and, not only are we inexorably moving towards Linux on all of our workstations (as CAD/CAE software is ported), but when Micosoft came around with threats and demands that we upgrade the entire company to Windows XP because they were no longer going to license NT to us, we told 'em to pack sand. So we still use NT on desktops, but I notice that the number of NT desktops keeps shrinking.
Much of our networking, by the way, is based on Sun servers running Solaris.
Exactly, and when software uses my resources to convey evidence against me without my permission, it is forcing me to bear witness against myself. Thank you for backing up my point.
But it's not unconstitutional. The fifth amendment makes that elegantly and simply clear. And that was my point. You're also sidestepping the issue that the software in question is illegally installed on your system. You're also sidestepping the issue that since the AUP is part of the software in question, installing it and using it would seem to me to be tacit approval of it using your computer's resources to convey information to the software publisher.
Your argument seems to be along the lines of that of a thief who breaks into a house, then gets shot by the house's owner who grabbed the gun from the thief: "But your honor, he shot me with my own gun and I never gave him permission to use it!"
Furthermore, your argument would render court-ordered wiretaps inadmissable as evidence. Obviously they are perfectly admissable and perfectly constitutional, even though the tappee's own words are used against him. Again, the scope and applicability of the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination is extraordinarily well defined.
Except that it's using MY resources to do so. Not only is the software stealing from me, bandwidth, CPU, and memory, it's forcing me to incriminate myself. Guess what... that's un-constitutional
The fifth amendment of the Constitution is quite clear on what self-incrimination means:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
As you can see, the fifth amendment is not violated in this case. Incidentally, the system, as described in the article, communicates by way of AUP - a normal component of the program. How is that different from Microsoft's AUP that refuses to update stolen copies of XP? Obviously some information has to be transmitted from your system to Microsoft's servers. Would you say, then, that the Windows XP that someone has "stolen" from Microsoft is then "stealing" from that person when they attempt to do an automatic update? Would you also say that the program has illegally forced that same person to incriminate themselves? That's a leap of deduction that is stunning, even for Slashdot!
My computer should never do anything I don't want it to do. Plain and simple. If I don't want you to scan my network for illicit copies, then don't do it. I don't really care about any legal "right" software companies have to do it. I don't want them to do it; I'm their customer; they shouldn't do it unless they feel like pissing me off and losing me as a customer.
I agree that I certainly wouldn't want the software to scan around my network looking for illicit copies of stuff. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a cracked program that, when started, determines that it is cracked, then reports that fact back to the publisher, along with information that will identify where the stolen property is.
This is almost like a Lojak system - the car is stolen, then the security system reports back to the police exactly where the car is. What if you stole the car and it's parked in your garage with the door closed? Yes, I understand that this example doesn't exactly parallel that of the article, but it is similar. The Lojak system doesn't check around the house to see if there are any other stolen things there...it's just concerned about one thing - the car. Much like the software that is described in this article.
Incidentally, neither I nor the article said anything about snooping around the network looking for stuff. And in the case of the software in question, it appears, at least from the limited information available to us in the article, that if this software is reporting information back to the "home office", it would be very hard to suggest that the user is anything remotely resembling a "customer". Unless you consider the guy who steals money from the bank to be a customer.
Bingo! The software can't know without any degree of certainty whether it is patched or not. So this data is sent back for *all* installations. The software company then checks product ID numbers against those which were registered. So even legitimate copies of this software are sending their customer's details back. *That* has to be a problem.
The only flaw in your reasoning is that it's all complete supposition. You don't know how the software determines that it's cracked...you don't even know what program it is! Here's an example...Cadence software that is licensed on a per-machine basis uses a dongle. If there's no dongle, the software won't start. What if somebody were to crack the software so that it would run without a dongle (like, say Autocad cracks)? Now, if there's no dongle and the software is trying to say that it's running with a local license, then obviously something is wrong. You'd better believe that Cadence would be "concerned" about that.
That's just one example. Your reasoning runs a lot like many other posts on this thread...we have a limited amount of information about this issue...we know what the software does when faced with a situation in which it believes that it is cracked. We don't know how it determines that it is cracked. We don't know what it does with properly licensed software.
The question is whether or not cracked software ought to be able to report information about where it is...and, given the details in the article, that's really the only question that we can answer in this case.
Not so. If you remember a few years ago, a judge ruled against Blizzard using spyware in their software even though all it was doing was helping them to squash bugs and prevent cheating.
So the transmission of even benign data without permission by the user is against the law.
I would agree with you, except that the story seems explicit in stating that the information that is transmitted is coming only from systems that are running cracked versions of the software. It strikes me that this is a sort of software "self-defense" mode. Somebody has stolen the software so it seems reasonable that the owner of the software ought to be able to cause it to call home and report the fact.
I think that in the case of Starcraft (it was Starcraft, right?), every copy of the software could effectively "phone home" and send information without the licensee being aware that it was happening. Wouldn't you agree that an individual using a stolen piece of software has substantially fewer rights regarding the function of that software than an individual who had properly licensed it?
But doesn't this imply owners of the legal software are also being spied upon?
Only to the degree that the software checks to see if it is not cracked. Consider the software that I use at work: Cadence's design tools require a license manager in a networked environment. That means that whenever I start up, say, SpecctraQuest, the software pops out on the network, verifies that a license server is running, then queries that server to make sure that there is a license available.
Now, if a license isn't available, it just says that it can't start. Obviously that's different behavior in this case. Nonetheless, our computers and network is open to Cadence's "spying" to make sure that the software is licensed.
To directly answer your question, the answer is no, there is no such implication, at least as the submitter of the article states it. All we know from the story submission is that cracked software initiates the spying. He doesn't say what happens if it's not cracked.
I'd say that it's certainly proper for the software publisher to do some sort of check to be sure that the software is properly licensed. What they do beyond that, though, is probably a matter best attended to by their legal staff.
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This is an argument that I've had with a number of people (and I'm sure I'm not alone). Even with the number of people who are no longer seeking work, I believe that the unemployment rate is still quite low. If you turn the numbers around, consider that even with a 10% unemployment rate, that means that 90% of the people are working. It's pure speculation, but I wonder just how many people who have given up have done so because they just won't work in a low-paying job? I'm lucky - I avoided my company's layoff sweep, but if I hadn't, you can bet that I would have taken just about any job if it meant the difference between paying the bills or going bankrupt.
Now I'll grant that perhaps a number of people may be underemployed, but the point is that they are working - they are making money and at least able to pay the bills. Yes, times are tough right now, but not nearly as tough as they were in the past. I remember the horrible recession of the Nixon era. Inflation was rampant, unemployment was rampant and the government stepped in with draconian wage and price controls. What's happening now is not even close to that bad. I remember the early '80s when interest rates were shockingly high...if you had money, you could make money, but if you needed money, you were screwed!
I think that part of the problem with negativism about the economy is that an awful lot of people are comparing today with the economy of five years ago. That was an unsustainable, irresponsible period of growth that had no foundation to stand on. It simply had to collapse. The whole "new economy" was a sham. I don't mean Enron...companies that simply made stuff up (although they certainly carry their fair share of blame). I mean the whole dot-com gang and their ilk. A lot of money moved around, a lot of people had great, high paying jobs, but in the end, it all had to fall apart because there was no profitable production to keep the money flowing.
So right now, as the economy corrects itself, a lot of people are working to just get by and pay the bills. That's too bad...it really is, but many of them are the same people who went on the crazy ride of the 90's without stopping to think about just how that particular economic boom was supported. I don't say that anybody deserves what they got...I'm just saying that everyone is paying for the unsupportable growth of the economy during the 90's.
-h-
At this point, I get cynical about any company that uses the word...it makes me wonder what they're hiding, even if they have nothing to hide.
-h-
That's not capitalism. It's dirty business. And what Cringely calls "sharp business" isn't sharp business, it's sharp dealing. Sharp dealing, the way my grandfather used to use the term...as in, "He's a sharp dealer." It's not a nice thing to say about somebody.
Capitalism means that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door (grossly simplified, I know). It does not mean that it's open season on your competitors to do whatever you can to get them out of the market. What Cringely described in the first half of his article may not have been legal, but don't confuse it with capitalism. It was dirty business, nothing more, nothing less.
And usually I hold what Cringely says at arm's length, but his second to the last paragraph, the one about innovation is, at least to me, right on the mark. I almost can't stand the word anymore.
-h-
No, I work Micron Technology in Boise, Idaho. I suppose that there's a direct correlation to the number of factories near airports and the number of airports built in the desert on the edge of town...land is cheap out there!
My point exactly. No serious programmer would allow that. Of course, no serious programmer would install that malware on their system to begin with, would they?
-h-
What takes an hour is that the technician has to take care of the other 20 people who can't be bothered to plug a cable back into the wall on their own.
Oh, and, of course, the tech also has to take care of real work - like fixing the programmer's machine after he installs the latest Webshots and Gator software.
Me: "It took our technican an hour to get all of the malware off of Stratjakt's computer that he downloaded from the Internet."
CTO: "Didn't he read the email that I sent out every month for the last six months telling the employees not to install non-work-related software?"
Me: "Well, I asked him about that...he said that he was a programmer and just doesn't care."
CTO: "He's fired."
Oh, and, incidentally, when your self-administering software becomes proficient enough to keep your big foot from wrapping around the network cable and yanking it out of the wall, then I'd say you really had something worthwhile. At this point, though, I have my doubts.
I agree, although maybe not so vehemently. For the IT managers who need a clue, the article is evidence that a sound disaster recovery plan works. Obviously, in the case of the ISP, the plan wasn't completely sound, but the other, possibly more important, point of the article is that the ISP's management recognized that their recovery plan was incomplete. Based on the lessons they learned, they made changes.
I work for a large (~20,000 employees) company, with about 10,000 employees at one site. The IT department (actually the entire company as well) has a disaster recovery plan in place. But beyond having a plan, we also have drills. As an example, we are in the flight path of the local airport (possibly not the best place in the world for a manufacturing site). What happens if a plane crashes smack in the middle of the plant? Hopefully we'll never know for sure, but the drills that we've run showed strong and weak points of the disaster plan. The strong points were emphasized, the weak points were revised and the disaster plan continues as a work in progress.
Specifics aside, and maybe this is just stating the obvious, but considering a disaster recovery plan to be a continuously evolving procedure could be one of its strongest points.
-h-
But, as a programmer, I just dont care.
When I was a sophomore, working on my electrical engineering degree, I worked for a small, network-centric company that employed what seemed to be an abnormal number of snooty programmers and technical writers. Maybe it wasn't so abnormal.
Me: "Hi, IT support."
Stratjakt: "Hey, I know you're just a high-school educated 'IT person', but you need to get one of your cable monkeys up here and find out why I can't see the network!"
Me:: "OK, but let's check a couple of things quickly before I dispatch a technician. It may save some time."
Stratjakt: "Hey, I'm a programmer! I just don't care!"
Me: "I understand...I realize that my mundane existance doesn't have the exhilaration and exitedness of the thrilling, edge-of-your-seat world of a computer programmer, but there are just a few simple things that we could do to resolve this problem that will be faster than you waiting for a technician."
Stratjakt: "I just don't care."
Me: "No problem, I'll dispatch a technican."
An hour later...
Technician: "Stratjakt is all fixed up. I plugged his network cable back into the jack."
Well, I live in Meridian, Idaho, about 12 miles to the east. I've got DSL and I've had it for over six years. I've got friends in south Nampa (just a couple of miles west of you) who have cable (CableOne).
On the other hand, I also have friends in Boise who can't get DSL because their neighborhoods are underprovisioned (multiplexed lines) and couldn't get cable until a year or so ago because CableOne had not upgraded their infrastructure in that area from analog.
I wouldn't be convinced that CableOne doesn't think that they need more customers. I think that a more likely theory is that because of the extraordinary amount of new house construction going on in this valley that they are devoting their resources to connecting new (and expensive) developments to their digital system - from a purely economic point of view, it's cheaper and gives them a better return on their money. I'm not saying it's right (or that I'm right)...it's just a theory.
-h-
Agreed, but I suspect that you'll find the number of individuals and corporations that elect the self-insurance route is a vanishingly small proportion of the population. For all intents and purposes, liability insurance is a requirement.
-h-
Yes, but the key difference between insurance and the lottery is that the dangers that you purchase insurance protection for are real and have a statistically significant chance of occuring to you. The lottery ticket that you buy provides you with a statistically insignificant chance to win a pile of money.
I agree that I would be pretty darn happy to have the winning ticket or an insurance policy if either one paid off, but my chances of needing the insurance are significantly greater (by orders of magnitude) than are my chances of winning the PowerBall.
That doesn't even consider the different insurances that we are required to have by law or by contract. Get pulled over by the police without liability insurance and see what happens. Try to get a mortgage on a house without homeowner's insurance. How about getting a bank to finance a car without comprehensive and collision coverage? They require that coverage, not because the chances of needing them are greater than zero but because the chances of needing them are significantly greater than zero.
Just food for thought, the Department of Transportation says that about 20 million vehicles are involved in accidents each year and an individual driver can expect to be in one, on the average, every six years. So, if I pay my $40 per month in liability insurance on my car, in 72 months I'll have paid $2880.00. Earlier this year, my wife got hit by a car in a low speed collision. After the medical bills, repair bills and rental car bills were paid, the grand total came out to be about $8000.00. Now, our insurance didn't pay, but you can bet that the other driver was damn glad to have a liability insurance policy.
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NASA has already released information that states that they could have put Columbia into a low resource consumption mode that would have extended the mission duration to over a month, enough time to do a very quick preparation of another space shuttle to launch with a minimal crew. NASA admitted that it would be a very risky mission and the amount of time that it would have taken was on the ragged edge of Columbia's endurance margin, but it could have been done.
Also, a spacewalk could have been done - there were two EVA suits on the shuttle. Some sort of makeshift repair was possible. What we don't know (and hopefully will never HAVE to know) is how well such a repair would have worked.
There is a good article about this at Spaceflight Now. There are some very good quotes regarding a previous shuttle damage incident and about the merits of rescues and repairs.
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Yes, it's the same Homer Hickam.
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Cui bono (or, as my local radio station says, "Follow the money")
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I think that this paragraph cuts straight to the chase of the RIAA's case at this point. They are pursuing a few high-profile cases and using them as a springboard to keep attention focused in the areas that support their position the best.
Waging a war of press releases and FUD doesn't do diddley for them in a court case, but it does keep the issue alive in the minds of the (concerned) masses. By keeping the issue alive, slanted the direction that they desire, the RIAA can use the publicity to shape public opinion in a manner that portrays them in the best light and supports their positions and theories that they have proposed.
When it comes down to it, the actual court cases will probably be anticlimactic, much like the previous cases. The dollar damages that the RIAA can claim are so irrationally high that defendants are almost guaranteed to settle early to avoid the possibility of being on the hook for a small fortune. But the real win for the RIAA is that the teeming masses will see them as a victim of a concentrated effort to "steal" music from their clients.
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True, in a painfully worded way.
The problem is that most people don't own all of the CDs for the songs they download, and the RIAA doesn't like it when you try to wriggle out of their money trap. If the actual sharing was the problem, the distribution itself, then we wouldn't have radio stations playing music either, because that also lets people listen to music they didn't pay for, but it's a bit different because you don't really get a choice of what you hear.
The radio stations play the music because they pay a licensing fee to be able to play them. In other words, they have a distribution agreement with organizations representing the record labels that allows them to distribute the music over the airwaves.
But now if you go and start recording songs you hear on the radio, so you could listen to them whenever you wanted, you're getting into that grey area. Of course the RIAA doesn't really care about that because they know that radio quality is shit, so there won't be widespread radio recording anyway.
It's not a gray area at all. It's perfectly legal to record broadcasts off the airwaves. This was addressed by the Supreme Court years ago! Now, if you want to take that recording from the radio and turn around and start giving or selling copies of it, then you are probably going to be in trouble (legally speaking).
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Maybe not through brute force, but you are leading by example. Sometimes it's astonishing what a grassroots revolution can accomplish!
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I'm with you! We have about 20,000 employees worldwide and, not only are we inexorably moving towards Linux on all of our workstations (as CAD/CAE software is ported), but when Micosoft came around with threats and demands that we upgrade the entire company to Windows XP because they were no longer going to license NT to us, we told 'em to pack sand. So we still use NT on desktops, but I notice that the number of NT desktops keeps shrinking.
Much of our networking, by the way, is based on Sun servers running Solaris.
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Thank you for backing up my point.
But it's not unconstitutional. The fifth amendment makes that elegantly and simply clear. And that was my point. You're also sidestepping the issue that the software in question is illegally installed on your system. You're also sidestepping the issue that since the AUP is part of the software in question, installing it and using it would seem to me to be tacit approval of it using your computer's resources to convey information to the software publisher.
Your argument seems to be along the lines of that of a thief who breaks into a house, then gets shot by the house's owner who grabbed the gun from the thief: "But your honor, he shot me with my own gun and I never gave him permission to use it!"
Furthermore, your argument would render court-ordered wiretaps inadmissable as evidence. Obviously they are perfectly admissable and perfectly constitutional, even though the tappee's own words are used against him. Again, the scope and applicability of the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination is extraordinarily well defined.
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The fifth amendment of the Constitution is quite clear on what self-incrimination means:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
As you can see, the fifth amendment is not violated in this case. Incidentally, the system, as described in the article, communicates by way of AUP - a normal component of the program. How is that different from Microsoft's AUP that refuses to update stolen copies of XP? Obviously some information has to be transmitted from your system to Microsoft's servers. Would you say, then, that the Windows XP that someone has "stolen" from Microsoft is then "stealing" from that person when they attempt to do an automatic update? Would you also say that the program has illegally forced that same person to incriminate themselves? That's a leap of deduction that is stunning, even for Slashdot!
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I agree that I certainly wouldn't want the software to scan around my network looking for illicit copies of stuff. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a cracked program that, when started, determines that it is cracked, then reports that fact back to the publisher, along with information that will identify where the stolen property is.
This is almost like a Lojak system - the car is stolen, then the security system reports back to the police exactly where the car is. What if you stole the car and it's parked in your garage with the door closed? Yes, I understand that this example doesn't exactly parallel that of the article, but it is similar. The Lojak system doesn't check around the house to see if there are any other stolen things there...it's just concerned about one thing - the car. Much like the software that is described in this article.
Incidentally, neither I nor the article said anything about snooping around the network looking for stuff. And in the case of the software in question, it appears, at least from the limited information available to us in the article, that if this software is reporting information back to the "home office", it would be very hard to suggest that the user is anything remotely resembling a "customer". Unless you consider the guy who steals money from the bank to be a customer.
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The only flaw in your reasoning is that it's all complete supposition. You don't know how the software determines that it's cracked...you don't even know what program it is! Here's an example...Cadence software that is licensed on a per-machine basis uses a dongle. If there's no dongle, the software won't start. What if somebody were to crack the software so that it would run without a dongle (like, say Autocad cracks)? Now, if there's no dongle and the software is trying to say that it's running with a local license, then obviously something is wrong. You'd better believe that Cadence would be "concerned" about that.
That's just one example. Your reasoning runs a lot like many other posts on this thread...we have a limited amount of information about this issue...we know what the software does when faced with a situation in which it believes that it is cracked. We don't know how it determines that it is cracked. We don't know what it does with properly licensed software.
The question is whether or not cracked software ought to be able to report information about where it is...and, given the details in the article, that's really the only question that we can answer in this case.
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So the transmission of even benign data without permission by the user is against the law.
I would agree with you, except that the story seems explicit in stating that the information that is transmitted is coming only from systems that are running cracked versions of the software. It strikes me that this is a sort of software "self-defense" mode. Somebody has stolen the software so it seems reasonable that the owner of the software ought to be able to cause it to call home and report the fact.
I think that in the case of Starcraft (it was Starcraft, right?), every copy of the software could effectively "phone home" and send information without the licensee being aware that it was happening. Wouldn't you agree that an individual using a stolen piece of software has substantially fewer rights regarding the function of that software than an individual who had properly licensed it?
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Only to the degree that the software checks to see if it is not cracked. Consider the software that I use at work: Cadence's design tools require a license manager in a networked environment. That means that whenever I start up, say, SpecctraQuest, the software pops out on the network, verifies that a license server is running, then queries that server to make sure that there is a license available.
Now, if a license isn't available, it just says that it can't start. Obviously that's different behavior in this case. Nonetheless, our computers and network is open to Cadence's "spying" to make sure that the software is licensed.
To directly answer your question, the answer is no, there is no such implication, at least as the submitter of the article states it. All we know from the story submission is that cracked software initiates the spying. He doesn't say what happens if it's not cracked.
I'd say that it's certainly proper for the software publisher to do some sort of check to be sure that the software is properly licensed. What they do beyond that, though, is probably a matter best attended to by their legal staff.
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It should have been very nearly-identical. Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive operation.
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