I too was so happy to hear we are going back to paper next time around. It always worked well -- I never heard of any problems with the Scantron ballots.
Waited 45 minutes this morning. There were about 15 of the Diebold machines at my polling place, but only two or three had voters at any given time because the election judges were taking so long to get people checked in.
We live in an area where the only high-speed connection available to us is a Verizon cellular device.
* Satellite? No clear view of the southern sky * Cable? Comcast says there aren't enough people in our area to justify the cost of running a line up our road -- despite the fact that our house is only 700 feet from a road that does have cable and we've offered to pay the $1000 for installation. * DSL? 400 feet too far from the CO * FIOS? See DSL, and Verizon is too busy upgrading everyone who has cable and DSL (as if they need even faster access) to get around to us country folk who have pretty much no other options
Would we pay for broadband at whatever price they were willing to charge? Absolutely -- but we can't get them to want to charge us. Before getting the cell service in November, it took my husband 2 hours every week to pay our bills online using the dial-up connection. Now it only takes 15 or so minutes.... except when our connection degrades to 100Kbps because of clouds or rain.
When we moved out here, I made an appointment for Comcast to transfer our cable service. It wasn't until moving day that they realized that they don't actually offer service to our house. Oooops. Every now and then, I check their website -- it continues to tell me that cable is available at my address despite the fact that it really isn't.
I gave up on checking Verizon's FIOS installation schedule because I know that hell will freeze over and have private 99Tbps connections to every tortured soul before FIOS makes out to our area.
I recently took a class on Relational Databases. The content that the instructor was assigning us to read wasn't quite matching up with our textbook, so I assumed he was teaching off of an old lesson plan for a prior edition. Around the 4th week of class, it got completely intolerable -- the reading assignment was so far off of the book we had that I could have sworn I was sitting in the wrong class.
After some investigative work, I discovered that the publisher was publishing two different "4th Edition" textbooks for the class. Both were 4th Edition, and both had the same ISBN number. One had 1099 pages, and the other had 1031. Because they came shrink-wrapped with Oracle 10i, the two different books were indistinguishable from each other from the outside.
The professor had one, and most of us ended up with the other. With no way to be sure of which book we were getting (since it wasn't carried in the bookstore and had to be ordered), we couldn't return our books and ask for the other one. Instead, we spent the semester playing "hide and go seek" translating the reading assignments and problems from his book to ours. In some cases, entire sections had been moved from one chapter to another or just removed completely. The professor didn't seem to think it was a problem.
"They were asked if the copies themselves were unauthorized. They responded "yes"."
And that's where my confusion comes in. To the layperson, their answer in the brief read: "No, but then..."
"If you've read the brief twice you should be able to point us to the passages to which he or she was referring."
I believe (s)he was referring to the discussions of the A&M Records v. Napster case which were dispersed throughout the brief.
"Don't you see that that was an insulting thing to accuse me of??"
My apologies for insulting you. Honestly I was feeling a bit insulted myself after reading your response to my first comment on your blog and then seeing my response to you deleted -- at least I assume that was mine. I'd also just finished reading way too many kneejerk posts from people who clearly didn't even read the whole summary. I was a bit fast at the keyboard and I apologize for that, but I wasn't trying to defend the troll, I was just agreeing with AC that too many people who had posted hadn't read the brief. I should have made that more clear.
Can you please tell me what the false statements of fact in my second comment on your blog were? Since it was deleted I have no clue what I said that was wrong. I had tried to create a what-if situation using the wording from the brief while changing the situation from MP3s to photographs and then explaining why I was interpreting what was written the way that I did -- in an effort to get you to tell me where my thought process was wrong instead of telling me that "Logic" is what I'm missing.
I'd be happy to continue the discussion offline if necessary; I just want to understand where I'm misinterpreting "and" and "no longer" which obviously mean something different in legal terms than they do in the real world.
BTW, this is what I was responding to... a post from AC in reply to your troll alert:
"Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11, @11:38AM (#21657095) No, he is absolutely right. The original post mistates the argument. This post is spreading a lot of bad information, I wish slashdot would correct this error."
"Troll" was entirely wrong about fair use, but the summary is misleading.
I did read the brief. Twice. And I would hardly call 2 comments (one of which hasn't been posted) littering your blog with sloppy comments. I'm not trying to waste anyone's time. But I fail to understand how you're interpreting the brief. Yes, I realize that you are a lawyer and I am not. But the plain English reading of the sentence that was quoted says that the fact that they were shared is what makes them unauthorized copies.
I've followed your cases with great interest; I subscribe to your blog. I actually have quite a bit of respect for you. Seriously though... if I'm wrong, educate me -- but don't talk to me like I'm two years old.
What I had wanted was for you, the obviously more educated, to explain to me how:
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs." == "RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized."
It seemed to me at first blush to be the Slashdot Kneejerk effect, and it still feels that way. But there's obviously no point in trying to continue this discussion. I'm done posting now so no worries -- no more sloppy comments from me.
Under that logic, it's not even "unauthorized distribution" to rip all his CD's to.mp3 so that he and his wife can listen to them wherever. The "unauthorized distribution" occurred when he copied them to his shared Kazaa folder so that the whole world could have them too.
Am I the only person who read the summary (much less the RIAA supplemental brief)?
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder." (emphasis mine)
The act of ripping them for their personal use wasn't the problem. The files became unauthorized copies when they were moved to the Kazaa shared folder. The Defendant admitted that he purposefully and knowingly shared the files with other Kazaa users (pages 17 & 18 of the brief).
For informational purposes, the entire transcript is here. It appears that Rush went around and around with a caller who claimed to be the sterotypical lifelong Republican and member of the military; Rush didn't believe him. The next caller got into a discussion about the media and their perceived bias (note, I'm not saying they're biased or not -- just providing background on the conversation) in reporting. The following exchange happens -- emphasis mine:
"CALLER: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.
RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.
CALLER: A lot of people.
RUSH: You know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.
CALLER: Exactly, sir......."
The caller made the original accusation that the solders who come out against the war are not real soldiers; Rush got burned by applying the word "phony" to describe the phenomenon. Once the call ends, Rush describes the recent Jessie Macbeth incident as an example of a phony soldier.
Meanwhile, I toasted four hard drives (all different brands) within 3 years in my spiffy Dell tower. My husband and I built another box about a year ago with SATA drives and I lost the secondary one in the first 9 months.
We're thinking that my photography habit ^H^H^H^H^H business is keeping them working a bit too hard, so now I try to archive everything off of the drives onto other media as often as is reasonable. Funny thing that is.... 160GB drives cost less than a pack of ramen noodles, and I have to make sure I keep them less than 75% full otherwise they give up the ghost.
Maryland (where he died) has county health programs that operate completely independently of Medicare/Medicaid/S-CHIP. I know because I got all of my dental and physical checkups through them as a child. I just checked, and they do still exist. As "welfare" recipients (both of my parents became disabled through no fault of their own), my family automatically qualified. There was no copay required, all of my visits were made to the county health center and my parents never had a problem getting me seen immediately when needed. My parents made sure I saw a dentist every six months (whether I wanted to or not) and I had physicals every year. The slightest dental problems were corrected immediately, to include orthodontic treatment. When my parents died, I reverted to the foster system where I still managed to get all of the care I needed until I turned 18. All of this before S-CHIP.
How is it anyone's fault his mom wasn't availing herself of the free care available to her?
After actually going to the Xerox website and reading about this new technology, I see that it is built around document routing (for review, for example) and has nothing whatsoever to do with their copier and MFD products. This makes sense, considering that they purchased A***** (can't remember the name), which handles legal discovery production and organization services for several corporations (SCO included). Xerox ("The Document Company") is more than just copiers these days.
Everyone seems to be automatically assuming that it would be used for classified data. This looks more to me like something developed for the businesses that have to deal with HIPPA. Well-defined medical forms (with SSN, name, etc in the same place every time) could automatically be redacted in order to ensure patient privacy and HIPPA-compliance. Looks like a win for the medical industry. It could also work well in the financial world where "need to know" information can be blacked out on financial forms and applications.
I second your thoughts and will add a snippet that I posted to my blog after returning from a last minute business trip today:
"I had an o-dark-thirty flight home from Orlando this morning. When I got to the Southwest counter, there was no line which was a cool thing. I stepped up to a kiosk, and a guy about my age and with no baggage stepped up to the one next to me. I checked in and was handing my bags over when I heard the guy explaining that his flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning but he was checking in early so that he could get an "A" boarding pass. (If you've never flown Southwest, then you wouldn't know why that's important. But I digress....) The Southwest employee told the guy that he can check in online. And that's when he explained that he can't because he's on the TSA "No Fly" list. I mentioned that their website has some process you can go through to get off of the list. That's when I found out that this poor guy has gone through that process dozens of times, but always ends up back on the list two months later. Not helpful when you've got meetings in Orlando every other week like he does (and oddly enough, like I seem to lately as well). So he's given up on the process and just drives by the airport 24 hours before every flight to check in at the counter. About the only thing I could find to say was "Well, I guess that what happens in Vegas doesn't really stay in Vegas." He laughed.
And so his painful odyssey through the transportation system continues......
Oh, I know all about the meme -- I just decided I'd use it as a launchpad for some b*tching about the unavailability about broadband access instead of responding with "heh heh".
I would agree with you except for the fact that I've been sentenced to dial-up hell for the last two years because no one offers broadband of any type to my area. My experience is made all the more painful by the fact that the whole intarweb has decided that Flash is "teh win".
No cable. Commicast offers service to the surrounding zip codes but had decided that we (about 100 homes) are too far from the main road for them to run a line up to us. I'm within the proper distance to the local CO for DSL, but Verizon doesn't think our "neighborhood" (and I use that term loosely) is worth the effort. Satellite? Nope; don't have a clear view to the south. Wireless broadband? Not unless someone decides to drop a cell tower off in the pasture across the street.
Maybe I should feel lucky that I have a telephone and don't have to light my house with candles?
Re:Kicking their own asses...
on
SCO Loses
·
· Score: 2, Funny
My husband and I run a forum for homebuilt aircraft and we've already got bots doing this. We're using captchas at registration, an email activiation link AND we have to have a moderator personally approve every registration...... and we still have some spammers who get through. I'm really beginning to think that there is an army of them out there earning.01 per hour to actually read our site and create profiles that match our user base. Some of the spammers have gone as far as to create signature blocks stating which type of kit they are building and the tail number they've reserved from the FAA. The account gets approved and then we've got hundreds of V1@grA posts to clean up in the morning.
I read an advertisement recently -- apparently someone is collecting the URLs of web forum signup pages and then selling them to the botnets. I was thinking that maybe we could come up with a way of randomizing the signup page URL so that it would only work when the link is actually clicked on, but never got around to it. And let's be honest -- they'd figure that out too. *sigh*
Slashdot Mirror
I too was so happy to hear we are going back to paper next time around. It always worked well -- I never heard of any problems with the Scantron ballots.
Waited 45 minutes this morning. There were about 15 of the Diebold machines at my polling place, but only two or three had voters at any given time because the election judges were taking so long to get people checked in.
We live in an area where the only high-speed connection available to us is a Verizon cellular device.
* Satellite? No clear view of the southern sky
* Cable? Comcast says there aren't enough people in our area to justify the cost of running a line up our road -- despite the fact that our house is only 700 feet from a road that does have cable and we've offered to pay the $1000 for installation.
* DSL? 400 feet too far from the CO
* FIOS? See DSL, and Verizon is too busy upgrading everyone who has cable and DSL (as if they need even faster access) to get around to us country folk who have pretty much no other options
Would we pay for broadband at whatever price they were willing to charge? Absolutely -- but we can't get them to want to charge us. Before getting the cell service in November, it took my husband 2 hours every week to pay our bills online using the dial-up connection. Now it only takes 15 or so minutes.... except when our connection degrades to 100Kbps because of clouds or rain.
When we moved out here, I made an appointment for Comcast to transfer our cable service. It wasn't until moving day that they realized that they don't actually offer service to our house. Oooops. Every now and then, I check their website -- it continues to tell me that cable is available at my address despite the fact that it really isn't.
I gave up on checking Verizon's FIOS installation schedule because I know that hell will freeze over and have private 99Tbps connections to every tortured soul before FIOS makes out to our area.
I recently took a class on Relational Databases. The content that the instructor was assigning us to read wasn't quite matching up with our textbook, so I assumed he was teaching off of an old lesson plan for a prior edition. Around the 4th week of class, it got completely intolerable -- the reading assignment was so far off of the book we had that I could have sworn I was sitting in the wrong class.
After some investigative work, I discovered that the publisher was publishing two different "4th Edition" textbooks for the class. Both were 4th Edition, and both had the same ISBN number. One had 1099 pages, and the other had 1031. Because they came shrink-wrapped with Oracle 10i, the two different books were indistinguishable from each other from the outside.
The professor had one, and most of us ended up with the other. With no way to be sure of which book we were getting (since it wasn't carried in the bookstore and had to be ordered), we couldn't return our books and ask for the other one. Instead, we spent the semester playing "hide and go seek" translating the reading assignments and problems from his book to ours. In some cases, entire sections had been moved from one chapter to another or just removed completely. The professor didn't seem to think it was a problem.
Fun.
I seriously thought about modding this redundant, but decided not to burn my karma on people who wouldn't get the joke.
(Dupes? Redundant? A Redundant Dupe? Ha Ha)
And that, sir, was the kind of answer I was looking for. Thank you. :)
"They were asked if the copies themselves were unauthorized. They responded "yes"."
And that's where my confusion comes in. To the layperson, their answer in the brief read: "No, but then..."
"If you've read the brief twice you should be able to point us to the passages to which he or she was referring."
I believe (s)he was referring to the discussions of the A&M Records v. Napster case which were dispersed throughout the brief.
"Don't you see that that was an insulting thing to accuse me of??"
My apologies for insulting you. Honestly I was feeling a bit insulted myself after reading your response to my first comment on your blog and then seeing my response to you deleted -- at least I assume that was mine. I'd also just finished reading way too many kneejerk posts from people who clearly didn't even read the whole summary. I was a bit fast at the keyboard and I apologize for that, but I wasn't trying to defend the troll, I was just agreeing with AC that too many people who had posted hadn't read the brief. I should have made that more clear.
Can you please tell me what the false statements of fact in my second comment on your blog were? Since it was deleted I have no clue what I said that was wrong. I had tried to create a what-if situation using the wording from the brief while changing the situation from MP3s to photographs and then explaining why I was interpreting what was written the way that I did -- in an effort to get you to tell me where my thought process was wrong instead of telling me that "Logic" is what I'm missing.
I'd be happy to continue the discussion offline if necessary; I just want to understand where I'm misinterpreting "and" and "no longer" which obviously mean something different in legal terms than they do in the real world.
Ok, I lied. One more.
BTW, this is what I was responding to... a post from AC in reply to your troll alert:
"Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11, @11:38AM (#21657095)
No, he is absolutely right. The original post mistates the argument. This post is spreading a lot of bad information, I wish slashdot would correct this error."
"Troll" was entirely wrong about fair use, but the summary is misleading.
Karma be damned...
.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs." == "RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized."
I did read the brief. Twice. And I would hardly call 2 comments (one of which hasn't been posted) littering your blog with sloppy comments. I'm not trying to waste anyone's time. But I fail to understand how you're interpreting the brief. Yes, I realize that you are a lawyer and I am not. But the plain English reading of the sentence that was quoted says that the fact that they were shared is what makes them unauthorized copies.
I've followed your cases with great interest; I subscribe to your blog. I actually have quite a bit of respect for you. Seriously though... if I'm wrong, educate me -- but don't talk to me like I'm two years old.
What I had wanted was for you, the obviously more educated, to explain to me how:
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed
It seemed to me at first blush to be the Slashdot Kneejerk effect, and it still feels that way. But there's obviously no point in trying to continue this discussion. I'm done posting now so no worries -- no more sloppy comments from me.
Exactly. Not everyone who actually reads the brief is a troll.
Under that logic, it's not even "unauthorized distribution" to rip all his CD's to .mp3 so that he and his wife can listen to them wherever. The "unauthorized distribution" occurred when he copied them to his shared Kazaa folder so that the whole world could have them too.
Mod parent up!
Am I the only person who read the summary (much less the RIAA supplemental brief)?
.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder." (emphasis mine)
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed
The act of ripping them for their personal use wasn't the problem. The files became unauthorized copies when they were moved to the Kazaa shared folder. The Defendant admitted that he purposefully and knowingly shared the files with other Kazaa users (pages 17 & 18 of the brief).
For informational purposes, the entire transcript is here. It appears that Rush went around and around with a caller who claimed to be the sterotypical lifelong Republican and member of the military; Rush didn't believe him. The next caller got into a discussion about the media and their perceived bias (note, I'm not saying they're biased or not -- just providing background on the conversation) in reporting. The following exchange happens -- emphasis mine:
"CALLER: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.
RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.
CALLER: A lot of people.
RUSH: You know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.
CALLER: Exactly, sir......."
The caller made the original accusation that the solders who come out against the war are not real soldiers; Rush got burned by applying the word "phony" to describe the phenomenon. Once the call ends, Rush describes the recent Jessie Macbeth incident as an example of a phony soldier.
Meanwhile, I toasted four hard drives (all different brands) within 3 years in my spiffy Dell tower. My husband and I built another box about a year ago with SATA drives and I lost the secondary one in the first 9 months.
We're thinking that my photography habit ^H^H^H^H^H business is keeping them working a bit too hard, so now I try to archive everything off of the drives onto other media as often as is reasonable. Funny thing that is.... 160GB drives cost less than a pack of ramen noodles, and I have to make sure I keep them less than 75% full otherwise they give up the ghost.
Maryland (where he died) has county health programs that operate completely independently of Medicare/Medicaid/S-CHIP. I know because I got all of my dental and physical checkups through them as a child. I just checked, and they do still exist. As "welfare" recipients (both of my parents became disabled through no fault of their own), my family automatically qualified. There was no copay required, all of my visits were made to the county health center and my parents never had a problem getting me seen immediately when needed. My parents made sure I saw a dentist every six months (whether I wanted to or not) and I had physicals every year. The slightest dental problems were corrected immediately, to include orthodontic treatment. When my parents died, I reverted to the foster system where I still managed to get all of the care I needed until I turned 18. All of this before S-CHIP.
How is it anyone's fault his mom wasn't availing herself of the free care available to her?
After actually going to the Xerox website and reading about this new technology, I see that it is built around document routing (for review, for example) and has nothing whatsoever to do with their copier and MFD products. This makes sense, considering that they purchased A***** (can't remember the name), which handles legal discovery production and organization services for several corporations (SCO included). Xerox ("The Document Company") is more than just copiers these days.
Everyone seems to be automatically assuming that it would be used for classified data. This looks more to me like something developed for the businesses that have to deal with HIPPA. Well-defined medical forms (with SSN, name, etc in the same place every time) could automatically be redacted in order to ensure patient privacy and HIPPA-compliance. Looks like a win for the medical industry. It could also work well in the financial world where "need to know" information can be blacked out on financial forms and applications.
I second your thoughts and will add a snippet that I posted to my blog after returning from a last minute business trip today:
...
"I had an o-dark-thirty flight home from Orlando this morning. When I got to the Southwest counter, there was no line which was a cool thing. I stepped up to a kiosk, and a guy about my age and with no baggage stepped up to the one next to me. I checked in and was handing my bags over when I heard the guy explaining that his flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning but he was checking in early so that he could get an "A" boarding pass. (If you've never flown Southwest, then you wouldn't know why that's important. But I digress....) The Southwest employee told the guy that he can check in online. And that's when he explained that he can't because he's on the TSA "No Fly" list. I mentioned that their website has some process you can go through to get off of the list. That's when I found out that this poor guy has gone through that process dozens of times, but always ends up back on the list two months later. Not helpful when you've got meetings in Orlando every other week like he does (and oddly enough, like I seem to lately as well). So he's given up on the process and just drives by the airport 24 hours before every flight to check in at the counter. About the only thing I could find to say was "Well, I guess that what happens in Vegas doesn't really stay in Vegas." He laughed.
And so his painful odyssey through the transportation system continues...
"Papers please?" "
If only I had registered when I actually started reading.....
(typing extraneous stuff in order to defeat the nifty "time filter"..........)
Oh, I know all about the meme -- I just decided I'd use it as a launchpad for some b*tching about the unavailability about broadband access instead of responding with "heh heh".
I would agree with you except for the fact that I've been sentenced to dial-up hell for the last two years because no one offers broadband of any type to my area. My experience is made all the more painful by the fact that the whole intarweb has decided that Flash is "teh win".
No cable. Commicast offers service to the surrounding zip codes but had decided that we (about 100 homes) are too far from the main road for them to run a line up to us. I'm within the proper distance to the local CO for DSL, but Verizon doesn't think our "neighborhood" (and I use that term loosely) is worth the effort. Satellite? Nope; don't have a clear view to the south. Wireless broadband? Not unless someone decides to drop a cell tower off in the pasture across the street.
Maybe I should feel lucky that I have a telephone and don't have to light my house with candles?
In Soviet Linden, SCO pays YOU!
Can anyone tell me how the heck their stock made it above $1.00?
Oh if only I had mod points right now. +5 Funny.
My husband and I run a forum for homebuilt aircraft and we've already got bots doing this. We're using captchas at registration, an email activiation link AND we have to have a moderator personally approve every registration...... and we still have some spammers who get through. I'm really beginning to think that there is an army of them out there earning .01 per hour to actually read our site and create profiles that match our user base. Some of the spammers have gone as far as to create signature blocks stating which type of kit they are building and the tail number they've reserved from the FAA. The account gets approved and then we've got hundreds of V1@grA posts to clean up in the morning.
I read an advertisement recently -- apparently someone is collecting the URLs of web forum signup pages and then selling them to the botnets. I was thinking that maybe we could come up with a way of randomizing the signup page URL so that it would only work when the link is actually clicked on, but never got around to it. And let's be honest -- they'd figure that out too. *sigh*