In addition to this, it should be noted that the standard of proof in a civil case is not "beyond reasonable doubt". It is a preponderance of evidence, which simply means that there's a reasonably high probability (some estimate it to be around 60%) that the defendant committed the act of which the plaintiff accuses them. In some other cases, the standard of proof is "clear and convincing" evidence (some say around 80% probability). Preponderance of evidence is the lowest standard.
That's the beauty of law. You can always find SOMETHING to contest. The jury is purely a finder of fact, but if the judge does not allow them to consider something they shouldn't have, or if he does allow them to consider something they shouldn't have, that alone is basis for appeal. There are tons of other reasons to file appearls, but the RIAA has enough time and enough money to litigate that woman into bankruptcy 500 times over.
This is a civil case, not a criminal one. If the RIAA loses, they will simply appeal. Then it doesn't go to a jury. It goes to a judge. Furthermore, it's highly likely it will go to a judge the first time around. Judges have no problems coming down on mothers of five because they truthfully don't care. I hope she wins on the merits of her case. I would love to see someone stick it to the RIAA. The sad thing is though, she will probably spend upwards for $200,000 litigating this. It's sad when citizens can't afford to defend themselves against large corporations.
Perhaps, but what can they really do about it? Other than ban the accounts of people that do this there isn't really much they can do. Torts require that there be actual harm to succeed in court. Without Blizzard being able to show actual harm to their financial resources, I don't see how they could take any kind of legal action. Unless the EULA actually spells out a penalty of a specific amount, and even then that amount cannot be excessive, or that part of the contract becomes unenforcable.
Instead of just bowing down to the RIAA I wonder what would happen if you fought it till the very end, including all appeals and if you lost just declare bankruptcy so that nobody walks away with a damn thing. You can't get blood from a stone and you can rightfully say by the end of it that you can't afford to pay the RIAA what you owe them. Therefore if you declare bankruptcy the debt should be discharged. Of course, you'll screw your credit rating for 7 years, but settling for tens of thousands of dollars might force you to declare bankruptcy anyways. Just a tought.
Their practices appear to violate the doctrine of first sale, which the Supreme Court has been found to heavily favor in the past. The parts of the agreement that govern the non-transferablility of the license could be invalidated if this were ever challenged in court. I think it would only take one lawsuit from a large corporation like a bank to take care of these prohibitive licensing terms. In the past, portions of contracts and complete contracts have even been invalidated because of terms that were not binding due to laws forbidding them. This could just be one of many of those.
Well one person you don't want to piss off is Uncle Sam. They can legislate SCO out of existence and the judges can be bought a whole lot easier if they have politicians talking into their ears. SCO is going down, no doubt about it, and hopefully McBride and his cronies will head to jail when all is said and done. Oh and First post!
I have read numerous reports filed with the NTSB and the FAA regarding the use of cellular phones or other RF-based mobile devices onboard both commercial and GA aircraft, and have found that it is a big pain in the ass in many cases. I've never experienced the problem myself since I do not allow cell phones to be used in any aircraft that I'm flying, but I have heard that they tend to wreak havoc with the VOR and sometimes ADF navigation, in addition to disrupting VHF radio equipment. Although GPS navigation does seem to be at least mostly immune from this problem, the other methods of navigation when flying IFR can be quite severely affected by the use of cell phones. Don't forget, a misreading of even 5 degrees on a VOR channel can cause a plane to be up to 20 miles off course. This definitely falls into one of those better safe than sorry categories.
"The four horsemen of the apocolypse mount their steeds and prepare for their conquest. However, they stand down, dismount, and begin a long game of contract bridge when a Republican judge overturns the verdict on appeal. 3 of the 4 horsemen are disappointed, but Pestilence is silently relieved as his good robe is at the cleaners"
Credit for the preceding quote goes to AJ Alexine of Byteback. I have modified it to fit this particular situation.
The RIAA and MPAA send their lobbyists to individual state legislatures in an attempt to get Senators and Representatives they feel will be sympathetic to their cause to introduce the bill. Those Senators and Representatives then contact their friends in the Senate and House of the state to gain support for their proposed bill. The bill is then drafted and a hearing often takes place before one or more committees in the state house and senate. During these hearings the MPAA and RIAA lobbyists are often called on to speak and say why the law should be adopted. These hearings are usually done in such a way that the average Joe can't participate, nor can groups opposed to the bill such as the EFF and ACLU. Once the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists have addressed the state congress they will then have presented a completely one-sided view of their issue to the congress, which will only see one side of the coin, and vote before they can really look at the other side. A lot of this gets hurried through because of the large number of issues that come before the state house and senate, and some of it gets hurried through by the Senators or Representatives that introduce the bill because they want to get it passed.
Well, you see, there's this thing called Antitrust law in America, which makes it illegal for a corporation to use their leverage in the market to destroy the competition. If Microsoft creates a proprietary, secure format that only Office users can read without having to hack it, they, having the largest office software marketshare in the United States will in fact be using their power as a monopoly to bludgeon projects like OpenOffice out of existence. This isn't an issue of whether or not they have to support another company's software, it's an issue of them using their already monsterous marketshare to keep other companies from competing with them by further building up their already giant barriers to entry into the market of office software. In case you don't recall, Microsoft has already been convicted once of Antitrust violations, but because of Bushy's boys they got a slap on the wrist which they totally ignored anyways. I truly hope a democratic President gets elected in 2004 and has the justice department smack M$ down with another lawsuit that hopefully will actually have some teeth to it.
Actually, theft wouldn't work here. You actually have to steal something or at least attempt to steal something for theft to be charged against you. Copying has nothing to do with theft. Copyright law was created specifically for that purpose. Besides, what if you didn't copy the combination. What if you just remembered it in your head? That would be an interesting argument for the prosecutor to make. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I intend to prove that the defendant did knowingly, and willfully, remember the combination to his company's safe. Moreover, I will prove that not only did he remember something he had no business remembering, he also told it to other people so they could rob the company blind." Something tells me the first part of the argument would have the jurors chuckling a little bit. However, conspiracy charges could be filed for giving out the information, especially if a theft attempt was made, but unless one was made it would be very hard to make those charges stick. The company could easily dismiss you though, which is what they would likely do.
I haven't heard from Warren Spector in a long time. I used to have phone conversations occassionally when he was at Origin and Looking Glass. Back then me and a few others were trying to put together a gaming project of our own, and Mr. Spector was kind enough to give us some thoughts on how to go about doing it, what was required, what some dos and don'ts of the industry were, and the like. He was always pretty cool and I really admired most of the games he produced in addition to the fact that he was never too high and mighty to take some time out and chat with the little guy about the business and how to succeed. Richard Garriot is a lot like Warren in some ways. He was always very down to earth, I loved the games he produced (especially the Ultima series), and I was supposed to meet him at Dragon*Con in '97, but with all the work being done on UO he wasn't able to show up. It's unfortunate that he had to resign from Origin, but I can fully understand it with the way EA raped the company and changed it into something that RG had never intended. It's nice to hear that both these guys are still around and kicking. Maybe there's yet some hope for more good games to come out.
Since I'm also going into law school once I've graduated college (accounting major), I've done a lot of research on what it takes to become a successful attorney. If you haven't read the book "One L" by Scott Turrow(sp?) you'll probably want to do that. It's a very good book about the first year of law school, which surprisingly hasn't changed much since the 1970s (when the book was written) according to attorneys I've talked to, some of which have gotten their law degrees less than 10 years ago. It will tell you what to expect from law school, because it's very hard work.
If after you've read that and you still decide that you're cut out for being an attorney then the next step would be to take the LSAT in either your junior or senior year of college. I recommend taking a prep course or two first, since your LSAT score is one of the primary criteria for which law schools will let you in. Once you've done that you can start looking into which law school you want to go to and start sending applications till you get accepted somewhere you like.
Another thing I have also learned is that most law school graduates cannot get into an non-profit organization as a lawyer. It's possible, but difficult to do. The best thing would be to try to secure a position as a law clerk first and try moving up to a lawyer over time, but this could take a few years. The field of law is flooded right now and it's difficult to find a job exactly where you want to.
As to pro-bono work, depending on the firm you're working for, some will require pro-bono work occassionally, some will prohibit it, and others will allow you to do it, but on your own and on your own time. The EFF obviously does a lot of pro-bono work, but as I mentioned before. Securing a position in an organization such as the EFF, as an attorney would be very difficult to do without significant past experience as a civil/criminal/intellectual property attorney or law clerk.
In the end, you could decide, like me, to persue various avenues of law instead of subspecializing in something as narrow as intellectual property law. I intend to have my primary practice focusing on civil and criminal defense for low- and middle-income families, charging an affordable fee for those who otherwise couldn't afford to defend themselves. This will allow me to help society, and still make a decent, though not lavish living.
Just remember, law isn't what you might think it is. It's extremely complex, and it requires you to look at cases from both sides, be able to successfully argue both sides, and analyze very small details in cases. Many people have complained that law school attempts to change their moral character into something they don't like, but the fact of the matter is, if you can't see the opposing counsel's point, how can you successfully counter it. Out of "One L" one thing I found interesting was when the author was talking about a case where a man had pointed a gun at someone to rob them and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't fire. Was that man guilty of assault or attempted murder? What if he had shot the gun into the air, hit a duck, and the duck fell on the man, would the criminal be guilty of battery in addition to robbery? Those minute details are what the law is all about. You have my best wishes in your efforts at becoming a good, moral trial attorney. Good luck, and have fun!
You killed Tivo Community. You bastards! Looks like the Slashdot Effect has struck again!
Text from tivocommunity.com: Due to a current issue with the site, the TiVo Community Forum is currently closed. We will re-open as soon as the issue can be corrected.
We are sorry for this outage but this maybe will give you a chance to do something "analog" for awhile. Or even catch up on some TiVo'ed shows you have been waiting to watch.:)
IANAL(yet), but unjust though it may seem, companies can use credit as a basis for accepting or denying employment. The primary reason for allowing corporations to run credit checks was so that people with bad credit didn't get themselves into a position such as CFO, COO, or CEO of a corporation. Imagine what a CFO who was not financially responsible could do to a company. Another reason is that some corporations are actually being sued for what's known as "negligent hiring", which is a situation that occurs when the company hires someone and he/she harms someone else or the corporation as a whole either intentionally, or through gross negligence. Credit checks are intended to keep the latter from occurring.
The problem is, that such a policy has to be applied consistently with all employees (contractors are exempt from this), or the company runs the possibility of discrimination lawsuits for showing favoritism to certain people. It's really kind of strange, but it assures that, for lack of better wording, "everyone's privacy is invaded equally". It may not seem fair, and I do not agree with it, but those are the rules unfortunately.
Oooohhhh publicly admitting you're going to download a movie? I can just see it now. Tomorrow there will be cop cars swarming around your house, 50 badasses wearing blue jackets with the letters MPAA on the back of them rushing towards the front door with assault rifles ready, and over the loudspeaker you hear, "This is the Motion Picture Association.... errrrr.... I mean the police! Come out with your hands up, leaving all illegal copies of movies and/or music in place. If you refuse to cooperate we will have no choice but to open fire."
In the background you can hear Jackie boy shouting, "Just shoot the bastards." and then the ensuing conversation between he and his top lieutenant.
Lieutenant: We can't shoot them yet sir.
Jack: why not??? They're stealing movies!
Lieutenant: Well, there might be some possible legal liability there sir.
Jack: No there won't be. If it becomes an issue I'll have it taken care of next time I talk to Fritzy in the Senate.
Lieutenant: Uh, yes sir.
Seconds later several thousand machine gun shots ring out destroying your entire house, killing everyone in it. It make headlines the following day, "President of Motion Picture Industry Saves our Country from Terrorist Movie Pirates" Within days Jack is mysteriously granted immunity from any and all charges stemming from the event and business goes on as usual.
I have to agree here. One of the reasons that a lot of our clients wouldn't consider a Linux solution is because of the lack of groupware solutions available for Linux. See, we have a lot of law firm and accounting firm clients that heavily use their calendars and our clients' lawyers' secretaries frequently proxy to their bosses' calendars to see when appointments are. Also, shared To Do Lists like those found in Groupwise are also pretty heavily used at our clients' offices. Until there's a real competitor to Exchange and Groupwise, we'd have a very difficult time selling a Linux solution to one of these clients. Still, I use Linux for my personal desktop because it meets all my needs. The only thing that kept me from using it before Redhat 8.0 was the lack of a good financial manager, which Gnucash serves as now.
I absolutely agree here. Whilst there may be some moral qualms about this, it is not the same thing as stealing physical property from someone. Does it mean it's really "right"? Not necessarily, but since the average human being is only capable of seeing what he/she has been taught to see it is very difficult for a person not to refer to something which resembles, but is clearly different from theft, as theft.
It is for this very reason that we will never see matter replicators even if it were scientifically possible to create them. God help us, we'd all be stealing the profits of those poor farmers by replicating all the food we needed rather than buying it from them. World hunger be damned along with the good of mankind because it's still theft damnit! After all, if it's theft to steal money from a bank and give it to a person that's starving then it must also be theft to replicate food to solve the problem of world hunger. People who hold the view that copyright infringement is the same thing as theft must be forced, by the very logic their using to accept the statement that replicating food = theft from farmers because "stealing is stealing"!
It's not going to be open to independent travellers! That sucks! Before I read the article I was about to ask for a couple weeks off to go on a really long road trip too.
Not really. SCO doesn't have the $$$ to hold up against the likes of Sun or IBM (IBM most notably). At the first hint of taking them to court, IBM would simply buy SCO, take their patents, layoff all their employees, fire the execs, and then leave what's left in the corner to rot.
IBM has also been rather protective of Linux ever since it became a viable competitor to Windows, probably just to get back at M$ for stabbing them in the back with that whole OS/2 fiasco years ago. I seriously doubt they're going to let some two-bit company like SCO just walk in and kill it off like M$ did to OS/2. IBM is a company that learns from their mistakes.
They may just buy out SCO and perform the above actions just to keep Linux alive so that they can sell more servers. IBM's biggest marketing push in the last year has been for the Linux platform. They are certainly not going to watch hundreds of millions in advertising go down the tube.
Legal right or not, what can the USA do about it? Bomb Vanatu? So what if an American judge orders Kazaa to shut down? They don't have to listen to it. They don't live in America. What will the USA do if they just simply ignore the lawsuit and continue doing business as usual? So what if Blastoise drops them like a bad habit? I'm certain there will be other companies chomping at the bit that don't exist under the thumb of the United States or Britain that will be more than willing to sign contracts with Kazaa. This case is going to go nowhere, and even if I had moderator points I wouldn't mod you down, because I live in America, the land where you have a right to free speech whether I agree with it or not. The Constitution borders on being sacred to me and it sickens me to see what Hollywood companies and the rest of corporate America have done to destroy it.
Actually, the reason is that I don't have $2,000,000 to invest in a new ISP otherwise I would. I'm sure I could do a much better job than most of these lameass residential providers can, but there's that thing called money that I don't have to invest and for some reason, banks are unwilling to lend me $2 million dollars. Wonder why that might be. A solution is only a solution if it's viable and feasible. Otherwise it's just idle chatter with no meaning.
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In addition to this, it should be noted that the standard of proof in a civil case is not "beyond reasonable doubt". It is a preponderance of evidence, which simply means that there's a reasonably high probability (some estimate it to be around 60%) that the defendant committed the act of which the plaintiff accuses them. In some other cases, the standard of proof is "clear and convincing" evidence (some say around 80% probability). Preponderance of evidence is the lowest standard.
That's the beauty of law. You can always find SOMETHING to contest. The jury is purely a finder of fact, but if the judge does not allow them to consider something they shouldn't have, or if he does allow them to consider something they shouldn't have, that alone is basis for appeal. There are tons of other reasons to file appearls, but the RIAA has enough time and enough money to litigate that woman into bankruptcy 500 times over.
This is a civil case, not a criminal one. If the RIAA loses, they will simply appeal. Then it doesn't go to a jury. It goes to a judge. Furthermore, it's highly likely it will go to a judge the first time around. Judges have no problems coming down on mothers of five because they truthfully don't care. I hope she wins on the merits of her case. I would love to see someone stick it to the RIAA. The sad thing is though, she will probably spend upwards for $200,000 litigating this. It's sad when citizens can't afford to defend themselves against large corporations.
Perhaps, but what can they really do about it? Other than ban the accounts of people that do this there isn't really much they can do. Torts require that there be actual harm to succeed in court. Without Blizzard being able to show actual harm to their financial resources, I don't see how they could take any kind of legal action. Unless the EULA actually spells out a penalty of a specific amount, and even then that amount cannot be excessive, or that part of the contract becomes unenforcable.
Instead of just bowing down to the RIAA I wonder what would happen if you fought it till the very end, including all appeals and if you lost just declare bankruptcy so that nobody walks away with a damn thing. You can't get blood from a stone and you can rightfully say by the end of it that you can't afford to pay the RIAA what you owe them. Therefore if you declare bankruptcy the debt should be discharged. Of course, you'll screw your credit rating for 7 years, but settling for tens of thousands of dollars might force you to declare bankruptcy anyways. Just a tought.
Their practices appear to violate the doctrine of first sale, which the Supreme Court has been found to heavily favor in the past. The parts of the agreement that govern the non-transferablility of the license could be invalidated if this were ever challenged in court. I think it would only take one lawsuit from a large corporation like a bank to take care of these prohibitive licensing terms. In the past, portions of contracts and complete contracts have even been invalidated because of terms that were not binding due to laws forbidding them. This could just be one of many of those.
Well one person you don't want to piss off is Uncle Sam. They can legislate SCO out of existence and the judges can be bought a whole lot easier if they have politicians talking into their ears. SCO is going down, no doubt about it, and hopefully McBride and his cronies will head to jail when all is said and done. Oh and First post!
I have read numerous reports filed with the NTSB and the FAA regarding the use of cellular phones or other RF-based mobile devices onboard both commercial and GA aircraft, and have found that it is a big pain in the ass in many cases. I've never experienced the problem myself since I do not allow cell phones to be used in any aircraft that I'm flying, but I have heard that they tend to wreak havoc with the VOR and sometimes ADF navigation, in addition to disrupting VHF radio equipment. Although GPS navigation does seem to be at least mostly immune from this problem, the other methods of navigation when flying IFR can be quite severely affected by the use of cell phones. Don't forget, a misreading of even 5 degrees on a VOR channel can cause a plane to be up to 20 miles off course. This definitely falls into one of those better safe than sorry categories.
"The four horsemen of the apocolypse mount their steeds and prepare for their conquest. However, they stand down, dismount, and begin a long game of contract bridge when a Republican judge overturns the verdict on appeal. 3 of the 4 horsemen are disappointed, but Pestilence is silently relieved as his good robe is at the cleaners"
Credit for the preceding quote goes to AJ Alexine of Byteback. I have modified it to fit this particular situation.
The RIAA and MPAA send their lobbyists to individual state legislatures in an attempt to get Senators and Representatives they feel will be sympathetic to their cause to introduce the bill. Those Senators and Representatives then contact their friends in the Senate and House of the state to gain support for their proposed bill. The bill is then drafted and a hearing often takes place before one or more committees in the state house and senate. During these hearings the MPAA and RIAA lobbyists are often called on to speak and say why the law should be adopted. These hearings are usually done in such a way that the average Joe can't participate, nor can groups opposed to the bill such as the EFF and ACLU. Once the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists have addressed the state congress they will then have presented a completely one-sided view of their issue to the congress, which will only see one side of the coin, and vote before they can really look at the other side. A lot of this gets hurried through because of the large number of issues that come before the state house and senate, and some of it gets hurried through by the Senators or Representatives that introduce the bill because they want to get it passed.
I want to get in on this... where do I sign up???
Well, you see, there's this thing called Antitrust law in America, which makes it illegal for a corporation to use their leverage in the market to destroy the competition. If Microsoft creates a proprietary, secure format that only Office users can read without having to hack it, they, having the largest office software marketshare in the United States will in fact be using their power as a monopoly to bludgeon projects like OpenOffice out of existence. This isn't an issue of whether or not they have to support another company's software, it's an issue of them using their already monsterous marketshare to keep other companies from competing with them by further building up their already giant barriers to entry into the market of office software. In case you don't recall, Microsoft has already been convicted once of Antitrust violations, but because of Bushy's boys they got a slap on the wrist which they totally ignored anyways. I truly hope a democratic President gets elected in 2004 and has the justice department smack M$ down with another lawsuit that hopefully will actually have some teeth to it.
Actually, theft wouldn't work here. You actually have to steal something or at least attempt to steal something for theft to be charged against you. Copying has nothing to do with theft. Copyright law was created specifically for that purpose. Besides, what if you didn't copy the combination. What if you just remembered it in your head? That would be an interesting argument for the prosecutor to make. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I intend to prove that the defendant did knowingly, and willfully, remember the combination to his company's safe. Moreover, I will prove that not only did he remember something he had no business remembering, he also told it to other people so they could rob the company blind." Something tells me the first part of the argument would have the jurors chuckling a little bit. However, conspiracy charges could be filed for giving out the information, especially if a theft attempt was made, but unless one was made it would be very hard to make those charges stick. The company could easily dismiss you though, which is what they would likely do.
I haven't heard from Warren Spector in a long time. I used to have phone conversations occassionally when he was at Origin and Looking Glass. Back then me and a few others were trying to put together a gaming project of our own, and Mr. Spector was kind enough to give us some thoughts on how to go about doing it, what was required, what some dos and don'ts of the industry were, and the like. He was always pretty cool and I really admired most of the games he produced in addition to the fact that he was never too high and mighty to take some time out and chat with the little guy about the business and how to succeed. Richard Garriot is a lot like Warren in some ways. He was always very down to earth, I loved the games he produced (especially the Ultima series), and I was supposed to meet him at Dragon*Con in '97, but with all the work being done on UO he wasn't able to show up. It's unfortunate that he had to resign from Origin, but I can fully understand it with the way EA raped the company and changed it into something that RG had never intended. It's nice to hear that both these guys are still around and kicking. Maybe there's yet some hope for more good games to come out.
Since I'm also going into law school once I've graduated college (accounting major), I've done a lot of research on what it takes to become a successful attorney. If you haven't read the book "One L" by Scott Turrow(sp?) you'll probably want to do that. It's a very good book about the first year of law school, which surprisingly hasn't changed much since the 1970s (when the book was written) according to attorneys I've talked to, some of which have gotten their law degrees less than 10 years ago. It will tell you what to expect from law school, because it's very hard work.
If after you've read that and you still decide that you're cut out for being an attorney then the next step would be to take the LSAT in either your junior or senior year of college. I recommend taking a prep course or two first, since your LSAT score is one of the primary criteria for which law schools will let you in. Once you've done that you can start looking into which law school you want to go to and start sending applications till you get accepted somewhere you like.
Another thing I have also learned is that most law school graduates cannot get into an non-profit organization as a lawyer. It's possible, but difficult to do. The best thing would be to try to secure a position as a law clerk first and try moving up to a lawyer over time, but this could take a few years. The field of law is flooded right now and it's difficult to find a job exactly where you want to.
As to pro-bono work, depending on the firm you're working for, some will require pro-bono work occassionally, some will prohibit it, and others will allow you to do it, but on your own and on your own time. The EFF obviously does a lot of pro-bono work, but as I mentioned before. Securing a position in an organization such as the EFF, as an attorney would be very difficult to do without significant past experience as a civil/criminal/intellectual property attorney or law clerk.
In the end, you could decide, like me, to persue various avenues of law instead of subspecializing in something as narrow as intellectual property law. I intend to have my primary practice focusing on civil and criminal defense for low- and middle-income families, charging an affordable fee for those who otherwise couldn't afford to defend themselves. This will allow me to help society, and still make a decent, though not lavish living.
Just remember, law isn't what you might think it is. It's extremely complex, and it requires you to look at cases from both sides, be able to successfully argue both sides, and analyze very small details in cases. Many people have complained that law school attempts to change their moral character into something they don't like, but the fact of the matter is, if you can't see the opposing counsel's point, how can you successfully counter it. Out of "One L" one thing I found interesting was when the author was talking about a case where a man had pointed a gun at someone to rob them and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't fire. Was that man guilty of assault or attempted murder? What if he had shot the gun into the air, hit a duck, and the duck fell on the man, would the criminal be guilty of battery in addition to robbery? Those minute details are what the law is all about. You have my best wishes in your efforts at becoming a good, moral trial attorney. Good luck, and have fun!
You killed Tivo Community. You bastards! Looks like the Slashdot Effect has struck again!
:)
Text from tivocommunity.com: Due to a current issue with the site, the TiVo Community Forum is currently closed. We will re-open as soon as the issue can be corrected.
We are sorry for this outage but this maybe will give you a chance to do something "analog" for awhile. Or even catch up on some TiVo'ed shows you have been waiting to watch.
Thanks
IANAL(yet), but unjust though it may seem, companies can use credit as a basis for accepting or denying employment. The primary reason for allowing corporations to run credit checks was so that people with bad credit didn't get themselves into a position such as CFO, COO, or CEO of a corporation. Imagine what a CFO who was not financially responsible could do to a company. Another reason is that some corporations are actually being sued for what's known as "negligent hiring", which is a situation that occurs when the company hires someone and he/she harms someone else or the corporation as a whole either intentionally, or through gross negligence. Credit checks are intended to keep the latter from occurring.
The problem is, that such a policy has to be applied consistently with all employees (contractors are exempt from this), or the company runs the possibility of discrimination lawsuits for showing favoritism to certain people. It's really kind of strange, but it assures that, for lack of better wording, "everyone's privacy is invaded equally". It may not seem fair, and I do not agree with it, but those are the rules unfortunately.
Oooohhhh publicly admitting you're going to download a movie? I can just see it now. Tomorrow there will be cop cars swarming around your house, 50 badasses wearing blue jackets with the letters MPAA on the back of them rushing towards the front door with assault rifles ready, and over the loudspeaker you hear, "This is the Motion Picture Association.... errrrr.... I mean the police! Come out with your hands up, leaving all illegal copies of movies and/or music in place. If you refuse to cooperate we will have no choice but to open fire."
In the background you can hear Jackie boy shouting, "Just shoot the bastards." and then the ensuing conversation between he and his top lieutenant.
Lieutenant: We can't shoot them yet sir.
Jack: why not??? They're stealing movies!
Lieutenant: Well, there might be some possible legal liability there sir.
Jack: No there won't be. If it becomes an issue I'll have it taken care of next time I talk to Fritzy in the Senate.
Lieutenant: Uh, yes sir.
Seconds later several thousand machine gun shots ring out destroying your entire house, killing everyone in it. It make headlines the following day, "President of Motion Picture Industry Saves our Country from Terrorist Movie Pirates" Within days Jack is mysteriously granted immunity from any and all charges stemming from the event and business goes on as usual.
I have to agree here. One of the reasons that a lot of our clients wouldn't consider a Linux solution is because of the lack of groupware solutions available for Linux. See, we have a lot of law firm and accounting firm clients that heavily use their calendars and our clients' lawyers' secretaries frequently proxy to their bosses' calendars to see when appointments are. Also, shared To Do Lists like those found in Groupwise are also pretty heavily used at our clients' offices. Until there's a real competitor to Exchange and Groupwise, we'd have a very difficult time selling a Linux solution to one of these clients. Still, I use Linux for my personal desktop because it meets all my needs. The only thing that kept me from using it before Redhat 8.0 was the lack of a good financial manager, which Gnucash serves as now.
I absolutely agree here. Whilst there may be some moral qualms about this, it is not the same thing as stealing physical property from someone. Does it mean it's really "right"? Not necessarily, but since the average human being is only capable of seeing what he/she has been taught to see it is very difficult for a person not to refer to something which resembles, but is clearly different from theft, as theft.
It is for this very reason that we will never see matter replicators even if it were scientifically possible to create them. God help us, we'd all be stealing the profits of those poor farmers by replicating all the food we needed rather than buying it from them. World hunger be damned along with the good of mankind because it's still theft damnit! After all, if it's theft to steal money from a bank and give it to a person that's starving then it must also be theft to replicate food to solve the problem of world hunger. People who hold the view that copyright infringement is the same thing as theft must be forced, by the very logic their using to accept the statement that replicating food = theft from farmers because "stealing is stealing"!
It's not going to be open to independent travellers! That sucks! Before I read the article I was about to ask for a couple weeks off to go on a really long road trip too.
Not really. SCO doesn't have the $$$ to hold up against the likes of Sun or IBM (IBM most notably). At the first hint of taking them to court, IBM would simply buy SCO, take their patents, layoff all their employees, fire the execs, and then leave what's left in the corner to rot.
IBM has also been rather protective of Linux ever since it became a viable competitor to Windows, probably just to get back at M$ for stabbing them in the back with that whole OS/2 fiasco years ago. I seriously doubt they're going to let some two-bit company like SCO just walk in and kill it off like M$ did to OS/2. IBM is a company that learns from their mistakes.
They may just buy out SCO and perform the above actions just to keep Linux alive so that they can sell more servers. IBM's biggest marketing push in the last year has been for the Linux platform. They are certainly not going to watch hundreds of millions in advertising go down the tube.
Legal right or not, what can the USA do about it? Bomb Vanatu? So what if an American judge orders Kazaa to shut down? They don't have to listen to it. They don't live in America. What will the USA do if they just simply ignore the lawsuit and continue doing business as usual? So what if Blastoise drops them like a bad habit? I'm certain there will be other companies chomping at the bit that don't exist under the thumb of the United States or Britain that will be more than willing to sign contracts with Kazaa. This case is going to go nowhere, and even if I had moderator points I wouldn't mod you down, because I live in America, the land where you have a right to free speech whether I agree with it or not. The Constitution borders on being sacred to me and it sickens me to see what Hollywood companies and the rest of corporate America have done to destroy it.
All your toner cartridges are belong to Lexmark!
Actually, the reason is that I don't have $2,000,000 to invest in a new ISP otherwise I would. I'm sure I could do a much better job than most of these lameass residential providers can, but there's that thing called money that I don't have to invest and for some reason, banks are unwilling to lend me $2 million dollars. Wonder why that might be. A solution is only a solution if it's viable and feasible. Otherwise it's just idle chatter with no meaning.