To kill spam/UCE, it will take considerably more than just one country. There needs to be a global agreement, otherwise it's pointless.
If there's even one country with no anti-spam laws, people will just go there to spam. Sure, there're technical ways to deal with that, but given how easy it is to "acquire" new IP address space most of them are doomed to failure.
Unlike most post-production houses which bid for work and pay for equipment out of that price, New Line Cinema bankrolls the technology Weta Digital needs to complete its task.
CGI would probably have progressed even further than the current state-of-the-art. New Line's management obviously need to be given a +5 Insightful mod:P
"Work To Rule"
What does your contract say is required of you? If you don't have any clauses requiring you to work like a slave because the company takes on unreasonable clients, work exactly to the letter of your contract and no more.
Sure, the company could try and fire you (and lose in court if you haven't broken your contractual obligations), and then they're down a developer. If enough of you start playing the WTR game, the company has no choice but to start looking at the situation more closely.
WTR means that there's no possible way for them to get the project done on-time and on-budget (contractors are expensive).
The main thing with WTR is that everyone needs to be in on it. If only one or two people do it, the load just gets dropped on everyone else and they will, funnily enough, get mightily pissed off.
of Dr. Kolodzy, it would seem that the FCC were actually quite serious about getting good ideas for dealing with the spectrum shortage.
You don't use someone with a background at MIT and Lockheed Martin to give you a stack of paper with words on it.
Thus the American philosophy that government is better when it simply creates an envioronment in which people have equal oppourtunity is actually more fair and produces better goods and services
Following through on your idea of fake countries, wouldn't it be nice if the American philosophy extended to actual free trade rather than only free trade that is beneficial to Americans?
The Aussies (I'm a Kiwi) are all making a big hoorah about how they're probably going to get an FTA with the US. That'd be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that the Yanks don't even do real (ie: no tarrifs on anything) free trade with their partners in NAFTA, let alone a bunch of yahoos on the opposite side of the world.
Before the Americans start lecturing the world on free markets and the benefits of open trade, they should practice what they preach - Nobody likes a hypocrite.
Since when were ex-KGB Soviet Commies like Vladamir Putin "extreme right-wing"?:)
The USSR's political spectrum was the reverse of the "western" one. The Communist Party hard-line were the extreme right-wing, while those who were seeking to liberalise and move towards a more capitalist/democratic society were the left-wing.
Fucked up, but then again what about the USSR wasn't?
In the US, I think we tend to think more about individual responsibility
Don't make me laugh. Good thing I'd just swallowed my coke.
Your definition of "individual responsibility" is to sue whoever was involved in you being a stupid idiot and getting hurt.
If "individual responsibility" is such a big deal, why does the US have an enormous tort reform lobby? Because suing is how your exercise your responsbibility for your actions, it would seem.
Take the nutter who sued NY Transit after getting drunk and climbing onto the tracks, and having both legs amputated below the knee. Yeah, that's really taking responsibility for your own actions - I got drunk and did something really, really stupid, but because I wasn't stopped from doing it by someone else I'm going to sue them.
Yes, "individual responsibility" is alive and well and definitely not hiding anywhere in the United States of America.
For all the sneering that Yanks direct at "socialist" countries, at least those of us who live in those countries don't go running to a lawyer when our own child hits us with a toy truck when we're out shopping.
I think people greatly underestimate the amount of effort, blood, sweat, and tears it would take to "switch" (so to speak) a government agency (let alone a whole government) to Linux.
I think that the catalyst for a lot of governmental change will be Longhorn.
Since Longhorn will not be backwards compatible (at least that's the word coming from the Beast of Redmond), any organisation that's going to be forced to upgrade has far less to lose by switching to OSS. When you're being made to rip it all out by a multi-national monopoly, it suddenly looks pretty attractive to start running software that dances to your tune.
The open source community should just be praying that Bill and Steve don't wise up to the once-in-a-development-cycle opportunity that Longhorn will present to us - Selling a total replacement (and one that won't cost a bean in licence fees, now or in the future) in the face of a total replacement (that will cost you a large chunk of your national debt in licence fees now, and that's not even counting next year) is a lot easier than selling a total replacement in the face of stagnation and an entrenched system.
.1A is enough to disturb the heart's rythm and send you into cardiac arrest. And people with pre-existing heart conditions are, obviously, susceptible to even lower currents.
...is like building a puzzle without the final image to look at.
Not that I can program worth a damn, let alone write device drivers, but I'd imagine you also don't have the benefit of being able to get a defined outline (ie: the edge pieces) of your puzzle from the bits you're pulling out of the box.
It's popular because no matter which McDonald's you go to, anywhere in the country, you know exactly how much the food will suck, so it's predictable. The food sucks equally, and in precisely the same way, at every single McDonald's in the US.
I believe McDonald's overseas will suck in a different manner though.
Nope, the degree of suckiness for standard products (ones they serve everywhere, as opposed to local variations) is globally standardised.
Did you want to upsize that suck?:P
There is the additional possibility of the electronics inside the phone igniting gasoline fumes which permeate the case, but I would think this is something that could be tested for. Gasoline fumes are volatile but I have to wonder if they are really volatile enough to be ignited by the amount of current running through a cell phone.
Am I the only person who finds it hard to believe that the forecourt of a petrol station could ever be anything other than a very under-rich fuel:air mix?
Petrol has a pretty small flammability range (63%-69% IIRC), and the chances of being able to get that concentration of fumes around the pumps must be sufficiently close to zero that it could be called an impossible risk - Obvious exceptions being badly designed station layouts with small, confined filling areas.
The current in a cellphone could easily ignite petrol fumes if it were to spark, but that spark must be introduced into a fuel:air mix that falls within the flammability limits of petrol.
A EULA is not a law. Legislatures make laws, not companies.
You really sure about that? Legislatures might pass laws, but sure as hell (in the US at least) it looks to the rest of us like companies acutally write the laws. DMCA, anyone?
As far as I can see, the only scenario that doesn't require somebody, somewhere being really grotesquely stupid is that SCO was hoping for a buyout all along, and counted on that buyout happening before they were ever forced to make their slanderous accusations into actual charges.
That would be a very risky proposition on SCO's part. IBM will not hesitate to counter-sue SCO if it turns out that the suit was not just frivilous, but out-right malicious. And while Micro$oft (how appropriate) might be sitting on the world's largest pile'o'cash[TM] and more than happy to throw some SCO's way, IBM's still a great white shark to Bill's piranha.
No we have someone who says SCO showed them chunks of code and said the code came from the SCO source and the Linux source.
Not only that, they showed the code to "analysts" who're known OSS-bashers. DiDio may as well just admit that she wants to have Bill's babies, and we all know that Aberdeen are just opinion whores - For sale to the highest bidder.
Until the code is subject to independant (not RH, or IBM, or SuSE, but also not Aberdeen, or DiDio, or any of Bill's mates) review by clueful people, the validity of the suit remains in question.
Our server types include blades, standard 2-way, and some 4+ processor machines. How many have Linux pre-installed? NOT ONE! We've bought over 200 Intel servers THIS YEAR (including dev, test and prod). Before year end, that could be as high as 600. Unless we have any more big expansions, then it could be many more.
...
What about those numbers? Where do they fit in the picture?
M$ will look at the number of Intel processors bought, and calculate on one copy of Windows for each processor. You haven't bought that many copies of Windows? You thieving, piratical scum.
And you think I'm joking.
"David Overfelt, president of the Missouri Retailers Association, applauded the decision. He said his industry group joined the lawsuit because it believed the ordinance would have forced retail clerks to make judgment calls on selling and renting to children."
Yeah, and we can't have retail clerks having to THINK!
Like, you know, that's just asking too much
*smacks bubble gum*
Seriously, though, David sums it up pretty well.
DRM is a perfect solution for an imperfect world - A solution that ignores the fact that people are, by our very nature, unlikely to stick exactly to rules. Grey exists because we don't like black and white as the only two choices, and because we're quite capable of defining our own middle ground.
Until we can develop computers that are able to do the kind of fuzzy matching that the human brain does naturally, turning control of creativity over to them is fraught with risk. All it takes is an incorrect statement somewhere in the source, or the confluence of a couple of seemingly benign factors, and suddenly you can't watch that DVD you just bought - But you can't take it back because you broke the seal on the packaging.
The thing the article doesn't go into is the "analogue hole". Human creativity is very good at working around restrictions. We designed ladders to reach high places, and windows because it's nice to be able to see out without letting the weather in.
They can DRM CDs all they want - I've got a DiscMan with optical out, and a soundcard with optical in. Sure, I'll have to do it manually, but I can still make perfect digital copies of whatever CDs I own. Similarly, people will find ways around this "broadcast flag", even if it's just going back to VHS and a capture card. Old hardware's not just going to disappear.
Finally, as much as xxAA would love to, they don't control the legislative process in other countries. Until they do, there's nothing they can do to make companies build DRM-compliant devices for other markets. Some of them will probably deliberately ensure their devices aren't DRM-compliant, if they've got some marketroids with a clue. How do you stop people importing "un-broken" hardware?
Buy Western Digital Special Edition, that way you get 3 year warranty. Simple really. I refuse to buy any of the hard drives that only give you 1 year warranty, it's rediculous. (you too should boycott them!)
Or you could move to a country that has proper consumer protection law - Like New Zealand.
I don't care if my new HDD fails at 18 months old, because I can just refer to the ample legal precedent that says that it must be fit for the purpose for which it was bought.
I have a 4.3GB Bigfoot in my closet, recently put there after I finally decided it wasn't worth keeping it in service. It still works. It has no bad sectors. And it's seven years old. If I were to suffer an HDD failure after 18 months, or even after 35 months, on a disk with a 12 month warranty, I could just go through our legal disputes (level below court action) process and make reference to the plentiful legal precedent saying that a device must be fit for use for the purpose for which it was sold. Obviously a brand new drive that fails, when a seven-year-old drive used in the same computer keeps going, isn't fit for its retailed purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
If there's even one country with no anti-spam laws, people will just go there to spam. Sure, there're technical ways to deal with that, but given how easy it is to "acquire" new IP address space most of them are doomed to failure.
What does your contract say is required of you? If you don't have any clauses requiring you to work like a slave because the company takes on unreasonable clients, work exactly to the letter of your contract and no more.
Sure, the company could try and fire you (and lose in court if you haven't broken your contractual obligations), and then they're down a developer. If enough of you start playing the WTR game, the company has no choice but to start looking at the situation more closely.
WTR means that there's no possible way for them to get the project done on-time and on-budget (contractors are expensive).
The main thing with WTR is that everyone needs to be in on it. If only one or two people do it, the load just gets dropped on everyone else and they will, funnily enough, get mightily pissed off.
The Kiwi geek community has already beaten you to it
You don't use someone with a background at MIT and Lockheed Martin to give you a stack of paper with words on it.
The Aussies (I'm a Kiwi) are all making a big hoorah about how they're probably going to get an FTA with the US. That'd be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that the Yanks don't even do real (ie: no tarrifs on anything) free trade with their partners in NAFTA, let alone a bunch of yahoos on the opposite side of the world.
Before the Americans start lecturing the world on free markets and the benefits of open trade, they should practice what they preach - Nobody likes a hypocrite.
Fucked up, but then again what about the USSR wasn't?
Your definition of "individual responsibility" is to sue whoever was involved in you being a stupid idiot and getting hurt.
If "individual responsibility" is such a big deal, why does the US have an enormous tort reform lobby? Because suing is how your exercise your responsbibility for your actions, it would seem.
Take the nutter who sued NY Transit after getting drunk and climbing onto the tracks, and having both legs amputated below the knee. Yeah, that's really taking responsibility for your own actions - I got drunk and did something really, really stupid, but because I wasn't stopped from doing it by someone else I'm going to sue them.
Yes, "individual responsibility" is alive and well and definitely not hiding anywhere in the United States of America.
For all the sneering that Yanks direct at "socialist" countries, at least those of us who live in those countries don't go running to a lawyer when our own child hits us with a toy truck when we're out shopping.
Since Longhorn will not be backwards compatible (at least that's the word coming from the Beast of Redmond), any organisation that's going to be forced to upgrade has far less to lose by switching to OSS. When you're being made to rip it all out by a multi-national monopoly, it suddenly looks pretty attractive to start running software that dances to your tune.
The open source community should just be praying that Bill and Steve don't wise up to the once-in-a-development-cycle opportunity that Longhorn will present to us - Selling a total replacement (and one that won't cost a bean in licence fees, now or in the future) in the face of a total replacement (that will cost you a large chunk of your national debt in licence fees now, and that's not even counting next year) is a lot easier than selling a total replacement in the face of stagnation and an entrenched system.
Did you want to upsize that suck?
Petrol has a pretty small flammability range (63%-69% IIRC), and the chances of being able to get that concentration of fumes around the pumps must be sufficiently close to zero that it could be called an impossible risk - Obvious exceptions being badly designed station layouts with small, confined filling areas.
The current in a cellphone could easily ignite petrol fumes if it were to spark, but that spark must be introduced into a fuel:air mix that falls within the flammability limits of petrol.
Until the code is subject to independant (not RH, or IBM, or SuSE, but also not Aberdeen, or DiDio, or any of Bill's mates) review by clueful people, the validity of the suit remains in question.
And you think I'm joking.
Like, you know, that's just asking too much *smacks bubble gum*
No shit. They have the second largest population, too.
What is it as a percentage? Somewhere around the US's level, IIRC.
DRM is a perfect solution for an imperfect world - A solution that ignores the fact that people are, by our very nature, unlikely to stick exactly to rules. Grey exists because we don't like black and white as the only two choices, and because we're quite capable of defining our own middle ground.
Until we can develop computers that are able to do the kind of fuzzy matching that the human brain does naturally, turning control of creativity over to them is fraught with risk. All it takes is an incorrect statement somewhere in the source, or the confluence of a couple of seemingly benign factors, and suddenly you can't watch that DVD you just bought - But you can't take it back because you broke the seal on the packaging.
The thing the article doesn't go into is the "analogue hole". Human creativity is very good at working around restrictions. We designed ladders to reach high places, and windows because it's nice to be able to see out without letting the weather in.
They can DRM CDs all they want - I've got a DiscMan with optical out, and a soundcard with optical in. Sure, I'll have to do it manually, but I can still make perfect digital copies of whatever CDs I own. Similarly, people will find ways around this "broadcast flag", even if it's just going back to VHS and a capture card. Old hardware's not just going to disappear.
Finally, as much as xxAA would love to, they don't control the legislative process in other countries. Until they do, there's nothing they can do to make companies build DRM-compliant devices for other markets. Some of them will probably deliberately ensure their devices aren't DRM-compliant, if they've got some marketroids with a clue. How do you stop people importing "un-broken" hardware?
I don't care if my new HDD fails at 18 months old, because I can just refer to the ample legal precedent that says that it must be fit for the purpose for which it was bought.
I have a 4.3GB Bigfoot in my closet, recently put there after I finally decided it wasn't worth keeping it in service. It still works. It has no bad sectors. And it's seven years old. If I were to suffer an HDD failure after 18 months, or even after 35 months, on a disk with a 12 month warranty, I could just go through our legal disputes (level below court action) process and make reference to the plentiful legal precedent saying that a device must be fit for use for the purpose for which it was sold. Obviously a brand new drive that fails, when a seven-year-old drive used in the same computer keeps going, isn't fit for its retailed purpose.
merkins speak English? *cough*