"As technology is continually being controlled by a select few, the consumer
ultimately loses out. Its unfortunate, and it has to stop soon.
But what do we do to stop it?"
Everyone in America pools together, puts in 50 bucks, and get our hands deeper into polititians pockets than big business is.
"Note that nowhere on that link, or at any other similar organization, does it say "None of this applies if you
broadcast to people who already own the CD of the song you're playing."
Um, if it was only able to be heard by a select group of people, it wouldn't be a broadcast. It would be similar to
something like HBO, where only permitted users (should) be able to recieve the material. HBO and similar stations
pay royalties per subscriber. That's the arguement against MP3.com, it doesn't pay royalties on songs, nor does it
regulate who can recieve data from them. It was, in a sense, broadcasting. And radio stations, through market
studies, know approximately how many listeners they have on average. This information is compiled to help
advertisers know when to post their commercial, as well as so they know how much to charge for commercial airtime.
I wouldn't doubt for a second that the RIAA also uses this information to deterimine how much to charge the radio
stations, but I cannot say this for sure.
Also, the radio station/mp3.com anology doesn't quite hold up well for this reason: when was the last time you
purchased a CD or searched MP3.com by artist or song title BEFORE hearing it? If you never heard the song, how
would you know it existed? Radio stations give bands HUGE exposure, something that listen on demand services such
as MP3.com cannot do, because they can't control what music gets used. There are 3 main ways that music gets
exposed, MTV, radio, or through a friend. That friend probably heard it first on MTV, the radio, or got it from a
friend who heard it on MT.....
Still, the RIAA is dumb for not harnessing the potential of this technoligy. Could you imagine the "New Artist"
section of Napster if the RIAA submitted mp3's? This is where they could fill the pitfalls of radio, people like me
who rarely listen to it. I find popping in a CD to be much more convienent as I don't have to listen to commercials,
songs I do not want to hear, or worse yet, annoying DJ's. I have not all day to listen to the radio for some amazing
new song that I probably won't hear them name anyway. But if I could go to RIAA.com, pick a style, and see what's
new on my own time, hell yeah! RIAA, wake up and smell the cable modem cooking... you can't stop it, so figure out
how to use it to your advantage!
For the record, I wasn't implying that BSD sucked, only that if Microsoft was to sell it that they would find a way to make it suck. Mabey they would find a neat way to "innovate" it. And how much you wanna bet they would find a way to intigrate IE into the OS? (Win98BSD anyone?)
"...and, yes, you'll get in trouble for perjury if you write "no" next to
the question that says "have you ever been convicted of a felony?"
I can understand them asking if you have ever been convicted of a crime, but has anyone ever seen the applications that ask if you have ever been arrested? In a country where you are innocent until proven guilty, and are not required to divulge self incriminating information, how can they ask if you have ever been arrested? This burns me every time I see it, because some holier-than-thu HR person will probably see an arrest, that is, being accused of a crime, as bad. I don't see this as fair to the truely innocent. Legally, I suppose a simple arrest means nothing, but we're dealing with human nature here. Does anybody know more about this?
"Most notably a 2 foot by 3 foot titanium fuel
tank may make it through the atmosphere"
Mabey Iridium can make their money back by selling "real parts from outer space" on Ebay or something. When they sell all the parts, they can sell their domain name there too and actually turn a profit.
"Own a peice of technological history!!! Iridium.com domain name: opening bid $4,000,000,000..."
Hmm.. Another "Feature" in a Micro$oft product, this one is almost as good as the one that lets nice people run.vbs scripts on your computer for you in Outlook =) Gee, is it any wonder why Windoze is closed source?
I guess he was true to his word when he said "We are more concerned with adding new features than fixing bugs.." Wow Bill, I can't wait till the next Windoze release to see what nice "Features" you have added!!!
"I'd love to hear Bill Gates stuttering response to these little tidbits of information. Gotta love the confidence they
have in their inferior products!
"
Yeah! What do you think it would take to get a Slashdot interview with Mr. Billy himself?
Commercial piolets must all speak english. And so do astronauts, it's been the accepted language. Also, english is being taught right along side of native languages in many parts of Europe and Asia. It seems obvious to me that English has become the accepted standard for international business. Why would the internet be any different? I'm sure that most sites will stay in their home language, but if a bigger e-commerce site want's to go international, I wouldn't doubt for a second they will have an english version before any other language.
Re:Is LEGO a proprietary standard?
on
The LEGO Desk
·
· Score: 1
Why is this? Does LEGO sue anyone who makes an exact clone? Surely any patent expired long ago (plenty of other
people make raised-dot-and-hole building blocks). Can you copyright *dimensions*?
They're not "dimentions". It's a "Propriatary User Interface."
Back OT... The reason that the plastic always seems to be different is that yes, Lego does indeed use a patented plastic for their blocks. But they didn't always. Some of the originals were wood. Check out their History page for more cool info on Legos.
BTW.. here is something nifty here lifted right from their site, if you have some free time on your hands:
"102,981,500 are how many different ways there are to combine
six 8-stud bricks of the same colour. If you haven't that much
time, you can take three 8-stud bricks - same colour - and fit
them together in 1,060 ways. Two 8-stud bricks - still the
same colour - can be put together in 24 ways."
Good luck! Any math geeks out there that could figure out how many combo's could be made from 35,000 blocks?
I would have do disagree with the judge in this case. It is true that it is the court's responsability only to interpret the law as it is written, not to make new laws. IANAL, nor have I read the IP laws on domain names and telephone numbers etc, so he might have very well been in his rights with his decision. I will not debate this from a legal standpoint, I do not understand the details of the law completely enough to do so. Nor is all lost yet, as the case could still be won in a fraud suite, as the article states.
I do believe that, on a logical, realistic level that domain names are property. I also might have some legal proof that they are. Look at it from this point of view. A telephone number is randomly assigned by the telco and has no meaning, it is a simple address to your telephone. A domain name, on the other hand, is in my opinion intellectual property. Why? Domain names aren't randomly assigned. It takes creativity to think of a domain name, no matter how simple. I wouldnt just go to a dictionay and pick a random word for my website. I would think of one that suites the content of my site, or at least one that has personal meaning for me. To take this even further, go to a registrar and try to register Microsoft.com, and see what happens. It will tell you that you cannot register Microsoft.* anything because it is a tradmarked name. I'm sure that many examples of this are active, but this is just the one that I am aware of. OTOH, Microsoft is an original name, Sex.com is a standard english word. But aren't all works of intelectual property just a compilation of words in native tounge? Who is to say that I cannot write and copyright a book that is only one word long? So what makes a domain name, basicly a title to my book in a manner of speaking, or a title to my business, not copyrightable? How about sites with common words that their domain is their business name? Like Amazon.com, or MP3.com? Is that protected under tradmark laws? Remember, trademark laws are seperate from copyright laws.
I think this whole Intellecual Property debate is going to continue for some time to come. The recent explosion of computers and digital media have come far faster and further than the big, slow wheels of Big Brother could dream of turning. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. With all the recent news of judges stripping sites of their domains, i.e. Corinthians.com, and others, this seems to be something that needs immediate attention of the lawmakers. Or at least the law interpreters. But just because this happens to involves computers, I don't see how it is complicated. Seems pretty straightforward to me, it's IP. I thought of it, I registered it, it's my exclusive right to use it for as long as I desire. So, while I technicaly might never "own" the domain name, I will forever own the thought that created it. And isn't that what copyrights and trademarks are?
"If he were still alive could we sue the inventor of guns
because guns are used to kill people illegally??!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Why the hell not? Smith and Wesson, Colt, all of the big US gun manufactures have already been sued in the past five years, right along with the tobaco companies, and everyone else who operates within the confines of the law and is not responsible for the end use of their product. Guns aren't bad, some bad people just use guns. Cigarettes only kill you if you smoke them. (ok, I understand the second hand thing, but aside from that) And Gnutella and Napster don't trade copywrited music. People do. But it seems like in this day and age that doesn't matter. All you have to do is have your product misused by some third party and you are liable. It's a sad, sad situation. Hell, even video game companies have been sued for making violent games. Oh, so it's not the parents fault for allowing their children to play them? There seems to be some misconception there that video games are all for children. No, and not all cartoons are either. The problem is nobody wants to take any personal responsability any more. Everything must be somebody elses fault, because if guns/cigarettes/video games/file sharing software were illegal, than nobody would be able to make a poor decision, nothing "bad" would be there to decide on. So just take everything that has the potential to do bad things and make it illegal, sue the hell of the people who make it, and "bad" things will just go away and the world will be all bright and sunny because nobody will have to think for themselves any more. All this anti everything sue the world crap is really starting to make me sick. We are just watching our rights slip away, one at at time. But it's ok, Big Brother will protect us from the evils of the world. Keep smiling, and kiss your freedom goodbye.
"Plus in areas where overlapping stations on the same frequency, how would the data react."
I would imagine that some type of addressing would be used. While the reciever might not be able to send a specific IP address nor would the broadcast station want to send out thousands of channels for every user, but they can still embed a source address in every packet. So you might not tune your radio by frequency like we do now. Mabey by name, like "NYCRocks" or something like that. Then your reciever would only open packets from that sender.
I have no idea if this is what they plan to do, but it seems like one logical solution. The downside to this type of broadcast is that with it being digital, it could easily become a pay for use system, with only paying subscribers reaping the benefits of such a system. It does promise to save a lot of frequency bandwith however, and if this ever became mainstream, we can all benefit from that.
Now, how the hell am I supposed to type "IDDQD" or "IDKFA" on a digital camera?
Back OT, I think stuff like this is great. Just shows how close we really are to a totally intigrated world. Kinda makes me wonder how many other gizmos are capable of such things. So, lets check the score, Linux on iOpener, hacks on the TiVo, Doom on digital cams... the list goes on. I'd like to see perhaps all of these such devices connected together. Bring your digital cam to grandma's, upload the pics to her iOpener, play a quick game of Doom or 2 while you're connected to it, and set the TiVo at home to record "Hackers" because you just saw a preview for it and you didn't know it was going to be on. Ah yes, I can't wait. Now, who said ports like this are useless?
Having worked in manufacturing, I can relate to Jim Bult's cause. I have seen pregnant women operating injection molding machines, with PVC fumes smoking out of it, highly unsafe handeling, storage, and working practices around acids and other battery components, such as lithium. And yes, I can't think of anywhere that I havn't seen some sort of interlock defeated. One time I came into contact with a small drop if Thionl Chloride, and while not a dangerous amount, was shocked to see that there was no immediate supply of baking soda or similar neutralizer available in case of a more serious mishap. When I brought the issue up with the safty officer, I was told that Thionl Chloride is a "mild acid" and if something did happen just to "rince it off in the eyewash." Now, I'm not a chemist, but it is my understanding that it is NOT a "mild acid" by any means. Hell, any acid, particularly in high concentrations, should be handled with extreme care and with proper emergency training and equipment. To make it worse, it was being handled by untrained production workers who knew very little about the dangers of long term exposure, saftey procedures, and emergency procedures. This is just one example of the many blatent saftey violatons that I have come across and reported but still went ignored. To top it off, the places I have seen the worst violations are the ones who scream SAFETY!!! every five seconds, and consider you safe if you are breathing in toxic fumes as long as your safety glasses are on. The fact that I have refused to work at times because of conditions with no recourse from my employer just further cements in my mind that they knew they were wrong. But they wouldn't tell anyone else who didn't know better.
I support Jim Bult all the way, and I hope that he wins his case. This is just typical of how upper management in this country looks at nothing but numbers. Just because nobody has gotten injured yet doesn't mean that it's not just itching to happen. But they don't care, numbers don't lie. It must be safe if nobody has gotten hurt, yet. How much would it really cost to check interlocks every month? Not nearly as much as it would cost to settle a multi million dollar lawsuite with the family, I'm sure.
"They... forbid downloads of over 500MB/day, etc."
Well, you can always go back to 56/k dialup and download all you want.What's that? Oh... that's right. Only 24 hours in a day. I do agree though, 500Mbyte/day does seem a little tight. But you have to remember, @home and similar services weren't intended from the beginning to provide us tech junkies with unlimited bandwidth usage. Also, remember that cable is a shared-bandwidth connection for everybody, that means your next door neighbor, the guy living 4 blocks away, etc. If they let you (and everyone else for that matter) download pr0n and MP3's all day with no usage limits, Joe down the street might not be able to even check his Hotmail. They have to remain fair with all their customers. If they figure that mabey on average say 25% of their customers are on at a time, and they have y bandwidth total, than everyone gets a max of x bandwidth. It may seem almost a waste as most people will probably not use even 25Mbyte/day, but it keeps everything fair. As far as it being against ToS to use Napster, that seems awfully controlling. How about OpenNap? Or MyNapster or Gnutella? Technically, I suppose it does turn your computer into a file server. But that is a hell of a place to draw a line, especially if you are not going over your 500Mbyte/day limit. Although I suppose someone leaving their computer and Napster on 24/7 could cause quite a bit of traffic.
I know it's not the news we all want to hear, but it's still the truth. Cable modems are consumer level products, and are not intended to provide everyone in the world with business grade connections. At least not yet, anyway. The intentions of the cable companies is to provide consumers with speed, not allow them to download more. While naturally people will, it still doesn't mean that for $40 bucks a month they should give away multi-TBytes of bandwidth.
IANAL, but it was always my understanding that as a civilian, and for non busniess purposes, it is legal in ALL US cities/towns/villiges/iglos to record all private phone calls. But it seems the FCC has differint opinions on the matter. Check out here, here and here to search for yourself. I searched for "telephone recording" by concept, so give that a try.
This exceprt from the second link might save you some time.
"Recording Intrastate Conversations
Questions or complaints about recording intrastate conversations (calls placed within the same state) should be addressed to the state
public utility commission for that state. You can contact your local or state consumer office to obtain the telephone number and
address for your state public utility commission. This information also may be listed in the government section of your telephone
directory."
And this excerpt from the first link might save ya some time also. This is in reference to interstate and foreign calls.
"The FCC protects the privacy of telephone conversations by
requiring notification before a recording device is used to
record interstate or foreign telephone conversations. These
types of conversations may not be recorded unless the use of
a recording device is:
preceded by verbal or written consent of all parties to
the telephone conversation; or
preceded by verbal notification which is recorded at the
beginning, and as part of the call, by the recording
party; or
accompanied by an automatic tone warning device,
sometimes called a beep tone, which automatically
produces a distinct signal that is repeated at regular
intervals during the course of the telephone conversation
when the recording device is in use."
I really don't know if this refers to everybody or only business that might desire to record their phone calls, so don't take the information I have linked to as gospel either. But it is straight from the FCC website. The search results I got were many and confusing, so I don't know if there is any more information on the site about this. Many of the pages are just like 7458273.txt etc. so their might be more there. Just my $0.02
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my original post, what I was refering to more than anything else was universities selling thier research in the form of patents, not direct sponsorship of the school. More and more, modern schools are turning more to a "Business Model" environment than a purely academic one. By doing such, students learn in an environment that closer parallels the real world, where things like budgets, investors, public relations, and professionalism are almost as important as the work itself to success on a project. This helps close the gap between the academea and reality. By capitalizing on the work they (the students) have done, they learn to work in something closer to a real world company. I think the benefits to this go without need for explaination.
To play devils advocate, there are a few benefits to a certain level of direct sponsorship. For example, by working with a company on a project, students have the unique opportunity
to work with experienced industry professionals, and gain knowledge and insight from different perspectives, something that isn't possible in a single teacher environment. Also, students and schools may be presented with the opportunity
to work with equipment that the school would never be able to afford otherwise.
This would, of course, have to be done in moderation. I would hate to see a school like MIT become "Microsoft Institute" for example. That is an extreme analogy, but the idea is the same. A limit would have to be set on the level of involvement that would be allowed.
But shoot, if they're going to be doing meaningful research anyway, why not capitalize on it?
"Taxpayer money goes to research for the greater good of society, university research should be public domain, period."
You have to remember, that although universities are publicy funded, and in many ways are there for improving society, they are still very often privately held business. But consider this, if the universities can find ways to become more independant of public finances, that is a relief to all of us taxpayers. And it benefits the entire student body, as it gives the school more money to fund improvements to the educational process, like computers, expensive labratory equipment, library and other research related resources, security, etc. So, better education, less strain on taxpayers, safer schools, how could this not be a win/win situation? Besides, the cost of overhead on the research is tremendous to a school. If they have the potential to capitalize on their work, that enables the schools to do more, uh, research:)
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone in America pools together, puts in 50 bucks, and get our hands deeper into polititians pockets than big business is.
Um, if it was only able to be heard by a select group of people, it wouldn't be a broadcast. It would be similar to something like HBO, where only permitted users (should) be able to recieve the material. HBO and similar stations pay royalties per subscriber. That's the arguement against MP3.com, it doesn't pay royalties on songs, nor does it regulate who can recieve data from them. It was, in a sense, broadcasting. And radio stations, through market studies, know approximately how many listeners they have on average. This information is compiled to help advertisers know when to post their commercial, as well as so they know how much to charge for commercial airtime. I wouldn't doubt for a second that the RIAA also uses this information to deterimine how much to charge the radio stations, but I cannot say this for sure.
Also, the radio station/mp3.com anology doesn't quite hold up well for this reason: when was the last time you purchased a CD or searched MP3.com by artist or song title BEFORE hearing it? If you never heard the song, how would you know it existed? Radio stations give bands HUGE exposure, something that listen on demand services such as MP3.com cannot do, because they can't control what music gets used. There are 3 main ways that music gets exposed, MTV, radio, or through a friend. That friend probably heard it first on MTV, the radio, or got it from a friend who heard it on MT.....
Still, the RIAA is dumb for not harnessing the potential of this technoligy. Could you imagine the "New Artist" section of Napster if the RIAA submitted mp3's? This is where they could fill the pitfalls of radio, people like me who rarely listen to it. I find popping in a CD to be much more convienent as I don't have to listen to commercials, songs I do not want to hear, or worse yet, annoying DJ's. I have not all day to listen to the radio for some amazing new song that I probably won't hear them name anyway. But if I could go to RIAA.com, pick a style, and see what's new on my own time, hell yeah! RIAA, wake up and smell the cable modem cooking... you can't stop it, so figure out how to use it to your advantage!
Microsoft BSD, Microsoft BSOD, I don't think there would be much difference. Microsoft could make anything suck.
I can understand them asking if you have ever been convicted of a crime, but has anyone ever seen the applications that ask if you have ever been arrested? In a country where you are innocent until proven guilty, and are not required to divulge self incriminating information, how can they ask if you have ever been arrested? This burns me every time I see it, because some holier-than-thu HR person will probably see an arrest, that is, being accused of a crime, as bad. I don't see this as fair to the truely innocent. Legally, I suppose a simple arrest means nothing, but we're dealing with human nature here. Does anybody know more about this?
Mabey Iridium can make their money back by selling "real parts from outer space" on Ebay or something. When they sell all the parts, they can sell their domain name there too and actually turn a profit.
"Own a peice of technological history!!! Iridium.com domain name: opening bid $4,000,000,000..."
I guess he was true to his word when he said "We are more concerned with adding new features than fixing bugs.." Wow Bill, I can't wait till the next Windoze release to see what nice "Features" you have added!!!
Yeah! What do you think it would take to get a Slashdot interview with Mr. Billy himself?
They're not "dimentions". It's a "Propriatary User Interface."
Back OT... The reason that the plastic always seems to be different is that yes, Lego does indeed use a patented plastic for their blocks. But they didn't always. Some of the originals were wood. Check out their History page for more cool info on Legos.
BTW.. here is something nifty here lifted right from their site, if you have some free time on your hands:
"102,981,500 are how many different ways there are to combine six 8-stud bricks of the same colour. If you haven't that much time, you can take three 8-stud bricks - same colour - and fit them together in 1,060 ways. Two 8-stud bricks - still the same colour - can be put together in 24 ways."
Good luck! Any math geeks out there that could figure out how many combo's could be made from 35,000 blocks?
I do believe that, on a logical, realistic level that domain names are property. I also might have some legal proof that they are. Look at it from this point of view. A telephone number is randomly assigned by the telco and has no meaning, it is a simple address to your telephone. A domain name, on the other hand, is in my opinion intellectual property. Why? Domain names aren't randomly assigned. It takes creativity to think of a domain name, no matter how simple. I wouldnt just go to a dictionay and pick a random word for my website. I would think of one that suites the content of my site, or at least one that has personal meaning for me. To take this even further, go to a registrar and try to register Microsoft.com, and see what happens. It will tell you that you cannot register Microsoft.* anything because it is a tradmarked name. I'm sure that many examples of this are active, but this is just the one that I am aware of. OTOH, Microsoft is an original name, Sex.com is a standard english word. But aren't all works of intelectual property just a compilation of words in native tounge? Who is to say that I cannot write and copyright a book that is only one word long? So what makes a domain name, basicly a title to my book in a manner of speaking, or a title to my business, not copyrightable? How about sites with common words that their domain is their business name? Like Amazon.com, or MP3.com? Is that protected under tradmark laws? Remember, trademark laws are seperate from copyright laws.
I think this whole Intellecual Property debate is going to continue for some time to come. The recent explosion of computers and digital media have come far faster and further than the big, slow wheels of Big Brother could dream of turning. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. With all the recent news of judges stripping sites of their domains, i.e. Corinthians.com, and others, this seems to be something that needs immediate attention of the lawmakers. Or at least the law interpreters. But just because this happens to involves computers, I don't see how it is complicated. Seems pretty straightforward to me, it's IP. I thought of it, I registered it, it's my exclusive right to use it for as long as I desire. So, while I technicaly might never "own" the domain name, I will forever own the thought that created it. And isn't that what copyrights and trademarks are?
Why the hell not? Smith and Wesson, Colt, all of the big US gun manufactures have already been sued in the past five years, right along with the tobaco companies, and everyone else who operates within the confines of the law and is not responsible for the end use of their product. Guns aren't bad, some bad people just use guns. Cigarettes only kill you if you smoke them. (ok, I understand the second hand thing, but aside from that) And Gnutella and Napster don't trade copywrited music. People do. But it seems like in this day and age that doesn't matter. All you have to do is have your product misused by some third party and you are liable. It's a sad, sad situation. Hell, even video game companies have been sued for making violent games. Oh, so it's not the parents fault for allowing their children to play them? There seems to be some misconception there that video games are all for children. No, and not all cartoons are either. The problem is nobody wants to take any personal responsability any more. Everything must be somebody elses fault, because if guns/cigarettes/video games/file sharing software were illegal, than nobody would be able to make a poor decision, nothing "bad" would be there to decide on. So just take everything that has the potential to do bad things and make it illegal, sue the hell of the people who make it, and "bad" things will just go away and the world will be all bright and sunny because nobody will have to think for themselves any more. All this anti everything sue the world crap is really starting to make me sick. We are just watching our rights slip away, one at at time. But it's ok, Big Brother will protect us from the evils of the world. Keep smiling, and kiss your freedom goodbye.
I would imagine that some type of addressing would be used. While the reciever might not be able to send a specific IP address nor would the broadcast station want to send out thousands of channels for every user, but they can still embed a source address in every packet. So you might not tune your radio by frequency like we do now. Mabey by name, like "NYCRocks" or something like that. Then your reciever would only open packets from that sender.
I have no idea if this is what they plan to do, but it seems like one logical solution. The downside to this type of broadcast is that with it being digital, it could easily become a pay for use system, with only paying subscribers reaping the benefits of such a system. It does promise to save a lot of frequency bandwith however, and if this ever became mainstream, we can all benefit from that.
Back OT, I think stuff like this is great. Just shows how close we really are to a totally intigrated world. Kinda makes me wonder how many other gizmos are capable of such things. So, lets check the score, Linux on iOpener, hacks on the TiVo, Doom on digital cams... the list goes on. I'd like to see perhaps all of these such devices connected together. Bring your digital cam to grandma's, upload the pics to her iOpener, play a quick game of Doom or 2 while you're connected to it, and set the TiVo at home to record "Hackers" because you just saw a preview for it and you didn't know it was going to be on. Ah yes, I can't wait. Now, who said ports like this are useless?
I support Jim Bult all the way, and I hope that he wins his case. This is just typical of how upper management in this country looks at nothing but numbers. Just because nobody has gotten injured yet doesn't mean that it's not just itching to happen. But they don't care, numbers don't lie. It must be safe if nobody has gotten hurt, yet. How much would it really cost to check interlocks every month? Not nearly as much as it would cost to settle a multi million dollar lawsuite with the family, I'm sure.
Tradition? You mean the ancient Greeks could only watch the Olympic games on the tube?
Well, you can always go back to 56/k dialup and download all you want.What's that? Oh... that's right. Only 24 hours in a day. I do agree though, 500Mbyte/day does seem a little tight. But you have to remember, @home and similar services weren't intended from the beginning to provide us tech junkies with unlimited bandwidth usage. Also, remember that cable is a shared-bandwidth connection for everybody, that means your next door neighbor, the guy living 4 blocks away, etc. If they let you (and everyone else for that matter) download pr0n and MP3's all day with no usage limits, Joe down the street might not be able to even check his Hotmail. They have to remain fair with all their customers. If they figure that mabey on average say 25% of their customers are on at a time, and they have y bandwidth total, than everyone gets a max of x bandwidth. It may seem almost a waste as most people will probably not use even 25Mbyte/day, but it keeps everything fair. As far as it being against ToS to use Napster, that seems awfully controlling. How about OpenNap? Or MyNapster or Gnutella? Technically, I suppose it does turn your computer into a file server. But that is a hell of a place to draw a line, especially if you are not going over your 500Mbyte/day limit. Although I suppose someone leaving their computer and Napster on 24/7 could cause quite a bit of traffic.
I know it's not the news we all want to hear, but it's still the truth. Cable modems are consumer level products, and are not intended to provide everyone in the world with business grade connections. At least not yet, anyway. The intentions of the cable companies is to provide consumers with speed, not allow them to download more. While naturally people will, it still doesn't mean that for $40 bucks a month they should give away multi-TBytes of bandwidth.
This exceprt from the second link might save you some time.
"Recording Intrastate Conversations Questions or complaints about recording intrastate conversations (calls placed within the same state) should be addressed to the state public utility commission for that state. You can contact your local or state consumer office to obtain the telephone number and address for your state public utility commission. This information also may be listed in the government section of your telephone directory."
And this excerpt from the first link might save ya some time also. This is in reference to interstate and foreign calls.
"The FCC protects the privacy of telephone conversations by requiring notification before a recording device is used to record interstate or foreign telephone conversations. These types of conversations may not be recorded unless the use of a recording device is:
preceded by verbal or written consent of all parties to the telephone conversation; or
preceded by verbal notification which is recorded at the beginning, and as part of the call, by the recording party; or
accompanied by an automatic tone warning device, sometimes called a beep tone, which automatically produces a distinct signal that is repeated at regular intervals during the course of the telephone conversation when the recording device is in use."
I really don't know if this refers to everybody or only business that might desire to record their phone calls, so don't take the information I have linked to as gospel either. But it is straight from the FCC website. The search results I got were many and confusing, so I don't know if there is any more information on the site about this. Many of the pages are just like 7458273.txt etc. so their might be more there. Just my $0.02
To play devils advocate, there are a few benefits to a certain level of direct sponsorship. For example, by working with a company on a project, students have the unique opportunity to work with experienced industry professionals, and gain knowledge and insight from different perspectives, something that isn't possible in a single teacher environment. Also, students and schools may be presented with the opportunity to work with equipment that the school would never be able to afford otherwise.
This would, of course, have to be done in moderation. I would hate to see a school like MIT become "Microsoft Institute" for example. That is an extreme analogy, but the idea is the same. A limit would have to be set on the level of involvement that would be allowed.
But shoot, if they're going to be doing meaningful research anyway, why not capitalize on it?
You have to remember, that although universities are publicy funded, and in many ways are there for improving society, they are still very often privately held business. But consider this, if the universities can find ways to become more independant of public finances, that is a relief to all of us taxpayers. And it benefits the entire student body, as it gives the school more money to fund improvements to the educational process, like computers, expensive labratory equipment, library and other research related resources, security, etc. So, better education, less strain on taxpayers, safer schools, how could this not be a win/win situation? Besides, the cost of overhead on the research is tremendous to a school. If they have the potential to capitalize on their work, that enables the schools to do more, uh, research :)
5. Vegitarians shouldn't have to deal with meat products getting mailed to them.
4. Handeling pork products violates many religions.
3. Nobody really knows what the hell "SPAM" stands for anyway.
2. Spam is the leading cause of traded lunches in elementry schools in the US.
And the #1 reason Spam should be banned:
Spam, like its E-mail counterpart, has very little wholesome content, and is mostly junk fillers.