I'm sure someone planned to bring in a cellphone with a 3D camera and release a barely-watchable 30-second clip of some of the less important dialogue.
DRM prevents piracy again! Yes!!!! Huzzah for DRM!
I'm a programmer. I know all about "tested it, but didn't test it." Umm, no, wait, my code always works and I always test every unexpected scenario the real world has a way of throwing at me, yeah, that's what I meant.;)
I'm sure the new compression method works just fine for the TV sets the BBC used, which are probably newer ones, and/or for very low values of signal loss.
You can also get better compression by specifying a more sophisticated compression method within the same codec, for example, since many codecs support various levels of compression.
Generally, "better" compression (fitting a higher resolution and/or framerate into a smaller size) requires a lot more power to encode and often some more power to decode. You can use less bitrate to get a quality signal there, but you need "smarter" coders and decoders at the respective ends of the transmission. So the BBC may have upgraded their compression engine to something that can do "better" compression, thereby fitting the same resolution and framerate into a 40% smaller stream. But their customers' television sets might not have the horsepower to decode it at full quality.
That could easily explain why the BBC's testing went so well but their consumers (with varying brands of TV sets probably mostly tested for British use with the old compression) can't keep up and render an inferior picture.
It's also possible that, by compressing the video stream into a denser compression method, signal loss is having a greater effect than it did with the old compression method. The viewers may be seeing artifacts that are the decoder's attempts to fill in the blanks. The old compression method might have allowed a certain amount of redundancy or error correction that the new one lacks, and the loss of part of the signal has a more visible effect on the new one.
OK, so ads served by Slashdot to support their page are wrong in your opinion, but your ad for Lemuria Skies in your signature (which presumably does not support the site you posted it on) is somehow OK?
Wait, I'm confused. The ads are bad on sites even when they help pay for content, but the ad in your signature is somehow OK even though it doesn't?
Or are you reserving the right to be the only person allowed to shove "product information" down other people's throats, "willingly or otherwise"?
Or is this a carefully-crafted example of ironic humor that went way over my head?
We'll have to agree to disagree on interpretation of her statement, then.
I completely understand and agree with your opinion if she had said "I want to kill him" that this is simply an expression of desire and not intent, and I'd be totally on board with your "Minority Report" comparison.
However, she used the words "looking forward to", not "want to", in her first post. To me, that crosses the line between desire and intent.
In order to make it an intent for murder, of course, you have to look at both of her posts, and I agree that this is a bit more of a stretch, but looks like a pretty reasonable conclusion for someone to make.
In the first, I could see it as being a cadaver, fair enough. But the second post seems to clarify the intent of the first one, especially with the use of the word "still".
As to why they called the cops rather than inviting her in for a 1:1, hard to say. Perhaps they feared violence toward their counselor, or didn't want the liability and just turned the information over to the authorities, or just overreacted?
Again, they very well may have overreacted, or maybe their response was not the optimal one, but the two postings paint a picture that I guess they felt couldn't be ignored.
See, we read the same statements and I have a very different interpretation.
"looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy.... Give me room, lots of aggression to be taken out with a trocar"
"I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. "
To me, those two statement combine to form a possible statement of intent. The fact that they were stated at different times tells me that there could be premeditation, or that she could have changed her mind, but I don't know which.
I'm not saying what the school admins or police did was necessarily right, just, or holy. But it was understandable.
Read the Star-Tribune link at the bottom of the summary. She didn't stop at "I want to...". Not even close. Her statements appear to meet the criteria for (b), (c), and (d) of your list above. She also claims (e). The only thing that never happened was (a), and we'll honestly never know her intent. Was she stating actual intent or blowing off steam? Tough decision for school admins and the cops to make when they are looking at text on a screen.
So, yeah, next time she learns that saying that she's looking forward to stabbing someone in the throat with a tocar during class and theorizing on how she might get rid of the body is probably not a well-chosen public statement to make.
The school admins may have overreacted, but if so they overreacted by adding too much credibility to a pretty clear threatening statement.
Also posting that she's very much looking forward to fulfilling those violent fantasies and discussing how she might get rid of the body is also an excellent way to make sure that everyone stays out of her business.
I fucking DARE you to come harass me over this post. I FUCKING DARE YOU.
OK, but at least make your posts paint the same picture you are comparing them to...
"I am thinking about stabbing the U of M Campus Police, as well as the Professor Dipshit that called them about this."
Now follow that up with a post that says you are "looking forward to my Campus Police therapy at 10AM tomorrow morning using a large knife to the throat followed shortly by some Dipshit Therapy and I really hope people give me a lot of room because I have a severe amount of aggression I am bringing to the therapy."
Then start talking about how you might dispose of the bodies.
It's not that she said she was thinking about it. She said she was LOOKING FORWARD to it. Very large difference between "I'd like to" and "I'm looking forward to"
The school admins and the police may have overreacted, that's arguable, but they were not reacting to a thought. They were reacting to a statement of intent.
True. But she made two statements, and combined they could easily be interpreted as intent. Read the Star-Tribune link at the end of the summary. They quote excerpts from the actual postings:
First statement (after expressing anger about her breakup with her boyfriend): "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy.... Give me room, lots of aggression to be taken out with a trocar."
Then followed it with a post that said "I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. Hmmm... perhaps I will spend the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy. I do know the code..."
So first she stated a pretty clear intent to do something without making it clear what (except that it was a violent act), then she clarified it with "I still want to do this" and filled in the details of what she intended to do, the fact that it was a person she was talking about (and not, say, her class cadaver), then talked about possibly disposing of the body.
Were her statements merely blowing off steam? Is this something school administrators, once someone mentioned it to them, would be justified in ignoring? I'm glad I'm not a school administrator, frankly, because if I were faced with this I'd be in a lose-lose situation. If I ignored it and it turned violent, the victims or their families would be all over my ass with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and I'd be at least fired for negligence. If I didn't ignore it, it'd be a civil rights issue.
Obviously they thought it needed to be acted on. They escalated the information to the police, who also interpreted it the same way.
Did they make a mistake? Possibly. But IMHO if it was a mistake it was an understandable one. Those two statements taken together in context are easily interpreted (misinterpreted?) as a statement of intent.
I disagree. Sorry, but if you're going to trust me with very sensitive data, you need to be able to trust me with it, and that means testing me in such a way that the results are valid.
Which is no way means it's pleasant, or fun, or is anything other than a complete horror show. On the other hand, I was ready to leave the company with my head held high because I stuck to my principles, and there's a part of me that is proud of that.
It still sucked fetid donkey balls when I was going through it, and I have no desire to repeat the experience.
But if you can come up with another test that can demonstrate without doubt that an employee's personal integrity is worth more to them than any specific job, I'm certain a whole lot of people who are responsible for important data would love to hear it.
Yes, that was part of the conversation. And it was no fun.
Given the amount of access I had to their systems and the sensitivity of the data I had immediate access to, I also understand now that the test was a necessary evil.
I did get a free dinner for my wife and myself at a very nice restaurant as a form of reward/apology. That was nice of them.
I worked for a company that performed services for companies that had a lot of personal information. Our systems were kept pretty tight.
For a while, I was the only IT person in the company. I had the primary passwords for much of the company's infrastructure, and the policy manual that was worked up allowed me to give those passwords to two other people on request - the President and my departmental Vice President of the company. The VP was three rungs up the ladder from me.
Neither had the chops to do anything with the passwords, but of course they could easily have hired someone who did. I also had to keep the current passwords in an offsite lockbox at a local bank and only the three of us had access to that box. That way, if I got hit by a bus (or terminated for cause, quit under suspicious circumstances, or whatever) the company could continue operations smoothly.
My boss's boss walked in my office one day and asked for a password for one of the main systems. After a long, involved, and rather unpleasant conversation, I was threatened with termination if the passwords were not handed over. As I started to pack my crap up, the President walked in the room and thanked me for my diligence in following security protocol. It was a surprise audit. I don't think I would have been terminated if I had handed over the passwords, but I'm sure my clearance to possess them would have been revoked in a very large hurry. And that would have been the correct action to take.
There are circumstances where you DO NOT have the authority to give information to your boss. If there is a policy against it, the policy trumps your boss's ability to ask you for the information.
I don't know for sure the policies in place at this particular department, but it is very possible that the boss was not authorized for that information. Passwords and security information do not necessarily follow the chain of command - they follow a chain of responsibility and/or trust, and that isn't always perfectly aligned with the chain of command. If Childs' boss was not authorized for the information, he did the right thing in insisting that the information be turned over to the people his security protocol manual specified.
If Childs' boss WAS authorized for the information by policy, and Childs honestly felt the boss would misuse the information for something illegal and/or was gunning for Childs, then his actions may or may not be justifiable in this case - he's going to have to produce some proof that his boss had an illegitimate purpose. That could be tough.
Actually, the beauty is that if you've already got one of their gizmos, you're already a customer and they don't need you to hear them.
Though they could put an uncompressed track on their commercial, saying something like "If you have one of our devices, don't you love it that this is the only commercial you can hear? Isn't the lack of shouting just glorious? If you don't have one of our devices, please enjoy this quiet ad and buy our product so this is the only type of ad you will hear from now on - eliminate the shouting by calling 1-888-STFU-ADS...":)
No offense, but I'd like to know as much about your company's decision to choose them, knowing that they are using warez and with suspicions that they are compromised, as I would about your vendor.
It's one thing for a vendor to use warez, it's even a bigger problem if the company that collects the data from me is knowingly giving it to an outsource group they feel is untrustworthy.
Wow, I knew Poe had some dark poetry, but this adds a whole new dimension of darkness to "The Raven".
I very seriously doubt I could have refrained from laughter, and any punishment for laughing would have been tame compared to the amount of damage I'd do to myself trying not to.
If Microsoft feels they have a good case, they should still pursue it. Microsoft only has to pay the defendant's expenses if they lose. If they win, they can probably get their own travel expenses added on.
Large companies can and do use their banks of on-staff lawyers and the various jurisdictions they have presences in to make their suits harder to defend against. Individuals or small companies cannot hope to afford to defend themselves against a concerted attack from a megacorp. This could really have a chilling effect on the "sue 'em all and let the courts sort it out" approach to license management, which is good.
PS: Plenty of companies here in the US also warez their MS products. It's an incidental expense, though, compared to the real money savings (labor), so I honestly doubt you'll see a leveling of the playing field - many of your Indian competitors are very large companies (WiPro, TaTa) who I very much doubt would dare violate MS licensing for extra profit.
A "rap" is a sharp blow (like knocking on a door), or a sharp rebuke (criticism for some wrongdoing), or a criminal sentence for committing a crime. Context would imply the second meaning (a sharp rebuke).
In the second meaning of this word, it's a perfectly appropriate usage for the circumstances. A judge issued a sharp rebuke, therefore he "rapped" Microsoft. I don't see how the usage is flippant, or frankly what's so horrible about the word that it would have a "flippant" usage. I won't cover the music that goes under the name "rap", because that IS too horrible to contemplate, but an Indian judge would use ragas anyway.
Now, if the article had said that that judge "raped" Microsoft, I'd say that was a flippant usage of THAT word.
Granted, but then again I'm sure there's something about excessive usage in the agreement between B&N or Amazon and the consumer who uses it, and I'm equally sure that a violation of that agreement will get the SIM card on the respective device locked out.
I wonder if you could replace the SIM chip and pay for the cell data plan oneself? Then you are completely not locked to any agreement that Amazon or B&N has with the cell provider - you're paying for the bandwidth and any excessive bandwidth gripes no longer involve Amazon or B&N.
So once the Nook is hacked, I imagine the Nook units will eventually be locked down by AT&T because the bandwidth is being paid for by B&N.
One of the advantages of AT&T, though, is that they use a SIM-based network. So if you can manage to "unlock" the device, I'd presume you'd also be able to replace the SIM chip in it, which means you may be able to buy a data plan from AT&T and use it all you want. Just insert the SIM chip you are paying for.
- B&N makes a sale of a Nook (assuming it isn't a lost leader for them, I doubt they'd have a problem with it).
- AT&T makes a sale of a data plan SIM chip and the corresponding monthly fee for same.
- You get your e-ink notebook with Internet access.
Umm, no. Certainly morally it is, but not legally.
If you leave your car running, the blame for the theft can be placed on you, and in some states you can actually be held partly liable if the thief does something wrong with the vehicle. Especially if the person who stole your car is underage.
Some decades ago, at my father's business, my mother stopped by to drop something off. Since she was parked next to the rear entrance to the store (which was in a mall), she hopped out of her car with the keys in it and the car running. It was winter, and the car had a habit of not starting well if it was already warmed up. Apparently a couple of kids were hanging out in the area, because the car was stolen in the 30 seconds it took her to drop off the paperwork and come back outside.
The police eventually caught the kids who did it once they wrecked the car. The kids were 17 and 16, and one of them was a repeat offender (petty theft, etc) whose name appeared in the police blotter regularly. But since the keys were in the car, the car was considered an "attractive nuisance" and the kids could not be held liable to stealing it. Quite the contrary, the presence of the keys was legally considered to be a compulsion for someone to steal it, and my mother was therefore liable for the theft AND everything they did in the car, including any injuries to themselves or others.
Fortunately for us, when the kids totalled her car neither of them was seriously hurt, and the property damage they did was minimal. We had to buy a new car, and pay for the property damage the wreck caused, and pay the medical bills for the kids to get checked out at the hospital. It set us back about $15,000 or so, since insurance wouldn't pay a penny of it of course, but it was an interesting and eye-opening lesson in liability.
Fortunately, the police officer decided not to press charges for reckless endangerment of a child, or my mother could have ended up in real trouble for having her car stolen.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure someone planned to bring in a cellphone with a 3D camera and release a barely-watchable 30-second clip of some of the less important dialogue.
DRM prevents piracy again! Yes!!!! Huzzah for DRM!
I'm a programmer. I know all about "tested it, but didn't test it." Umm, no, wait, my code always works and I always test every unexpected scenario the real world has a way of throwing at me, yeah, that's what I meant. ;)
I'm sure the new compression method works just fine for the TV sets the BBC used, which are probably newer ones, and/or for very low values of signal loss.
Here, looked that up for you on m-w.com:
estoppel
One entry found.
Main Entry: estoppel
Pronunciation: \e-stä-pl\
Function: noun
Etymology: probably alteration of Anglo-French estopere stopping, from estoper
Date: 1531
: a legal bar to alleging or denying a fact because of one's own previous actions or words to the contrary
You can also get better compression by specifying a more sophisticated compression method within the same codec, for example, since many codecs support various levels of compression.
Generally, "better" compression (fitting a higher resolution and/or framerate into a smaller size) requires a lot more power to encode and often some more power to decode. You can use less bitrate to get a quality signal there, but you need "smarter" coders and decoders at the respective ends of the transmission. So the BBC may have upgraded their compression engine to something that can do "better" compression, thereby fitting the same resolution and framerate into a 40% smaller stream. But their customers' television sets might not have the horsepower to decode it at full quality.
That could easily explain why the BBC's testing went so well but their consumers (with varying brands of TV sets probably mostly tested for British use with the old compression) can't keep up and render an inferior picture.
It's also possible that, by compressing the video stream into a denser compression method, signal loss is having a greater effect than it did with the old compression method. The viewers may be seeing artifacts that are the decoder's attempts to fill in the blanks. The old compression method might have allowed a certain amount of redundancy or error correction that the new one lacks, and the loss of part of the signal has a more visible effect on the new one.
OK, so ads served by Slashdot to support their page are wrong in your opinion, but your ad for Lemuria Skies in your signature (which presumably does not support the site you posted it on) is somehow OK?
Wait, I'm confused. The ads are bad on sites even when they help pay for content, but the ad in your signature is somehow OK even though it doesn't?
Or are you reserving the right to be the only person allowed to shove "product information" down other people's throats, "willingly or otherwise"?
Or is this a carefully-crafted example of ironic humor that went way over my head?
We'll have to agree to disagree on interpretation of her statement, then.
I completely understand and agree with your opinion if she had said "I want to kill him" that this is simply an expression of desire and not intent, and I'd be totally on board with your "Minority Report" comparison.
However, she used the words "looking forward to", not "want to", in her first post. To me, that crosses the line between desire and intent.
In order to make it an intent for murder, of course, you have to look at both of her posts, and I agree that this is a bit more of a stretch, but looks like a pretty reasonable conclusion for someone to make.
A statement of intent is not a thought, it's a threat. There's a difference there.
Agreed, it's questionable whether this was a credible statement of intent, and intent is not a crime. So I agree that she hasn't committed a crime.
If she had, she'd have been charged with one. Instead, she made threats, and was barred from the school as a result.
In the first, I could see it as being a cadaver, fair enough. But the second post seems to clarify the intent of the first one, especially with the use of the word "still".
As to why they called the cops rather than inviting her in for a 1:1, hard to say. Perhaps they feared violence toward their counselor, or didn't want the liability and just turned the information over to the authorities, or just overreacted?
Again, they very well may have overreacted, or maybe their response was not the optimal one, but the two postings paint a picture that I guess they felt couldn't be ignored.
See, we read the same statements and I have a very different interpretation.
"looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy. ... Give me room, lots of aggression to be taken out with a trocar"
"I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. "
To me, those two statement combine to form a possible statement of intent. The fact that they were stated at different times tells me that there could be premeditation, or that she could have changed her mind, but I don't know which.
I'm not saying what the school admins or police did was necessarily right, just, or holy. But it was understandable.
Read the Star-Tribune link at the bottom of the summary. She didn't stop at "I want to...". Not even close. Her statements appear to meet the criteria for (b), (c), and (d) of your list above. She also claims (e). The only thing that never happened was (a), and we'll honestly never know her intent. Was she stating actual intent or blowing off steam? Tough decision for school admins and the cops to make when they are looking at text on a screen.
So, yeah, next time she learns that saying that she's looking forward to stabbing someone in the throat with a tocar during class and theorizing on how she might get rid of the body is probably not a well-chosen public statement to make.
The school admins may have overreacted, but if so they overreacted by adding too much credibility to a pretty clear threatening statement.
Also posting that she's very much looking forward to fulfilling those violent fantasies and discussing how she might get rid of the body is also an excellent way to make sure that everyone stays out of her business.
I fucking DARE you to come harass me over this post. I FUCKING DARE YOU.
OK, but at least make your posts paint the same picture you are comparing them to...
"I am thinking about stabbing the U of M Campus Police, as well as the Professor Dipshit that called them about this."
Now follow that up with a post that says you are "looking forward to my Campus Police therapy at 10AM tomorrow morning using a large knife to the throat followed shortly by some Dipshit Therapy and I really hope people give me a lot of room because I have a severe amount of aggression I am bringing to the therapy."
Then start talking about how you might dispose of the bodies.
It's not that she said she was thinking about it. She said she was LOOKING FORWARD to it. Very large difference between "I'd like to" and "I'm looking forward to"
The school admins and the police may have overreacted, that's arguable, but they were not reacting to a thought. They were reacting to a statement of intent.
True. But she made two statements, and combined they could easily be interpreted as intent. Read the Star-Tribune link at the end of the summary. They quote excerpts from the actual postings:
First statement (after expressing anger about her breakup with her boyfriend): "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy. ... Give me room, lots of aggression to be taken out with a trocar."
Then followed it with a post that said "I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. Hmmm ... perhaps I will spend the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy. I do know the code ..."
So first she stated a pretty clear intent to do something without making it clear what (except that it was a violent act), then she clarified it with "I still want to do this" and filled in the details of what she intended to do, the fact that it was a person she was talking about (and not, say, her class cadaver), then talked about possibly disposing of the body.
Were her statements merely blowing off steam? Is this something school administrators, once someone mentioned it to them, would be justified in ignoring? I'm glad I'm not a school administrator, frankly, because if I were faced with this I'd be in a lose-lose situation. If I ignored it and it turned violent, the victims or their families would be all over my ass with multimillion-dollar lawsuits and I'd be at least fired for negligence. If I didn't ignore it, it'd be a civil rights issue.
Obviously they thought it needed to be acted on. They escalated the information to the police, who also interpreted it the same way.
Did they make a mistake? Possibly. But IMHO if it was a mistake it was an understandable one. Those two statements taken together in context are easily interpreted (misinterpreted?) as a statement of intent.
I disagree. Sorry, but if you're going to trust me with very sensitive data, you need to be able to trust me with it, and that means testing me in such a way that the results are valid.
Which is no way means it's pleasant, or fun, or is anything other than a complete horror show. On the other hand, I was ready to leave the company with my head held high because I stuck to my principles, and there's a part of me that is proud of that.
It still sucked fetid donkey balls when I was going through it, and I have no desire to repeat the experience.
But if you can come up with another test that can demonstrate without doubt that an employee's personal integrity is worth more to them than any specific job, I'm certain a whole lot of people who are responsible for important data would love to hear it.
Yes, that was part of the conversation. And it was no fun.
Given the amount of access I had to their systems and the sensitivity of the data I had immediate access to, I also understand now that the test was a necessary evil.
I did get a free dinner for my wife and myself at a very nice restaurant as a form of reward/apology. That was nice of them.
I worked for a company that performed services for companies that had a lot of personal information. Our systems were kept pretty tight.
For a while, I was the only IT person in the company. I had the primary passwords for much of the company's infrastructure, and the policy manual that was worked up allowed me to give those passwords to two other people on request - the President and my departmental Vice President of the company. The VP was three rungs up the ladder from me.
Neither had the chops to do anything with the passwords, but of course they could easily have hired someone who did. I also had to keep the current passwords in an offsite lockbox at a local bank and only the three of us had access to that box. That way, if I got hit by a bus (or terminated for cause, quit under suspicious circumstances, or whatever) the company could continue operations smoothly.
My boss's boss walked in my office one day and asked for a password for one of the main systems. After a long, involved, and rather unpleasant conversation, I was threatened with termination if the passwords were not handed over. As I started to pack my crap up, the President walked in the room and thanked me for my diligence in following security protocol. It was a surprise audit. I don't think I would have been terminated if I had handed over the passwords, but I'm sure my clearance to possess them would have been revoked in a very large hurry. And that would have been the correct action to take.
There are circumstances where you DO NOT have the authority to give information to your boss. If there is a policy against it, the policy trumps your boss's ability to ask you for the information.
I don't know for sure the policies in place at this particular department, but it is very possible that the boss was not authorized for that information. Passwords and security information do not necessarily follow the chain of command - they follow a chain of responsibility and/or trust, and that isn't always perfectly aligned with the chain of command. If Childs' boss was not authorized for the information, he did the right thing in insisting that the information be turned over to the people his security protocol manual specified.
If Childs' boss WAS authorized for the information by policy, and Childs honestly felt the boss would misuse the information for something illegal and/or was gunning for Childs, then his actions may or may not be justifiable in this case - he's going to have to produce some proof that his boss had an illegitimate purpose. That could be tough.
Actually, the beauty is that if you've already got one of their gizmos, you're already a customer and they don't need you to hear them.
Though they could put an uncompressed track on their commercial, saying something like "If you have one of our devices, don't you love it that this is the only commercial you can hear? Isn't the lack of shouting just glorious? If you don't have one of our devices, please enjoy this quiet ad and buy our product so this is the only type of ad you will hear from now on - eliminate the shouting by calling 1-888-STFU-ADS..." :)
No offense, but I'd like to know as much about your company's decision to choose them, knowing that they are using warez and with suspicions that they are compromised, as I would about your vendor.
It's one thing for a vendor to use warez, it's even a bigger problem if the company that collects the data from me is knowingly giving it to an outsource group they feel is untrustworthy.
Wow, I knew Poe had some dark poetry, but this adds a whole new dimension of darkness to "The Raven".
I very seriously doubt I could have refrained from laughter, and any punishment for laughing would have been tame compared to the amount of damage I'd do to myself trying not to.
You mean Lipton isn't the pinnacle of tea-making civilization? It gets BETTER? ;)
If Microsoft feels they have a good case, they should still pursue it. Microsoft only has to pay the defendant's expenses if they lose. If they win, they can probably get their own travel expenses added on.
Large companies can and do use their banks of on-staff lawyers and the various jurisdictions they have presences in to make their suits harder to defend against. Individuals or small companies cannot hope to afford to defend themselves against a concerted attack from a megacorp. This could really have a chilling effect on the "sue 'em all and let the courts sort it out" approach to license management, which is good.
PS: Plenty of companies here in the US also warez their MS products. It's an incidental expense, though, compared to the real money savings (labor), so I honestly doubt you'll see a leveling of the playing field - many of your Indian competitors are very large companies (WiPro, TaTa) who I very much doubt would dare violate MS licensing for extra profit.
A "rap" is a sharp blow (like knocking on a door), or a sharp rebuke (criticism for some wrongdoing), or a criminal sentence for committing a crime. Context would imply the second meaning (a sharp rebuke).
In the second meaning of this word, it's a perfectly appropriate usage for the circumstances. A judge issued a sharp rebuke, therefore he "rapped" Microsoft. I don't see how the usage is flippant, or frankly what's so horrible about the word that it would have a "flippant" usage. I won't cover the music that goes under the name "rap", because that IS too horrible to contemplate, but an Indian judge would use ragas anyway.
Now, if the article had said that that judge "raped" Microsoft, I'd say that was a flippant usage of THAT word.
Fortunately, that's not the word they used.
Granted, but then again I'm sure there's something about excessive usage in the agreement between B&N or Amazon and the consumer who uses it, and I'm equally sure that a violation of that agreement will get the SIM card on the respective device locked out.
I wonder if you could replace the SIM chip and pay for the cell data plan oneself? Then you are completely not locked to any agreement that Amazon or B&N has with the cell provider - you're paying for the bandwidth and any excessive bandwidth gripes no longer involve Amazon or B&N.
So once the Nook is hacked, I imagine the Nook units will eventually be locked down by AT&T because the bandwidth is being paid for by B&N.
One of the advantages of AT&T, though, is that they use a SIM-based network. So if you can manage to "unlock" the device, I'd presume you'd also be able to replace the SIM chip in it, which means you may be able to buy a data plan from AT&T and use it all you want. Just insert the SIM chip you are paying for.
- B&N makes a sale of a Nook (assuming it isn't a lost leader for them, I doubt they'd have a problem with it).
- AT&T makes a sale of a data plan SIM chip and the corresponding monthly fee for same.
- You get your e-ink notebook with Internet access.
Everyone wins.
Umm, no. Certainly morally it is, but not legally.
If you leave your car running, the blame for the theft can be placed on you, and in some states you can actually be held partly liable if the thief does something wrong with the vehicle. Especially if the person who stole your car is underage.
Some decades ago, at my father's business, my mother stopped by to drop something off. Since she was parked next to the rear entrance to the store (which was in a mall), she hopped out of her car with the keys in it and the car running. It was winter, and the car had a habit of not starting well if it was already warmed up. Apparently a couple of kids were hanging out in the area, because the car was stolen in the 30 seconds it took her to drop off the paperwork and come back outside.
The police eventually caught the kids who did it once they wrecked the car. The kids were 17 and 16, and one of them was a repeat offender (petty theft, etc) whose name appeared in the police blotter regularly. But since the keys were in the car, the car was considered an "attractive nuisance" and the kids could not be held liable to stealing it. Quite the contrary, the presence of the keys was legally considered to be a compulsion for someone to steal it, and my mother was therefore liable for the theft AND everything they did in the car, including any injuries to themselves or others.
Fortunately for us, when the kids totalled her car neither of them was seriously hurt, and the property damage they did was minimal. We had to buy a new car, and pay for the property damage the wreck caused, and pay the medical bills for the kids to get checked out at the hospital. It set us back about $15,000 or so, since insurance wouldn't pay a penny of it of course, but it was an interesting and eye-opening lesson in liability.
Fortunately, the police officer decided not to press charges for reckless endangerment of a child, or my mother could have ended up in real trouble for having her car stolen.