Hmm, if the company insists on owning his thoughts for 168 hours a week but only pays for 40, then the company can have the ideas... but has to pay for the other 6700-odd hours a year that it allegedly owns his thoughts but for which it hasn't paid. That's a lot of back pay.
Other action you can take: Write to all current Congresspeople. The RIAA are once again trying to extend the copyright expiration term. Will this be the last time they seek to extend it, or will they eventually have it out to life + 500 years?
Speak out against copyright extension. Use this dumping of CD's on public libraries as evidence that the RIAA cannot be trusted.
There are many compilers out there for many languages. Other then VC++ I cant think of any language that dosn't have a free compiler out there for Windows. How many of these compilers will you find on the Windows installation disk? None. Linux on the other hand ships with compilers as standard.
There are so many desktop replacments/customizers out for windows I wouldn't even know where to start. How about you start with those that ship with the Windows installation disk?
Same issue with other software - Windows stuff has to be obtained from third parties because the standard installation doesn't have them, whereas in many cases a standard Linux installation ships with this stuff.
That is the difference.
Another difference is the issue of trust. Most of the Linux stuff ships with source code that you can inspect. Windows stuff from third parties, on the other hand, is mostly closed source, with all its inherent risks.
I use dialup because I cannot get cable installed to my block of flats without having to get permission from the provider, the landlord, the body corporate and perhaps other bodies as well. It's just too much paperwork.
I run Windows, so I take precautions against all malware. I disable ActiveX, I have Zonealarm running, and I switch my modem off when I am not using it.
send them a picture of somewhere on Earth that deserves to be spared from the Vogons
I will assume that Vogons will be doing the judging. (Given that the competition closes in about 24 hours, this is probably correct.) What appeals to Vogons? Administration. Bureaucratic red tape, sealing wax and paperwork. Ugly, drab functionality.
Therefore, I would send in a picture of an administration building on Earth that is the most ugly, greyest, most drab utilitarian administration building in existence, and that also generates great quantities of bureaucratic paper work for no good reason.
That would be worth preserving - to prove to the universe that the Vogons can be matched elsewhere in the galaxy for sheer bloodyminded bureaucracy.
Discalimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice then hire a lawyer, blah blah blah.
We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense. I'm waiting for the day when someone wins in court by claiming to agree to only that part of the agreement that can be seen on screen when an "I Agree" button is clicked.
Let me give you a common example. Agreements are often presented in text boxes in web browsers that are only 10 to 20 lines high, but the actual agreement is hundreds of lines long. To read the agreement, you have to use the scrollbar in the text box to scroll though the agreement. It's only a matter of time when someone sues because they didn't know how to work the scrollbar. Far-fetched? Just ask McDonald's about the hot coffee lawsuit.
To maximise your chances of winning such a hidden-terms lawsuit, print out two or three copies of the agreement as rendered by the web browser before pressing "I Agree". Make sure these copies are as accurate a rendering of the text on screen as possible. Keep these copies safe. If you are the lucky person that chooses to sue, tender these copies in court as the agreement. If they point out in court that you have to use the scrollbar to read the full text of the agreement, ask "What's a scrollbar?" The "What's a scrollbar" question should have the same effect to your case as "I didn't know that coffee was hot" did against McDonald's: a fatal hit below the waterline.
If that lawsuit wins, then it will set a precedent where all text of online agreements must be clearly visible on screen. That will put a stop to the "hide big agreement in small text box" crowd, but also put a stop to the "hidden terms" clowns like Nextel.
If any terms of a contract are not clearly presented to a customer before the company takes the customer's money, are those terms legally binding?
How can people possibly get this wrong? The simplest conversion to remember is 25.4mm in an inch, and everything multiplies out from there. Yes, it is simple, particularly since the inch is defined as exactly 25.4 mm. Calculating from Imperial to metric is fairly easy because many of the conversion factors are exact. The trouble is, calculating metric to imperial is harder because the inverse fractions are not exact and this is the problem stated in the article.
Just remember that 1 mm = 1/25.4 inch and work from there. (1000 mm = 1 m, 1000 m = 1 km, he went up 100 km, therefore he went up 1000 * 1000 * 100 / 25.4 = 3,937,007.87 inches, and divide by 12 and you get 328,083.99 feet. Because the 100 km altitude is approximate, 328,000 feet will suffice.)
Disclaimer: I'm an Australian who entered the school system during the changeover to metric. And therein lies a tale... taught metric at school and imperial at home, I sort of grew up bimetric.
Off the top of my head, I can state (without calculating): 1 inch = 2.54 cm 1 mile = 63360 inches (12 inches to the foot * 3 feet to the yard * 5.5 yards to the rod * 4 rods to the chain * 10 chains to the furlong * 8 furlongs to the mile) 1 mile = 1.609344 km (63360 inches * 25.4 mm to the inch)
When the latest movie hits the cinemas, you have to pay $10 to $15 (depending on currency) per viewing. If you're prepared to wait six months, you can rent it for $5 and view it a couple of times. If you wait a year, you can get it as a weekly video for less. If you're prepared to wait a couple of years, you can see that same movie for free when it is on TV.
The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, and have no soul-sucking registration to view, but only allow the viewing of articles from non-current newspapers. The online edition would then become a free archive service. People who want today's news can buy today's newspaper, or wait a day or two when it's posted online.
If this sort of thing ever happened to me I would fight them with the business world's equivalent of nuclear weapons. I would go straight to the media. There's bound to be a few media organisations looking for just such a story.
People with poor service fear media exposure. It's like a bright light shining into a cockroach-infested hovel - watch the creeps run for cover. And watch as your previously intractible problem is suddenly solved.
Or you can do the following: (1) wipe the drive with ones (2) wipe the drive with zeroes (3) fill the drive with p0rn (4) wipe the drive with ones (5) wipe the drive with zeroes
When they get to the p0rn layer, the chances are good that they will stop looking further. Once they find all those goodies you planted at step 3, they won't look for all those financial records.
BT need to think carefully about the legal ramifications of this. ISP's and the like have enjoyed "common-carrier" status in the past. This has granted them various immunities from lawmakers on the grounds that selective blocking is technically infeasible. Now that BT are selectively blocking web sites, it destroys the argument of technical infeasibility, and thus makes it more difficult for all ISP's to maintain common-carrier immunity. I expect the RIAA and MPAA to start lobbying for changes to the DMCA soon.
There is a fable that has made the rounds of UNIX installations in the early days that describes a car that Ken Thompson helped to design. Ken is the originator of the file-system concept that is central to the design of UNIX. The fable goes something like this:
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver," he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
-- Source: http://www.parrette.net/~wap/wapProfessional.html (and seen elsewhere on the Net)
The real problem is the forced password changes every 90 days (for me), and the half-dozen (at least) passwords I have to change every time. Thank God my IT doesn't check for reused passwords, or I'd have to resort to writing them all down, or picking insecure sequences.
The BOFH had some good ideas by ruling through fear and intimidation. If I was running your IT department, I would (1) Check for re-used passwords and reject them. (2) If your password had a dictionary word in it the expiry would be 7 days instead of 90.
Yes, you can sue for up to $500 per call under the TCPA (law since 1991). You don't have to demonstrate damages, just that you received the call. It can be argued that it DID cost you money to receive the call - it drained your battery a bit, and when you recharge your phone you pay for the power, right?
Look elsewhere for information about the TCPA, especially the messages here modded up as Informative.
You can send them a bill for $500 per call because that is the statutory damages for telemarketing to a mobile phone under the TCPA.
I think a better approach would be to bill the telemarketers for a smaller amount, say $200, and if they challenge it take them to small claims court for the full $500.
Almost every group, no matter how exclusive, has members who are more gullible and willing to make the invite.
When you consider that the spammer demographic would include some 15-year-olds without much real-world experience, and who know little but think they know everything, such invites would not be hard to get. Kids who have never been on the receiving end of a con are not in short supply.
This would be useful if it did it in the following way: (1) display a message on their screen that says "Your computer has been infected with a virus!" and (2) hang the machine. Preferably, the message should be displayed in English, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese. (The spam I get mostly seems to come from infected boxes in China, South Korea, and Brazil.)
If this happened to them three or four times a day, they would be annoyed, but they would also have SOME clue as to what's causing the problem, and they just might fix it. Don't forget, if they are still using Windows 98, unexplained crashes once or twice a day wouldn't be considered out of the ordinary.
This does not work well when the typist is using hunt-and-peck typing, since all the characters would be relatively evenly spaced in time.
I guess that makes hunt and peck a useful technique for entering passwords. Especially if you also type very gently as well so that little sound is made when the keys are depressed.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, if the company insists on owning his thoughts for 168 hours a week but only pays for 40, then the company can have the ideas ... but has to pay for the other 6700-odd hours a year that it allegedly owns his thoughts but for which it hasn't paid. That's a lot of back pay.
So far we have the following episodes:
IV: A New Scammer
V: Philly eBay Scammer Strikes Back!
Let's hope that the next episode is:
VI: Return of the Money
Other action you can take:
Write to all current Congresspeople. The RIAA are once again trying to extend the copyright expiration term. Will this be the last time they seek to extend it, or will they eventually have it out to life + 500 years?
Speak out against copyright extension. Use this dumping of CD's on public libraries as evidence that the RIAA cannot be trusted.
There are many compilers out there for many languages. Other then VC++ I cant think of any language that dosn't have a free compiler out there for Windows.
How many of these compilers will you find on the Windows installation disk? None. Linux on the other hand ships with compilers as standard.
There are so many desktop replacments/customizers out for windows I wouldn't even know where to start.
How about you start with those that ship with the Windows installation disk?
Same issue with other software - Windows stuff has to be obtained from third parties because the standard installation doesn't have them, whereas in many cases a standard Linux installation ships with this stuff.
That is the difference.
Another difference is the issue of trust. Most of the Linux stuff ships with source code that you can inspect. Windows stuff from third parties, on the other hand, is mostly closed source, with all its inherent risks.
I use dialup because I cannot get cable installed to my block of flats without having to get permission from the provider, the landlord, the body corporate and perhaps other bodies as well. It's just too much paperwork.
I run Windows, so I take precautions against all malware. I disable ActiveX, I have Zonealarm running, and I switch my modem off when I am not using it.
I'm sure we can think of a few.
send them a picture of somewhere on Earth that deserves to be spared from the Vogons
I will assume that Vogons will be doing the judging. (Given that the competition closes in about 24 hours, this is probably correct.) What appeals to Vogons? Administration. Bureaucratic red tape, sealing wax and paperwork. Ugly, drab functionality.
Therefore, I would send in a picture of an administration building on Earth that is the most ugly, greyest, most drab utilitarian administration building in existence, and that also generates great quantities of bureaucratic paper work for no good reason.
That would be worth preserving - to prove to the universe that the Vogons can be matched elsewhere in the galaxy for sheer bloodyminded bureaucracy.
Discalimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice then hire a lawyer, blah blah blah.
We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense. I'm waiting for the day when someone wins in court by claiming to agree to only that part of the agreement that can be seen on screen when an "I Agree" button is clicked.
Let me give you a common example. Agreements are often presented in text boxes in web browsers that are only 10 to 20 lines high, but the actual agreement is hundreds of lines long. To read the agreement, you have to use the scrollbar in the text box to scroll though the agreement. It's only a matter of time when someone sues because they didn't know how to work the scrollbar. Far-fetched? Just ask McDonald's about the hot coffee lawsuit.
To maximise your chances of winning such a hidden-terms lawsuit, print out two or three copies of the agreement as rendered by the web browser before pressing "I Agree". Make sure these copies are as accurate a rendering of the text on screen as possible. Keep these copies safe. If you are the lucky person that chooses to sue, tender these copies in court as the agreement. If they point out in court that you have to use the scrollbar to read the full text of the agreement, ask "What's a scrollbar?" The "What's a scrollbar" question should have the same effect to your case as "I didn't know that coffee was hot" did against McDonald's: a fatal hit below the waterline.
If that lawsuit wins, then it will set a precedent where all text of online agreements must be clearly visible on screen. That will put a stop to the "hide big agreement in small text box" crowd, but also put a stop to the "hidden terms" clowns like Nextel.
If any terms of a contract are not clearly presented to a customer before the company takes the customer's money, are those terms legally binding?
How can people possibly get this wrong? The simplest conversion to remember is 25.4mm in an inch, and everything multiplies out from there.
... taught metric at school and imperial at home, I sort of grew up bimetric.
Yes, it is simple, particularly since the inch is defined as exactly 25.4 mm. Calculating from Imperial to metric is fairly easy because many of the conversion factors are exact. The trouble is, calculating metric to imperial is harder because the inverse fractions are not exact and this is the problem stated in the article.
Just remember that 1 mm = 1/25.4 inch and work from there. (1000 mm = 1 m, 1000 m = 1 km, he went up 100 km, therefore he went up 1000 * 1000 * 100 / 25.4 = 3,937,007.87 inches, and divide by 12 and you get 328,083.99 feet. Because the 100 km altitude is approximate, 328,000 feet will suffice.)
Disclaimer: I'm an Australian who entered the school system during the changeover to metric. And therein lies a tale
Off the top of my head, I can state (without calculating):
1 inch = 2.54 cm
1 mile = 63360 inches (12 inches to the foot * 3 feet to the yard * 5.5 yards to the rod * 4 rods to the chain * 10 chains to the furlong * 8 furlongs to the mile)
1 mile = 1.609344 km (63360 inches * 25.4 mm to the inch)
I believe the poster is thinking of SMTP features such as the following:
l e.com
user(slashdot)@example.com
user+slashdot@examp
Depending on your ISP, these may or may not work, because these are not supported by all mail hosts.
When the latest movie hits the cinemas, you have to pay $10 to $15 (depending on currency) per viewing. If you're prepared to wait six months, you can rent it for $5 and view it a couple of times. If you wait a year, you can get it as a weekly video for less. If you're prepared to wait a couple of years, you can see that same movie for free when it is on TV.
The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, and have no soul-sucking registration to view, but only allow the viewing of articles from non-current newspapers. The online edition would then become a free archive service. People who want today's news can buy today's newspaper, or wait a day or two when it's posted online.
If this sort of thing ever happened to me I would fight them with the business world's equivalent of nuclear weapons. I would go straight to the media. There's bound to be a few media organisations looking for just such a story.
People with poor service fear media exposure. It's like a bright light shining into a cockroach-infested hovel - watch the creeps run for cover. And watch as your previously intractible problem is suddenly solved.
"Honey, I had a minor car accident today. Luckily, nothing was damaged except the number plates."
"What happened to your plates, sir?"
"I was in the carpark and I ran into someone, and someone else ran into me from behind."
"A gang of youths went on the rampage today, doing minor damage to parked cars in the area."
Hmm, and how many more such "accidents" will we see? Only time will tell....
Or you can do the following:
(1) wipe the drive with ones
(2) wipe the drive with zeroes
(3) fill the drive with p0rn
(4) wipe the drive with ones
(5) wipe the drive with zeroes
When they get to the p0rn layer, the chances are good that they will stop looking further. Once they find all those goodies you planted at step 3, they won't look for all those financial records.
BT need to think carefully about the legal ramifications of this. ISP's and the like have enjoyed "common-carrier" status in the past. This has granted them various immunities from lawmakers on the grounds that selective blocking is technically infeasible. Now that BT are selectively blocking web sites, it destroys the argument of technical infeasibility, and thus makes it more difficult for all ISP's to maintain common-carrier immunity. I expect the RIAA and MPAA to start lobbying for changes to the DMCA soon.
There is a fable that has made the rounds of UNIX installations in the early days that describes a car that Ken Thompson helped to design. Ken is the originator of the file-system concept that is central to the design of UNIX. The fable goes something like this:
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver," he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
-- Source: http://www.parrette.net/~wap/wapProfessional.html
(and seen elsewhere on the Net)
Section 9's cool too. It says that you waive the right to sue them in a real court, but instead will have a hearing before a "neutral arbitrator".
You can get the right to sue in court back, or alternatively force them to waive the right to sue YOU in court. See battle of the forms for more info.
The real problem is the forced password changes every 90 days (for me), and the half-dozen (at least) passwords I have to change every time. Thank God my IT doesn't check for reused passwords, or I'd have to resort to writing them all down, or picking insecure sequences.
The BOFH had some good ideas by ruling through fear and intimidation. If I was running your IT department, I would
(1) Check for re-used passwords and reject them.
(2) If your password had a dictionary word in it the expiry would be 7 days instead of 90.
Wow, since daily US oil consumption is what, 20 *million* barrels per day, I'm sure it will be no problem to set up another 10,000 of these plants
The plant is a pilot plant. From the FAQ on the company web site: "the next generation of plants will be larger."
Telemarketing calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice are illegal under the TCPA.
Yes, you can sue for up to $500 per call under the TCPA (law since 1991). You don't have to demonstrate damages, just that you received the call. It can be argued that it DID cost you money to receive the call - it drained your battery a bit, and when you recharge your phone you pay for the power, right?
Look elsewhere for information about the TCPA, especially the messages here modded up as Informative.
You can send them a bill for $500 per call because that is the statutory damages for telemarketing to a mobile phone under the TCPA.
I think a better approach would be to bill the telemarketers for a smaller amount, say $200, and if they challenge it take them to small claims court for the full $500.
Almost every group, no matter how exclusive, has members who are more gullible and willing to make the invite.
When you consider that the spammer demographic would include some 15-year-olds without much real-world experience, and who know little but think they know everything, such invites would not be hard to get. Kids who have never been on the receiving end of a con are not in short supply.
give it a payload that shuts the machine down.
This would be useful if it did it in the following way: (1) display a message on their screen that says "Your computer has been infected with a virus!" and (2) hang the machine. Preferably, the message should be displayed in English, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese. (The spam I get mostly seems to come from infected boxes in China, South Korea, and Brazil.)
If this happened to them three or four times a day, they would be annoyed, but they would also have SOME clue as to what's causing the problem, and they just might fix it. Don't forget, if they are still using Windows 98, unexplained crashes once or twice a day wouldn't be considered out of the ordinary.
This does not work well when the typist is using hunt-and-peck typing, since all the characters would be relatively evenly spaced in time.
I guess that makes hunt and peck a useful technique for entering passwords. Especially if you also type very gently as well so that little sound is made when the keys are depressed.