What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?
Well, for a start, MS and Apple are likely to implement the inventions themselves, as well as licensing them to others. That's much, much more important than it may seem at first - by implementing them, it quickly becomes obvious that the patent exists. If you patent something and sit on it, then someone else has the same idea, it's a lot less likely that they'll spot the patent, if they believe they're the first to have the idea. That allows for much greater scope for surprise litigation.
Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it.
I agree, up to a point. They do have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, but they also have equal opportunity to do a lot of harm. Until such time as they show their hand one way or the other, you'll have to forgive me for being suspicious of them.
It's important to have alternative hypotheses, among other reasons, in order to be able to determine when you got a null result. Until the theoreticians have done their homework and provided a reasonable and plausible alternative hypothesis, perhaps we shouldn't be investing millions of dollars (euros) in these kinds of experiments.
That's simply not true. Right now, all our understanding of how the universe works points towards the existence of gravity waves. If we fail to detect them, then one of two things is true:
1) The equipment was wrong 2) The theory was wrong
Until such time as it looks like 2) is the case, there's no basis for exploring alternative hypotheses, especially given that so far, we have no reason to doubt the current one and every reason to believe that it's either valid, or very nearly so.
As for needing an alternative to be able to recognise a null value, that's not the case either. The current theory makes a prediction. If we don't make an observation that matches prediction within expected tolerance and we can find nothing wrong with the equipment, then the theory is most likely wrong. At that point, you can bet your life that people will be scrabbling to work out how, and what needs to be done to correct (or replace) it.
Think of it this way - what if the theory is correct, and there simply *isn't* any "reasonable and plausible alternative hypothesis" (perhaps because we can't think of any, perhaps because there simply aren't any). Should we *never* attempt to confirm it?
Well, if it's *ethical* hacking you're talking about, the offline analogue wouldn't be bank robbing, it would be noticing that someone's front door looks a bit flimsy, managing to easily open it without doing any damage, then letting the owner know, perhaps fixing the problem in the process.
If you break into a computer system, copy/steal/mess around with stuff, then tell the maintainer, it's hardly ethical, is it?
That's not to say that it's sensible, just that done right, it's absolutely nothing like bank robbery or mugging.
Not only Quicktime - if you install iTunes, it installs an iPodHelper service too, set to start up automatically. I would understand if it asked ("Do you have an iPod? No - ok, I won't install the service, just go to Tools -> Options ->... if you ever buy one; they're great!"), but it doesn't. There's a word for software that silently installs components that take up resources even when the main program isn' running...
1) If any of the media you listed ran an offensive ad, they'd be fined or similarly chastised by the appropriate regulatory body. No such body exists for the web, that I'm aware of.
2) In each of those media, the ads are submitted for approval to a human, and a human manually puts them in place (by running the tape/CD, dropping the ad in place in Quark, etc). On the web, it's entirely possible for a person to approve a third party ad serving service, then for that service to pull a fast one and show ads that are not of the agreed type.
In this case, the ad service only served up the offending ads to us poor schmucks that aren't in the US. That way, the US-based approvers, if they checked at all, would never see them anyway.
your post implies that there is an alternative to Capitalism that is hand in hand with positive morality
No it doesn't. All his post says is that capitalists are not necessarily moral. He says nothing about the existence of capitalists that *are* moral, or of other systems that are moral (or for that matter, other systems that are less moral).
Actually, I'd like to see a few sue MySpace, and lose big time - I mean the judge handing out an absolute arse-kicking to the plaintiffs, utterly shredding their cases, pointing out in no uncertain terms exactly what they've done wrong, what they should have done, and to never even consider suing on similar grounds again.
With a little luck, it might make a few people think twice and actually take some personal responsibility.
Because of this, iTunes decided that she had her library on more than one computer.
This is the bit I don't get - her music was in "My Music". This (amongst other folders) was backed up to a server, then to an external hard drive, then taken home.
How did iTunes know about any of this? iTunes will just see the data you've pointed it at - "My Music". It won't know about the server, the external drive or even the trip home unless you try to run a copy of iTunes against one or more of those stores.
I'm missing something (not least of which is why she was taking backups of "the company server" home on USB hdds); what is it?
That's all very well, but there's an obvious problem - a lot of the people you grab for it are going to be citizens of your own country. Depending on exactly what your methods and processes are, some proportion of them are going to be innocent, and deserve just as much protection from the state as do the innocent suspect of "normal" crimes.
IANAL, etc, but wouldn't it be illegal for the two 17 year olds to be screwing in the first place? I don't know about the US, but here in the UK I'm fairly certain that "below the age of consent" is below the age of consent - it doesn't matter how old the bloke is, although I'd imagine that a 30 year old screwing a 13 year old would be dealt with more harshly than another 13 year old would.
I seem to recall cases in which relatively young kids ( 16 years old) were required to sign on to the sex offenders register.
I've seen many times on the news that sex offenders(usually child molesters) are ordered to give up their porn, in which case I would assume they would be prohibited from it for a certain period of time as well.
Well, assuming in the case of a child molester that it was child porn, presumably the period of time would be "forever"...
...which is why we use an IDE (Eclipse) to write the code in, and ant (via the built-in interface) to actually build and deploy our code.
We get all the nice features of a proper code-aware editing environment (real-time error flagging, refactoring support, code structure browsing, etc), with the power and control of ant.
Don't get me wrong, I used to use vi and make exclusively; I just have no desire to go back.
As for being Windows-only... I think that shows how short-sited these people are. Linux users are quite a bit more likely to embrace change than Windows users.
You *are* kidding, right? In my experience (both personal and based on comments here) Linux users tend to be the least flexible, most opposed to change people I've ever met. That's not to say that they *all* are, of course, but read any article here about KDE, Gnome, xgl, new HCI ideas, etc and you'll see a whole slew of comments deriding it, with a lot of them expousing the innate superiority of the commenter's chosen preference (be it WindowMaker, the CLI, vi & make rather than an IDE, C rather than a higher level language, etc).
Yes, you also get a lot of comments arguing against them, but if anything that merely implies that as a whole, Linux users are neither more nor less likely to embrace change.
Hell, a lot of the die-hard Linux users *won't* embrace change - lots of them got their computing start on Unix boxes. Not all Linux users have migrated away from Windows in disgust; a lot (myself included) got our start on OSes other than Windows.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK verbal contracts are binding; the only trouble you may have is in proving that one exists. Similarly, if I phoned up a supplier to cancel my contract with them, I would damn well expect them to do so.
If for some reason that failed, then of course my next step would be to write to them (as a paper trail is hard to deny), but I personally would consider that to be an escalation, not a first step. The exception would be if the contract specifically stated that it needed to be cancelled in writing; failing that, I'd definitely 'phone first.
That's nothing. I live in the UK, and briefly considered signing up with Bulldog for ADSL service, as I can get a discount, and wanted to see what service they offer in my area.
To do so, you have to enter your 'phone number in their "availability checker" - this is extremely common, as even now not all areas have ADSL coverage, and service levels differ from exchange to exchange, on how far you are from the exchange, etc. So I plugged my number in, found that it wasn't any better than what I already had (and certainly not better by enough to consider switching to Bulldog, who do not have a good customer service reputation), so I left it at that.
A week or two later, I get cold-called by a Bulldog sales rep, asking why I'd not followed through, and doing his best to persuade me to sign up. Just because I'd used their "is Bulldog ADSL available in your area?" CGI.
Ok, so I got rid of him pretty quickly and they didn't try it again, but still.
So if the EFF is seen at worst as "pirates or piracy sympathies", what on earth makes you think the political establishment will take the Pirate Party seriously? At *best* they'll be viewed as being worse than the EFF.
Thank you, you pretty-much illustrated what I meant.
What part of "looking at" your gf did you interpret to include "guys whissling at her, making inappropriate comments and suggestions and just.. acting overly annoying as if she's just a piece of meat you'd want to fuck instantly... Or being raped for that matter."? Note that I didn't even actually say anything about recording her, although that was an omission on my part, given the context.
There will always be arseholes who take things too far. That goes both for the "lewd comments" crowd, and the "don't you dare look at my girl!" crowd. Seriously, I've seen people pick fights over passing glances; it's that that I don't understand.
How about a Firefox plugin that e-mails the Firefox foundation everytime you start Firefox? Or an ActiveX control in IE that does the same? I think it would send a clear message that these things are important to consumers and ought to be a priority for updates.
And *I* think it would very quickly get filtered to/dev/null, probably at the email server.
Seriously, there are ways to get your point across; email bombing people isn't one of them.
Why don't you want people looking at your girlfriend? Do you trust her so little (or treat her so badly) that you think she'll run off with the first person to show her some attention? Or do you think that someone else looking at her will somehow spoil her for you? Or does she embarrass you somehow?
Seriously, this whole overblown macho "were you lookin' at my wumman?" thing is reasonably common, but I really don't understand it.
The day I can run all the software I need under Linux is the day I switch back. Until then, I have no compelling reason to use Linux and several to use Windows.
I guess that means I fail your sentience test. Feel free to dismiss this comment as scripted output, if it helps save your fragile worldview.
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I'm using FF1.5.0.4 under Windows (XP Pro), and it worked jsut fine for me.
Whatever's going on, I doubt it's a FF issue.
What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?
Well, for a start, MS and Apple are likely to implement the inventions themselves, as well as licensing them to others. That's much, much more important than it may seem at first - by implementing them, it quickly becomes obvious that the patent exists. If you patent something and sit on it, then someone else has the same idea, it's a lot less likely that they'll spot the patent, if they believe they're the first to have the idea. That allows for much greater scope for surprise litigation.
Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it.
I agree, up to a point. They do have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, but they also have equal opportunity to do a lot of harm. Until such time as they show their hand one way or the other, you'll have to forgive me for being suspicious of them.
no one should be barred from having access to their governments documents because they can't afford some software
I agree, but likewise no-one should be barred because they can't afford a computer.
It's important to have alternative hypotheses, among other reasons, in order to be able to determine when you got a null result. Until the theoreticians have done their homework and provided a reasonable and plausible alternative hypothesis, perhaps we shouldn't be investing millions of dollars (euros) in these kinds of experiments.
That's simply not true. Right now, all our understanding of how the universe works points towards the existence of gravity waves. If we fail to detect them, then one of two things is true:
1) The equipment was wrong
2) The theory was wrong
Until such time as it looks like 2) is the case, there's no basis for exploring alternative hypotheses, especially given that so far, we have no reason to doubt the current one and every reason to believe that it's either valid, or very nearly so.
As for needing an alternative to be able to recognise a null value, that's not the case either. The current theory makes a prediction. If we don't make an observation that matches prediction within expected tolerance and we can find nothing wrong with the equipment, then the theory is most likely wrong. At that point, you can bet your life that people will be scrabbling to work out how, and what needs to be done to correct (or replace) it.
Think of it this way - what if the theory is correct, and there simply *isn't* any "reasonable and plausible alternative hypothesis" (perhaps because we can't think of any, perhaps because there simply aren't any). Should we *never* attempt to confirm it?
Well, if it's *ethical* hacking you're talking about, the offline analogue wouldn't be bank robbing, it would be noticing that someone's front door looks a bit flimsy, managing to easily open it without doing any damage, then letting the owner know, perhaps fixing the problem in the process.
If you break into a computer system, copy/steal/mess around with stuff, then tell the maintainer, it's hardly ethical, is it?
That's not to say that it's sensible, just that done right, it's absolutely nothing like bank robbery or mugging.
Not only Quicktime - if you install iTunes, it installs an iPodHelper service too, set to start up automatically. I would understand if it asked ("Do you have an iPod? No - ok, I won't install the service, just go to Tools -> Options -> ... if you ever buy one; they're great!"), but it doesn't. There's a word for software that silently installs components that take up resources even when the main program isn' running...
One word: NORAID.
What's the view like from that horse of yours?
Well, there are two things:
1) If any of the media you listed ran an offensive ad, they'd be fined or similarly chastised by the appropriate regulatory body. No such body exists for the web, that I'm aware of.
2) In each of those media, the ads are submitted for approval to a human, and a human manually puts them in place (by running the tape/CD, dropping the ad in place in Quark, etc). On the web, it's entirely possible for a person to approve a third party ad serving service, then for that service to pull a fast one and show ads that are not of the agreed type.
In this case, the ad service only served up the offending ads to us poor schmucks that aren't in the US. That way, the US-based approvers, if they checked at all, would never see them anyway.
your post implies that there is an alternative to Capitalism that is hand in hand with positive morality
No it doesn't. All his post says is that capitalists are not necessarily moral. He says nothing about the existence of capitalists that *are* moral, or of other systems that are moral (or for that matter, other systems that are less moral).
Actually, I'd like to see a few sue MySpace, and lose big time - I mean the judge handing out an absolute arse-kicking to the plaintiffs, utterly shredding their cases, pointing out in no uncertain terms exactly what they've done wrong, what they should have done, and to never even consider suing on similar grounds again.
With a little luck, it might make a few people think twice and actually take some personal responsibility.
Because of this, iTunes decided that she had her library on more than one computer.
This is the bit I don't get - her music was in "My Music". This (amongst other folders) was backed up to a server, then to an external hard drive, then taken home.
How did iTunes know about any of this? iTunes will just see the data you've pointed it at - "My Music". It won't know about the server, the external drive or even the trip home unless you try to run a copy of iTunes against one or more of those stores.
I'm missing something (not least of which is why she was taking backups of "the company server" home on USB hdds); what is it?
That is what sets America apart from the rest of the world.
It doesn't even set America apart from the whole of the third world, let alone the other developed nations.
Your fervour for justice is commendable, but your patriotism is misplaced; we're not all police-state dwelling savages, y'know.
That's all very well, but there's an obvious problem - a lot of the people you grab for it are going to be citizens of your own country. Depending on exactly what your methods and processes are, some proportion of them are going to be innocent, and deserve just as much protection from the state as do the innocent suspect of "normal" crimes.
IANAL, etc, but wouldn't it be illegal for the two 17 year olds to be screwing in the first place? I don't know about the US, but here in the UK I'm fairly certain that "below the age of consent" is below the age of consent - it doesn't matter how old the bloke is, although I'd imagine that a 30 year old screwing a 13 year old would be dealt with more harshly than another 13 year old would.
I seem to recall cases in which relatively young kids ( 16 years old) were required to sign on to the sex offenders register.
I've seen many times on the news that sex offenders(usually child molesters) are ordered to give up their porn, in which case I would assume they would be prohibited from it for a certain period of time as well.
Well, assuming in the case of a child molester that it was child porn, presumably the period of time would be "forever"...
...which is why we use an IDE (Eclipse) to write the code in, and ant (via the built-in interface) to actually build and deploy our code.
We get all the nice features of a proper code-aware editing environment (real-time error flagging, refactoring support, code structure browsing, etc), with the power and control of ant.
Don't get me wrong, I used to use vi and make exclusively; I just have no desire to go back.
As for being Windows-only... I think that shows how short-sited these people are. Linux users are quite a bit more likely to embrace change than Windows users.
You *are* kidding, right? In my experience (both personal and based on comments here) Linux users tend to be the least flexible, most opposed to change people I've ever met. That's not to say that they *all* are, of course, but read any article here about KDE, Gnome, xgl, new HCI ideas, etc and you'll see a whole slew of comments deriding it, with a lot of them expousing the innate superiority of the commenter's chosen preference (be it WindowMaker, the CLI, vi & make rather than an IDE, C rather than a higher level language, etc).
Yes, you also get a lot of comments arguing against them, but if anything that merely implies that as a whole, Linux users are neither more nor less likely to embrace change.
Hell, a lot of the die-hard Linux users *won't* embrace change - lots of them got their computing start on Unix boxes. Not all Linux users have migrated away from Windows in disgust; a lot (myself included) got our start on OSes other than Windows.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK verbal contracts are binding; the only trouble you may have is in proving that one exists. Similarly, if I phoned up a supplier to cancel my contract with them, I would damn well expect them to do so.
If for some reason that failed, then of course my next step would be to write to them (as a paper trail is hard to deny), but I personally would consider that to be an escalation, not a first step. The exception would be if the contract specifically stated that it needed to be cancelled in writing; failing that, I'd definitely 'phone first.
That's nothing. I live in the UK, and briefly considered signing up with Bulldog for ADSL service, as I can get a discount, and wanted to see what service they offer in my area.
To do so, you have to enter your 'phone number in their "availability checker" - this is extremely common, as even now not all areas have ADSL coverage, and service levels differ from exchange to exchange, on how far you are from the exchange, etc. So I plugged my number in, found that it wasn't any better than what I already had (and certainly not better by enough to consider switching to Bulldog, who do not have a good customer service reputation), so I left it at that.
A week or two later, I get cold-called by a Bulldog sales rep, asking why I'd not followed through, and doing his best to persuade me to sign up. Just because I'd used their "is Bulldog ADSL available in your area?" CGI.
Ok, so I got rid of him pretty quickly and they didn't try it again, but still.
So if the EFF is seen at worst as "pirates or piracy sympathies", what on earth makes you think the political establishment will take the Pirate Party seriously? At *best* they'll be viewed as being worse than the EFF.
Thank you, you pretty-much illustrated what I meant.
What part of "looking at" your gf did you interpret to include "guys whissling at her, making inappropriate comments and suggestions and just.. acting overly annoying as if she's just a piece of meat you'd want to fuck instantly... Or being raped for that matter."? Note that I didn't even actually say anything about recording her, although that was an omission on my part, given the context.
There will always be arseholes who take things too far. That goes both for the "lewd comments" crowd, and the "don't you dare look at my girl!" crowd. Seriously, I've seen people pick fights over passing glances; it's that that I don't understand.
How about a Firefox plugin that e-mails the Firefox foundation everytime you start Firefox? Or an ActiveX control in IE that does the same? I think it would send a clear message that these things are important to consumers and ought to be a priority for updates.
/dev/null, probably at the email server.
And *I* think it would very quickly get filtered to
Seriously, there are ways to get your point across; email bombing people isn't one of them.
Why don't you want people looking at your girlfriend? Do you trust her so little (or treat her so badly) that you think she'll run off with the first person to show her some attention? Or do you think that someone else looking at her will somehow spoil her for you? Or does she embarrass you somehow?
Seriously, this whole overblown macho "were you lookin' at my wumman?" thing is reasonably common, but I really don't understand it.
The day I can run all the software I need under Linux is the day I switch back. Until then, I have no compelling reason to use Linux and several to use Windows.
I guess that means I fail your sentience test. Feel free to dismiss this comment as scripted output, if it helps save your fragile worldview.
Where do you get the 10% figure for Apple's market share?