I agree with you. HTML5 is nowhere near ready to replace Flash. The problem is Flash player is expensive for Adobe on mobile because they have to do a version for every GPU / OS / Hardware. There are good solution for video (as long as you don't care about DRM) but what about vector art? This is going to take the web back to the 1990s where it was low functioning websites or platform specific applications.
If you think tactically it makes sense. Long term it is incredibly damaging to Adobe.
1) Flash-lite which centered on video playback for mobile is being killed by video in hardware. 2) Flash as a cross platform standard for mobile is failing. Both Apple and Microsoft aren't including it. 3) Mobile Flash costs a fortune to develop since to get it to work they have to deal with every (GPU / OS / Hardware) combination.
Conclusion: Flash is not going to be successful in the next 3 years on mobile. Thus Adobe developers need to be doing something else for cross platform and that looks like HTML5.
But Flash on the desktop still works. However as mobile expands as a percentage of the market that's going to get less and less valuable. So think shorter term: Advertisers with a desktop focus can continue to use desktop flash. But that means the technology should stabalize which means holding down costs.
I think it makes sense, if you only have a 3 year horizon.
Why is it of academic interest? Flash still exists on the desktop, there is a need for an SDK for it. Flex is the best SDK around. It has been open source since 2008, so nothing really has changed but Flex is not a bad project.
I personally use mindmapping software for notes during meetings. It allows for the information to flow naturally and be reorganized and regrouped quickly (i.e. during the lecture). You might need other stuff for diagrams but mind mapping is terrific. I use mindjet because I learned it a decade ago, but the market is much more competitive now and I would likely pick another brand today.
Notebook by circus pony (link) is specifically designed for what you want to do and I've heard good things about it.
I'm not sure what this has to do with fire, and beside it is mainly just name calling. Underwhelmed by what? Enjoyed the Asus why? Would rather not be tied to iTunes because? A nightmare of support because?
I agree with what you wrote though I was in the Linux world long before Ubuntu, I would have loved something like Ubuntu when I got started. But reading the above, I think you are a pretty good case of the kind of users that is clearly ready to move on from a beginner distribution. My home for Ubunutu is that it goes back to serving the beginner market and not you all.:) Linux has tons of distributions once you have a few years under your belt.
If you like flashy I can't see why you don't go with a KDE based distribution. KDE is a lot flashier than Gnome, I'm thinking openSuse. Debian is drab, NQA. There is also kubuntu, which I've never been a fan of but might involve the least switching.
As far as NeXT. I use WindowMaker when I can instead of running a GUI. I find not having to play with the GUI of the week to be a huge advantage. So we agree there.
Not really. After the discovery either party would be free to change their password back to private. This was not a granting of perpetual access. And that still doesn't solve the basic problem, taking any action, like publishing your password, designed to destroy evidence is still illegal. It is not the judges' responsibility to preserve the evidence it belongs to the parties of the lawsuit. They need to preserve the evidence in their possession.
Aircraft are assembled on robotic production lines, why can't they be maintained on them ?
1) There is a much larger variety of aircraft in an airport than in an assembly line. 2) Assembly is a much easier problem than repair and maintenance. Computers suck at detection of irregularity so far. 3) There is a time factor. Maintenance crews hit the plane as soon as it lands. You would have to have everyone disembark and then move the plane to an assembly then move it back into position and then have it load. The goal is basically to keep expensive aircraft in the air as much as possible.
If a robot can navigate my living room and vacuum my floor, it can certainly clean a runway.
That robot isn't having to deal with complexity. Where there is a problem it just fails.
It's a struggle to see why a few robotic arms and some conveyor belts can't do this.
Because we don't know how to make an arm that can handle irregular sized items effectively. Plus there needs to be a truck you don't want to be driving large conveyor belts all over an airport or you have even more stuff to maintain.
This is one of the reasons the US has to run a large trade deficit. If we were running a surplus fewer producing countries would be as scared by sanction threats.
I doubt that. Ultimately icons on screens are worthless until you get physical stuff done. Airplanes don't fly without fuel, and without working parts. That requires guys with wrenches. The actual airplane needs to be loaded with stuff like luggage and mail and unloaded every single time. The runway needs to be cleaned and that can't be done by a computer. Etc...
We just need to bring back customer service and incentive labor in our tax laws.
*ANY* record of something might potentially be called on as evidence
The law is likely not potentially. You are free to destroy records that could be potentially be called as long as you determine they are unlikely to be called. If you destroy a record and can prove that the record was unlikely to be needed you are fine.
Just to clarify as a matter, if you have a policy of always destroying confidential data for that to be legal you need to have checks which avoid it being applied for documents likely to be called. This comes up all the time with corporate email retention systems. For example a company might have a policy that employees are told to save important emails to sharepoint, because all emails are deleted after a year.
I trust you can see the absurdity behind this.... and what it invariably means for privacy and anonymity online.
Not really. The alternative would be to eliminate the civil system of discovery. For the criminal system, it is useful for going after low level employees that frequently are a key part of racketeering. I only wish this law were enforced more on banks and brokerages.
As far as online anonymity... I'm not sure the state has any compelling objective to preserving a legal shield for online anonymity. You could make a case for that, but in the USA setting up an LLC is pretty easy. The account could be property of the LLC and that creates some shield. I'm not sure what you would want the state to do beyond that.
So if I were to say that I routinely always destroy certain confidential records that are my own property after I've read them *SPECIFICALLY* to prevent the eventuality that their contents might ever be used to incriminate me, and I go to court and they order me to turn over such records, again, bearing in mind here that preventing self-incrimination is the *SOLE* reason for doing this, am I going to be liable for willful destruction of evidence?
Yep. The court would look at that defense the same way they would look at X's claim, "I make it a policy to always deliver drugs when asked. This specific drug delivery I got caught for did not involve an individual act it was part of the more general policy of delivering drugs". Even if you destroyed evidence for perfectly legitimately reasons once you became aware that the evidence was likely to be needed in a trial you are obligated not to follow your policy of destruction of records. If you didn't, the same way they got Al Capone for tax evasion they could get you for spoliation and not the underlying crime.
One further question then which I still can't quite comprehend: how can a judge interfere with a third-party contract? Or is a contract significantly (i.e., legally) different from a TOS agreement?
A contract is an agreement between two parties. I was being a little flippant to make the point. I'll be a bit more anal in this response. The judge can't alter the contract, what he can do is alter the enforceability of the contract and the legal status of the contract.
Lets say for example A makes a contract to give 3 grams of marijuana to B in exchange for $75. That's a contract. Because it is an inherently illegal contract any acts taken in furtherance of this contract are criminal acts. And since both parties have a higher obligation to the law than to the contract either party could violate the contract without fear of judgement. So for example if A were to give the marijuana to B and B refused to pay, and A took him to court for the debt. B could argue that purchasing marijuana was a crime, by itself and the court would most likely render a judgement against A getting to collect the $75. In a sense the anti drug statute nullifies A and B's contract. And that is policy of the US courts, "the suppression of illegal contracts is far more likely in general to be accomplished, by leaving the parties without remedy against each other." (Atwood v. Fisk).
Essentially the court reserves the right to alter A and B's contract because it is illegal. Moreover the existence of the contract does not protect A or B in any way regarding their criminal act. When we talk about nullifying a contract we generally mean making it unenforcible legally. The contract still exists in some vague sense but it becomes without any legal weight. And this can happen for any contract even those without illegal acts. For example if I promise to my daughter to take her to an amusement park on Saturday and she agrees to go. The court cannot enforce that promise nor can it penalize her if she changes her mind and no longer wants to go, nor can it compel me to take her. All contracts get their legal power from the courts, outside enforceability contracts don't mean much.
Facebook is obligated to assist and certainly not interfere with evidence collection for all trials in all courts in the USA. That obligation instantly nullifies the TOS whenever it occurs. Once Facebook is aware of the trial they are in exactly the same situation as A and B above. They are obligated to maintain the account. If they believe the obligation interferes with the TOS then the TOS is now part of an illegal contract. Hence essentially either:
a) There is no violation of the TOS b) The provisions involving the TOS are illegal with respect to that couple and hence altered by the greater obligation. So neither party is violating the TOS, because they don't exist anymore.
If Facebook felt itself injured by not being able to close the accounts they could petition the court to be allowed to close the accounts. But most likely they would have to provide services to the court to collect the information in other ways. The court does not want to create a hardship for Facebook. Or alternately they could approach the couple and try and come to an altered TOS agreement. What they can't do is close the accounts.
You may be thinking of the fact that Alaska, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio create a new tort over and above the original for spoliation (NB: I find different lists of states). Generally though in most cases it is negligent spoliation that is iffy. The situation being discussed would be intentional which is more serious.
What is being discussed is Facebook deliberately interfering with the court, destroying evidence after they knew the court wanted it. Not the typical failing to preserve what a court might want.
Again, I agree with you except that it sounds like you're saying that FB would be held legally liable for following it's own TOS without being given legal notice.
No what I'm saying is that a casual notification is legal notice. Once they have good reason to suspect, i.e. like someone telling them then they have notice. There is no formal requirement.
The judge gave no orders or anything directly to FB, so FB never received legal notice
He didn't ask FB to do anything. On the other hand FB is forbidden from interfering the same you or I are.
That's how I see it, anyway.
I understand that's how you see it. You just are dead wrong. Sorry.
This is why the judge should have followed regular discovery procedures in the first place.
Judges don't follow discovery.
My analogy is that it's the same thing as if the judge ordered the parties to exchange debit card PINs and had them go to a local ATM and print out the account information
In which case the bank, if they knew about it would be prohibited in closing the ATM card, even thought the bank's TOS might very well mandate an account closure in the case a pin is known.
BTW just to clarify this, there is no TOS violation. The judge overrides the TOS.
I agree as long as FB was given legal notice and in this case, it was not.
Once Facebook knows, or has reason to believe the account was ordered open by a judge they can't interfere with the evidence gathering. They don't need to be given notice by a court, spoliation is criminal. Everyone in the country is forbidden from destroying likely evidence for every case in the country intentionally.
I'm not sure that even if the parties involved sent PM's to FB admins that they had to give up their passwords to each other, that that would constitute legal notice.
It would. An admin who then erased the accounts after having received this notice would be committing a crime, potentially. Even hearing it from a 3rd party, would be notice. "Likely" is all that is needed to meet the criteria for the crime, you don't need to know for sure.
. I think the idea of evidence tampering by the other party is too great a risk. So even if people deride the TOS as irrelevant, I still think that the judge went out on a limb and did not follow standard discovery procedures.
I agree it is a lousy collection procedure. But most likely one of the two sides suggested it and the other didn't disagree. Had one side raised the potentially for tampering, the judge would have likely used another method. The judge isn't responsible for best practice the attorneys are.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you. HTML5 is nowhere near ready to replace Flash. The problem is Flash player is expensive for Adobe on mobile because they have to do a version for every GPU / OS / Hardware. There are good solution for video (as long as you don't care about DRM) but what about vector art? This is going to take the web back to the 1990s where it was low functioning websites or platform specific applications.
If you think tactically it makes sense. Long term it is incredibly damaging to Adobe.
Here is the strategy:
1) Flash-lite which centered on video playback for mobile is being killed by video in hardware.
2) Flash as a cross platform standard for mobile is failing. Both Apple and Microsoft aren't including it.
3) Mobile Flash costs a fortune to develop since to get it to work they have to deal with every (GPU / OS / Hardware) combination.
Conclusion: Flash is not going to be successful in the next 3 years on mobile.
Thus Adobe developers need to be doing something else for cross platform and that looks like HTML5.
But Flash on the desktop still works. However as mobile expands as a percentage of the market that's going to get less and less valuable. So think shorter term: Advertisers with a desktop focus can continue to use desktop flash. But that means the technology should stabalize which means holding down costs.
I think it makes sense, if you only have a 3 year horizon.
Time to die? Adobe sells just over $4b a year and does well over a $1b profit on that. Cut the losses, shut up shop?
I think Adobe has made some mistakes and is letting their products decay but lets get a grip about where they actually stand.
Why is it of academic interest? Flash still exists on the desktop, there is a need for an SDK for it. Flex is the best SDK around. It has been open source since 2008, so nothing really has changed but Flex is not a bad project.
They are trading for well under book since they are very close to losing money. But they have plenty and only about $700m in debt.
Further Google might be looking to take over the lawsuit.
Learn TeX. Even if the formula isn't perfect you can do quasi-Tex style formulas very quickly.
I personally use mindmapping software for notes during meetings. It allows for the information to flow naturally and be reorganized and regrouped quickly (i.e. during the lecture). You might need other stuff for diagrams but mind mapping is terrific. I use mindjet because I learned it a decade ago, but the market is much more competitive now and I would likely pick another brand today.
Notebook by circus pony (link) is specifically designed for what you want to do and I've heard good things about it.
I think you're right.
You are right, just checked. I stand corrected.
Good comment. I agree. In general I think most consumer OSes probably want a RTOS over a high throughput OS.
I'm not sure what this has to do with fire, and beside it is mainly just name calling. Underwhelmed by what? Enjoyed the Asus why? Would rather not be tied to iTunes because? A nightmare of support because?
You aren't actually saying anything.
I agree with what you wrote though I was in the Linux world long before Ubuntu, I would have loved something like Ubuntu when I got started. But reading the above, I think you are a pretty good case of the kind of users that is clearly ready to move on from a beginner distribution. My home for Ubunutu is that it goes back to serving the beginner market and not you all. :) Linux has tons of distributions once you have a few years under your belt.
If you like flashy I can't see why you don't go with a KDE based distribution. KDE is a lot flashier than Gnome, I'm thinking openSuse. Debian is drab, NQA. There is also kubuntu, which I've never been a fan of but might involve the least switching.
As far as NeXT. I use WindowMaker when I can instead of running a GUI. I find not having to play with the GUI of the week to be a huge advantage. So we agree there.
Not really. After the discovery either party would be free to change their password back to private. This was not a granting of perpetual access. And that still doesn't solve the basic problem, taking any action, like publishing your password, designed to destroy evidence is still illegal. It is not the judges' responsibility to preserve the evidence it belongs to the parties of the lawsuit. They need to preserve the evidence in their possession.
1) There is a much larger variety of aircraft in an airport than in an assembly line.
2) Assembly is a much easier problem than repair and maintenance. Computers suck at detection of irregularity so far.
3) There is a time factor. Maintenance crews hit the plane as soon as it lands. You would have to have everyone disembark and then move the plane to an assembly then move it back into position and then have it load. The goal is basically to keep expensive aircraft in the air as much as possible.
That robot isn't having to deal with complexity. Where there is a problem it just fails.
Because we don't know how to make an arm that can handle irregular sized items effectively. Plus there needs to be a truck you don't want to be driving large conveyor belts all over an airport or you have even more stuff to maintain.
This is one of the reasons the US has to run a large trade deficit. If we were running a surplus fewer producing countries would be as scared by sanction threats.
I doubt that. Ultimately icons on screens are worthless until you get physical stuff done. Airplanes don't fly without fuel, and without working parts. That requires guys with wrenches. The actual airplane needs to be loaded with stuff like luggage and mail and unloaded every single time. The runway needs to be cleaned and that can't be done by a computer. Etc...
We just need to bring back customer service and incentive labor in our tax laws.
The law is likely not potentially. You are free to destroy records that could be potentially be called as long as you determine they are unlikely to be called. If you destroy a record and can prove that the record was unlikely to be needed you are fine.
Just to clarify as a matter, if you have a policy of always destroying confidential data for that to be legal you need to have checks which avoid it being applied for documents likely to be called. This comes up all the time with corporate email retention systems. For example a company might have a policy that employees are told to save important emails to sharepoint, because all emails are deleted after a year.
Not really. The alternative would be to eliminate the civil system of discovery. For the criminal system, it is useful for going after low level employees that frequently are a key part of racketeering. I only wish this law were enforced more on banks and brokerages.
As far as online anonymity... I'm not sure the state has any compelling objective to preserving a legal shield for online anonymity. You could make a case for that, but in the USA setting up an LLC is pretty easy. The account could be property of the LLC and that creates some shield. I'm not sure what you would want the state to do beyond that.
Yep. The court would look at that defense the same way they would look at X's claim, "I make it a policy to always deliver drugs when asked. This specific drug delivery I got caught for did not involve an individual act it was part of the more general policy of delivering drugs". Even if you destroyed evidence for perfectly legitimately reasons once you became aware that the evidence was likely to be needed in a trial you are obligated not to follow your policy of destruction of records. If you didn't, the same way they got Al Capone for tax evasion they could get you for spoliation and not the underlying crime.
A contract is an agreement between two parties. I was being a little flippant to make the point. I'll be a bit more anal in this response. The judge can't alter the contract, what he can do is alter the enforceability of the contract and the legal status of the contract.
Lets say for example A makes a contract to give 3 grams of marijuana to B in exchange for $75. That's a contract. Because it is an inherently illegal contract any acts taken in furtherance of this contract are criminal acts. And since both parties have a higher obligation to the law than to the contract either party could violate the contract without fear of judgement. So for example if A were to give the marijuana to B and B refused to pay, and A took him to court for the debt. B could argue that purchasing marijuana was a crime, by itself and the court would most likely render a judgement against A getting to collect the $75. In a sense the anti drug statute nullifies A and B's contract. And that is policy of the US courts, "the suppression of illegal contracts is far more likely in general to be accomplished, by leaving the parties without remedy against each other." (Atwood v. Fisk).
Essentially the court reserves the right to alter A and B's contract because it is illegal. Moreover the existence of the contract does not protect A or B in any way regarding their criminal act. When we talk about nullifying a contract we generally mean making it unenforcible legally. The contract still exists in some vague sense but it becomes without any legal weight. And this can happen for any contract even those without illegal acts. For example if I promise to my daughter to take her to an amusement park on Saturday and she agrees to go. The court cannot enforce that promise nor can it penalize her if she changes her mind and no longer wants to go, nor can it compel me to take her. All contracts get their legal power from the courts, outside enforceability contracts don't mean much.
Facebook is obligated to assist and certainly not interfere with evidence collection for all trials in all courts in the USA. That obligation instantly nullifies the TOS whenever it occurs. Once Facebook is aware of the trial they are in exactly the same situation as A and B above. They are obligated to maintain the account. If they believe the obligation interferes with the TOS then the TOS is now part of an illegal contract. Hence essentially either:
a) There is no violation of the TOS
b) The provisions involving the TOS are illegal with respect to that couple and hence altered by the greater obligation. So neither party is violating the TOS, because they don't exist anymore.
If Facebook felt itself injured by not being able to close the accounts they could petition the court to be allowed to close the accounts. But most likely they would have to provide services to the court to collect the information in other ways. The court does not want to create a hardship for Facebook. Or alternately they could approach the couple and try and come to an altered TOS agreement. What they can't do is close the accounts.
Causing evidence to lose its verity is generally also illegal in most states. That's evidence tampering.
You may be thinking of the fact that Alaska, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio create a new tort over and above the original for spoliation (NB: I find different lists of states). Generally though in most cases it is negligent spoliation that is iffy. The situation being discussed would be intentional which is more serious.
What is being discussed is Facebook deliberately interfering with the court, destroying evidence after they knew the court wanted it. Not the typical failing to preserve what a court might want.
We aren't sure its the guy, the article isn't clear. But yeah that is absolutely correct Facebook may not know yet.
However, the deletion would likely be recorded by Facebook and at a later date they might ask for account records from Facebook.
Responding in order, to your posts, so you can ignore the other one which came before this one.
Glad you see it now.
No what I'm saying is that a casual notification is legal notice. Once they have good reason to suspect, i.e. like someone telling them then they have notice. There is no formal requirement.
He didn't ask FB to do anything. On the other hand FB is forbidden from interfering the same you or I are.
I understand that's how you see it. You just are dead wrong. Sorry.
Judges don't follow discovery.
In which case the bank, if they knew about it would be prohibited in closing the ATM card, even thought the bank's TOS might very well mandate an account closure in the case a pin is known.
BTW just to clarify this, there is no TOS violation. The judge overrides the TOS.
Once Facebook knows, or has reason to believe the account was ordered open by a judge they can't interfere with the evidence gathering. They don't need to be given notice by a court, spoliation is criminal. Everyone in the country is forbidden from destroying likely evidence for every case in the country intentionally.
It would. An admin who then erased the accounts after having received this notice would be committing a crime, potentially. Even hearing it from a 3rd party, would be notice. "Likely" is all that is needed to meet the criteria for the crime, you don't need to know for sure.
I agree it is a lousy collection procedure. But most likely one of the two sides suggested it and the other didn't disagree. Had one side raised the potentially for tampering, the judge would have likely used another method. The judge isn't responsible for best practice the attorneys are.