So if sun had gone bankrupt rather than been bought, and the employees who got laid off got laid off along with *everyone else* doing anything open source @ sun.. would that have been a better outcome? Its time to get out of the 60s and realize that NOTHING is contributed by companies to Linux or any other open source project "because its the right thing to do", it is either done because they HAVE to do it due to licensing issues, or because they feel that long term it is a cost neutral decision, or will net them a profit in some way down the road (even if said profit is based on the idea that making Linux more usable will sell more copies of their hardware/software that lives on top of Linux)
If you want good for society, you should be looking to foundations, and government to fund it, not public companies who have to be accountable to shareholders.. who generally frown on expenses that are not either required by law, or aimed at generating a profit (sadly in an ever and ever shorter time frame these days but thats another article)
A company choosing to stay in business rather than paying people to do stuff that is of little to no benefit in the short or long term (accessibility implies desktop, which is not making ANYONE money in Linux landscape.. try justifying that expense to shareholders in this economy, go ahead we will wait)
Argue all you want that someone should pickup the torch, but implying that its somehow "good for society" that a company that is buying another company as they crash toward bankruptcy court, should somehow "keep doing" things that clearly contributed to its slide into bankruptcy.. is the ultimate 60s era naivety, that the open source community in general seems to be afflicted with..
I think that people calling their slashdot reading geek friend to ask/tell about the "tech" ad they just saw on the superbowl is not saying much about the success or failure of the commercial.. it says far more about you and your friends than about the commercial
Yah because disclosure in January 2010 (June 2009 privately - January 2010 publicly) is gonna totally screw up turnaround time avg..Why do people fail to comprehend and read the freaking summary much less the articles?
Reading the summary, nevermind the article would have kept both of you and the poster above you from posting sillyness..
The bug exists in a bit of 17 year old code, but was discovered last month... so not even remotely "old"
Ehh thats whats wrong with this entire debate.. OMG is spreading FUD and trying to keep the good team down... When in actual point of fact, the linux side of this has ALWAYS used FUD, and played the classic role of "victim" in all of these arguments..
There is just one major problem with this view of the world of OS monopolies, its simply and utterly false.. If a shop had chosen linux 10 years ago, they would be JUST as locked in and forced to continue to use Linux as they are "forced" to continue to use MS products..
In short the lock in is because of scale, difficulty of switching from A to B for what is most likely negligible gain (or a net cost.. free software is most definitely NOT free in the real world of help desks, installs, and support) and other factors that are completely unrelated to WHICH platform your company is currently using.
IE linux community members tend to cry foul in the same way that opera software does.. which results in the sane folks of the world dismissing them as lunatic fringe, rather than trying to compete on merits, they try to play victim.. If the linux community would actually come together and stop trying to make a vanity distro every 60 secs, standardize a desktop, and actually pay some attention to the fact that regardless of which choice is the dominant one at the time, its the role of the "alternate' choice to work with the dominate choice.. not the other way around (in any and all business not just operating systems) then perhaps we wouldn't be sitting her crying about MS, and instead would be choosing the right tool for the job. Not trying to treat everything as a political game..
Yes but they are not actually able to monitor accounts, only characters.. which can't be traced back to account owner from the armory, or in game for that matter.. so yes you can now monitor 10s of thousands of random avatars and see what they are doing.. but how exactly is that a problem? its no different from (theoretically) totally anonymous ballots dropped in a paper box with a bunch of checkboxes to see what people like/dislike..
Your argument about slippery slopes/terrorism/voter fraud and barrier to entry.. are called "I don't have a clue WTF I am talking about but will comment anyhow because I can!" Syndrome
granted its 'new to google' to be you know selling phones directly.. but this is not a "war" with carriers or handset makers, its more of a war on.. noone?
Its really not that much different from going to the HTC website and clicking buy now and being directed to a web seller of any given phone as well as the carriers who sell them.. all google is REALLY doing here is creating a platform they can use to advertise android.. by that I mean.. when Verizon is done spamming millions of Droid Does! ads.. Android is left with being just another handset in the carriers collection of handsets.. by creating a direct way of buying , they have more importantly created a direct "sales conduit" that showcases Android and only android devices..
For all intents and purposes this is no different than the ADP1 and ADP2 only now rather than buying unlocked, you buy them with tmobile service, which was the only place the unlocked dev phones worked in 3g anyhow.
If Google was trying to be a gamechanger, they would have become an MVNO buying bandwidth from t-mobile, and reselling it (at reduced rates) in exchange for advertising/collecting demographic data from all the buyers, possibly even going with a pure GoogleVoice device that was IP only and no actual telephone service..
Now if they would just fix the fragmented Android mess of a landscape, do away with the half-assed java applets and move to entirely native apps.. as well as license SenseUI from HTC OR convince HTC to offer its app stack over the marketplace.. they could almost become a decent size player in the mobile space.. until then.. MS/Nokia and Apple will contine to eat their lunch.. Pity that Google didn't buy Palm and kill the Pre before it shipped as it too is hurting Android's long term viability as a platform.
Ineptitude is "he and his family should get counciling because his motion detector LOOKED like a bomb to someone else" not that the principle mistakenly thought it was a bomb.. mistakes happen.. but how you deal with them is what makes you inept.
No its not because your presumption is false..
Lemme explain how it works in laymans terms..
user A (me) logs in like normal to facebook.. at the same time user B also logs in.... the important factoid here is we are BOTH logging in from computers with absolutely legit credentials IE there is not a single solitary security method that will fix this problem.. because
The ISP's servers are trying to cache responses from the servers before passing them on to users..
So when ATT's server decides to send user B's data to me.. I am still logged in to my own account etc.. its the ISP that is transposing the data returned by the website to the wrong terminal.. which in turn ends up validating our logins for each others sessions.
Because... the isp's caching responded with the right credentials, now the "seed" you spoke of, is sitting on the other guys computer and on my computer as its a 2 way street.. and we can effectively maintain this logged in to wrong account state until the original sites "force you to log in again" which on many sites could be never or several weeks later
Not at all..
The "new feature" on the block is reading ebooks.. something dedicated readers do "very well" currently.. at a much cheaper cost (not just dollars but also weight, energy err battery life) than any other device on the market.. including macs and pc's and their laptop versions with the kindle app, etc.
But just because YOU do not want a converged device, does NOT mean the market doesn't exist.. people will gravitate to the devices that offer *them* the best mix of features for the $$ invested..
You dont like convergence to the point that you mistake the reason for MP3 playing inclusion on ereaders as convergence, when in actual point of fact it is required for audio books.. if the hardware is already capable.. should it really bar use for that purpose? some people like to listen to music WHILE THEY READ.. should that also be banned because you want a single purpose device?
Noone is seriously pushing the Kindle as media player, but there are MANY text/technical books which would be VERY helpful to have both color and video within the text.. this is not asking for youtube to work on the kindle 3, its asking for the next step in ereaders.. what happens though is that once you have the hardware on board to be able to do color and video.. and your already connected via 3g wireless.. Why not leverage that for functions that are still pretty painful on smartphones? Why not let it browse the web on a nice 7-10" screen, instead of the 2.7-3.7" smartphone screen?
The same is true from the other side (ereader apps on smartphones/pcs) if I buy the books to read on my device of choice, why not let me keep them on whatever device i have handy that is capable of reading them? be it a smartphone, a netbook, a laptop or my desktop?
I get the concern about added complexity adding cost/weight/difficulty to single purpose devices.. and that is valid concern, but not one that is insurmountable, nor is it a reason why a small screen greyscale device with limited battery life and slow screen refreshes should be the "ultimate in technology" just because it works.
I still think you should consider the great many differences between everyone's opinions on hardware/devices/hell everything... we disagree on this.. i am sure there are hundreds of thousands of others who fall somwhere else on the convergence spectrum.. is it really wrong to ask manufacturers to fill the need expressed by market?
As long as they continue to offer a dedicated device for you.. why can't I have my convergent device?
CORRECTION.. they said they asked.. and recieved permission.. no way we can be sure they asked or recieved it, or that they actually asked for what they where intending to do!
"hey is it ok if we have a few people up to our suite for some closed door demos" "sure"
having a hawker on show floor inviting hundreds if not thousands back to your room for what is essentially a public booth, definately could be construed as disorderly conduct, in the same way that frat boyz throwing a party in a hotel room can be booted out for making too much noise/disturbing other guests.
Newsflash, not everyone has the same mix of devices (either at home or portable versions)..
Thus to the person with the iphone, and a 17" macbook pro, feature phones look stupid and braindead, netbooks make no sense at all, and having any sort of desktop computer at all seems so ancient an idea..
Change the devices around a bit.. and the guy with a moto razr, and a netbook.. cant comprehend why anyone would bother with an iphone or a high end winmobile device.. much less the idea of a giant laptop at home.. when they can have a desktop pc at home..
Different strokes/different folks..
as far as the reason for the MP3 player in most of these devices is so that they can be compatible with audible.com audiobooks.. not so that you can whip out your kindle DX to listen to some tunes.
"product gets wider availability and its market share increases, old product in same category has not been "rethought" in some time and loses some of its huge market share".. the news is not that it happens.. but rather what the "old entrenched product" does to compete with the upstart..
Innovate out in front, react from behind, or bury head in sand and collect fat cash until suddenly they are no longer in business they thought they where in? (apple has done all 3 of the above in the past!)
Your absolutely and utterly incorrect, thanks for playing though..
They are in fact the EU equivalent of the FBI, they are not an entirely desk oriented organization.
Perhaps you should do a bit more investigating of your own, before just shitting out what you came up with in your head.
Interpol,in addition to acting as an information exchange organization, also investigates things that cross borders between member countries, where local police are unable to follow for various reasons.
Which is why.. every member country has a national central office/bureau staffed with national law enforcement/police..
By your own misguided understanding of just what interpol is, you seem to not get that "if they didnt have people in the field.. why do they need diplomatic immunity? Answer.. because in addition to maintaining worldwide databases on a variety of matters, they are also an investigative unit..
Embassy staffers generally do not run around with guns 'investigating' crimes.. with carte blanche to break every local law.. up to and including murdering the suspect.
"this guy fled to america, go shoot him while trying to escape, its cheapr than a trial here in anyhow.."
I would say its a VERY far cry from giving ambassadors and their families immunity from traffic tickets/full body searches
I think it is in fact you who are mistaken, this is the pertinent section of the World Of Warcraft Terms Of Use.
C. Blizzard may, with or without notice to you, disclose your Internet Protocol (IP) address(es), personal information, Chat logs, and other information about you and your activities: (a) in response to a request by law enforcement, a court order or other legal process; or (b) if Blizzard believes that doing so may protect your safety or the safety of others.
Note the fact that it says request, not court order, nothing more than REQUEST.. which is exactly what this was..
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html
While I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim to be one.. I am quite good at reading that very short paragraph, and picking out that they specifically mention "request" separately from "court order"
hrrm.. given that the wow TOS/EULA basically say they will respond to requests from all forms of law enforcement... dont think thats an issue here..
in addition if they guy REALLy wanted to hide, he likely would not be using his name, and would be using a gamecard rather than credit card to pay..
That said, given that his childhood friend gave them the info that he A) played wow B) used X screen name even then he would have been screwed.. Just cant trust those damn childhood friends can yah?
There are unlocked smartphones all over the place? this is not new.. but you cannot use virgin mobile or any of the other sprint wannabe phone companies in the states for it.. as they dont offer data..
You will basically have to goto tmobile, and buy a data only plan on flexpay (no contract prepaid, essentially you can pick any plan t-mobile offers and have it where you pay first, then use minutes versus the more standard postpay market in the states)
You can also buy any phone tmobile offers on this unsubsidized plan TODAY if you want (and if your credit is good they will even finance the hardware for you)
if jail time, possible death, and homicide charges are not enough of a deterrent.. "red letter of shame" style punishments are not likely to force folks to suddenly think before they get behind the wheel.
Fairly easy to prove the illegal firing,(paper trails are a bitch to backdate for illegal firings) as well as disprove that it was you who was mentioned on feed with a single phonecall and comparison of state issued id number of the person arrested vs the person in your office. Especially if you bring it to your employers attention.
Umm they are publishing via twitter data that anyone can get (frequently from boring local newssheets/newspapers) on who was arrested.. IE its not a "this person is guilty and we are preconvicting them" merely a statement of information that so and so was arrested.
The argument is not that people are wrongly put on feed, the discussion should rather be about.. is gossip mongering an appropriate or even an effective tool..
On its face the idea that "consequences" will prevent a poor decision.. in this case should already be covered by the fact that they are not only putting their own lives into jeopardy, but also anyone in the vehicle or on the road or even NEAR the road.. should they not? Is twitter identification a stronger motivation than potentially killing or seriously injuring yourself and others, as well as potential jail time already a VERY strong reason to not engage in this type of behavior?
is there potential for possible embarassing phone calls from similarly named people who show up on the feed? If it really was not you, thats easy enough to prove that anyone could check it in 2 secs, and would be in a world of legal trouble for firing based on it.
I submit for discussion that.. if your name on twitter means more to you than your life.. there are MUCH bigger issues than this one to worry about.
That was pretty much my original point.. a week is an arbitrary figure that is at once too long to justify its cost for the majority of outages.. while doing very little to help in catastrophic outages that stretch beyond its backup time.
I think that are whole home UPS that powered SPECIFIC items for a reasonable amount of time (think UPS outlets for key equipment such as our evergrowing reliance on unpowered cable for not just internet but also telephone applications, basic home lighting as well as keeping the fridge working in the event of even relatively minor outage.. having basic power covered would be a good idea, and putting load leveling/power conditioning into the home would also likely go a LONG way to eliminating or at the very least greatly reducing both spike induced damage to sensitive electronics, as well as brownouts caused by surges in electrical demand that are intense in the very short term (several seconds at most) but not extensive if they are contained.
Not to mention the size and cost of such a setup.. I would think that they would sell far more batteries (I am guessing this is the idea behind it from panasonic as a battery maker) would be to push a more "whole house UPS/power conditioner" type system..
a week of power? at a huge cost? for that one natural disaster where the rest of our backups dont work and we are left screwed? At that point a week is not enough.. or it is way too much.. (avg power outage across the entire US is 214 mins per year(70 in the UK. 53 mins in france, 6 mins in japan! data taken from http://www.emerson.com/smallbusiness/docs/power_outage_stats.pdf)
I would think that most homes could do with a few hours of backup power (and many would pay just for the benefits of not having flashing clocks all over the house!)
Slashdot Mirror
So if sun had gone bankrupt rather than been bought, and the employees who got laid off got laid off along with *everyone else* doing anything open source @ sun.. would that have been a better outcome? Its time to get out of the 60s and realize that NOTHING is contributed by companies to Linux or any other open source project "because its the right thing to do", it is either done because they HAVE to do it due to licensing issues, or because they feel that long term it is a cost neutral decision, or will net them a profit in some way down the road (even if said profit is based on the idea that making Linux more usable will sell more copies of their hardware/software that lives on top of Linux)
If you want good for society, you should be looking to foundations, and government to fund it, not public companies who have to be accountable to shareholders.. who generally frown on expenses that are not either required by law, or aimed at generating a profit (sadly in an ever and ever shorter time frame these days but thats another article)
A company choosing to stay in business rather than paying people to do stuff that is of little to no benefit in the short or long term (accessibility implies desktop, which is not making ANYONE money in Linux landscape.. try justifying that expense to shareholders in this economy, go ahead we will wait)
Argue all you want that someone should pickup the torch, but implying that its somehow "good for society" that a company that is buying another company as they crash toward bankruptcy court, should somehow "keep doing" things that clearly contributed to its slide into bankruptcy.. is the ultimate 60s era naivety, that the open source community in general seems to be afflicted with..
I think that people calling their slashdot reading geek friend to ask/tell about the "tech" ad they just saw on the superbowl is not saying much about the success or failure of the commercial.. it says far more about you and your friends than about the commercial
Yah because disclosure in January 2010 (June 2009 privately - January 2010 publicly) is gonna totally screw up turnaround time avg..Why do people fail to comprehend and read the freaking summary much less the articles?
Reading the summary, nevermind the article would have kept both of you and the poster above you from posting sillyness.. The bug exists in a bit of 17 year old code, but was discovered last month... so not even remotely "old"
since this bug was "discovered" in january its only chance at being a record would be the rapid turnaround in getting it patched..
By that I mean, rapid turnaround on Microsoft scale from disclosure in January, through to early Feb patching..
Ehh thats whats wrong with this entire debate.. OMG is spreading FUD and trying to keep the good team down... When in actual point of fact, the linux side of this has ALWAYS used FUD, and played the classic role of "victim" in all of these arguments..
There is just one major problem with this view of the world of OS monopolies, its simply and utterly false.. If a shop had chosen linux 10 years ago, they would be JUST as locked in and forced to continue to use Linux as they are "forced" to continue to use MS products..
In short the lock in is because of scale, difficulty of switching from A to B for what is most likely negligible gain (or a net cost.. free software is most definitely NOT free in the real world of help desks, installs, and support) and other factors that are completely unrelated to WHICH platform your company is currently using.
IE linux community members tend to cry foul in the same way that opera software does.. which results in the sane folks of the world dismissing them as lunatic fringe, rather than trying to compete on merits, they try to play victim.. If the linux community would actually come together and stop trying to make a vanity distro every 60 secs, standardize a desktop, and actually pay some attention to the fact that regardless of which choice is the dominant one at the time, its the role of the "alternate' choice to work with the dominate choice.. not the other way around (in any and all business not just operating systems) then perhaps we wouldn't be sitting her crying about MS, and instead would be choosing the right tool for the job. Not trying to treat everything as a political game..
Yes but they are not actually able to monitor accounts, only characters.. which can't be traced back to account owner from the armory, or in game for that matter.. so yes you can now monitor 10s of thousands of random avatars and see what they are doing.. but how exactly is that a problem? its no different from (theoretically) totally anonymous ballots dropped in a paper box with a bunch of checkboxes to see what people like/dislike..
Your argument about slippery slopes/terrorism/voter fraud and barrier to entry.. are called "I don't have a clue WTF I am talking about but will comment anyhow because I can!" Syndrome
granted its 'new to google' to be you know selling phones directly .. but this is not a "war" with carriers or handset makers, its more of a war on.. noone?
Its really not that much different from going to the HTC website and clicking buy now and being directed to a web seller of any given phone as well as the carriers who sell them.. all google is REALLY doing here is creating a platform they can use to advertise android.. by that I mean.. when Verizon is done spamming millions of Droid Does! ads.. Android is left with being just another handset in the carriers collection of handsets.. by creating a direct way of buying , they have more importantly created a direct "sales conduit" that showcases Android and only android devices..
For all intents and purposes this is no different than the ADP1 and ADP2 only now rather than buying unlocked, you buy them with tmobile service, which was the only place the unlocked dev phones worked in 3g anyhow.
If Google was trying to be a gamechanger, they would have become an MVNO buying bandwidth from t-mobile, and reselling it (at reduced rates) in exchange for advertising/collecting demographic data from all the buyers, possibly even going with a pure GoogleVoice device that was IP only and no actual telephone service..
Now if they would just fix the fragmented Android mess of a landscape, do away with the half-assed java applets and move to entirely native apps.. as well as license SenseUI from HTC OR convince HTC to offer its app stack over the marketplace.. they could almost become a decent size player in the mobile space.. until then.. MS/Nokia and Apple will contine to eat their lunch.. Pity that Google didn't buy Palm and kill the Pre before it shipped as it too is hurting Android's long term viability as a platform.
Ineptitude is "he and his family should get counciling because his motion detector LOOKED like a bomb to someone else" not that the principle mistakenly thought it was a bomb.. mistakes happen.. but how you deal with them is what makes you inept.
No its not because your presumption is false.. Lemme explain how it works in laymans terms.. user A (me) logs in like normal to facebook.. at the same time user B also logs in.. .. the important factoid here is we are BOTH logging in from computers with absolutely legit credentials IE there is not a single solitary security method that will fix this problem.. because
The ISP's servers are trying to cache responses from the servers before passing them on to users..
So when ATT's server decides to send user B's data to me.. I am still logged in to my own account etc.. its the ISP that is transposing the data returned by the website to the wrong terminal.. which in turn ends up validating our logins for each others sessions.
Because ... the isp's caching responded with the right credentials, now the "seed" you spoke of, is sitting on the other guys computer and on my computer as its a 2 way street.. and we can effectively maintain this logged in to wrong account state until the original sites "force you to log in again" which on many sites could be never or several weeks later
Not at all.. The "new feature" on the block is reading ebooks.. something dedicated readers do "very well" currently.. at a much cheaper cost (not just dollars but also weight, energy err battery life) than any other device on the market.. including macs and pc's and their laptop versions with the kindle app, etc. But just because YOU do not want a converged device, does NOT mean the market doesn't exist.. people will gravitate to the devices that offer *them* the best mix of features for the $$ invested.. You dont like convergence to the point that you mistake the reason for MP3 playing inclusion on ereaders as convergence, when in actual point of fact it is required for audio books.. if the hardware is already capable .. should it really bar use for that purpose? some people like to listen to music WHILE THEY READ.. should that also be banned because you want a single purpose device?
Noone is seriously pushing the Kindle as media player, but there are MANY text/technical books which would be VERY helpful to have both color and video within the text.. this is not asking for youtube to work on the kindle 3, its asking for the next step in ereaders.. what happens though is that once you have the hardware on board to be able to do color and video.. and your already connected via 3g wireless.. Why not leverage that for functions that are still pretty painful on smartphones? Why not let it browse the web on a nice 7-10" screen, instead of the 2.7-3.7" smartphone screen?
The same is true from the other side (ereader apps on smartphones/pcs) if I buy the books to read on my device of choice, why not let me keep them on whatever device i have handy that is capable of reading them? be it a smartphone, a netbook, a laptop or my desktop?
I get the concern about added complexity adding cost/weight/difficulty to single purpose devices.. and that is valid concern, but not one that is insurmountable, nor is it a reason why a small screen greyscale device with limited battery life and slow screen refreshes should be the "ultimate in technology" just because it works.
I still think you should consider the great many differences between everyone's opinions on hardware/devices/hell everything... we disagree on this.. i am sure there are hundreds of thousands of others who fall somwhere else on the convergence spectrum.. is it really wrong to ask manufacturers to fill the need expressed by market?
As long as they continue to offer a dedicated device for you.. why can't I have my convergent device?
CORRECTION.. they said they asked.. and recieved permission.. no way we can be sure they asked or recieved it, or that they actually asked for what they where intending to do! "hey is it ok if we have a few people up to our suite for some closed door demos" "sure" having a hawker on show floor inviting hundreds if not thousands back to your room for what is essentially a public booth, definately could be construed as disorderly conduct, in the same way that frat boyz throwing a party in a hotel room can be booted out for making too much noise/disturbing other guests.
Newsflash, not everyone has the same mix of devices (either at home or portable versions).. Thus to the person with the iphone, and a 17" macbook pro, feature phones look stupid and braindead, netbooks make no sense at all, and having any sort of desktop computer at all seems so ancient an idea.. Change the devices around a bit.. and the guy with a moto razr, and a netbook.. cant comprehend why anyone would bother with an iphone or a high end winmobile device .. much less the idea of a giant laptop at home.. when they can have a desktop pc at home..
Different strokes/different folks..
as far as the reason for the MP3 player in most of these devices is so that they can be compatible with audible.com audiobooks.. not so that you can whip out your kindle DX to listen to some tunes.
"product gets wider availability and its market share increases, old product in same category has not been "rethought" in some time and loses some of its huge market share" .. the news is not that it happens.. but rather what the "old entrenched product" does to compete with the upstart..
Innovate out in front, react from behind, or bury head in sand and collect fat cash until suddenly they are no longer in business they thought they where in? (apple has done all 3 of the above in the past!)
Your absolutely and utterly incorrect, thanks for playing though.. They are in fact the EU equivalent of the FBI, they are not an entirely desk oriented organization. Perhaps you should do a bit more investigating of your own, before just shitting out what you came up with in your head. Interpol,in addition to acting as an information exchange organization, also investigates things that cross borders between member countries, where local police are unable to follow for various reasons. Which is why.. every member country has a national central office/bureau staffed with national law enforcement/police.. By your own misguided understanding of just what interpol is, you seem to not get that "if they didnt have people in the field.. why do they need diplomatic immunity? Answer.. because in addition to maintaining worldwide databases on a variety of matters, they are also an investigative unit..
Embassy staffers generally do not run around with guns 'investigating' crimes .. with carte blanche to break every local law.. up to and including murdering the suspect.
"this guy fled to america, go shoot him while trying to escape, its cheapr than a trial here in anyhow.."
I would say its a VERY far cry from giving ambassadors and their families immunity from traffic tickets/full body searches
I think it is in fact you who are mistaken, this is the pertinent section of the World Of Warcraft Terms Of Use.
C. Blizzard may, with or without notice to you, disclose your Internet Protocol (IP) address(es), personal information, Chat logs, and other information about you and your activities: (a) in response to a request by law enforcement, a court order or other legal process; or (b) if Blizzard believes that doing so may protect your safety or the safety of others.
Note the fact that it says request, not court order, nothing more than REQUEST.. which is exactly what this was..
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html
While I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim to be one.. I am quite good at reading that very short paragraph, and picking out that they specifically mention "request" separately from "court order"
hrrm.. given that the wow TOS/EULA basically say they will respond to requests from all forms of law enforcement ... dont think thats an issue here..
in addition if they guy REALLy wanted to hide, he likely would not be using his name, and would be using a gamecard rather than credit card to pay..
That said, given that his childhood friend gave them the info that he A) played wow B) used X screen name even then he would have been screwed.. Just cant trust those damn childhood friends can yah?
There are unlocked smartphones all over the place? this is not new.. but you cannot use virgin mobile or any of the other sprint wannabe phone companies in the states for it.. as they dont offer data.. You will basically have to goto tmobile, and buy a data only plan on flexpay (no contract prepaid, essentially you can pick any plan t-mobile offers and have it where you pay first, then use minutes versus the more standard postpay market in the states) You can also buy any phone tmobile offers on this unsubsidized plan TODAY if you want (and if your credit is good they will even finance the hardware for you)
if jail time, possible death, and homicide charges are not enough of a deterrent.. "red letter of shame" style punishments are not likely to force folks to suddenly think before they get behind the wheel.
Fairly easy to prove the illegal firing,(paper trails are a bitch to backdate for illegal firings) as well as disprove that it was you who was mentioned on feed with a single phonecall and comparison of state issued id number of the person arrested vs the person in your office. Especially if you bring it to your employers attention.
Umm they are publishing via twitter data that anyone can get (frequently from boring local newssheets/newspapers) on who was arrested.. IE its not a "this person is guilty and we are preconvicting them" merely a statement of information that so and so was arrested. .. is gossip mongering an appropriate or even an effective tool..
The argument is not that people are wrongly put on feed, the discussion should rather be about
On its face the idea that "consequences" will prevent a poor decision.. in this case should already be covered by the fact that they are not only putting their own lives into jeopardy, but also anyone in the vehicle or on the road or even NEAR the road.. should they not? Is twitter identification a stronger motivation than potentially killing or seriously injuring yourself and others, as well as potential jail time already a VERY strong reason to not engage in this type of behavior? is there potential for possible embarassing phone calls from similarly named people who show up on the feed? If it really was not you, thats easy enough to prove that anyone could check it in 2 secs, and would be in a world of legal trouble for firing based on it.
I submit for discussion that.. if your name on twitter means more to you than your life.. there are MUCH bigger issues than this one to worry about.
Linux on the desktop is fine, linux for the mass market is a WHOLE OTHER KETTLE OF FISH!
That was pretty much my original point.. a week is an arbitrary figure that is at once too long to justify its cost for the majority of outages.. while doing very little to help in catastrophic outages that stretch beyond its backup time. I think that are whole home UPS that powered SPECIFIC items for a reasonable amount of time (think UPS outlets for key equipment such as our evergrowing reliance on unpowered cable for not just internet but also telephone applications, basic home lighting as well as keeping the fridge working in the event of even relatively minor outage.. having basic power covered would be a good idea, and putting load leveling/power conditioning into the home would also likely go a LONG way to eliminating or at the very least greatly reducing both spike induced damage to sensitive electronics, as well as brownouts caused by surges in electrical demand that are intense in the very short term (several seconds at most) but not extensive if they are contained.
Not to mention the size and cost of such a setup.. I would think that they would sell far more batteries (I am guessing this is the idea behind it from panasonic as a battery maker) would be to push a more "whole house UPS/power conditioner" type system.. a week of power? at a huge cost? for that one natural disaster where the rest of our backups dont work and we are left screwed? At that point a week is not enough .. or it is way too much.. (avg power outage across the entire US is 214 mins per year(70 in the UK. 53 mins in france, 6 mins in japan! data taken from http://www.emerson.com/smallbusiness/docs/power_outage_stats.pdf)
I would think that most homes could do with a few hours of backup power (and many would pay just for the benefits of not having flashing clocks all over the house!)