I have to take issue with something Robertson said:
These aren't obscure or unknown Indie bands like those you'd find on Amie Street
Sure, Amie Street has a lot of obscure/unknown Indie bands. (Someofthemarereallygood, too!) They also have some pretty big names, though. Here's a short list:
That was actually the first thing I thought of. Apparently, you can play the song one time, all the way through, for free. I wondered how many people would fire up Audacity and just record that first play through. If you didn't like the song, you wouldn't save the Audacity recording. If you liked it, you could save the recording and have a (admittedly low bitrate, but free) recording of the song. Not that I would encourage anyone to do that or anything.
Except that systems are powerful enough nowadays to run virtual machines. So Microsoft could have Windows 7 be backwards incompatible (taking advantage of any speed boosts that this gives the OS and Designed-For-Win7 applications) and they could include a free "Windows XP/Vista" virtual OS to run applications that require backwards compatibility. If done right, the virtual OS would be seamlessly integrated into the main OS. You wouldn't even know that Old Application #7 was running on a virtual OS instead of the regular OS (except, perhaps, for a bigger memory footprint and slightly slower response rate).
IIRC, Apple did this when they moved from their old OS to their current one and it did wonders to ease the transition while still allowing Apple to break free of the shackles of backwards compatibility.
Have you actually used WiiFit? I have been using it every chance I get and let me tell you, some of those activities make you feel the burn. I didn't think much of Yoga, but I've got to say that some of those poses really work out your muscles. (Note to those attempting Tree Pose: Wear "slipper socks" or some other gripping sock/shoe or your foot will slide down your leg leading to loss of balance.) I've found that the best (of my currently unlocked activities) is the Hula Hoops. Swinging around to spin those hoops and then leaning over to catch other hoops really seems like a great workout.
Of course, WiiFit can only be one part of a plan to get in shape. If you work out with WiiFit for 30 minutes a day, but then follow that up with a banana split each time, you're not going to lose any weight. However, if you work out with WiiFit and eat healthier, the added exercise WiiFit gives you should help with weight loss.
Plus, the weight/BMI charting alone should help. I've found that the closer I pay attention to my weight, the less likely I am to gain weight. Probably because I'll be more likely to reconsider that sweet treat if my weight is on my mind.
Then my references to Google Images dating back to July 2001 should be prior art. If it needs to be at least a year before the filing date, then (taking SCHecklerX's tip), I found some references to Altavista's Image Search dating to Feb 2000. Either way, this company seems to be your typical patent troll. They have a patent that either has overly vague language or specifically applies to commonly used technology. They sat on it (or recently "discovered" that they have it) and now intend on making everyone using that commonly used technology pay them money for the rights to use the commonly used technology. Once a technology was in wide use, a patent holder shouldn't be allowed to just "appear" and claim patent rights over it.
After reading the claims, this patent seems to be more targeting sites that use search engines to return images that relate to a user's query.
Like Google Image search? The date on the patent seems to be June 20, 2006. If I understand the rules of Prior Art correctly, then we would need to find an instance of a search engine returning images relating to a user's search on or before June 20, 2005. I didn't have any data about when Google Images launched, but I was sure it was prior to 2005. A bit of searching and I found this blog post discussing Google Images in May of 2004.
After a bit more searching, I found references to Google Images as far back as July 8th, 2001. That was a full 3 months prior to this patent's original filing date. In short, Google's Image search could be both a target of this lawsuit and the solution to it.
Or, better yet, how would a border guard be able to tell that the MP3 file on my MP3 player is illegal versus legally purchased from a shop that sells non-DRM-ed MP3s (Amie Street or eMusic for example)? Both MP3s could look exactly alike and it's not like I can whip out the source CD to prove that I bought it legally. Sure, I could check the website, print out a list of my purchases, and prove it that way, but what if the website goes out of business? If I buy a song from eMusic and then eMusic folds, can I be heavily fined and have my player taken away since now I can't prove that my non-DRM-ed MP3 is legit? Is the legitimacy of my music now going to be tied to whether or not the site I bought it from is still operating?
I'll say that MAYBE twitter really isn't an integral part of the internet, or blogosphere or whatever so much as it is an exercise in self absorbed gobshittery.
I'll admit that I use Twitter. I decided to check it out when the jQuery team announced that they would be twittering. I use it as a "multiple IM" type of thing. If I want to send basically the same short IM to a few friends, I'll Twitter it. If I want to make a long, detailed point, I'll e-mail it. In fact, the Twitter client I use (Twhirl) helps make Twitter seem like another IM system.
In the end, Twitter is just another tool in my online arsenal (along with my IM client, feed reader, web browser, e-mail client, web site/blog, etc). Like any tool, though, it can be abused. Those people who feel the need to Twitter about every second of their existence definitely fit your description of Twitter. Don't judge the tool by those who abuse it, though.
Cults engage in serious mind control. Religions are just a set of spiritual principles. For example, there are some Christians who worship in a cult-like society, and some that do not.
Exactly. If you lump religions in with actual cults just because you don't subscribe to their religious beliefs, then you might as well call any group of people with similar beliefs and values a cult. Vegetarians? Cult! Athiests? Cult! Republicans? Cult! Democrats? Cult!
Of course, this is totally ridiculous and reduces the meaning of the word "cult" to the point that actual cults seem fine. Here's a little test. Join a church/temple/whatever. Attend services for a few months. Then try to leave. If the spiritual leader (priest, rabbi, etc) says that he's sad to see you go, wishes you would stay, but ultimately it is your decision, then the group isn't a cult. If the leader tells you that you'll roast in hell if you ever entertain notions of leaving their sacred community ever again and you should immediately repent, well then you're in a cult.
And while you're listening to the sermons during your time there, don't be confused. Of course the rabbi/priest/etc will be speaking along the lines of the congregation's beliefs. That doesn't in and of itself mean it's a cult. (Imagine if a priest in a Catholic church started a sermon about how the Pope was an idiot and Jesus wasn't the son of God. He'd be out of a job in an instant simply because his beliefs don't mesh with those of the church congregation.) If, however, other avenues of fact/opinion (e.g. the Internet, TV, radio, newspapers) are banned and you are *only* allowed to listen to the leader's sermon's, then you just might be in a cult. (It doesn't count if the religious leader himself doesn't use the Internet/TV/etc. He's free to do as he pleases. It only counts if he imposes that restriction on the followers.)
To give an example, I'm Jewish and once belonged to an Orthodox synagogue. I didn't like the rabbi there and only went because I was living with my parents at the time and they were founding members. The rabbi was very strict religious-wise. He wouldn't do certain things (like watch TV) simply because he felt they were a bad influence. However, he never told us to get rid of the TV from our houses. (If he had, my father would have laughed at him.) He was also very anti-evolution. I stayed silent during his sermons about how the world was created 6,000 years ago and scientists don't know anything, but only because I knew that 1) that wasn't the time or place to argue with him and 2) I could have the most informed arguments in the world and he wouldn't budge in his opinion. After all, it said right there in the Torah that God created the Heavens and the Earth.
My wife is fond of calling that synagogue a cult. However, it wasn't even close to a true cult. Yes, the rabbi tried to get the congregation to see the Jewish religion as he did and follow it as he did, but that's just normal. (If you think something is the "right" way of doing something, it's natural to try to get others to follow that way.) However, he never threatened people into following him. He just laid out what he believed and why he believed it. I disagreed with him and didn't follow his lead. My parents agreed with him on some things and disagreed on others. People left the synagogue with no trouble. When I left for college, I wasn't told to stay. Nor was I given any special "orders" to follow. (Not that I would have obeyed any orders that he gave.)
That group was a religious organization. One with views slightly out of sync with mainstream society, yes, but not a cult.
Oh, I thought of that. But all that would happen would be a minor modification of the contract that would be given to Best Buy and any other retailer that would allow them to sell the software to consumers and then be removed from any terms of the contract. In fact, had AutoDesk's assertions held up in court, things might have been worse for the retailers. Software companies could have loaded the "retailer contract" with clauses that allowed them to enforce the "consumer contract" onto the retailers if certain conditions weren't met. Granted, I don't see AutoDesk being able to bully Best Buy into something like this, but imagine if you ran a small software store and a Microsoft rep told you to remove the $1 Ubuntu CDs* from your rack or have all of your Windows and Office "retailer contracts" suddenly turn into non-transferable "consumer contracts." (Meaning you couldn't sell them.)
* Yes, I know Ubuntu is free. I'm figuring cost of burning a disk, plus some minor profit for the shop.
Fraud watches aren't 100% security from credit fraud also. A fraud watch is actually voluntary. It means that the credit issuer should be careful and double-check whether a certain application is really from the person it claims to be from. However, some issuers ignore the fraud watches and will issue the credit anyway.
The best protection is freezing your credit. That way, no one can check your credit or add new lines of credit. If you want to do anything involving your credit (open a new credit card, get a loan, get a background check), you would then need to unfreeze your credit and refreeze it when the activity was completed. Unfortunately, this costs $5 per action per agency per person. So if a husband and wife want to freeze their credit, it is $5 * 3 (credit agencies) * 2 (people), or $30. If they then want to unfreeze their credit, get a car load, and then refreeze their credit, it would cost $60.
There was a bill awhile back that would have made this free, but the credit industry lobbyists got it killed. After all, if you freeze your credit then you can't sign up for a new credit card at the checkout line of a store to get 10% off your purchase. And that means that you are less likely to have lots of credit card debt interest to pay off. And that means less profits for them.
As far as ID theft is concerned, they honestly don't care. If your identity gets stolen, it's your problem. You need to spend the time and money to prove to them that something went wrong. Any losses due to cards issued during ID theft are written off (or sent to a collection agency to hassle the ID theft victim and further negatively impact their credit rating).
I'm glad to see this was slapped down. From my understanding (from reading the article) is that Vernor obtained boxed copies of AutoCAD (through some legal means) and then sold them on eBay. AutoDesk was claiming that Vernor was bound by their software license agreement. Even if you accept the validity of a click-through license (a big IF, I know), how would he have been bound by a license that he never clicked "I Agree" to? In AutoDesk's reasoning, did his mere purchasing of the boxed software bind him to the license? I can see how a judge would laugh this out of court. At least with a click-through license, you can present the license's text. In a "buy the box, bound to the license" agreement, where would the license be presented to you? As you were about to pay for the box, would the Best Buy checkout clerk hand you a 10 page agreement to sign? If they didn't, then the license can't be binding (you need to be able to read a contract before agreeing to it), if they did, a lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable signing a big, legal looking document every time they picked up a piece of software.
I'm not sure if this is the case with the forum in question, but an OffTopic forum can help smooth the flow of a forum's posts. When I took over PCQandA.com (then called PCNineOneOne.com), I realized that the Computer Help forum (the main reason for PC911) was being overrun with off topic posts. They weren't bad most of the time, but you might make a post for help, check back later, only to find that your post had dropped a page or two thanks to a few jokes. Plus, flamewars that were erupting over politically themed posts were spilling over into computer help threads.
So we created an Off-Topic forum. Now the Computer Help forum chugs along smoothly, isn't choked off by Off Topic posts, and flamewars (mostly) stay out of the way of the computer help threads.
I don't have any numbers (right now) to see whether we got more posts before or after the creation of the Off-Topic Forum, but the separation has definitely made it easier for new users to post and reply without getting bogged down by OT items.
My first question would be: Who owns the data? If it is the customer's data and just your systems holding it, then there's no problem (barring that systems are put in place to keep a badly written READ call from bringing down everyone's systems). If it is your company's data and they are just paying for access to it, then giving them direct Read control is essentially giving them a copy of the database. I would wager that, if the latter situation is the case, your company views their database as an important asset and having a client download the entire thing would make management queasy.
Ok, just kidding... Well sort of. I don't know if it helps you out or not, but I know what I would do if I had an extra laptop or two lying around. I would repurpose one of them into a laptop for my 4 year old. He loves using the computer for TuxPaint and other games. I have an old computer that I set up for him, but my house's layout keeps it from being in a convenient spot for him to use. A laptop could be used by him on the couch, on the floor, in the car (while the battery lasted at least), or anywhere else. If you have any young nieces/nephews or if you have friends with young children, you could see if they want a laptop with Edubuntu installed. And speaking of Linux....
After having a laptop for my son, I would install Linux on a second spare laptop to play around with/learn Linux. Again, I'm not sure if this applies to you or not. I run Windows on all of my machines. I've wanted to try Linux out and have run a few LiveCDs (both boot-to-CD and inside VMWare), but it would be nice to have a whole system boot into Linux to try out. My two laptops are right now my work laptop (they probably wouldn't like it if I messed something up during my Linux install) and my wife's laptop (she definitely wouldn't like it if I messed something up during the Linux install). With an extra laptop, I could mess up and not really care about anything going wrong. From what I've heard, Linux shouldn't have a problem with the older systems (though I could be horribly wrong... I'm sure other users could clarify this point). So you could use one laptop as a test bed for various purposes. Get a nice system setup going, make an image of it, play around until the system is messed up, restore the image, play around some more, repeat.
Of course, if you seriously consider sending out old laptops to folks here, can I be the first in line?;-)
This also leads me to wondering whether they would then push to make the publication of vulnerability information equivalent to publishing military secrets. After all, if they are using exploit X to gain access to systems and you've now told the world about exploit X, you've just revealed important, classified military information to the public. Security researchers simply trying to help people keep their systems secure could wind up running afoul of the US military.
Do you mean Santa Claus? Are you saying he doesn't exist? They why have I been lighting fires in my fireplace every Christmas eve in the hopes that he would mistake my household for one that celebrates Christmas?
I called early Christianity a cult. Early on, Christians were on the fringe of society and had to sneak around lest they be rounded up as dangerous radicals and executed. (Fed to lions?) Since then, however, Christianity has moved into being the dominant religion and is no longer a cult. (Though a small sect of Christianity can easily be a cult, the main religion is not one.)
As for your "any who don't believe the way we believe" statement goes, the same could be said for many different things. Look at rhetoric in politics, for example. I recently told my father that I was planning on voting for Barack Obama. He reacted with horror that I would vote for a Muslim who will turn our country over to the terrorists. Yes, my father apparently listens to the far-right wing folks who spew that kind of nonsense and he believes it completely. To people with a far-right wing opinion, voting Democrat is the same as treason. And, just to be fair, to some far-left folks voting Republican is the same as using the Constitution as toilet paper.
And it isn't just politics. Try telling some skeptics that you think you saw a UFO. Or tell some atheists that you've found God. Or tell some Open Source advocates that you'll be releasing your application as Closed Source. There are many different groups of people who, when confronted with someone who doesn't share their views, perceives of that person as mentally and morally inferior and possibly even dangerous. (Sometimes it seems that there are far too few people in society who can tolerate an opposing opinion without frothing at the mouth.)
Removing the verses would be problematic because they are in sacred texts. Whether the verses are used or not is actually irrelevant to most observant people. In fact, given the history of interpretation in Judaism, I wouldn't be surprised if the "stone a convert to death" clause was used as justification for treating a convert as dead. (Something that a few very religious people will do.) You can leave but you leave your entire life behind and are regarded as if you died. They wouldn't actively kill you (as the literal reading of the verse would indicate) but instead would interpret it into a milder form.
Even the most literal, Orthodox segments that I know of don't hold that we need to follow everything that is in the Torah to the letter. If they did, they would be rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and holding sacrifices. (There are some radical segments in Israel that are trying to get the Temple rebuilt, but even they hold that there are some things in the Torah that we can't do until it is rebuilt.)
In Judaism, the Torah itself isn't the be all and end all. There's a rich history in Judaism of interpreting what the Torah means and basing laws off of that. For example: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." This is the basis for the Kosher law of not eating milk and meat together. By itself, the verse seems to allow chicken to be eaten with milk. After all, a mother chicken doesn't produce milk. It would also seem to allow eating a beef hamburger with goat's milk. However, over the years, to avoid confusion, accidental violations of the law, and the appearance of violation of the law, it got expanded into not eating milk and meat together and waiting a certain period of time between meat and dairy.
There are even differing opinions and arguments between great Jewish rabbis in the past as to how to observe Judaism properly. Some are more lenient, some are stricter. The power of figuring out what the laws mean traditionally is seen as a rabbinical duty. (There's even a story told about two rabbis arguing a point when a "Heavenly voice" came down and proclaimed one of the rabbis correct. The other rabbi told the voice to keep out of it because the Torah was for man to interpret, not for angels/God.)
The Torah also instructs in the proper treatment of slaves and how to conduct sacrifices. There are things in the Torah that aren't actively practiced anymore for one reason or another. I don't know of any segment of Judaism that would seriously consider killing you if you left for another religion.
Not really. Most of the major religions will allow you to leave their churches/temples without any problem. You can even convert to another religion with minimum fuss. For example, I'm Jewish. There's nothing to stop me from leaving my temple and joining another. (My wife and I have even discussed this very subject recently.) There's also nothing to stop me from leaving my temple, becoming Christian, and joining a church. (Beyond the fact that the Church's religious beliefs don't match with my own, of course.)
In a cult, leaving the church is unthinkable and anyone who expresses a desire to do so is forcibly kept from doing so. Were I a member of a cult, expressing a desire to leave the group would likely result in my detention for "re-education" or perhaps in my "disappearance."
You are kind of right about religions being popular cults, though. Most religions start out as cults and the either die out or ease up on the cult-like behaviors and merge more into society. Christianity was a cult when it first started, but over the years it integrated more into society to the point that it isn't considered a cult now.
I agree. They definitely "lose more sales" to DVDs, movies on demand, Internet stuff, cell phones, games, etc than they do to piracy. They also don't produce music that's as good as they used to. They find an artist that's successful and then a) over-market him/her until the public is sick of them and b) find a dozen more artists as identical as possible and market their music because obviously if the original was a success then all of the clones will be too. Toss a not so hot economy in the mix and you have them offering a worse product to consumers with more spending choices for their shrinking entertainment dollar. And yet they still insist that "piracy" is the main reasoning for their dropping sales. Suuuuuure.;-)
The indies (and the gasoline and food companies) are eating their lunch. Most of us have only so many dollars to spend. If I buy four $5 CDs from the band that plays at the bar (professionally recorded and duplicated, with art and packaging) that's twenty dollars I don't have to buy an RIAA CD.
I agree. In addition, this is one big reason why their "lost sales" calculations are huge stinking loads of bull manure. The RIAA figures that 1 song downloaded (regardless of the legality of the download) equals one sale not made which means that much revenue not put in their pockets. You could easily use the same reasoning to prove that Indie labels cost the record labels money. Or that food store sales cost the record companies money. Or that oil companies cost the record companies money.
Hey, there's an idea. Pit the Big Oil companies against the Big Record Companies/RIAA. Two Companies Enter! One leaves! We won't really be cheering for a winner so much as cheering for one of the companies to be beaten to a pulp.
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Sure, Amie Street has a lot of obscure/unknown Indie bands. (Some of them are really good, too!) They also have some pretty big names, though. Here's a short list:
Barenaked Ladies
Sarah Mclachlan
Elvis Presley
B.B. King
Louis Armstrong
That was actually the first thing I thought of. Apparently, you can play the song one time, all the way through, for free. I wondered how many people would fire up Audacity and just record that first play through. If you didn't like the song, you wouldn't save the Audacity recording. If you liked it, you could save the recording and have a (admittedly low bitrate, but free) recording of the song. Not that I would encourage anyone to do that or anything.
Except that systems are powerful enough nowadays to run virtual machines. So Microsoft could have Windows 7 be backwards incompatible (taking advantage of any speed boosts that this gives the OS and Designed-For-Win7 applications) and they could include a free "Windows XP/Vista" virtual OS to run applications that require backwards compatibility. If done right, the virtual OS would be seamlessly integrated into the main OS. You wouldn't even know that Old Application #7 was running on a virtual OS instead of the regular OS (except, perhaps, for a bigger memory footprint and slightly slower response rate).
IIRC, Apple did this when they moved from their old OS to their current one and it did wonders to ease the transition while still allowing Apple to break free of the shackles of backwards compatibility.
Have you actually used WiiFit? I have been using it every chance I get and let me tell you, some of those activities make you feel the burn. I didn't think much of Yoga, but I've got to say that some of those poses really work out your muscles. (Note to those attempting Tree Pose: Wear "slipper socks" or some other gripping sock/shoe or your foot will slide down your leg leading to loss of balance.) I've found that the best (of my currently unlocked activities) is the Hula Hoops. Swinging around to spin those hoops and then leaning over to catch other hoops really seems like a great workout.
Of course, WiiFit can only be one part of a plan to get in shape. If you work out with WiiFit for 30 minutes a day, but then follow that up with a banana split each time, you're not going to lose any weight. However, if you work out with WiiFit and eat healthier, the added exercise WiiFit gives you should help with weight loss.
Plus, the weight/BMI charting alone should help. I've found that the closer I pay attention to my weight, the less likely I am to gain weight. Probably because I'll be more likely to reconsider that sweet treat if my weight is on my mind.
Then my references to Google Images dating back to July 2001 should be prior art. If it needs to be at least a year before the filing date, then (taking SCHecklerX's tip), I found some references to Altavista's Image Search dating to Feb 2000. Either way, this company seems to be your typical patent troll. They have a patent that either has overly vague language or specifically applies to commonly used technology. They sat on it (or recently "discovered" that they have it) and now intend on making everyone using that commonly used technology pay them money for the rights to use the commonly used technology. Once a technology was in wide use, a patent holder shouldn't be allowed to just "appear" and claim patent rights over it.
Like Google Image search? The date on the patent seems to be June 20, 2006. If I understand the rules of Prior Art correctly, then we would need to find an instance of a search engine returning images relating to a user's search on or before June 20, 2005. I didn't have any data about when Google Images launched, but I was sure it was prior to 2005. A bit of searching and I found this blog post discussing Google Images in May of 2004.
After a bit more searching, I found references to Google Images as far back as July 8th, 2001. That was a full 3 months prior to this patent's original filing date. In short, Google's Image search could be both a target of this lawsuit and the solution to it.
Or, better yet, how would a border guard be able to tell that the MP3 file on my MP3 player is illegal versus legally purchased from a shop that sells non-DRM-ed MP3s (Amie Street or eMusic for example)? Both MP3s could look exactly alike and it's not like I can whip out the source CD to prove that I bought it legally. Sure, I could check the website, print out a list of my purchases, and prove it that way, but what if the website goes out of business? If I buy a song from eMusic and then eMusic folds, can I be heavily fined and have my player taken away since now I can't prove that my non-DRM-ed MP3 is legit? Is the legitimacy of my music now going to be tied to whether or not the site I bought it from is still operating?
I'll admit that I use Twitter. I decided to check it out when the jQuery team announced that they would be twittering. I use it as a "multiple IM" type of thing. If I want to send basically the same short IM to a few friends, I'll Twitter it. If I want to make a long, detailed point, I'll e-mail it. In fact, the Twitter client I use (Twhirl) helps make Twitter seem like another IM system.
In the end, Twitter is just another tool in my online arsenal (along with my IM client, feed reader, web browser, e-mail client, web site/blog, etc). Like any tool, though, it can be abused. Those people who feel the need to Twitter about every second of their existence definitely fit your description of Twitter. Don't judge the tool by those who abuse it, though.
Exactly. If you lump religions in with actual cults just because you don't subscribe to their religious beliefs, then you might as well call any group of people with similar beliefs and values a cult. Vegetarians? Cult! Athiests? Cult! Republicans? Cult! Democrats? Cult!
Of course, this is totally ridiculous and reduces the meaning of the word "cult" to the point that actual cults seem fine. Here's a little test. Join a church/temple/whatever. Attend services for a few months. Then try to leave. If the spiritual leader (priest, rabbi, etc) says that he's sad to see you go, wishes you would stay, but ultimately it is your decision, then the group isn't a cult. If the leader tells you that you'll roast in hell if you ever entertain notions of leaving their sacred community ever again and you should immediately repent, well then you're in a cult.
And while you're listening to the sermons during your time there, don't be confused. Of course the rabbi/priest/etc will be speaking along the lines of the congregation's beliefs. That doesn't in and of itself mean it's a cult. (Imagine if a priest in a Catholic church started a sermon about how the Pope was an idiot and Jesus wasn't the son of God. He'd be out of a job in an instant simply because his beliefs don't mesh with those of the church congregation.) If, however, other avenues of fact/opinion (e.g. the Internet, TV, radio, newspapers) are banned and you are *only* allowed to listen to the leader's sermon's, then you just might be in a cult. (It doesn't count if the religious leader himself doesn't use the Internet/TV/etc. He's free to do as he pleases. It only counts if he imposes that restriction on the followers.)
To give an example, I'm Jewish and once belonged to an Orthodox synagogue. I didn't like the rabbi there and only went because I was living with my parents at the time and they were founding members. The rabbi was very strict religious-wise. He wouldn't do certain things (like watch TV) simply because he felt they were a bad influence. However, he never told us to get rid of the TV from our houses. (If he had, my father would have laughed at him.) He was also very anti-evolution. I stayed silent during his sermons about how the world was created 6,000 years ago and scientists don't know anything, but only because I knew that 1) that wasn't the time or place to argue with him and 2) I could have the most informed arguments in the world and he wouldn't budge in his opinion. After all, it said right there in the Torah that God created the Heavens and the Earth.
My wife is fond of calling that synagogue a cult. However, it wasn't even close to a true cult. Yes, the rabbi tried to get the congregation to see the Jewish religion as he did and follow it as he did, but that's just normal. (If you think something is the "right" way of doing something, it's natural to try to get others to follow that way.) However, he never threatened people into following him. He just laid out what he believed and why he believed it. I disagreed with him and didn't follow his lead. My parents agreed with him on some things and disagreed on others. People left the synagogue with no trouble. When I left for college, I wasn't told to stay. Nor was I given any special "orders" to follow. (Not that I would have obeyed any orders that he gave.)
That group was a religious organization. One with views slightly out of sync with mainstream society, yes, but not a cult.
Oh, I thought of that. But all that would happen would be a minor modification of the contract that would be given to Best Buy and any other retailer that would allow them to sell the software to consumers and then be removed from any terms of the contract. In fact, had AutoDesk's assertions held up in court, things might have been worse for the retailers. Software companies could have loaded the "retailer contract" with clauses that allowed them to enforce the "consumer contract" onto the retailers if certain conditions weren't met. Granted, I don't see AutoDesk being able to bully Best Buy into something like this, but imagine if you ran a small software store and a Microsoft rep told you to remove the $1 Ubuntu CDs* from your rack or have all of your Windows and Office "retailer contracts" suddenly turn into non-transferable "consumer contracts." (Meaning you couldn't sell them.)
* Yes, I know Ubuntu is free. I'm figuring cost of burning a disk, plus some minor profit for the shop.
Fraud watches aren't 100% security from credit fraud also. A fraud watch is actually voluntary. It means that the credit issuer should be careful and double-check whether a certain application is really from the person it claims to be from. However, some issuers ignore the fraud watches and will issue the credit anyway.
The best protection is freezing your credit. That way, no one can check your credit or add new lines of credit. If you want to do anything involving your credit (open a new credit card, get a loan, get a background check), you would then need to unfreeze your credit and refreeze it when the activity was completed. Unfortunately, this costs $5 per action per agency per person. So if a husband and wife want to freeze their credit, it is $5 * 3 (credit agencies) * 2 (people), or $30. If they then want to unfreeze their credit, get a car load, and then refreeze their credit, it would cost $60.
There was a bill awhile back that would have made this free, but the credit industry lobbyists got it killed. After all, if you freeze your credit then you can't sign up for a new credit card at the checkout line of a store to get 10% off your purchase. And that means that you are less likely to have lots of credit card debt interest to pay off. And that means less profits for them.
As far as ID theft is concerned, they honestly don't care. If your identity gets stolen, it's your problem. You need to spend the time and money to prove to them that something went wrong. Any losses due to cards issued during ID theft are written off (or sent to a collection agency to hassle the ID theft victim and further negatively impact their credit rating).
Todd Davis is just lucky that he wasn't a victim of Criminal Identity Theft.
I'm glad to see this was slapped down. From my understanding (from reading the article) is that Vernor obtained boxed copies of AutoCAD (through some legal means) and then sold them on eBay. AutoDesk was claiming that Vernor was bound by their software license agreement. Even if you accept the validity of a click-through license (a big IF, I know), how would he have been bound by a license that he never clicked "I Agree" to? In AutoDesk's reasoning, did his mere purchasing of the boxed software bind him to the license? I can see how a judge would laugh this out of court. At least with a click-through license, you can present the license's text. In a "buy the box, bound to the license" agreement, where would the license be presented to you? As you were about to pay for the box, would the Best Buy checkout clerk hand you a 10 page agreement to sign? If they didn't, then the license can't be binding (you need to be able to read a contract before agreeing to it), if they did, a lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable signing a big, legal looking document every time they picked up a piece of software.
I'm not sure if this is the case with the forum in question, but an OffTopic forum can help smooth the flow of a forum's posts. When I took over PCQandA.com (then called PCNineOneOne.com), I realized that the Computer Help forum (the main reason for PC911) was being overrun with off topic posts. They weren't bad most of the time, but you might make a post for help, check back later, only to find that your post had dropped a page or two thanks to a few jokes. Plus, flamewars that were erupting over politically themed posts were spilling over into computer help threads.
So we created an Off-Topic forum. Now the Computer Help forum chugs along smoothly, isn't choked off by Off Topic posts, and flamewars (mostly) stay out of the way of the computer help threads.
I don't have any numbers (right now) to see whether we got more posts before or after the creation of the Off-Topic Forum, but the separation has definitely made it easier for new users to post and reply without getting bogged down by OT items.
My first question would be: Who owns the data? If it is the customer's data and just your systems holding it, then there's no problem (barring that systems are put in place to keep a badly written READ call from bringing down everyone's systems). If it is your company's data and they are just paying for access to it, then giving them direct Read control is essentially giving them a copy of the database. I would wager that, if the latter situation is the case, your company views their database as an important asset and having a client download the entire thing would make management queasy.
Ok, just kidding... Well sort of. I don't know if it helps you out or not, but I know what I would do if I had an extra laptop or two lying around. I would repurpose one of them into a laptop for my 4 year old. He loves using the computer for TuxPaint and other games. I have an old computer that I set up for him, but my house's layout keeps it from being in a convenient spot for him to use. A laptop could be used by him on the couch, on the floor, in the car (while the battery lasted at least), or anywhere else. If you have any young nieces/nephews or if you have friends with young children, you could see if they want a laptop with Edubuntu installed. And speaking of Linux....
;-)
After having a laptop for my son, I would install Linux on a second spare laptop to play around with/learn Linux. Again, I'm not sure if this applies to you or not. I run Windows on all of my machines. I've wanted to try Linux out and have run a few LiveCDs (both boot-to-CD and inside VMWare), but it would be nice to have a whole system boot into Linux to try out. My two laptops are right now my work laptop (they probably wouldn't like it if I messed something up during my Linux install) and my wife's laptop (she definitely wouldn't like it if I messed something up during the Linux install). With an extra laptop, I could mess up and not really care about anything going wrong. From what I've heard, Linux shouldn't have a problem with the older systems (though I could be horribly wrong... I'm sure other users could clarify this point). So you could use one laptop as a test bed for various purposes. Get a nice system setup going, make an image of it, play around until the system is messed up, restore the image, play around some more, repeat.
Of course, if you seriously consider sending out old laptops to folks here, can I be the first in line?
This also leads me to wondering whether they would then push to make the publication of vulnerability information equivalent to publishing military secrets. After all, if they are using exploit X to gain access to systems and you've now told the world about exploit X, you've just revealed important, classified military information to the public. Security researchers simply trying to help people keep their systems secure could wind up running afoul of the US military.
Do you mean Santa Claus? Are you saying he doesn't exist? They why have I been lighting fires in my fireplace every Christmas eve in the hopes that he would mistake my household for one that celebrates Christmas?
The ants are taking over. Finally, the original ant overlords quote from the Simpsons is on-topic.
"And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords"
I called early Christianity a cult. Early on, Christians were on the fringe of society and had to sneak around lest they be rounded up as dangerous radicals and executed. (Fed to lions?) Since then, however, Christianity has moved into being the dominant religion and is no longer a cult. (Though a small sect of Christianity can easily be a cult, the main religion is not one.)
As for your "any who don't believe the way we believe" statement goes, the same could be said for many different things. Look at rhetoric in politics, for example. I recently told my father that I was planning on voting for Barack Obama. He reacted with horror that I would vote for a Muslim who will turn our country over to the terrorists. Yes, my father apparently listens to the far-right wing folks who spew that kind of nonsense and he believes it completely. To people with a far-right wing opinion, voting Democrat is the same as treason. And, just to be fair, to some far-left folks voting Republican is the same as using the Constitution as toilet paper.
And it isn't just politics. Try telling some skeptics that you think you saw a UFO. Or tell some atheists that you've found God. Or tell some Open Source advocates that you'll be releasing your application as Closed Source. There are many different groups of people who, when confronted with someone who doesn't share their views, perceives of that person as mentally and morally inferior and possibly even dangerous. (Sometimes it seems that there are far too few people in society who can tolerate an opposing opinion without frothing at the mouth.)
Removing the verses would be problematic because they are in sacred texts. Whether the verses are used or not is actually irrelevant to most observant people. In fact, given the history of interpretation in Judaism, I wouldn't be surprised if the "stone a convert to death" clause was used as justification for treating a convert as dead. (Something that a few very religious people will do.) You can leave but you leave your entire life behind and are regarded as if you died. They wouldn't actively kill you (as the literal reading of the verse would indicate) but instead would interpret it into a milder form.
Even the most literal, Orthodox segments that I know of don't hold that we need to follow everything that is in the Torah to the letter. If they did, they would be rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and holding sacrifices. (There are some radical segments in Israel that are trying to get the Temple rebuilt, but even they hold that there are some things in the Torah that we can't do until it is rebuilt.)
In Judaism, the Torah itself isn't the be all and end all. There's a rich history in Judaism of interpreting what the Torah means and basing laws off of that. For example: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." This is the basis for the Kosher law of not eating milk and meat together. By itself, the verse seems to allow chicken to be eaten with milk. After all, a mother chicken doesn't produce milk. It would also seem to allow eating a beef hamburger with goat's milk. However, over the years, to avoid confusion, accidental violations of the law, and the appearance of violation of the law, it got expanded into not eating milk and meat together and waiting a certain period of time between meat and dairy.
There are even differing opinions and arguments between great Jewish rabbis in the past as to how to observe Judaism properly. Some are more lenient, some are stricter. The power of figuring out what the laws mean traditionally is seen as a rabbinical duty. (There's even a story told about two rabbis arguing a point when a "Heavenly voice" came down and proclaimed one of the rabbis correct. The other rabbi told the voice to keep out of it because the Torah was for man to interpret, not for angels/God.)
The Torah also instructs in the proper treatment of slaves and how to conduct sacrifices. There are things in the Torah that aren't actively practiced anymore for one reason or another. I don't know of any segment of Judaism that would seriously consider killing you if you left for another religion.
Not really. Most of the major religions will allow you to leave their churches/temples without any problem. You can even convert to another religion with minimum fuss. For example, I'm Jewish. There's nothing to stop me from leaving my temple and joining another. (My wife and I have even discussed this very subject recently.) There's also nothing to stop me from leaving my temple, becoming Christian, and joining a church. (Beyond the fact that the Church's religious beliefs don't match with my own, of course.)
In a cult, leaving the church is unthinkable and anyone who expresses a desire to do so is forcibly kept from doing so. Were I a member of a cult, expressing a desire to leave the group would likely result in my detention for "re-education" or perhaps in my "disappearance."
You are kind of right about religions being popular cults, though. Most religions start out as cults and the either die out or ease up on the cult-like behaviors and merge more into society. Christianity was a cult when it first started, but over the years it integrated more into society to the point that it isn't considered a cult now.
I agree. They definitely "lose more sales" to DVDs, movies on demand, Internet stuff, cell phones, games, etc than they do to piracy. They also don't produce music that's as good as they used to. They find an artist that's successful and then a) over-market him/her until the public is sick of them and b) find a dozen more artists as identical as possible and market their music because obviously if the original was a success then all of the clones will be too. Toss a not so hot economy in the mix and you have them offering a worse product to consumers with more spending choices for their shrinking entertainment dollar. And yet they still insist that "piracy" is the main reasoning for their dropping sales. Suuuuuure. ;-)
I agree. In addition, this is one big reason why their "lost sales" calculations are huge stinking loads of bull manure. The RIAA figures that 1 song downloaded (regardless of the legality of the download) equals one sale not made which means that much revenue not put in their pockets. You could easily use the same reasoning to prove that Indie labels cost the record labels money. Or that food store sales cost the record companies money. Or that oil companies cost the record companies money.
Hey, there's an idea. Pit the Big Oil companies against the Big Record Companies/RIAA. Two Companies Enter! One leaves! We won't really be cheering for a winner so much as cheering for one of the companies to be beaten to a pulp.