It's called a comparison. The RIAA has sued file sharers. The MPAA is going to sue file sharers. The RIAA was in the position of having lost revenue. The MPAA is doing it more out of principle, as their revenue has not fallen.
Looking at the two different organizations, one can see that the imperitives behind doing this are likely different, though the motivation is still a fat stack of $$'s.
I love that belief, that every download or copy made without paying for it WOULD HAVE BEEN a sale. Believe me, there are movies that I've seen that, while yes I liked, I would not spend what they asked for it. I would not go out of my way to acquire the movie. In all honesty, if I lived without seeing the movie again, I could probably do so very happily.
For some people, there is a certain price that they're willing to pay for something. In the case of someone who won't buy it, that price just happens to be $0.
Exceptions to this statement are those people that would have bought it, but instead saw it for free (pirated) and in their cost comparison, found free was more amiable to anything else.
This is not meant as validation for pirating, merely debunking this "lost revenue" crap.
Considering there is a complete cycle that the worms take to propagate and persist, without user intervention, I would say that you could (not have to) consider them akin to what kinds of life you would find in biological viruses. They're pretty stupid. They generally stick to doing one thing. Once they're known and decoded, a defense can be formed.
However, reading the article, the advance of programming technology is getting pretty sneaky. Self-decrypting program code (hmm.. similar to DNA, only the parts in use are exposed), Self-modifying code (probably close here, though with VB's capacity to recompile on any windows machine...), Command and Control, built in analytical heuristics (worms using scanners and 'decision making' on how to propogate), and even getting to the point where they start to operate at less than full throttle to avoid the common detection method, interference in the host's performance.
The similarity between computer worms and viruses and biological viruses is very close, just on different platforms. While these aren't 'alive' in the common sense, they sure have the capacity to act like it on occasion.
Wonder what's next. Worms that record where it sends itself to in order to form a distributed AI Network?
In the first scenareo, hopefully if you are brave/stupid enough to go after someone that has broken into your home, you will have several things under your belt. Training, a moderate amount of skill with your chosen weapon. One thing you will have an advantage of is foreknowledge of the battleground (your house). The drawback is the person in your house may not be a burgler (mistakenly entered the wrong house, family member not expected home) and that you place yourself in danger. If you are incapable of moving silently through your house, or are inept enough to present more of a target than a burgler does, then this option is not for you. In order to truely defend yourself, possession of a gun alone will not do it. Possession of a gun, training, and an intent to defend yourself usually is.
The second option still relies on your ability to move silently through the house. If the intruder in your home hears you, or your children, in order to gain the time necessary to make their escape safely, they will need to subdue you in some fashion. Generally, this does not involve killing, but there is no guarontee. It also depends on a valid escape plan, potentially similar to your fire escape routes (second floor units or ranch style homes would seek direct window access out rather than through the fire in the main portion of the house, where the burgler would be). Note here: YOU ARE STILL AT RISK. Detection can be fatal, and instead of seeking out the burgler, now he would seek you out.
The third option is a valid one. However, it assumes that the burgler is not aware of your presence (expects noone home) or is not aware that he has been detected (expects you to be asleep). It assumes also that the burgler will not seek out bedroom locations for jewelry (valuable and easy to sell items for large cash sums), where they are typically housed. Depending on what you think your odds are of remaining undetected and the mindset of the burgler, this may be a valid option, though presents as much risk overall as any other.
The risk of death and other dangers is already present when you have an intruder in your home. Only an assessment and assumptions about that intruder at that time can tell you which of the options poses the least risk. If you are unwilling to kill to defend yourself, that is when the first option (defense) is a far more lethal route for yourself and your family.
Generalities don't gusually hold up, though. Dell, I tried to get to a manager when it was obvious the tech was incompetant. However, the Tech, being a complete and utter retard, continued to argue with me and refused to help as well as refused to get the manager. I had to hang up in order to get anything done.
Here is where you take a bad idea (sequestered instancing) and turn it into a good idea (event instancing).
In sequestered instancing, you are litterally in your own little zone, with maybe a select few people. The world doesn't exist while there.
However, in event instancing, the instancing occurs in the world itself, where everyone and anyone can be. You approach a trigger, or a point to kick off the event, and reguardless of who was there previously, as long as you meet the criteria set (ie: you can't trigger it once you kill it until 2 hours have elapsed), the event becomes available to you.
Sequestered instancing gets boring very fast. Reusing the same old locations and maps (say, a pool of 5) to go through repeatedly makes it seem like you're playing the exact same location constantly. Event Instancing can be anywhere within the game world, and makes use of the landscape already present.
I don't know how you'd know if the LCD you were buying had a bad pixel in it. It's not like they unbox YOUR purchase, power it on, and let you see it in action before you call it good. They generally grab a box from a stack and say "here you go."
The star may also be siphoning off the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere, being that close. Such dynamics are highly difficult (if not impossible) to determine without another method of viewing the system (closer approach, top down, other odd characteristic).
I think the point was "light" as in "unreasonably unsafe due to lack of proper structural support", not light as in "over 500 lbs and less than 2000". Light streetworthy cars can weigh around 1000 lbs, and have enough structural support to survive an accident. Lightweight necessary to be powered by solar cells alone probably comes close to weighing maybe 100-300 lbs. If they don't invest in expensive and lightweight structural supports, the vehicle (light weight) is unsafe.
One reason: Security flaws. If version 2.4.10 (what you run) otherwise is a good kernel, is stable for you, but has a massive glaring flaw that happens to be the rage for worm writers, would you feel compelled to upgrade to 2.4.11? I probably would. After being hacked several times, with tard script kiddies breaking shit on my machine, I want to keep the system as secure as I can, and (for the most part, since Linux doesn't typically do the bugfix + feature enhancement in revisions) upgrading to the latest kernel in that series is generally desirable.
I think many people tend to be cautious of the implication, and the precident that it sets. These kids will be growing up accustomed to wearing tracking collars, and may well not see a problem with it if a good enough case is pressed for adults to carry such tags 'in the name of public safety'. Besides, just having such tags will not serve as a solid secured method of finding abducted children. First thing an abductor would do, knowing that these tags are out there, is to strip the kid, and throw away every piece of clothing or gear they had. Now, you have the same problem (abducted kid) and you still don't know where they're at.
Human society has a nasty tendancy to slip from what may be a clear defined goal (Keep kids safe by tracking them) towards something that's similar where the logic matches fairly close (Keep people safe by tracking them). However, at the same time, you run a higher risk of abuse of such information. While this is something of a straw man argument, consider what the Holocaust would've been like if the leaders of the country could find every member of the Jewish community, hiding or not, because they were wearing tags?
Personally, I'd almost rather teach my children self defense and how to handle unknowns in the world, than to rely on a removable tracking tag for their "safety". They'll be better off for knowing that.
There should be a system call that will fetch out the 'current user' setting for a particular personal file directory. These special directories are notated within the registry, usually something like HKEY_CURRENT_USER->blah. So long as the apps use CURRENT_USER in their hardcoding (like they probably should), then it should work acceptably.
The same reasoning that makes it ok to access a web site without the owner's express consent also makes it ok to access an open mail relay.
In a manner of speaking, if the website owner set up the website and failed to restrict it to the appropriate few he wanted to have view it, and left it open to the world, then yes, one can see that accessing a website may happen against the owner's wishes. However, most people who set up websites do so with the express purpose of having everyone be able to view it. I would argue that this is not the case with the majority of open mail relays back in 'the day'. These old versions left relaying open as a convenience for the person installing it, and it was the responsibility of the owner to lock it down. Nowadays, mail systems (I believe) come with relaying blocked, as this is a generally undesirable thing.
No, they aren't. The first involves using a publically offered resource. The second involves *modifying the behaviour* of a *private system* without consent.
If most of the open mail relays out there are intended for the purpose of public consumption, then yes, the statement you make is true. If most open mail relays are there because some nimrod didn't alter the default configuration appropriately and close it, than my analogy is closer to accurate. Again, though, I don't believe most open mail relays were intended to be for public consumption.
Spam is fundamentally identical to telemarketing and direct postal mail. You publish a means of contact and people who believe they have something you would be interested in contact you. Yes, spam is more of a problem because bandwidth and computation is much cheaper than telephone lines, postage, printing. So now it's being made criminal, but even within the bounds of current law, you can receive a lot of marketing email. Don't misuse the word criminal, please.
Actually, I would argue that using an open mail relay without concent of the owner of the system it runs on is a criminal act. You have no right to use a system someone else owns without their consent, and if you do so, that is a criminal act. In fact, that defines a great number of criminal acts, appropriating someone else's property for your own use. Be it computational resource or physical one, it is still criminal.
Previously, spammers just used an insecure mail exchange that someone else used, abusing the system. Now, they have worms hack into unsuspecting systems and set up mail relays of their own. These two relays are fundamentally the same.
The only way this would be identical to direct mailing or telemarketing is if, god forbid, they ran their own servers and sent their massive spam blasts. If they did this, then it would not be a criminal act. They won't, however, because that would mean that it would be trivial for most people not wanting spam to blacklist their servers.
I don't believe that "Internet Direct Marketing" can work. Think about it. Many people don't like direct marketing tactics. It's crap in the mailbox that goes right in the garbage. Many many people do not like telemarketing, so much that the telemarketing industry fought tooth and nail to prevent the one tool that could punish and block their attempts to push random promotions onto the masses. Spamming is the same tactic in a new medium, except that unlike direct mail and telemarketing, it uses YOUR resources reguardless if you read the email or not (pick up the phone, open the direct mailer) and you have the potential for much more control over rejecting all kinds of spam at once, and the spammers cannot handle that.
Personally, I do not generally respond to spam email to unsubscribe myself (this validates the email address, since there is no law requiring and forcing adherance to a 'do not spam' list). Not only is validating the fact they have a good email address with a living body at the other end, but often times, I question whether or not any of the links or return addresses they utilize even work, since half the time the 'From' field or even the date field is badly malformed and shows up blank for me.
Frankly, this spam issue is bad, since I cannot believe that unsubscribing will work, but beyond rejecting the email and getting them to stop sending me crap (or canceling my email address either temporarily or perminently), this garbage that doesn't apply to me keeps rolling in. It needs to stop, but unfortunately, there is no law that says a company can't advertise in that manner (yet).
Until you actually file your taxes as an Independant, it's trivial. You are a dependant of your parents, you are their responsibility, and as such, they have legal rights to decide matters concerning your affairs. What you have is granted to you by your parents to foster a sense of independance and self initiative so that when you turn 18, you can enter the world of property ownership with some basic skills. Don't think for a second you actually own it til you're 18, though.
Until you are 18, you cannot vote, you cannot enter into any contracts on your own, you cannot own property, and you are bound to the decisions of your guardian. The only exceptions of this are when you have the court define you a legal adult, which is something that happens almost never (special cases, petitioning the court, etc, and with a damn good reason). Sucks for those under 18, but I wouldn't trust a 12 or 15 year old with the ability to understand the rights and responsibilities of owning property. Eventually, when you gain more experience in the world, you are likely to share that opinion.
Nice try. By this logic, Windows is their product and they can code it however they like. Except, that's been found to be an inaccurate statement, and illegal due to their overwhelming market dominance.
Minority market share = more leeway and more "it's your product, make it how you like."
Monopoly = more strict rules to adhere to and less 'Do as you want to do.'
Anyone that has a monopoly on a product can use that product to entrap people into other products, limit and force people into a certain manner of being for that product, and as they have a monopoly, there's not a damn thing you can do about it, except avoid it all together (not acceptable in all cases).
Through "random" chance and countless numbers of cell divisions, some cells never fully split apart, but remained 'adhered' to each other. In response to a predator that ate other cells, it would be more successfull for that genotype to retain that cohesion and be less prone to being gobbled up (other single celled organisms probably cannot envelop two).
You also miss a big point. Convenience. It is convenient to me to pick up a bottle of water out on the road where I don't have access to the taps and don't have anything to put it in anyways. I don't buy bottled water for quality.
If he did not clear that with his company before publishing this paper, @stake has every reason to fire him.
You know, this may seem like a 'duh' to most people, but to me, this sounds quite a lot like censorship. So, what you're basically saying is that, if all the major security people who know the ins and outs of Windows work for Windows affiliated companies, they could not say that there was a glaring problem with that product without fear of being fired (or quite likely being fired). I would concur that the first likely step is to consult the company to get it resolved, but in a general design or past history, sometimes public display is the only motivation to correct those issues. Would be nice if it didn't come down to public humiliation, but then companies are a lot like children sometimes.
Re:SCO is not targetting Linux with a lawsuit
on
SCO Volleys to Red Hat
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you have a Linux kernel, then you already have received it under a license from the copyright owners.
Only if every owner of the material in the kernel has authorized it for distribution. If someone stole code and put it in the kernel, that doesn't mean you have a legal license to that code. However, it does mean that the person to get punished for it isn't you, but rather the developer that broke the law. Not saying that there is inappropriate code in the kernel, because I believe SCO is smoking something really nice and not sharing, just that "posession makes it legal" isn't always accurate.
To add to that, SCO attempting to extract runtime fees for use of the Linux Kernel is a scam on the order of anything else I've seen. Keep changing the statements regularly, keep them off balance, throw enough confusion into the works, then say "If you pay me $X, I'll make all your problems go away." If there is copyrighted code in the kernel, they need to persue the companies or individuals that placed it there and sue them for copyright infringement. Said person will then get slapped with a fine to match the crime (whatever ammount per incident, ie: as many times as the Linux Kernel was distributed), and then would it get paid for.
The problem is that SCO is demanding money from the 'victims' in this case and not the 'criminal', without first setting a legal precident that yes, these statements they are making are true and yes, you do owe them money. They're not apparently actively and quickly persuing IBM, they're persuing the individual users of the Linux Kernel.
Weather and Radar transmitters. Would those be the ones that project their signals outside the metal skin of the aircraft, making it far harder for that kind of interferance to breech the faraday's cage that comprises the hull of the plane? Microwave ovens you have a minor point on, but then, most microwave ovens are purposefully shielded as to stop the leaking of radiation outside it's own casing. Microwaves are considered by most to be bad for your health and hense stopped as much as possible.
The problem is more this. Cel phones periodically broadcast a 'Are you there?' signal to the ground stations. Most phones, if they don't get an answer will amplify this signal and request again (or just try repeatedly until they get one). Other electronics are not so nice about not producing EM interference from failing or aged circuitry. Besides, have you ever heard a nextel phone when it recieves or broadcasts to it's ground stations? That phone is so low in frequency or whatever that you can know your phone is going to ring when the speakers nearby you start to warble at you.
As for your plane being secured and safe, bully for you. Perhaps your plane's wiring is a) shielded, b) not sufficiently exposed to become an antenna or c) you aren't flying at sufficient distance from any towers to cause your phone to shout for a reponse (or your phone is 'plane friendly' and doesn't). Considering the age of most planes, I wouldn't count this measure of safety as a 'given'.
Slashdot Mirror
2% rule here.
It's called a comparison. The RIAA has sued file sharers. The MPAA is going to sue file sharers. The RIAA was in the position of having lost revenue. The MPAA is doing it more out of principle, as their revenue has not fallen.
Looking at the two different organizations, one can see that the imperitives behind doing this are likely different, though the motivation is still a fat stack of $$'s.
I love that belief, that every download or copy made without paying for it WOULD HAVE BEEN a sale. Believe me, there are movies that I've seen that, while yes I liked, I would not spend what they asked for it. I would not go out of my way to acquire the movie. In all honesty, if I lived without seeing the movie again, I could probably do so very happily.
For some people, there is a certain price that they're willing to pay for something. In the case of someone who won't buy it, that price just happens to be $0.
Exceptions to this statement are those people that would have bought it, but instead saw it for free (pirated) and in their cost comparison, found free was more amiable to anything else.
This is not meant as validation for pirating, merely debunking this "lost revenue" crap.
Considering there is a complete cycle that the worms take to propagate and persist, without user intervention, I would say that you could (not have to) consider them akin to what kinds of life you would find in biological viruses. They're pretty stupid. They generally stick to doing one thing. Once they're known and decoded, a defense can be formed.
However, reading the article, the advance of programming technology is getting pretty sneaky. Self-decrypting program code (hmm.. similar to DNA, only the parts in use are exposed), Self-modifying code (probably close here, though with VB's capacity to recompile on any windows machine...), Command and Control, built in analytical heuristics (worms using scanners and 'decision making' on how to propogate), and even getting to the point where they start to operate at less than full throttle to avoid the common detection method, interference in the host's performance.
The similarity between computer worms and viruses and biological viruses is very close, just on different platforms. While these aren't 'alive' in the common sense, they sure have the capacity to act like it on occasion.
Wonder what's next. Worms that record where it sends itself to in order to form a distributed AI Network?
Consider your options in such a situation.
1. Defend yourself (or attempt to)
2. Flee (or attempt to)
3. Do nothing
In the first scenareo, hopefully if you are brave/stupid enough to go after someone that has broken into your home, you will have several things under your belt. Training, a moderate amount of skill with your chosen weapon. One thing you will have an advantage of is foreknowledge of the battleground (your house). The drawback is the person in your house may not be a burgler (mistakenly entered the wrong house, family member not expected home) and that you place yourself in danger. If you are incapable of moving silently through your house, or are inept enough to present more of a target than a burgler does, then this option is not for you. In order to truely defend yourself, possession of a gun alone will not do it. Possession of a gun, training, and an intent to defend yourself usually is.
The second option still relies on your ability to move silently through the house. If the intruder in your home hears you, or your children, in order to gain the time necessary to make their escape safely, they will need to subdue you in some fashion. Generally, this does not involve killing, but there is no guarontee. It also depends on a valid escape plan, potentially similar to your fire escape routes (second floor units or ranch style homes would seek direct window access out rather than through the fire in the main portion of the house, where the burgler would be). Note here: YOU ARE STILL AT RISK. Detection can be fatal, and instead of seeking out the burgler, now he would seek you out.
The third option is a valid one. However, it assumes that the burgler is not aware of your presence (expects noone home) or is not aware that he has been detected (expects you to be asleep). It assumes also that the burgler will not seek out bedroom locations for jewelry (valuable and easy to sell items for large cash sums), where they are typically housed. Depending on what you think your odds are of remaining undetected and the mindset of the burgler, this may be a valid option, though presents as much risk overall as any other.
The risk of death and other dangers is already present when you have an intruder in your home. Only an assessment and assumptions about that intruder at that time can tell you which of the options poses the least risk. If you are unwilling to kill to defend yourself, that is when the first option (defense) is a far more lethal route for yourself and your family.
Generalities don't gusually hold up, though. Dell, I tried to get to a manager when it was obvious the tech was incompetant. However, the Tech, being a complete and utter retard, continued to argue with me and refused to help as well as refused to get the manager. I had to hang up in order to get anything done.
Here is where you take a bad idea (sequestered instancing) and turn it into a good idea (event instancing).
In sequestered instancing, you are litterally in your own little zone, with maybe a select few people. The world doesn't exist while there.
However, in event instancing, the instancing occurs in the world itself, where everyone and anyone can be. You approach a trigger, or a point to kick off the event, and reguardless of who was there previously, as long as you meet the criteria set (ie: you can't trigger it once you kill it until 2 hours have elapsed), the event becomes available to you.
Sequestered instancing gets boring very fast. Reusing the same old locations and maps (say, a pool of 5) to go through repeatedly makes it seem like you're playing the exact same location constantly. Event Instancing can be anywhere within the game world, and makes use of the landscape already present.
I don't know how you'd know if the LCD you were buying had a bad pixel in it. It's not like they unbox YOUR purchase, power it on, and let you see it in action before you call it good. They generally grab a box from a stack and say "here you go."
Blinded geese? Oh man, I'd pay big money to see formations of geese lose control and go crashing into each other midair. Classic.
Geese around where I live are the bane of all that is good. Monsters think they own the town.
The star may also be siphoning off the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere, being that close. Such dynamics are highly difficult (if not impossible) to determine without another method of viewing the system (closer approach, top down, other odd characteristic).
I think the point was "light" as in "unreasonably unsafe due to lack of proper structural support", not light as in "over 500 lbs and less than 2000". Light streetworthy cars can weigh around 1000 lbs, and have enough structural support to survive an accident. Lightweight necessary to be powered by solar cells alone probably comes close to weighing maybe 100-300 lbs. If they don't invest in expensive and lightweight structural supports, the vehicle (light weight) is unsafe.
One reason: Security flaws. If version 2.4.10 (what you run) otherwise is a good kernel, is stable for you, but has a massive glaring flaw that happens to be the rage for worm writers, would you feel compelled to upgrade to 2.4.11? I probably would. After being hacked several times, with tard script kiddies breaking shit on my machine, I want to keep the system as secure as I can, and (for the most part, since Linux doesn't typically do the bugfix + feature enhancement in revisions) upgrading to the latest kernel in that series is generally desirable.
I think many people tend to be cautious of the implication, and the precident that it sets. These kids will be growing up accustomed to wearing tracking collars, and may well not see a problem with it if a good enough case is pressed for adults to carry such tags 'in the name of public safety'. Besides, just having such tags will not serve as a solid secured method of finding abducted children. First thing an abductor would do, knowing that these tags are out there, is to strip the kid, and throw away every piece of clothing or gear they had. Now, you have the same problem (abducted kid) and you still don't know where they're at.
Human society has a nasty tendancy to slip from what may be a clear defined goal (Keep kids safe by tracking them) towards something that's similar where the logic matches fairly close (Keep people safe by tracking them). However, at the same time, you run a higher risk of abuse of such information. While this is something of a straw man argument, consider what the Holocaust would've been like if the leaders of the country could find every member of the Jewish community, hiding or not, because they were wearing tags?
Personally, I'd almost rather teach my children self defense and how to handle unknowns in the world, than to rely on a removable tracking tag for their "safety". They'll be better off for knowing that.
Trust someone who cannot read to screw up a funny joke. Explaining it takes all the humor out of it.
There should be a system call that will fetch out the 'current user' setting for a particular personal file directory. These special directories are notated within the registry, usually something like HKEY_CURRENT_USER->blah. So long as the apps use CURRENT_USER in their hardcoding (like they probably should), then it should work acceptably.
In a manner of speaking, if the website owner set up the website and failed to restrict it to the appropriate few he wanted to have view it, and left it open to the world, then yes, one can see that accessing a website may happen against the owner's wishes. However, most people who set up websites do so with the express purpose of having everyone be able to view it. I would argue that this is not the case with the majority of open mail relays back in 'the day'. These old versions left relaying open as a convenience for the person installing it, and it was the responsibility of the owner to lock it down. Nowadays, mail systems (I believe) come with relaying blocked, as this is a generally undesirable thing.
No, they aren't. The first involves using a publically offered resource. The second involves *modifying the behaviour* of a *private system* without consent.
If most of the open mail relays out there are intended for the purpose of public consumption, then yes, the statement you make is true. If most open mail relays are there because some nimrod didn't alter the default configuration appropriately and close it, than my analogy is closer to accurate. Again, though, I don't believe most open mail relays were intended to be for public consumption.
Actually, I would argue that using an open mail relay without concent of the owner of the system it runs on is a criminal act. You have no right to use a system someone else owns without their consent, and if you do so, that is a criminal act. In fact, that defines a great number of criminal acts, appropriating someone else's property for your own use. Be it computational resource or physical one, it is still criminal.
Previously, spammers just used an insecure mail exchange that someone else used, abusing the system. Now, they have worms hack into unsuspecting systems and set up mail relays of their own. These two relays are fundamentally the same.
The only way this would be identical to direct mailing or telemarketing is if, god forbid, they ran their own servers and sent their massive spam blasts. If they did this, then it would not be a criminal act. They won't, however, because that would mean that it would be trivial for most people not wanting spam to blacklist their servers.
I don't believe that "Internet Direct Marketing" can work. Think about it. Many people don't like direct marketing tactics. It's crap in the mailbox that goes right in the garbage. Many many people do not like telemarketing, so much that the telemarketing industry fought tooth and nail to prevent the one tool that could punish and block their attempts to push random promotions onto the masses. Spamming is the same tactic in a new medium, except that unlike direct mail and telemarketing, it uses YOUR resources reguardless if you read the email or not (pick up the phone, open the direct mailer) and you have the potential for much more control over rejecting all kinds of spam at once, and the spammers cannot handle that.
Personally, I do not generally respond to spam email to unsubscribe myself (this validates the email address, since there is no law requiring and forcing adherance to a 'do not spam' list). Not only is validating the fact they have a good email address with a living body at the other end, but often times, I question whether or not any of the links or return addresses they utilize even work, since half the time the 'From' field or even the date field is badly malformed and shows up blank for me.
Frankly, this spam issue is bad, since I cannot believe that unsubscribing will work, but beyond rejecting the email and getting them to stop sending me crap (or canceling my email address either temporarily or perminently), this garbage that doesn't apply to me keeps rolling in. It needs to stop, but unfortunately, there is no law that says a company can't advertise in that manner (yet).
Until you actually file your taxes as an Independant, it's trivial. You are a dependant of your parents, you are their responsibility, and as such, they have legal rights to decide matters concerning your affairs. What you have is granted to you by your parents to foster a sense of independance and self initiative so that when you turn 18, you can enter the world of property ownership with some basic skills. Don't think for a second you actually own it til you're 18, though.
Until you are 18, you cannot vote, you cannot enter into any contracts on your own, you cannot own property, and you are bound to the decisions of your guardian. The only exceptions of this are when you have the court define you a legal adult, which is something that happens almost never (special cases, petitioning the court, etc, and with a damn good reason). Sucks for those under 18, but I wouldn't trust a 12 or 15 year old with the ability to understand the rights and responsibilities of owning property. Eventually, when you gain more experience in the world, you are likely to share that opinion.
Nice try. By this logic, Windows is their product and they can code it however they like. Except, that's been found to be an inaccurate statement, and illegal due to their overwhelming market dominance.
Minority market share = more leeway and more "it's your product, make it how you like."
Monopoly = more strict rules to adhere to and less 'Do as you want to do.'
Anyone that has a monopoly on a product can use that product to entrap people into other products, limit and force people into a certain manner of being for that product, and as they have a monopoly, there's not a damn thing you can do about it, except avoid it all together (not acceptable in all cases).
Through "random" chance and countless numbers of cell divisions, some cells never fully split apart, but remained 'adhered' to each other. In response to a predator that ate other cells, it would be more successfull for that genotype to retain that cohesion and be less prone to being gobbled up (other single celled organisms probably cannot envelop two).
From there, the game of numbers began.
Is that why we have the MX record in the DNS tables, because we don't care why a name is being requested, only that we get an IP address for it?
You also miss a big point. Convenience. It is convenient to me to pick up a bottle of water out on the road where I don't have access to the taps and don't have anything to put it in anyways. I don't buy bottled water for quality.
You know, this may seem like a 'duh' to most people, but to me, this sounds quite a lot like censorship. So, what you're basically saying is that, if all the major security people who know the ins and outs of Windows work for Windows affiliated companies, they could not say that there was a glaring problem with that product without fear of being fired (or quite likely being fired). I would concur that the first likely step is to consult the company to get it resolved, but in a general design or past history, sometimes public display is the only motivation to correct those issues. Would be nice if it didn't come down to public humiliation, but then companies are a lot like children sometimes.
Only if every owner of the material in the kernel has authorized it for distribution. If someone stole code and put it in the kernel, that doesn't mean you have a legal license to that code. However, it does mean that the person to get punished for it isn't you, but rather the developer that broke the law. Not saying that there is inappropriate code in the kernel, because I believe SCO is smoking something really nice and not sharing, just that "posession makes it legal" isn't always accurate.
To add to that, SCO attempting to extract runtime fees for use of the Linux Kernel is a scam on the order of anything else I've seen. Keep changing the statements regularly, keep them off balance, throw enough confusion into the works, then say "If you pay me $X, I'll make all your problems go away." If there is copyrighted code in the kernel, they need to persue the companies or individuals that placed it there and sue them for copyright infringement. Said person will then get slapped with a fine to match the crime (whatever ammount per incident, ie: as many times as the Linux Kernel was distributed), and then would it get paid for.
The problem is that SCO is demanding money from the 'victims' in this case and not the 'criminal', without first setting a legal precident that yes, these statements they are making are true and yes, you do owe them money. They're not apparently actively and quickly persuing IBM, they're persuing the individual users of the Linux Kernel.
Weather and Radar transmitters. Would those be the ones that project their signals outside the metal skin of the aircraft, making it far harder for that kind of interferance to breech the faraday's cage that comprises the hull of the plane? Microwave ovens you have a minor point on, but then, most microwave ovens are purposefully shielded as to stop the leaking of radiation outside it's own casing. Microwaves are considered by most to be bad for your health and hense stopped as much as possible.
The problem is more this. Cel phones periodically broadcast a 'Are you there?' signal to the ground stations. Most phones, if they don't get an answer will amplify this signal and request again (or just try repeatedly until they get one). Other electronics are not so nice about not producing EM interference from failing or aged circuitry. Besides, have you ever heard a nextel phone when it recieves or broadcasts to it's ground stations? That phone is so low in frequency or whatever that you can know your phone is going to ring when the speakers nearby you start to warble at you.
As for your plane being secured and safe, bully for you. Perhaps your plane's wiring is a) shielded, b) not sufficiently exposed to become an antenna or c) you aren't flying at sufficient distance from any towers to cause your phone to shout for a reponse (or your phone is 'plane friendly' and doesn't). Considering the age of most planes, I wouldn't count this measure of safety as a 'given'.