just as thin does not uniquely imply fit, smart does not imply intelligence.
Just because one can remember facts, draw cats, or perform fast calculations, does not mean that one can actually solve arbitrary problems. It certainly means that you can impress weak minded people at cocktail parties. It does not mean that you can figure out how to best repair a broken faucet or write a well structured memo.
It is the knowledge and ability do provide is confidence and perspective. And while some people take that perspective and confidence and turn it to gain personal power at any cost, a great many more people try to use it to help people. I believe the former is caused by a dedication to facts and unintegrated knowledge at the expense of wisdom and thought.
Which is the standard plausible deniability. No matter what you do, no matter who you kill, as long as there is some patsy you can put the blame on, you walk free.,
Where is the personal responsibility that the congress is always talking about. Why is it the responsibility of a raped women to carry the resulting child, but not the responsibility of a senator to take responsibility for the mistakes of the people that do his work. Why is it ok to deny a child $80 a week for food, but the senator can just claim 'i have no control over my staff' and walk away free.
I mean really. Honor is not such a hard thing. For instance, do not claim that the malfeasance in a company that is yours, a company that pays you millions of dollars to manage, was not your responsibility. If you were not aware of the impropriety, then at least admit negligence.
In this case, if you are a elected official, say a president, do not act like a coward and hide behind plausible deniability and claim you were unaware of that your staff was trading drugs. If you were indeed unaware, at least have the honor to admit incompetence and negligence.
This is why our kids come to school without proper materials. They see top government and corporate officials never taking responsibility, or held to account, for anything of a significant nature, so why should they?
As has been said, the issue is not just logging, but secure, auditable logging. If a client claims a communication, and the trader denies, then the trader better make damn sure that the logging method he uses is not some half-ass consumer grade piece of crap that won't stand up in court.
Beyond that, there is also an issue of destroying information. If it is logged, then it should be destroyed as soon as legally possible. This is not a hard thing to do is logging is centralized and the backups are at known centralized locations. It becomes a bit harder if everyone has a copy of the logs on their own machines as well as backups of those machines which may be misplaced in the file cabinets. In such a case, the federales are going to have a field day when they come to your office.
But the money is hardly the issue here. MS IE for Apple, like so many of the other MS technologies, are provided to Apple for two reasons. The first is so that MS can claim nearly 100% desktop use of the technology which then helps companies feel more comfortable developing with that technology. Second, MS wants can claim it is not acting unfairly to competitors.
Both of these are no longer an issue. IE is the standard. Much basic web developers do not have the skill, and most basic development does not have the funding, to do anything in other than Frontpage with a little bit of flash thrown in. In time some companies may start funding development of more friendly HTML, but that will take time.
MS has also shown that it no longer has fear of prosecution. Shrub and Co. has clearly shown that they believe in the inherent right of any corporation to grow as big as possible, take on pseudo-governmental roles, and have all rights and privileges of the person. Given this new mandate, MS in integrated IE into Windows. Ignore the fact that they claim it already is integrated. The natural extension of this integration is that will cease as a separate project, and therefore IE for Mac makes no sense.
There will be damage to the Mac. MS will rewrite the standards implemented in Frontpage and Windows to break IE Mac. Developer will use the new Frontpage because there is nothing else they can do. I suspect this is a long term bad move for MS. There is little difference between an idiot with a great deal of money and a well run business.
We reach this point because of two common behaviors on the part of the so-called 'Vendor'.
First, most vendors will reasonable deny that a security flaw exists unless there is code or a process that clearly exploits the flaw. This is reasonable. After all, if a flaw is only theoretical, and not a clearly exploitable, it really is not clear and present danger. The problem occurs when exploit code exists but the vendors denies it's existence. The vendor will then use the official lack of exploit code as a reason not to solve the problem, which has in the past caused the subsequent release of exploit code to the embarrassment of the vendor.
Second, vendors have sometimes been slow to release fixes. This is also reasonable. It is probably very expensive to expedite fixing of security flaws. It is probably much cheaper to put the fixes in the pipeline and let the coders get to them as time permits. Of course, this may cause problems for users, but that is no different from the rest of American corporate culture where no problem exists until the costs of the lawsuit and the negative publicity approaches the cost to fix the problem. Fortunately, in software we do not need such drastic action to effect change. The flaw and exploit code can simply be released to the public.
We are once again a situation where a company's primary product is not a good or service, but the stock. The primary goal is not to serve customers or create good products, but convince investors that at some point the stock can be sold for a higher price to someone else. In the 'new economy' this just means that you can be enough of a nuisance so that a bigger fish will find it easier to gobble you up than to deal with you.
In this respect SCO is not unique. Many an ok company has been destroyed over the past few years by greed and a belief that money can be made from nothing. However, most of those companies are no longer a threat. The question is, why is SCO still out there? Why is it that no one want to come up with 100 million to buy them out. It seems like if they have the IP they claim to have someone would have done so already?
Furthermore, if SCO wanted to be sold, why not do it last year when the company was worth something. Did they try, but during due diligence, did the suitor decide that there was nothing there to be bought? Or is SCO really run by punk rock band members who believe insulting their suppliers and customers is the best way to boost shareholder value?
I honestly do not believe IBM thinks SCO has anything it wants. I honestly believe SCO is being bankrolled by a third party. That third party is likely to be MS or the secret second licensee holder. The stakes are high. In the next few years customers will decide if closed source, open source, or a combination is the best software value. Open source software can coexist and thrive with closed source software. It is clear from the reaction of some closed source software vendors that they do not believe they can survive in such an environment. We know who is afraid, and we know what people do when they are afraid.
Occam's razor says the we must build the simplest model that reliably represents all pertinent data. While it is true that assuming SCO is acting on it's own volition is simpler model, such a model may not reliable reflect all pertinent data.
For instance, there is compelling circumstantial evidence that MS is the ringleader. For instance, MS provided a timely cash infusion that probably allowed SCO to post it's first profit in a relatively long time. That license was very publicly paraded, in a clear effort to validate the SCO claim to the IP, and very clearly indicate that MS is able to attack users of OSS. MS very specifically mentioned that it supported SCO in it's effort to protect the IP, and considered them a partner in that effort.
Furthermore it is becoming increasingly clear that SCO does not own the IP, but only acts as an agent for Novell. SCO may have developed some IP, but that seems to be the extent of it is very unclear. They have only sold two licenses through the newly created department. And yet, given these weak fundementals, they seem willing and even eager to destroy the relationships with Novell and IBM, the very relationships that generate revenue. SCO will not be able to fight it is not a going concern. This is not Be where the IP rights and anti-competitive behavior was very clear. They must have a source of money that will insure they can fight.
Which is where the model of SCO acting alone breaks down. Every action of SCO has jeopardized the relationships between itself the customers, and suppliers. Any money made in the future is likely to be extorted out of unwilling customers. There claims are tenuous enough that winning such payments are going to be very time consuming and costly. It make no sense from the point of view of maintaining stock value. Unless, of course, SCO is just a straw-man, and another firm is financing the fight.
In fact, the better model is that SCO is being used to fight the battle that MS was not able to fight. SCO can and is scaring people about using Linux, something MS was not able to do. SCO is going to take companies and individuals to court, something MS will not do. The most likely outcome of these will be to try to bankrupt the firms and individuals, not win.
The simplest, most reasonable model is that MS has promised SCO two things in exchange for the attack on OSS. The first, the purchase of the license, has already happened. MS may have even been involved in both licenses, and the that is why the second license is secret. The second will be the purchase of whatever IP SCO actually owns, for an amount, say 100 million, suitably reward shareholders.
From the MS point of view, the amount of money involved is insignificant even if no additional damage is done to OSS. It maintains a monopoly. From the SCO point of view, it is a godsend. Three months ago SCO was barely a viable company, and such an offer from MS would guarantee the stock holders would not be stuck with a penny stock.
This is a very simple model that explains all data. It does not violate occam's razor , the responsibility of the corporation to maintain stock value, nor does it assume incompetent management.
We just announced our second quarter, and our financially are in very good position. The company is profitable.
And of course, as has been mentioned already, their profitability is a fiction. They are only profitable because they sold two licenses. The only public purchaser of the license is MS, which likely means that most of the money comes from MS. This implies that MS is responsible for the profitability of SCO, and any money from MS should be considered a one time deal. It is really irresponsible to assume a company can grow with a single customer. It is also unlikely that SCO will get anymore customers since most Linux distributors have no money. In fact they have said they plan to lose a customer namely IBM.
I think the original points still stand. It seems to be that a block of 5-15 lines can be defended as a standard idiom. Even bigger blocks can be defended as just the most efficient way to do things. I think it would be interesting to do a study where we take pairs of applications that performs similar functions but are otherwise unrelated and just how many largely similar blocks we can find. One instance that comes to mind in Lotus 123 and the original version of Excel.
If we look at the history of technology, no sane person ever reinvents the wheel, and no one really had to. Careful inventors would hide their theft, but it would seldom be an issue. The issue is the rampant NDA and the patenting of trivial business processes. For instance, there is only so many ways to process user input from the command line and parse it into a standard set of commands. I should not have to pay royalties everytime I want to check if a user wants a directory listing. Likewise there are only so many ways to process a request for a web page. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the commercial web servers lift the function calls directly from Apache.
Do corporations, like consumers, pay for each static IP they use. I assume they pay quite a bit more for the range of addresses. If they do, that might be problem, as it provide an incentive to the suppliers to waste addresses.
It is the same with the telcos. A business might need only need 5-10 outside lines and 20 or 30 insides lines, but the telco salesperson will sit there for an hour trying to sell the business a block of one hundred number, saying how wonderful it is to have a each employee on their own telephone number. Of course all astute customers know that what really is going on is an attempt to maximize the sales and commissions.
So, I can imagine some salesperson convincing a company that if they don't buy a class A network right now, it won't be available when they need it. And if the company tries to explain the company only needs a few static IPs, the salesman says how will the executives look at the club if they don't even have a Class B?
A poke is a bag. A pig is a swine. The expression 'buying a pig in poke' refers to a time when one would go the market to buy a pig, and the pig would be given to you in a bag. If the seller were dishonest, he or she would discourage the buyer from checking the bag to insure that a pig was in fact in the bag, or if the pig were of suitable quality. If the buyer did not check the bag, and later found out the seller sold defective merchandise, the expression 'damn, I bought a pig in a poke' would result. In time, it was generalized for, as you say, buying something sight unseen, which in modern parlance would mean without performing due diligence.
However, the common belief is that MS did not exchange money for product. Rather, it is likely that bought the licenses to 1) validate the SCO claims by providing a major client for it's new department; 2) provide cash that would allow SCO to characterize itself as profitable, growing, and ongoing company; and 3) show all IT users that using Linux is very dangerous as MS intends to destroy it and all who sell or use it by any means necessary. Under this logic, MS is the seller of a pig in a poke, not the buyer.
I think I see what you are getting at. Why take a measurement in watts, which is J/s, when one can just measure in J. If my reading of Watt Balance is correct, this machine actually relates voltage and current to time and distance using an interferometer. As experiments must be expressed in terms of the measurables, that leads to power.
To review, time is measured in seconds, which is defined as a certain number of periods of a certain transition in a certain atom. Length is measured in meters which is a the length that light travels in a vacuum over a certain number of seconds. The ampere is the current that occurs when two ideal wires are placed one meter apart to produce a certain force. Force, of course, is a derived unit that depends on mass.
Seconds and meters, as well as kelvin, are well defined quantities that can be independently verified in a very well equipped lab. On the other hand, the Kg depends on a hunk of rock in a vault, and is therefore it is very difficult to know if you are absolutely correct. This cascades in causing problem for the other base units of Ampere, mole, and candela.
So, if they use the interferometer to calibrate for voltage and current, and then actually mass the objects as requiring a certain number of fringes over a certain amount of time, with the only other dependencies being the distance between things, it seems that one would get a pretty good definition of mass, at least indirectly, in terms of power consumed, and not energy. This method also appears to solve the problem of defining mass in terms of Amperes, which would be strange as the Ampere is already defined in terms of mass.
I think the issue might be that Germany has gotten good at looking at the long term effects of their decisions. For example, I believe back in 1991 they enacted laws to make manufacturers responsible for their waste. In Munich, most restaurants pay a great deal of money if they choose to use non-reusable serving products. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the western world where disposal cost for manufacturing and restaurant wastes are often externalized to the tax payer and future generations.
It seems to me that the decision to use Linux, even though discounted MS products might be cheaper and easier in the short term, is consistent with the forward thinking that seems to have become typical of German politics.
(I am sure those of you in Germany will corrects any errors I may have made).
Not to be disrespectful, but you really need to get a clue. The issue is that it hard to find a tech job that does not have a non-compete clause, and due to the various distortions to the free market by colluding firms, there is not a high level of competition by firms for workers. Even if a high level of competition existed, one is still hard pressed to support abusive practices of any sort.
First, to have an effective free market, there must be competition. Without competition, there is no reason to improve product and make life better is general. I am a great supporter of free market. I like having choices, and I like the power I have as a worker, consumer, and entrepreneur.
Part of that competition is the competition for workers. This competition encourages workers to become better workers by providing them opportunities of a better life if they become better workers, as well as allowing the workers freedom to move to the firms that can best exploit them. The problem is that businesses collude to extinguish significant competition is hiring and usurp the free market. Even if the company eventually leaves the market, the loss in productivity still exists. Such practices may bring sort term gains the business, but always to the detriment of the free market.
The current favorite practice is the noncompete clause. This clause effectively prevents the free movement of workers, a critical part of the free market. Why is this movement critical? Because it maximizes productivity. Not every firm or worker is equally productive. If a very productive work becomes stuck is at a firm that is able to utilize the productivity, the entire economy suffers. This is the same reason we wish to give firms to rid themselves of workers.
Second, no relationship should be based on abusive principles. Abusive relationships leads to more abusive relationships, anger, and wasted resources spent on retaliation and revenge. The book The Jungle, which was found largely accurate by a congressional committee, but was later demonized by a very large public relations campaign, clearly illustrates the lasting effects of an abusive relationship. If those business were less abusive, perhaps they would not have to have spent all that money on the PR campaign, perhaps the workers would not have so scared as to have support the extremely powerful unions that lead to Hoffa, and perhaps the money could have been to pay workers to create more competitive products rather than to pay lawyers to defend the abuse of worker and bad products. Those of us who are powerful need to take responsibilities for our actions, and perhaps even a bit of responsibility for others, instead of blaming all our problems on others.
On a side note, it is interesting to see that the meat packers have still not learned their lessons and the US economy still suffers. Meat packing is still a dangerous business, and meat packers are still reluctant to pay for the medical care of the injured workers. Instead, they pay lawyers to push the costs of the injured workers onto the US taxpayers. In addition, the work is so bad that it is hard to get legal workers to do it. As such, they must smuggle in foreign workers (as in the recent tragedy in Texas in which several people, including at least one baby, died) to do the work. This wastes US tax-dollars on health care, law enforcement, and education for so-called illegal aliens. (I am not saying these people should not receive these things, but it is an efficiency that must be taken into account). This create massive inefficiencies that hurts the entire US economy for the benefit of the few.
I agree with you to a point. Prior to Camino nee Chimera, Opera was the best browser for OS X. IE, though serviceable, was so user hostile and complicated that it was, and still is, only good for specialized content, such as porn or company specific intranets, and it's requirement often indicates lazy or incompetent programmers. Likewise, Mozilla was so unstable as to be nearly unusable. I was very happy to have Opera, and was eagerly waiting the real OS X release so I could send them money.
Unfortunately, the production release never came for OS X. But while, for whatever reason, Opera was released for every OS except for X, Chimera, and later Safari, were created and released. These browsers more than adequately filled the needs of the Mac market.
So, IMHO, Opera is not a bad browser. Rather, it is the only browser that requires the user to pay money, and it no longer see as sufficiently unique as to justify that payment. I believe that, unfortunately, the have lost the race. The open source engines are good enough to make Opera's previous advantages insignificant.
This is such bullshit. You have a job. If you do not like your job, quit. If you cannot do you job and get bitched out by your supervisors, quit. It is not the customers fault that you cannot do your job. It is not your supervisors fault that you cannot do your job. It is your fault you cannot do your job. Your job is to sell things to customers in such a way that your supervisors will be happy. If you cannot do that, then you do not deserve the job. Your hate customers because you know you do not do the job that is required. I feel for you, because perhaps this is the only job you can have. But I would think that perhaps you might feel pity for the customers that you lie to, feel relief when customers do not fall for the lies, and responsibility for perpetuating the lies.
I have seen several overly complicated methods to get album art into iTunes. The way I did it was to sort iTunes by album, select all the songs for the album, go to the web and find a good copy of the cover, and drag the cover to the iTunes window that clearly states 'Drag Album artwork here'. I also notice that you can drag more than on picture into the area for an album. I plan to scan some CD booklets and put them in the artwork area.
As far writing CDs, I have my iTunes set to burn audio CDs by default. If there is too much for an audio CD, iTunes will prompt me to write a MP3 CD instead. iTunes has no problem writing an audio CD from the ACC tracks. Of course you lose the track information, but at that point one can do what one wishes...
Most tort reform attacks the contingency system. This system allows victims who would not otherwise be able to afford constitutionally guaranteed representation, to consult and, if the lawyer thinks the case has merit, retain the lawyer. As should be the case in a free enterprise system, if the lawyer does well the lawyer is well paid. As is to be expected in a country where we have government by the people, a jury makes the decision on who is right and wrong within the framework of rule of law. Some people say the jury can't be trusted in these complicated business manner, but if they can be trusted to send someone to his or her death or incarcerate a person for life, these little business matters do not seem so important.
Reform is occurring on two planes. The first is with compensation limits. These limits in effect creates an environment in which lawyers are not going to make a profit on a case, even if they win, and therefore cannot afford to take contingency cases. Therefore, victims with good cases buy no money are denied their constitutional rights, and lawyers are denied the right to conduct business at a profit. The limits are also difficult to defend in environment where corporation specifcally calculate thier risk based on the amount they will have to pay for each person that dies from the use of thier product.
The second target is allowing those sued to countersue for court costs if they win. This may be a method for victims of lawsuits, like those in this case, to recover court costs, but of course this process itself is going to cost money, and will probably be settled for significantly less, and lawyers, as rational business people, will not take this risk.
And the reforms make no sense. For instance, in Texas the lawyer who fought the Tobacco companies, invested their own money at their own risk. If they would have lost, they would been out an incredible amount of money. However, they won and, as is appropriate in a free market system, the large risk gave them a large return. However, then Governor Bush decided he didn't like lawyers and decided to fight the settlement in court. This was a frivolous lawsuit. The contracts were clear. The documentation was clear. It was just a matter of greed on his part. Which was surprising because the State of Texas was the beneficiary of billions of dollars in the settlement. Governor Bush himself was a direct beneficiary because it was this money that allowed him to pass a promised tax cut, without which he would have been like his father, and had a much harder time convincing the people of Texas to support him for president.
So, to summarize tort reform prevents parties without money from suing parties with money. It provides a mechanism for parties who get sued and win to get their court cost paid by the party who sued them. However, this process is still going to cost money, so in effect it prevents parties without money from suing parties with money by creating even greater risks in the process. In this case, where parties with money are suing parties without money, it does nothing. Even if the party with money loses and has to pay court costs later on, these cost will begin to compensate the victims of the lawsuit.
One more thing. One thing listed in the parent URL was the medical reform, supposedly to keep insurance affordable for doctors. One example is California, where insurance rates did not become affordable due to tort reform, but due to heavy regulation of the insurance industry.
I would think you might take this one step further. Depending on the payment method, buy two copyright violating products. Pay for the first through Paypal. Pay for the second through registered mail and USPS money order. If possible have one shipped through the US mail and one through Fedex.
The guy has to have a valid address to receive the check. The guy has to have a valid address and bank/credit account to do Paypal. I am pretty sure the guy would not need a valid return address on the package, as the loss of CD represents no money. In any case, a complaint can then be filed with the USPS for misrepresentation of product or the like. One can even get an idea of the amount of money he has defrauded people of through his feedback.
It doesn't matter if it is bankrupt in two years. It is a publicly traded company. The board and management have no interest in it's longevity. They are only interested in the keeping the stock high, negotiating deals that transfers maximum company assets to their pockets, and making sure that their pensions are safe, in that order. Also, by that time, all the well connected investors will have had time to cash out, and losses will be fall to ever abused middle class.
I pretty much agree with you, but I wonder if there are some subtleties to this that makes it an important case.
First, the COPA, like many laws for the internet, is even a more reactionary law written by legislators who have to balance an ignorance with issues, a constituency that wants action, and corporations who want profit irregardless of social consequences. These forces result in imperfect legislation. Though it hard to fault Amazon and others for having difficulty following these laws, one wonders if the difficulties were not included by design to make.
Second, skipping to the end of the comments, it is absolutely horrible to use the TV or the Internet as a babysitter. OTOH, kids do and should be able to use both, but can't due to negative ancillary content. For example,, there are shows on TV that kids should be able to watch, but can't due to the advertising. A few years ago, in order to make certain kids shows more palatable to parents, Disney promised not to advertise movie that were not suitable for kids. Although they did keep to the letter of the promise, they did advertise toys for those movies. After all, it is one thing to lose money on a demographic that you are not even legally supposed to target, but it is quite another thing to not teach children that their purpose in life is to consume small unnecessary plastic objects.
This relates to the internet as follows. Web Sites want people to register. They want personal information, they want demographics, they want money. They want children to register not only because children are a key demographic, but also because they want these children to be grow up into adults that are comfortable giving personal information to any fly by night web site. If these children have to ask their parents about registering, then the odd parent might give the child a lecture about the dangers of passing personal information to strangers, and, to the detriment of free enterprise, the child might develop a sense of privacy.
So, due to the fact that most sites want to collect a lot of informaion about the users, there are few sites that are actually safe for children. They could be made safe by just enforcing some common sense rules. For instance, your idea of credit card verification for Amazon use would actually make a lot sense. Amazon is in the business of selling stuff, and therefore should want to maximize the number of actual adults on their site that can actually buy stuff. Such a system would nto affect the browsers, andlikely create better content and reduce the possibility of review stuffing.
ISPs and spying makes this worse
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The Virus Did It
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I hope the general public starts to understand cases like this and make the connection to the ISP who wish to own their customers networks and computers, and governments that wish to have back doors into all network equipment and computers. There are so many risks associated current security holes, why do we want to add them on purpose.
In this case a crime was committed. Whether the crime was committed by the accused or some unknown third party is irrelevant. All that is relevant is known security holes and popular complacence allowed the criminal(s) to escape prosecution. Would the firewall banned by the ISP had helped this guy? Who knows. Will following the paranoid government route of building back doors and escrowed keys into every so-called secured system make the situation worse? Probably. The government will have great motivation to prove their protocols are one hundred percent secure, and will have no motivation to make sure justice is done by finding the real criminals.
I find these thing hilarious. The suits have jobs definitions that have nothing to do with reality. They have no sense of programming methods, only languages. As such, when a supervisor comes in wanted a lead programmer, the suits think 5 years experience. This is why we saw so many ads in the late 90's for java developers with 5 years experience.
First, 'piles' sound like it takes the desktop metaphor too far. The advantage of computers is that they provide and enforce rules that help us organize information. The problem with a real desktop is that there are no rules and therefore it is very easy to get every growing stacks of documents and clutter. If i wanted clutter I would just work on my real table. The last thing I want is to move my physical inability to organize to my computer.
Second is the security of movable home directories. Most of MS problems come from leaving things open to make those things more convenient for users. Even if we stipulate that the BSD core has an inherent security advantage, and Apple has and will do a good job at setting defaults to a secure state, can we be sure that average users will have the knowledge to maintain the security?
Let me add that though Applied Cryptography is a dauntingly dense book, one can get great benefit from the first hundred pages. The first section of the book develops background material and basic understanding of the issues. To use the authors' physics example, reading a first semester physics book will not teach you physics, but it will teach enough of the science to defend yourself against those who would abuse it.
As the reviewers states, the algorithms have changed over the past several years, but it may be more important to remember that the basic issues have not. People are still trying to pass off obviously flawed protocols as good security measures.
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Just because one can remember facts, draw cats, or perform fast calculations, does not mean that one can actually solve arbitrary problems. It certainly means that you can impress weak minded people at cocktail parties. It does not mean that you can figure out how to best repair a broken faucet or write a well structured memo.
It is the knowledge and ability do provide is confidence and perspective. And while some people take that perspective and confidence and turn it to gain personal power at any cost, a great many more people try to use it to help people. I believe the former is caused by a dedication to facts and unintegrated knowledge at the expense of wisdom and thought.
Where is the personal responsibility that the congress is always talking about. Why is it the responsibility of a raped women to carry the resulting child, but not the responsibility of a senator to take responsibility for the mistakes of the people that do his work. Why is it ok to deny a child $80 a week for food, but the senator can just claim 'i have no control over my staff' and walk away free.
I mean really. Honor is not such a hard thing. For instance, do not claim that the malfeasance in a company that is yours, a company that pays you millions of dollars to manage, was not your responsibility. If you were not aware of the impropriety, then at least admit negligence.
In this case, if you are a elected official, say a president, do not act like a coward and hide behind plausible deniability and claim you were unaware of that your staff was trading drugs. If you were indeed unaware, at least have the honor to admit incompetence and negligence.
This is why our kids come to school without proper materials. They see top government and corporate officials never taking responsibility, or held to account, for anything of a significant nature, so why should they?
Beyond that, there is also an issue of destroying information. If it is logged, then it should be destroyed as soon as legally possible. This is not a hard thing to do is logging is centralized and the backups are at known centralized locations. It becomes a bit harder if everyone has a copy of the logs on their own machines as well as backups of those machines which may be misplaced in the file cabinets. In such a case, the federales are going to have a field day when they come to your office.
Both of these are no longer an issue. IE is the standard. Much basic web developers do not have the skill, and most basic development does not have the funding, to do anything in other than Frontpage with a little bit of flash thrown in. In time some companies may start funding development of more friendly HTML, but that will take time.
MS has also shown that it no longer has fear of prosecution. Shrub and Co. has clearly shown that they believe in the inherent right of any corporation to grow as big as possible, take on pseudo-governmental roles, and have all rights and privileges of the person. Given this new mandate, MS in integrated IE into Windows. Ignore the fact that they claim it already is integrated. The natural extension of this integration is that will cease as a separate project, and therefore IE for Mac makes no sense.
There will be damage to the Mac. MS will rewrite the standards implemented in Frontpage and Windows to break IE Mac. Developer will use the new Frontpage because there is nothing else they can do. I suspect this is a long term bad move for MS. There is little difference between an idiot with a great deal of money and a well run business.
First, most vendors will reasonable deny that a security flaw exists unless there is code or a process that clearly exploits the flaw. This is reasonable. After all, if a flaw is only theoretical, and not a clearly exploitable, it really is not clear and present danger. The problem occurs when exploit code exists but the vendors denies it's existence. The vendor will then use the official lack of exploit code as a reason not to solve the problem, which has in the past caused the subsequent release of exploit code to the embarrassment of the vendor.
Second, vendors have sometimes been slow to release fixes. This is also reasonable. It is probably very expensive to expedite fixing of security flaws. It is probably much cheaper to put the fixes in the pipeline and let the coders get to them as time permits. Of course, this may cause problems for users, but that is no different from the rest of American corporate culture where no problem exists until the costs of the lawsuit and the negative publicity approaches the cost to fix the problem. Fortunately, in software we do not need such drastic action to effect change. The flaw and exploit code can simply be released to the public.
In this respect SCO is not unique. Many an ok company has been destroyed over the past few years by greed and a belief that money can be made from nothing. However, most of those companies are no longer a threat. The question is, why is SCO still out there? Why is it that no one want to come up with 100 million to buy them out. It seems like if they have the IP they claim to have someone would have done so already?
Furthermore, if SCO wanted to be sold, why not do it last year when the company was worth something. Did they try, but during due diligence, did the suitor decide that there was nothing there to be bought? Or is SCO really run by punk rock band members who believe insulting their suppliers and customers is the best way to boost shareholder value?
I honestly do not believe IBM thinks SCO has anything it wants. I honestly believe SCO is being bankrolled by a third party. That third party is likely to be MS or the secret second licensee holder. The stakes are high. In the next few years customers will decide if closed source, open source, or a combination is the best software value. Open source software can coexist and thrive with closed source software. It is clear from the reaction of some closed source software vendors that they do not believe they can survive in such an environment. We know who is afraid, and we know what people do when they are afraid.
For instance, there is compelling circumstantial evidence that MS is the ringleader. For instance, MS provided a timely cash infusion that probably allowed SCO to post it's first profit in a relatively long time. That license was very publicly paraded, in a clear effort to validate the SCO claim to the IP, and very clearly indicate that MS is able to attack users of OSS. MS very specifically mentioned that it supported SCO in it's effort to protect the IP, and considered them a partner in that effort.
Furthermore it is becoming increasingly clear that SCO does not own the IP, but only acts as an agent for Novell. SCO may have developed some IP, but that seems to be the extent of it is very unclear. They have only sold two licenses through the newly created department. And yet, given these weak fundementals, they seem willing and even eager to destroy the relationships with Novell and IBM, the very relationships that generate revenue. SCO will not be able to fight it is not a going concern. This is not Be where the IP rights and anti-competitive behavior was very clear. They must have a source of money that will insure they can fight.
Which is where the model of SCO acting alone breaks down. Every action of SCO has jeopardized the relationships between itself the customers, and suppliers. Any money made in the future is likely to be extorted out of unwilling customers. There claims are tenuous enough that winning such payments are going to be very time consuming and costly. It make no sense from the point of view of maintaining stock value. Unless, of course, SCO is just a straw-man, and another firm is financing the fight.
In fact, the better model is that SCO is being used to fight the battle that MS was not able to fight. SCO can and is scaring people about using Linux, something MS was not able to do. SCO is going to take companies and individuals to court, something MS will not do. The most likely outcome of these will be to try to bankrupt the firms and individuals, not win.
The simplest, most reasonable model is that MS has promised SCO two things in exchange for the attack on OSS. The first, the purchase of the license, has already happened. MS may have even been involved in both licenses, and the that is why the second license is secret. The second will be the purchase of whatever IP SCO actually owns, for an amount, say 100 million, suitably reward shareholders.
From the MS point of view, the amount of money involved is insignificant even if no additional damage is done to OSS. It maintains a monopoly. From the SCO point of view, it is a godsend. Three months ago SCO was barely a viable company, and such an offer from MS would guarantee the stock holders would not be stuck with a penny stock.
This is a very simple model that explains all data. It does not violate occam's razor , the responsibility of the corporation to maintain stock value, nor does it assume incompetent management.
And of course, as has been mentioned already, their profitability is a fiction. They are only profitable because they sold two licenses. The only public purchaser of the license is MS, which likely means that most of the money comes from MS. This implies that MS is responsible for the profitability of SCO, and any money from MS should be considered a one time deal. It is really irresponsible to assume a company can grow with a single customer. It is also unlikely that SCO will get anymore customers since most Linux distributors have no money. In fact they have said they plan to lose a customer namely IBM.
If we look at the history of technology, no sane person ever reinvents the wheel, and no one really had to. Careful inventors would hide their theft, but it would seldom be an issue. The issue is the rampant NDA and the patenting of trivial business processes. For instance, there is only so many ways to process user input from the command line and parse it into a standard set of commands. I should not have to pay royalties everytime I want to check if a user wants a directory listing. Likewise there are only so many ways to process a request for a web page. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the commercial web servers lift the function calls directly from Apache.
It is the same with the telcos. A business might need only need 5-10 outside lines and 20 or 30 insides lines, but the telco salesperson will sit there for an hour trying to sell the business a block of one hundred number, saying how wonderful it is to have a each employee on their own telephone number. Of course all astute customers know that what really is going on is an attempt to maximize the sales and commissions.
So, I can imagine some salesperson convincing a company that if they don't buy a class A network right now, it won't be available when they need it. And if the company tries to explain the company only needs a few static IPs, the salesman says how will the executives look at the club if they don't even have a Class B?
However, the common belief is that MS did not exchange money for product. Rather, it is likely that bought the licenses to 1) validate the SCO claims by providing a major client for it's new department; 2) provide cash that would allow SCO to characterize itself as profitable, growing, and ongoing company; and 3) show all IT users that using Linux is very dangerous as MS intends to destroy it and all who sell or use it by any means necessary. Under this logic, MS is the seller of a pig in a poke, not the buyer.
To review, time is measured in seconds, which is defined as a certain number of periods of a certain transition in a certain atom. Length is measured in meters which is a the length that light travels in a vacuum over a certain number of seconds. The ampere is the current that occurs when two ideal wires are placed one meter apart to produce a certain force. Force, of course, is a derived unit that depends on mass.
Seconds and meters, as well as kelvin, are well defined quantities that can be independently verified in a very well equipped lab. On the other hand, the Kg depends on a hunk of rock in a vault, and is therefore it is very difficult to know if you are absolutely correct. This cascades in causing problem for the other base units of Ampere, mole, and candela.
So, if they use the interferometer to calibrate for voltage and current, and then actually mass the objects as requiring a certain number of fringes over a certain amount of time, with the only other dependencies being the distance between things, it seems that one would get a pretty good definition of mass, at least indirectly, in terms of power consumed, and not energy. This method also appears to solve the problem of defining mass in terms of Amperes, which would be strange as the Ampere is already defined in terms of mass.
It seems to me that the decision to use Linux, even though discounted MS products might be cheaper and easier in the short term, is consistent with the forward thinking that seems to have become typical of German politics.
(I am sure those of you in Germany will corrects any errors I may have made).
First, to have an effective free market, there must be competition. Without competition, there is no reason to improve product and make life better is general. I am a great supporter of free market. I like having choices, and I like the power I have as a worker, consumer, and entrepreneur.
Part of that competition is the competition for workers. This competition encourages workers to become better workers by providing them opportunities of a better life if they become better workers, as well as allowing the workers freedom to move to the firms that can best exploit them. The problem is that businesses collude to extinguish significant competition is hiring and usurp the free market. Even if the company eventually leaves the market, the loss in productivity still exists. Such practices may bring sort term gains the business, but always to the detriment of the free market.
The current favorite practice is the noncompete clause. This clause effectively prevents the free movement of workers, a critical part of the free market. Why is this movement critical? Because it maximizes productivity. Not every firm or worker is equally productive. If a very productive work becomes stuck is at a firm that is able to utilize the productivity, the entire economy suffers. This is the same reason we wish to give firms to rid themselves of workers.
Second, no relationship should be based on abusive principles. Abusive relationships leads to more abusive relationships, anger, and wasted resources spent on retaliation and revenge. The book The Jungle, which was found largely accurate by a congressional committee, but was later demonized by a very large public relations campaign, clearly illustrates the lasting effects of an abusive relationship. If those business were less abusive, perhaps they would not have to have spent all that money on the PR campaign, perhaps the workers would not have so scared as to have support the extremely powerful unions that lead to Hoffa, and perhaps the money could have been to pay workers to create more competitive products rather than to pay lawyers to defend the abuse of worker and bad products. Those of us who are powerful need to take responsibilities for our actions, and perhaps even a bit of responsibility for others, instead of blaming all our problems on others.
On a side note, it is interesting to see that the meat packers have still not learned their lessons and the US economy still suffers. Meat packing is still a dangerous business, and meat packers are still reluctant to pay for the medical care of the injured workers. Instead, they pay lawyers to push the costs of the injured workers onto the US taxpayers. In addition, the work is so bad that it is hard to get legal workers to do it. As such, they must smuggle in foreign workers (as in the recent tragedy in Texas in which several people, including at least one baby, died) to do the work. This wastes US tax-dollars on health care, law enforcement, and education for so-called illegal aliens. (I am not saying these people should not receive these things, but it is an efficiency that must be taken into account). This create massive inefficiencies that hurts the entire US economy for the benefit of the few.
Unfortunately, the production release never came for OS X. But while, for whatever reason, Opera was released for every OS except for X, Chimera, and later Safari, were created and released. These browsers more than adequately filled the needs of the Mac market.
So, IMHO, Opera is not a bad browser. Rather, it is the only browser that requires the user to pay money, and it no longer see as sufficiently unique as to justify that payment. I believe that, unfortunately, the have lost the race. The open source engines are good enough to make Opera's previous advantages insignificant.
This is such bullshit. You have a job. If you do not like your job, quit. If you cannot do you job and get bitched out by your supervisors, quit. It is not the customers fault that you cannot do your job. It is not your supervisors fault that you cannot do your job. It is your fault you cannot do your job. Your job is to sell things to customers in such a way that your supervisors will be happy. If you cannot do that, then you do not deserve the job. Your hate customers because you know you do not do the job that is required. I feel for you, because perhaps this is the only job you can have. But I would think that perhaps you might feel pity for the customers that you lie to, feel relief when customers do not fall for the lies, and responsibility for perpetuating the lies.
As far writing CDs, I have my iTunes set to burn audio CDs by default. If there is too much for an audio CD, iTunes will prompt me to write a MP3 CD instead. iTunes has no problem writing an audio CD from the ACC tracks. Of course you lose the track information, but at that point one can do what one wishes...
Reform is occurring on two planes. The first is with compensation limits. These limits in effect creates an environment in which lawyers are not going to make a profit on a case, even if they win, and therefore cannot afford to take contingency cases. Therefore, victims with good cases buy no money are denied their constitutional rights, and lawyers are denied the right to conduct business at a profit. The limits are also difficult to defend in environment where corporation specifcally calculate thier risk based on the amount they will have to pay for each person that dies from the use of thier product.
The second target is allowing those sued to countersue for court costs if they win. This may be a method for victims of lawsuits, like those in this case, to recover court costs, but of course this process itself is going to cost money, and will probably be settled for significantly less, and lawyers, as rational business people, will not take this risk.
And the reforms make no sense. For instance, in Texas the lawyer who fought the Tobacco companies, invested their own money at their own risk. If they would have lost, they would been out an incredible amount of money. However, they won and, as is appropriate in a free market system, the large risk gave them a large return. However, then Governor Bush decided he didn't like lawyers and decided to fight the settlement in court. This was a frivolous lawsuit. The contracts were clear. The documentation was clear. It was just a matter of greed on his part. Which was surprising because the State of Texas was the beneficiary of billions of dollars in the settlement. Governor Bush himself was a direct beneficiary because it was this money that allowed him to pass a promised tax cut, without which he would have been like his father, and had a much harder time convincing the people of Texas to support him for president.
So, to summarize tort reform prevents parties without money from suing parties with money. It provides a mechanism for parties who get sued and win to get their court cost paid by the party who sued them. However, this process is still going to cost money, so in effect it prevents parties without money from suing parties with money by creating even greater risks in the process. In this case, where parties with money are suing parties without money, it does nothing. Even if the party with money loses and has to pay court costs later on, these cost will begin to compensate the victims of the lawsuit.
One more thing. One thing listed in the parent URL was the medical reform, supposedly to keep insurance affordable for doctors. One example is California, where insurance rates did not become affordable due to tort reform, but due to heavy regulation of the insurance industry.
The guy has to have a valid address to receive the check. The guy has to have a valid address and bank/credit account to do Paypal. I am pretty sure the guy would not need a valid return address on the package, as the loss of CD represents no money. In any case, a complaint can then be filed with the USPS for misrepresentation of product or the like. One can even get an idea of the amount of money he has defrauded people of through his feedback.
It doesn't matter if it is bankrupt in two years. It is a publicly traded company. The board and management have no interest in it's longevity. They are only interested in the keeping the stock high, negotiating deals that transfers maximum company assets to their pockets, and making sure that their pensions are safe, in that order. Also, by that time, all the well connected investors will have had time to cash out, and losses will be fall to ever abused middle class.
First, the COPA, like many laws for the internet, is even a more reactionary law written by legislators who have to balance an ignorance with issues, a constituency that wants action, and corporations who want profit irregardless of social consequences. These forces result in imperfect legislation. Though it hard to fault Amazon and others for having difficulty following these laws, one wonders if the difficulties were not included by design to make.
Second, skipping to the end of the comments, it is absolutely horrible to use the TV or the Internet as a babysitter. OTOH, kids do and should be able to use both, but can't due to negative ancillary content. For example,, there are shows on TV that kids should be able to watch, but can't due to the advertising. A few years ago, in order to make certain kids shows more palatable to parents, Disney promised not to advertise movie that were not suitable for kids. Although they did keep to the letter of the promise, they did advertise toys for those movies. After all, it is one thing to lose money on a demographic that you are not even legally supposed to target, but it is quite another thing to not teach children that their purpose in life is to consume small unnecessary plastic objects.
This relates to the internet as follows. Web Sites want people to register. They want personal information, they want demographics, they want money. They want children to register not only because children are a key demographic, but also because they want these children to be grow up into adults that are comfortable giving personal information to any fly by night web site. If these children have to ask their parents about registering, then the odd parent might give the child a lecture about the dangers of passing personal information to strangers, and, to the detriment of free enterprise, the child might develop a sense of privacy.
So, due to the fact that most sites want to collect a lot of informaion about the users, there are few sites that are actually safe for children. They could be made safe by just enforcing some common sense rules. For instance, your idea of credit card verification for Amazon use would actually make a lot sense. Amazon is in the business of selling stuff, and therefore should want to maximize the number of actual adults on their site that can actually buy stuff. Such a system would nto affect the browsers, andlikely create better content and reduce the possibility of review stuffing.
In this case a crime was committed. Whether the crime was committed by the accused or some unknown third party is irrelevant. All that is relevant is known security holes and popular complacence allowed the criminal(s) to escape prosecution. Would the firewall banned by the ISP had helped this guy? Who knows. Will following the paranoid government route of building back doors and escrowed keys into every so-called secured system make the situation worse? Probably. The government will have great motivation to prove their protocols are one hundred percent secure, and will have no motivation to make sure justice is done by finding the real criminals.
I find these thing hilarious. The suits have jobs definitions that have nothing to do with reality. They have no sense of programming methods, only languages. As such, when a supervisor comes in wanted a lead programmer, the suits think 5 years experience. This is why we saw so many ads in the late 90's for java developers with 5 years experience.
First, 'piles' sound like it takes the desktop metaphor too far. The advantage of computers is that they provide and enforce rules that help us organize information. The problem with a real desktop is that there are no rules and therefore it is very easy to get every growing stacks of documents and clutter. If i wanted clutter I would just work on my real table. The last thing I want is to move my physical inability to organize to my computer.
Second is the security of movable home directories. Most of MS problems come from leaving things open to make those things more convenient for users. Even if we stipulate that the BSD core has an inherent security advantage, and Apple has and will do a good job at setting defaults to a secure state, can we be sure that average users will have the knowledge to maintain the security?
As the reviewers states, the algorithms have changed over the past several years, but it may be more important to remember that the basic issues have not. People are still trying to pass off obviously flawed protocols as good security measures.