True, but there's a certain amount of "vicious circle" in copyright law and copyright violation.
Speed laws are routinely broken, but as the speed limits become more reasonable for road conditions, more people follow them. If the speed limit on the Interstate were set at 25MPH, you'd have a LOT of people violating it and it would be hard to justify enforcement. Now that it's 55-65, there's a much smaller population of people speeding, and it's easy to justify giving the speed demons real penalties for it. You'll always have speeders and copyright violators, but if the speed limits and laws surrounding copyright are reasonable, speeders and copyright violators will receive a lot less sympathy and you can justify harsher penalties.
At the moment, copyright law is analogous to setting interstate speed limits at 25MPH and mandating instant impounding of a vehicle and significant fines if someone reports someone else speeding until innocence is determined.
If the terms of a copyright went for, say, seven years, I for one would be far more willing to tolerate a higher incidence of DRM (provided it somehow released the work when it became public domain) and more vigorous enforcement of copyright law, because there would be a reasonable body of work I could enjoy free of those encumbrances if I chose. I'm all for compensating artists for their work, but it doesn't entitle their great-grandkids to a guaranteed income for life.
Right now, we have a system where all works are fully protected, in essence, forever. Nothing created since my father was born will stand a reasonable chance of reverting to public domain before I die. Multi-generational absolute copyright protection was NOT what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they protected the rights of cartographers to make money on their original maps (which took a hell of a lot of work to create) for a 20-year period. Limited protection encourages innovation. Unlimited protection stifles it, because anyone who comes out with anything has to spend massive amounts of time making sure it doesn't resemble in any way anything that has come before it.
You'd still have violators, but it would be a LOT harder to self-justify it, and you'd have a much easier time justifying stiff fines for violation.
Which is also known as a "Trademark", and is perfectly workable in law today.
At issue is not using the specific character of "Mickey Mouse", a white-and-black character with a very specific look. Disney can and should be able to keep that as protected, but they can do that under Trademark law, and no one else could use Mickey or something intentionally similar to him to market products that would compete with Disney.
Disney is trying to protect all works since they started as a company, including all the words and images in every cartoon and movie they've ever released. That's excessive.
Copyright should expire on a reasonable schedule (I like the "7 plus limited time available for purchase" idea, but a fixed 20-30 years works too). That releases the works to the public domain and allows derivative works. Trademark should protect the identity of ongoing companies like Disney, and Disney should obviously be issued a trademark for their major characters (within reason). Mickey Mouse is a patently obvious trademark of Disney, and is a complete no-brainer one to issue them in perpetuity (or at least as long as they use the image as a significant part of their identity).
What that would mean is that the original Disney black-and-white cartoons and all other relevant material would fall into the public domain, but people would still be restricted from using licensed trademarks (like Mickey Mouse) in their derivative works. They could replace Mickey with a rat, a badger, or a stoat, and give him a new name and have at it. They could also freely copy and/or sell copies of the original unaltered work, but once they alter it they need to remove Mickey and replace him with something else that is not a Disney trademark.
Disney still gets the protection of their corporate identity, which they very much deserve to get, but they don't get protection for every single frame of cartoon they've made in the last century.
The Linux kernel today is not the same software that was released in 1991. However, if you allow a series of continuous revisions to protect copyright, then authors would simply change one word every month in their works and have continuous protection. The key is protection of the version that existed in a specific point in time.
If you had a rolling-seven-year copyright on the Linux kernel, then any Linux kernel released in the last seven years would be under copyright protection, and if Linus chose to protect an older version under the GPL, he would be charged 1000 times the sale price of that kernel (of course, 1000 x $0 = $0, but let's ignore that for the moment and assume there's some sort of minimum).
So if an author makes minor changes to a work, the newly-changed version of the work is automatically protected, and each version gets seven years of protection.
In the Windows XP world, that would meant that Windows XP is now public domain, and if I remember my dates correctly SP1 is also fair game, but you don't have the right to SP2 or SP3. Those would still be under copyright protection. That does lead to some sticky bits about product activation, but I guess once it's in the public domain it would also be legal to crack the activation scheme, as long as you didn't use the crack to download SP2 or SP3.
Obviously, in this case, Microsoft would just pull out some pocket change and pay whatever it takes to protect Windows XP anyway, but they'd also be forced to make it available for sale if they did so, at 1/1000 the license fee they set. In Microsoft's case, they'd simply set a license fee of $1,000,000 (chump change) and then they could max their price for XP at $1,000 a copy if they chose to. That would allow them to make XP available at whatever price they chose and continue their push to a Windows 7 migration for their customers.
But, still, once a specific version of the work hits seven years old, the author either pays for protection of the older work, or it reverts to the public domain. You know, I think I kinda like this idea.
Hmm, when was this? My father-in-law switched to AT&T from Verizon over the summer, and he took the phone back to the AT&T store and asked them to block the data plan because he kept clicking on the prominent web button. The rep actually apologized for the inconvenience, blocked the data plan, reversed the charges, and asked my father-in-law to test it right there in the store to make sure the data plan was blocked.
I think both AT&T and Verizon are requiring the purchase of a data plan for certain smartphones now. I believe that started with AT&T back in September or October. My wife wanted a Blackberry without a data plan, and we beat the "must have data plan" deadline by about a month.
But if they let you buy a phone and didn't require the data plan, they should block the data for you and refund the accidental charges. It was absolutely no problem for us.
Of course, my company does a lot of business with AT&T and I'm actually the accountholder through the "AT&T Premier" plan, so maybe AT&T puts a little extra effort into not pissing off customers associated with major business accounts.:)
My father-in-law ran into that, and had data blocked on his phones. Verizon is MUCH more reluctant to do this than AT&T was, but they'll still do it if you insist.
Anyone in the US can go out and buy an unlocked phone that is compatible with your carrier of choice (note that the US has at least three major competing technologies, none of them compatible with European GSM, so you have to make sure the phone you choose works with the carrier you choose). Then you buy a SIM chip and install it (or, in the case of Verizon, activate your IMEI with Verizon).
Unfortunately, the major phone companies in the US charge the same whether you get your phone from them or you bring your own, and the subsidies are significant. So the only things you gain for your extra money are the flexibility to move from company to company and complete control over your phone (carrier can't turn off features if it's not their phone, though of course they can block access to specific data services if they want).
But we have LOTS of month-to-month phone plans you can buy without a contract at all, and that are SIM-chip based. Most of them are referred to in the US as "prepaid" plans, and you'll find a bevy of them at any convenience store or electronics store.
It's just that few Americans choose them because the subsidies that the major companies offer are actually pretty good deals, providing you are willing to commit to a specific phone company for two years or so and end up with a phone that only works on their service at the end of your contract. Most Americans are going to throw away a cell after two years anyway, so we'll just recommit to a new 2-year contract to get a new cell phone with that "new phone" smell. Some will continue their contracts month-to-month with the same carrier. Most will just get a fresh phone and renew their contract, and maybe change carriers at the switchover.
If more major carriers offered a significant discount for "bring your own" plans, maybe the American marketplace would shift to an "own the phone, then choose the carrier" model. But with multiple incompatible wireless technologies, once you buy a phone you're locked into a small subset of wireless carriers anyway.
Maybe they've changed it. I was thinking about the Verizon World 88xx series phone which has a SIM chip, but uses the European (850MHz) band and not the US (900MHz) band for GSM. That, and the fact that Verizon locked out the GPS unless you bought Telenav, made me choose AT&T for my Blackberry.
This is good advice, and the following is not intended as a criticism.
Then, (directed at the original poster) just before you end up with the inevitable brain aneurysm brought on from trying to learn the legal AND tax codes at the federal AND state levels and get all caught up with your paperwork in a few short months, you can hire professionals anyway, but at least you'll know just enough to understand what the hell they are talking about.
Seriously, I've heard very good things about the Nolo series, but the time to read them was before you started your business. Not now. You need to read the "running" part so you can quickly go back and reconstruct all the financial statements in a way that your lawyer and accountant can understand, that will save you massive gobs of billable hours. I had a part-time job for years with an accountant just tallying up and balancing checkbooks for clients, which was mind-crushingly boring but which paid well (probably because it WAS mind-crushingly boring and the business owners decided they'd rather pay my boss an incredible hourly fee to do it). Or you can get one of the better small business packages for a couple hundred bucks and solve most of the housekeeping/paperwork problems that way.
In the end, I think you'll really, REALLY want to get some professionals involved. The lawyer can talk about S-Corp versus LLC and other fun facts to know and tell, and the accountant can save you from massive penalties for not carrying the "3" properly on the form you filled out in error.
Yeah, the addition of "can issue prescriptions" does make it a little scary. I would hope that any qualified doctor would reserve their actual diagnosis for easy and obvious cases ("what, the over-the-counter hayfever medications aren't working for you? OK, let me send you a scrip for Claritin-whatever_letter_they_are_at_now").
But, of course, that means that the utility of such a service is limited. It's rather expensive for 10 minutes with someone who is either horribly overqualified to diagnose your condition in-person or horribly under-equipped to diagnose something they ARE qualified to diagnose because they can't get enough information. If I need to try out an asthma med or help with the diagnosis of athlete's foot or hayfever, any trained nurse can do that for me. If I need something more complicated, a doctor might be hard-pressed to diagnose it accurately over a webcam.
It's especially expensive if you have to pay for a referral to an in-person doc, unless the $45 includes the office visit if one becomes necessary.
This does seem rather expensive for a "dial-a-doc" service. The insurance company I use provides free "dial-a-nurse" services, charging $45 to add prescription capabilities seems a little pricey.
But, of course, $45 for a guaranteed ten minutes of access to an actual MD is probably well worth it. I've been with my current doctor for 6 years now, and I've met her once when one of the RNs wanted to do an in-office biopsy (and she observed while a med student did the actual cutting and stitching). All other business I've done with the office has been with a nurse.
The actual doctor rarely gets involved for an "uncomplicated" visit, so you probably WOULD get a lot of takers for $45 to spend 15 minutes with a nurse/practitioner.
Hold a firecracker, lit with an 8-second fuse, in your left hand and count to ten on your fingers. One finger per second. If you need both hands, you can temporarily place the firecracker between your legs while you finish the count.
$45 please. Please be sure to pay up BEFORE you perform the operation.
As a patient, and it pains me deeply to say this... I'd have to agree with a lawyer.
There. I said it. I agree with a lawyer on something. I'm going to hell now.
But seriously, we use our insurance company's "dial-a-nurse" service and it works well if you have some idea of what is wrong with you and just want some "best practices" advice, like "I have either a cold or the flu, can you help me determine which it is, and what symptoms I would indicate that I should see my doctor as opposed to drinking plenty of fluids and staying home?"
I can see a service like this being useful for other minor ailments that are relatively easy to diagnose based on clear symptoms, but that require medications that need a prescription. I'd hope that any doctor who was concerned about it being "maybe this or maybe that" wouldn't just take a guess (or render a medical opinion beyond their training) and hide behind some special immunity from lawsuit. But that doesn't mean I'd want to extend that immunity. If you're unsure of your diagnosis because you can't get enough information, the correct answer would be "I cannot help you, proceed to an in-person clinic in your area, this will be a no-charge courtesy call, 'kthanksbye!"
I'm not saying that a service like this would be useless, but if a good relatively confident diagnosis is not practical, the answer is to refer the patient to an in-person diagnosis, NOT to protect the doctor from indemnity if they made a diagnosis based on insufficient data because the tools they chose to use couldn't give them the data they needed.
Of course, that argument also leads down the slippery slope of requiring an MRI for a splinter removal as a lawsuit-prevention device, but any doctor who chooses to use "telediagnosis" should be aware of the limits of the technology and adjust their confidence in their diagnosis accordingly.
Your cell phone, if it's in the US, probably operates at one of two ranges: 900MHz or 1800MHz. I think most of the newer ones use 1800MHz. So if you're worried about the frequency differential, there isn't THAT much of a gap between 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz, so if you've got a newer cell you're already soaking in higher-frequency RF. Especially in Europe, where the 3G networks switched from the old 900/1800MHz frequencies to 2100MHz (2.1GHz) years ago.
The real concern, as others have mentioned, is power. Your cell phone puts out enough power to be heard by a tower that can be a couple of miles (a few KM) away. Your Bluetooth headset uses enough power to reach about 30 feet (10 meters). That's a very large difference in power. A Class II Bluetooth headset is probably on the order of 2.5mW (.0025 watts), while your average cell phone can be hundreds of times that amount.
As far as the studies that debunk the cellphone - cancer link, especially the oft-cited Scandinavian one... Unfortunately, most of them I've seen cited are based on analog cell phones. The Scandinavian study cited above ran until 2003, which is the first year that EDGE came out. Coincidentally, the introduction of EDGE was also when the 2100MHz frequencies started coming into heavy use. So the Scandinavian study doesn't cover the time period that includes any EDGE or 3G services.
So, while I don't know the current state of the science, keep in mind that the biggest, most cited study supporting "no link between cell and cancer" is a large-scale informal data aggregation that does not include data on the technology the phone you actually carry actually employs. It's rather like saying that airbags don't save lives because the horses that draw our carriages can't run fast enough to hurt anyone if there's a crash.
The nature of the data aggregation in the oft-cited Scandinavian study also didn't attempt to track who actually uses cell phones and whether those individuals got cancer, it tracked the rate of two specific types of cranial cancer over 30 years and generically explained increases in certain age groups until it found there were enough explanations to cover all the reported cases of that specific cancer and called it good. No attempt was made to:
- determine whether cases happened in younger groups (you only generally get terminal brain cancer once, depriving you of the chance to get it when you are older),
- determine whether other cancers went up (or not),
- or whether there was a higher incidence of cranial cancers among actual cell users (and especially heavy cell users) as opposed to the general populace.
They dismissed the actual measured and documented increases as a result of better detection, but I saw no sign that they compared those increase rates so, say, some other cancers that couldn't be cell-related. Not that it would be that meaningful, but it'd be nice to see how the better detection rates affected other cancers during the same period.
So we have an aggregation based on non-current technology that indicates a clear increase in cancer. The increase is then explained away by better detection technology. Pardon me if I'm not ENTIRELY convinced by it. I'm not saying there IS a link, I'm just saying the data analysis done doesn't appear to support such a conclusion.
More recent and formal studies (in other words, those that actually study current technologies and use a control population and a study population) have somewhat more concerning, though not entirely conclusive, results. (WHO Example http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569465,00.html ).
Is there a link? I, for one, honestly don't know. I tend to use my cell stuck up next to my head, which is probably not the best idea, and I'll probably start using a bluetooth headset more often for calls just because of the lower RF output and my deep and abiding desire to live forever (so far, so good). But since I used to use
Now look what you've done! You've made them feel all baaaa-aa-aa-aad.:)
Seriously, sounds like the definition of a good ad campaign to me.
- Money to charity? Check. Everyone'll pitch in to give money to a charity - hopefully it's a credible one and not the "Simon Cowell Antique Automobile Preservation Fund" or somesuch.
- "Stickin' it to the Man?" Check.
- Using a profitable social media site which is full of commercialism to rage against commercialism, by pushing a band that rages against "the man" to sell albums through one of the largest music labels in the world? Check. Irony is important in these things. Double irony doubly so.
- Getting people to spend money to "vote" on a meaningless statistic where you own both potential winners? Check. But at least people get to keep an MP3 out of this one, unlike the "pay $1 per vote" call-in polls most of these things turn into.
And, no, I didn't throw numbers on the list, so technically I can't:
If a schism group wanted to form their own church, why would they even want to use the Papal symbols as they exist today? Wouldn't they want to install their own command chain with some other symbol denoting their pontiff or leader? Using the same symbols would cause confusion and possibly give credibility to the Church the schismatics want to leave, right?
You do raise a good point, but I think this is more to prevent criticism of the Church ("you used the word 'Pope' in your article, and it's critical of the Church, so we're issuing a DMCA(*) takedown notice") and/or to make sure the clergy within the Church don't use the Pope's name, images, or symbols for their own agendas that the Church may disagree with. In the former case, it denotes a distinct lack of faith in God to defend his own Church, and in the latter it denotes a distinct lack of discipline within the church hierarchy.
(*): Assuming the article is correct and they are really trying to get an actual Copyright. I suspect they want to get Trademarks, which would require a different type of takedown notice.
I suspect preemptive HIPAA lawsuits will be filed about 1 femtosecond after this patent gets approved, years before any such product could go to market.
I can't see any benefit to a device like this, unless someone is trying to make a "virtual gym" or something, in which case I'll join a real gym. That way no one has access to my medical records. As a bonus, if I overdo it and go to code blue or something, there are actual people around to call an ambulance and administer first aid.
Unless they have plans to integrate a defib into the game controller.
Should be plenty of room to fit 'em all. You don't need a lot of payload, they'll provide their own forced-hot-air heating system until the oxygen runs out, and you want to make that mercifully (*) quick.
No one is going to accept ads suddenly popping up when they try to link from Myst Island to Channelwood.
Well, they could be subtle and work it into the game dialogue/gameplay...
"Bring me the BIG BLUE pages!" "D'Ni" could become "Sun'i" and they could have everyone drinking Java there. The "Linking Books" could be Nooks or Kindles. The clock puzzle could have a brand on the face.
Well, it's hard to say why the key generator company was unable to produce enough valid licenses in time. According to the article, the movie theaters had licenses but they turned out to be "no longer valid" on opening day. I suspect that either "Deluxe" (the key distributor) had a major systems failure and couldn't regen the day's licenses, or forgot to tell their customers that they needed to have the keys renewed frequently, or something.
The movie distributor was certainly able to deliver the movies (which are delivered by courier on AES-encrypted hard drives) on time, so if the actual physical movies could be delivered you'd think the key generator company that the movie could keep up by issuing one key for each drive physically delivered, and if those keys have to be generated each time the movie is shown you'd think they'd have that worked out.
I get the impression that the theaters (multiple, independent theaters across Germany were affected, not just one) have all been planning and looking forward to this for some time. Th article indicates that they all received their copies of the movie they purchased in plenty of time, and copied them to their theater server well in advance, but that the keys turned out not to work when they hit PLAY. But maybe this is the German equivalent of a RIAA/ASCAP thing where you buy the movie from one source and you have to buy the licenses to play it from an entirely different source, and the theaters didn't realize that the keys they originally got only worked for testing or something.
Still, with all the advance planning, and all the various theaters that were affected, I find it hard to believe that so many theaters who had planned screenings so far in advance would somehow "forget" to buy licenses to play it. They had the physical movie, they had the glasses, they sold the tickets, and it sounds like they paid since the key distributor was able to get them the keys the next day.
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Redundant _and_ repetitive?
Now I know where the thesaurus went. ;)
True, but there's a certain amount of "vicious circle" in copyright law and copyright violation.
Speed laws are routinely broken, but as the speed limits become more reasonable for road conditions, more people follow them. If the speed limit on the Interstate were set at 25MPH, you'd have a LOT of people violating it and it would be hard to justify enforcement. Now that it's 55-65, there's a much smaller population of people speeding, and it's easy to justify giving the speed demons real penalties for it. You'll always have speeders and copyright violators, but if the speed limits and laws surrounding copyright are reasonable, speeders and copyright violators will receive a lot less sympathy and you can justify harsher penalties.
At the moment, copyright law is analogous to setting interstate speed limits at 25MPH and mandating instant impounding of a vehicle and significant fines if someone reports someone else speeding until innocence is determined.
If the terms of a copyright went for, say, seven years, I for one would be far more willing to tolerate a higher incidence of DRM (provided it somehow released the work when it became public domain) and more vigorous enforcement of copyright law, because there would be a reasonable body of work I could enjoy free of those encumbrances if I chose. I'm all for compensating artists for their work, but it doesn't entitle their great-grandkids to a guaranteed income for life.
Right now, we have a system where all works are fully protected, in essence, forever. Nothing created since my father was born will stand a reasonable chance of reverting to public domain before I die. Multi-generational absolute copyright protection was NOT what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they protected the rights of cartographers to make money on their original maps (which took a hell of a lot of work to create) for a 20-year period. Limited protection encourages innovation. Unlimited protection stifles it, because anyone who comes out with anything has to spend massive amounts of time making sure it doesn't resemble in any way anything that has come before it.
You'd still have violators, but it would be a LOT harder to self-justify it, and you'd have a much easier time justifying stiff fines for violation.
Which is also known as a "Trademark", and is perfectly workable in law today.
At issue is not using the specific character of "Mickey Mouse", a white-and-black character with a very specific look. Disney can and should be able to keep that as protected, but they can do that under Trademark law, and no one else could use Mickey or something intentionally similar to him to market products that would compete with Disney.
Disney is trying to protect all works since they started as a company, including all the words and images in every cartoon and movie they've ever released. That's excessive.
Copyright should expire on a reasonable schedule (I like the "7 plus limited time available for purchase" idea, but a fixed 20-30 years works too). That releases the works to the public domain and allows derivative works. Trademark should protect the identity of ongoing companies like Disney, and Disney should obviously be issued a trademark for their major characters (within reason). Mickey Mouse is a patently obvious trademark of Disney, and is a complete no-brainer one to issue them in perpetuity (or at least as long as they use the image as a significant part of their identity).
What that would mean is that the original Disney black-and-white cartoons and all other relevant material would fall into the public domain, but people would still be restricted from using licensed trademarks (like Mickey Mouse) in their derivative works. They could replace Mickey with a rat, a badger, or a stoat, and give him a new name and have at it. They could also freely copy and/or sell copies of the original unaltered work, but once they alter it they need to remove Mickey and replace him with something else that is not a Disney trademark.
Disney still gets the protection of their corporate identity, which they very much deserve to get, but they don't get protection for every single frame of cartoon they've made in the last century.
The Linux kernel today is not the same software that was released in 1991. However, if you allow a series of continuous revisions to protect copyright, then authors would simply change one word every month in their works and have continuous protection. The key is protection of the version that existed in a specific point in time.
If you had a rolling-seven-year copyright on the Linux kernel, then any Linux kernel released in the last seven years would be under copyright protection, and if Linus chose to protect an older version under the GPL, he would be charged 1000 times the sale price of that kernel (of course, 1000 x $0 = $0, but let's ignore that for the moment and assume there's some sort of minimum).
So if an author makes minor changes to a work, the newly-changed version of the work is automatically protected, and each version gets seven years of protection.
In the Windows XP world, that would meant that Windows XP is now public domain, and if I remember my dates correctly SP1 is also fair game, but you don't have the right to SP2 or SP3. Those would still be under copyright protection. That does lead to some sticky bits about product activation, but I guess once it's in the public domain it would also be legal to crack the activation scheme, as long as you didn't use the crack to download SP2 or SP3.
Obviously, in this case, Microsoft would just pull out some pocket change and pay whatever it takes to protect Windows XP anyway, but they'd also be forced to make it available for sale if they did so, at 1/1000 the license fee they set. In Microsoft's case, they'd simply set a license fee of $1,000,000 (chump change) and then they could max their price for XP at $1,000 a copy if they chose to. That would allow them to make XP available at whatever price they chose and continue their push to a Windows 7 migration for their customers.
But, still, once a specific version of the work hits seven years old, the author either pays for protection of the older work, or it reverts to the public domain. You know, I think I kinda like this idea.
Hmm, when was this? My father-in-law switched to AT&T from Verizon over the summer, and he took the phone back to the AT&T store and asked them to block the data plan because he kept clicking on the prominent web button. The rep actually apologized for the inconvenience, blocked the data plan, reversed the charges, and asked my father-in-law to test it right there in the store to make sure the data plan was blocked.
I think both AT&T and Verizon are requiring the purchase of a data plan for certain smartphones now. I believe that started with AT&T back in September or October. My wife wanted a Blackberry without a data plan, and we beat the "must have data plan" deadline by about a month.
But if they let you buy a phone and didn't require the data plan, they should block the data for you and refund the accidental charges. It was absolutely no problem for us.
Of course, my company does a lot of business with AT&T and I'm actually the accountholder through the "AT&T Premier" plan, so maybe AT&T puts a little extra effort into not pissing off customers associated with major business accounts. :)
My father-in-law ran into that, and had data blocked on his phones. Verizon is MUCH more reluctant to do this than AT&T was, but they'll still do it if you insist.
Anyone in the US can go out and buy an unlocked phone that is compatible with your carrier of choice (note that the US has at least three major competing technologies, none of them compatible with European GSM, so you have to make sure the phone you choose works with the carrier you choose). Then you buy a SIM chip and install it (or, in the case of Verizon, activate your IMEI with Verizon).
Unfortunately, the major phone companies in the US charge the same whether you get your phone from them or you bring your own, and the subsidies are significant. So the only things you gain for your extra money are the flexibility to move from company to company and complete control over your phone (carrier can't turn off features if it's not their phone, though of course they can block access to specific data services if they want).
But we have LOTS of month-to-month phone plans you can buy without a contract at all, and that are SIM-chip based. Most of them are referred to in the US as "prepaid" plans, and you'll find a bevy of them at any convenience store or electronics store.
It's just that few Americans choose them because the subsidies that the major companies offer are actually pretty good deals, providing you are willing to commit to a specific phone company for two years or so and end up with a phone that only works on their service at the end of your contract. Most Americans are going to throw away a cell after two years anyway, so we'll just recommit to a new 2-year contract to get a new cell phone with that "new phone" smell. Some will continue their contracts month-to-month with the same carrier. Most will just get a fresh phone and renew their contract, and maybe change carriers at the switchover.
If more major carriers offered a significant discount for "bring your own" plans, maybe the American marketplace would shift to an "own the phone, then choose the carrier" model. But with multiple incompatible wireless technologies, once you buy a phone you're locked into a small subset of wireless carriers anyway.
Maybe they've changed it. I was thinking about the Verizon World 88xx series phone which has a SIM chip, but uses the European (850MHz) band and not the US (900MHz) band for GSM. That, and the fact that Verizon locked out the GPS unless you bought Telenav, made me choose AT&T for my Blackberry.
This is good advice, and the following is not intended as a criticism.
Then, (directed at the original poster) just before you end up with the inevitable brain aneurysm brought on from trying to learn the legal AND tax codes at the federal AND state levels and get all caught up with your paperwork in a few short months, you can hire professionals anyway, but at least you'll know just enough to understand what the hell they are talking about.
Seriously, I've heard very good things about the Nolo series, but the time to read them was before you started your business. Not now. You need to read the "running" part so you can quickly go back and reconstruct all the financial statements in a way that your lawyer and accountant can understand, that will save you massive gobs of billable hours. I had a part-time job for years with an accountant just tallying up and balancing checkbooks for clients, which was mind-crushingly boring but which paid well (probably because it WAS mind-crushingly boring and the business owners decided they'd rather pay my boss an incredible hourly fee to do it). Or you can get one of the better small business packages for a couple hundred bucks and solve most of the housekeeping/paperwork problems that way.
In the end, I think you'll really, REALLY want to get some professionals involved. The lawyer can talk about S-Corp versus LLC and other fun facts to know and tell, and the accountant can save you from massive penalties for not carrying the "3" properly on the form you filled out in error.
Yeah, the addition of "can issue prescriptions" does make it a little scary. I would hope that any qualified doctor would reserve their actual diagnosis for easy and obvious cases ("what, the over-the-counter hayfever medications aren't working for you? OK, let me send you a scrip for Claritin-whatever_letter_they_are_at_now").
But, of course, that means that the utility of such a service is limited. It's rather expensive for 10 minutes with someone who is either horribly overqualified to diagnose your condition in-person or horribly under-equipped to diagnose something they ARE qualified to diagnose because they can't get enough information. If I need to try out an asthma med or help with the diagnosis of athlete's foot or hayfever, any trained nurse can do that for me. If I need something more complicated, a doctor might be hard-pressed to diagnose it accurately over a webcam.
It's especially expensive if you have to pay for a referral to an in-person doc, unless the $45 includes the office visit if one becomes necessary.
This does seem rather expensive for a "dial-a-doc" service. The insurance company I use provides free "dial-a-nurse" services, charging $45 to add prescription capabilities seems a little pricey.
But, of course, $45 for a guaranteed ten minutes of access to an actual MD is probably well worth it. I've been with my current doctor for 6 years now, and I've met her once when one of the RNs wanted to do an in-office biopsy (and she observed while a med student did the actual cutting and stitching). All other business I've done with the office has been with a nurse.
The actual doctor rarely gets involved for an "uncomplicated" visit, so you probably WOULD get a lot of takers for $45 to spend 15 minutes with a nurse/practitioner.
Hold a firecracker, lit with an 8-second fuse, in your left hand and count to ten on your fingers. One finger per second. If you need both hands, you can temporarily place the firecracker between your legs while you finish the count.
$45 please. Please be sure to pay up BEFORE you perform the operation.
As a patient, and it pains me deeply to say this... I'd have to agree with a lawyer.
There. I said it. I agree with a lawyer on something. I'm going to hell now.
But seriously, we use our insurance company's "dial-a-nurse" service and it works well if you have some idea of what is wrong with you and just want some "best practices" advice, like "I have either a cold or the flu, can you help me determine which it is, and what symptoms I would indicate that I should see my doctor as opposed to drinking plenty of fluids and staying home?"
I can see a service like this being useful for other minor ailments that are relatively easy to diagnose based on clear symptoms, but that require medications that need a prescription. I'd hope that any doctor who was concerned about it being "maybe this or maybe that" wouldn't just take a guess (or render a medical opinion beyond their training) and hide behind some special immunity from lawsuit. But that doesn't mean I'd want to extend that immunity. If you're unsure of your diagnosis because you can't get enough information, the correct answer would be "I cannot help you, proceed to an in-person clinic in your area, this will be a no-charge courtesy call, 'kthanksbye!"
I'm not saying that a service like this would be useless, but if a good relatively confident diagnosis is not practical, the answer is to refer the patient to an in-person diagnosis, NOT to protect the doctor from indemnity if they made a diagnosis based on insufficient data because the tools they chose to use couldn't give them the data they needed.
Of course, that argument also leads down the slippery slope of requiring an MRI for a splinter removal as a lawsuit-prevention device, but any doctor who chooses to use "telediagnosis" should be aware of the limits of the technology and adjust their confidence in their diagnosis accordingly.
Your cell phone, if it's in the US, probably operates at one of two ranges: 900MHz or 1800MHz. I think most of the newer ones use 1800MHz. So if you're worried about the frequency differential, there isn't THAT much of a gap between 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz, so if you've got a newer cell you're already soaking in higher-frequency RF. Especially in Europe, where the 3G networks switched from the old 900/1800MHz frequencies to 2100MHz (2.1GHz) years ago.
The real concern, as others have mentioned, is power. Your cell phone puts out enough power to be heard by a tower that can be a couple of miles (a few KM) away. Your Bluetooth headset uses enough power to reach about 30 feet (10 meters). That's a very large difference in power. A Class II Bluetooth headset is probably on the order of 2.5mW (.0025 watts), while your average cell phone can be hundreds of times that amount.
As far as the studies that debunk the cellphone - cancer link, especially the oft-cited Scandinavian one... Unfortunately, most of them I've seen cited are based on analog cell phones. The Scandinavian study cited above ran until 2003, which is the first year that EDGE came out. Coincidentally, the introduction of EDGE was also when the 2100MHz frequencies started coming into heavy use. So the Scandinavian study doesn't cover the time period that includes any EDGE or 3G services.
So, while I don't know the current state of the science, keep in mind that the biggest, most cited study supporting "no link between cell and cancer" is a large-scale informal data aggregation that does not include data on the technology the phone you actually carry actually employs. It's rather like saying that airbags don't save lives because the horses that draw our carriages can't run fast enough to hurt anyone if there's a crash.
The nature of the data aggregation in the oft-cited Scandinavian study also didn't attempt to track who actually uses cell phones and whether those individuals got cancer, it tracked the rate of two specific types of cranial cancer over 30 years and generically explained increases in certain age groups until it found there were enough explanations to cover all the reported cases of that specific cancer and called it good. No attempt was made to:
- determine whether cases happened in younger groups (you only generally get terminal brain cancer once, depriving you of the chance to get it when you are older),
- determine whether other cancers went up (or not),
- or whether there was a higher incidence of cranial cancers among actual cell users (and especially heavy cell users) as opposed to the general populace.
They dismissed the actual measured and documented increases as a result of better detection, but I saw no sign that they compared those increase rates so, say, some other cancers that couldn't be cell-related. Not that it would be that meaningful, but it'd be nice to see how the better detection rates affected other cancers during the same period.
So we have an aggregation based on non-current technology that indicates a clear increase in cancer. The increase is then explained away by better detection technology. Pardon me if I'm not ENTIRELY convinced by it. I'm not saying there IS a link, I'm just saying the data analysis done doesn't appear to support such a conclusion.
More recent and formal studies (in other words, those that actually study current technologies and use a control population and a study population) have somewhat more concerning, though not entirely conclusive, results. (WHO Example http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569465,00.html ).
Is there a link? I, for one, honestly don't know. I tend to use my cell stuck up next to my head, which is probably not the best idea, and I'll probably start using a bluetooth headset more often for calls just because of the lower RF output and my deep and abiding desire to live forever (so far, so good). But since I used to use
Ivory Pope, 99.4% Pure Pope!
Which leads to some marketing spinoffs, including "Pope on a Rope". ... I'm going to hell now, aren't I?
Now look what you've done! You've made them feel all baaaa-aa-aa-aad. :)
Seriously, sounds like the definition of a good ad campaign to me.
- Money to charity? Check. Everyone'll pitch in to give money to a charity - hopefully it's a credible one and not the "Simon Cowell Antique Automobile Preservation Fund" or somesuch.
- "Stickin' it to the Man?" Check.
- Using a profitable social media site which is full of commercialism to rage against commercialism, by pushing a band that rages against "the man" to sell albums through one of the largest music labels in the world? Check. Irony is important in these things. Double irony doubly so.
- Getting people to spend money to "vote" on a meaningless statistic where you own both potential winners? Check. But at least people get to keep an MP3 out of this one, unlike the "pay $1 per vote" call-in polls most of these things turn into.
And, no, I didn't throw numbers on the list, so technically I can't:
5. Profit.
But I will anyway.
If a schism group wanted to form their own church, why would they even want to use the Papal symbols as they exist today? Wouldn't they want to install their own command chain with some other symbol denoting their pontiff or leader? Using the same symbols would cause confusion and possibly give credibility to the Church the schismatics want to leave, right?
You do raise a good point, but I think this is more to prevent criticism of the Church ("you used the word 'Pope' in your article, and it's critical of the Church, so we're issuing a DMCA(*) takedown notice") and/or to make sure the clergy within the Church don't use the Pope's name, images, or symbols for their own agendas that the Church may disagree with. In the former case, it denotes a distinct lack of faith in God to defend his own Church, and in the latter it denotes a distinct lack of discipline within the church hierarchy.
(*): Assuming the article is correct and they are really trying to get an actual Copyright. I suspect they want to get Trademarks, which would require a different type of takedown notice.
How many people would be gullible to fall for it twice?
Oh, wait, never mind. I must be new here. Continue with your countdown.
I suspect preemptive HIPAA lawsuits will be filed about 1 femtosecond after this patent gets approved, years before any such product could go to market.
I can't see any benefit to a device like this, unless someone is trying to make a "virtual gym" or something, in which case I'll join a real gym. That way no one has access to my medical records. As a bonus, if I overdo it and go to code blue or something, there are actual people around to call an ambulance and administer first aid.
Unless they have plans to integrate a defib into the game controller.
I would have used FTFY, but I figured the convergence of pun and meme would cause a breach in the pun-meme continuum.
I think you meant this:
1. Make fake software.
2. Make fake software work like it will outshine proprietary software.
3. ???
4. Prophet
Should be plenty of room to fit 'em all. You don't need a lot of payload, they'll provide their own forced-hot-air heating system until the oxygen runs out, and you want to make that mercifully (*) quick.
(*) for us, not them.
No one is going to accept ads suddenly popping up when they try to link from Myst Island to Channelwood.
Well, they could be subtle and work it into the game dialogue/gameplay...
"Bring me the BIG BLUE pages!"
"D'Ni" could become "Sun'i" and they could have everyone drinking Java there.
The "Linking Books" could be Nooks or Kindles.
The clock puzzle could have a brand on the face.
But the fact that the movie did not show at all in 3D means the 3D version can't be pirated. DRM rules.
In the words of the immortal F. Leghorn, "Why, I say.. It's a joke, son."
Well, it's hard to say why the key generator company was unable to produce enough valid licenses in time. According to the article, the movie theaters had licenses but they turned out to be "no longer valid" on opening day. I suspect that either "Deluxe" (the key distributor) had a major systems failure and couldn't regen the day's licenses, or forgot to tell their customers that they needed to have the keys renewed frequently, or something.
The movie distributor was certainly able to deliver the movies (which are delivered by courier on AES-encrypted hard drives) on time, so if the actual physical movies could be delivered you'd think the key generator company that the movie could keep up by issuing one key for each drive physically delivered, and if those keys have to be generated each time the movie is shown you'd think they'd have that worked out.
I get the impression that the theaters (multiple, independent theaters across Germany were affected, not just one) have all been planning and looking forward to this for some time. Th article indicates that they all received their copies of the movie they purchased in plenty of time, and copied them to their theater server well in advance, but that the keys turned out not to work when they hit PLAY. But maybe this is the German equivalent of a RIAA/ASCAP thing where you buy the movie from one source and you have to buy the licenses to play it from an entirely different source, and the theaters didn't realize that the keys they originally got only worked for testing or something.
Still, with all the advance planning, and all the various theaters that were affected, I find it hard to believe that so many theaters who had planned screenings so far in advance would somehow "forget" to buy licenses to play it. They had the physical movie, they had the glasses, they sold the tickets, and it sounds like they paid since the key distributor was able to get them the keys the next day.