The reason Gucci (or Rolex) doesn't like the fake versions has nothign to do with reflecting on the quality of their merchandise. As a customer, I know it's fake... the store told me so.
It has to do with someone else making money off a brand name that they paid money to produce.
The internet was never truly anonymous... and expecting that you can do something illegal and remain anonymous is absurd.
The internet has a good degree of casual anonymity, just as people walking on a city street do... you don't know who everyone is.
You can surf around on sites or go to chat rooms and expect that people generally can't find out who you are.. but you know damn well if the force of law is brought down they COULD find out who you are.
GSM phones, unlike previous cellular phones, by convention do not have information like the phone's ESN and your phone settings and whatnot hardwired into the phone, instead they are on a little removalbe flash card, called a SIM.
You want to use your other phone? pop out the sim, pop it in another phone, that phone now has your number, and perhaps your stored directory, etc. Phone died? Want ot borrow someone elses? you can borrow their phone, use your sim, it all goes on your account (although most are prepaid)
North American phone provideres have a history of locking phones to their providers.... meaning the carrier sells you a phone super cheap, like free, or $50, etc... (when the phone is worth from $200 to $1000).. they make it up because the phone can only be used with them.
So when they start rolling out GSM.. well.. who's going to buy a $200 GSM phone when the competiting non-GSM phones seem to be $50? The fact that the $200 phone can be switched to multiple providers won't help... The US (and Canadian) market is conditioned to accept that the phone goes with the provider.
Locked GSM phones only accept a SIM from the provider they have been programmed for. You are still free to take that SIM and use it in any open phone (or PDA, laptop, etc)
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And then someone just puts up some free porn sites, asking entrants to identify the shown text into a form to enter.... web surfers become your workforce, no need for fancy technical OCR when you have a few thousand humans working for you.
Yes, I realize that.. my point is only that purchases on the open market do not result in direct financial gains for the company being purchased.
This is a common misconception.
I realze there are plenty of very real secondary benefits to having a strong stock price...but that wasn't the topic.
Given a particular situation, a company man, in fact often will, realize benefits if their stock price rises.. increased flexibility with banks, the ability to issue new stock at rates that are good for the company, heck, increased publicity.... but there are also situations when the stock price cna climb or sick and it has little or no bearing whatsoever on the actual operation of the company.
I'm not saying there are no benefits to the company.. there most definately are real benefits.. but the cash from the sale of shares is not always one of them.
Further, if the company holds 50% in reserve, that is part of the stock price.. should they start selling that stock, the price would drop... just as if BillG dumped his MS stock, he would not necessarily be able to get anywhere near his paper value.. (though he'd still be a very, very, very, very wealthy man)
Executives have reason to keep up the fight for personal gain? Good! That's how I'd want MY executives to be as well... but the fact remains, just because DARL might see some personal wealth from a big stock trade, it does not follow that SCO will be on any better financial footing.
There is a common misconception out there that stock price directly affects a company... it does not.
If I purchase a milliion shares of SCO on the open market, SCO does not see a PENNY of that money. The only time SCO sees money from the sale of stock is when SCO issues NEW stock into the market.
So.. if the stock price goes up, it's good for a company, in that they can issue more stock, and get more capital without giving away such a large piece of the pie.
However, microsoft buying a million shares of SCO would not by itself fund sco at all.... unless they bought those shares FROM SCO, which it doesn't sound like they are doing.
It would seem reasonable that by "Season" they mean the regular-season games.. not exhibition games and whatnot. That is commonly accepted.. though probably not all that heavily thought about.
As a business, though, there is MONEY in pre-season and post-season games... there is an audience, there is gambling, there is everything you get wiht normal season games.. so season could also be taken to mean one entire yearly cycle of the sport.
Sounds like this really is one for the lawyers though.
Pixar will switch to whatever is currently going to suit their needs the best... in their business, they aren't going to sit around and use "legacy" stuff just because of previous investment.. you will see them re-tool much more often than a traditional business.
Absolutely... because as time marches on for us, our observable universe gets larger, and the things we are watching get older... if we could fast forward, we would see more and more galaxies forming further and further away.
You are thinking of a 3-dimensional explosion / expansion.. everything moving away from some central point. This is not what is going on at all, though.
This is a 4-dimensional explosion / expansion.. everything is moving away from everything else.. there is no "middle". Or, if you like, any observer is smack in the middle of his own observable universe.
There center is you. The edge is the distance travelled at the speed of light times the age of the universe. Speculating on what "might" exist outside of that is irrelevant, if it is outside that boundary, it is not in your universe, and nothing happening there has any effect on your observable universe (which is expanding at this moment). IN fact to speak of it as a "place" where things could be is even erroneous.. the farther away we look, the farther back in time we are also looking. To think of it as a 3 dimensional boundary that we could just go to the edge of might seem logical at first, but in fact it's totally and competely inaccurate to think of it that way.
Though that logic makes sense at first, it's not true.
Certainly with a really loud car stereo, the effect is the same.. but there is somethin gabout the way headphones work that relatively quiet headphones really do cut you off from the outside world much more than speaker listening at the same volume... partly due to how your brain intereprets the sound, how your awareness focuses.
Try this.. get a little stereo, and some headphones, and adjust both so listening to the same tune seems to be at the same volume. Don't pick a high volume.. a medium, easy listening one. Then try to have a conversation with someone in the room... you will find it's a lot easier to talk to them when listening to the stereo as opposed to the headphones, despite having the same volume at the ear.
This is not a blacklist. IT's just a plain old list.
Just because you sued a doctor for malpractice does not mean you will be refused care.. but if it looks like you are in the habit of suing doctors for a living.... you should expect them to be wary, rightly so.
People are free to compile a complimentary database of doctors who have been sued...
First, it's not a blacklist.. it's just a list. I believe the front-page of the site even boldy states that THIS IS NOT A BLACKLIST.
It's there for information.
"Oh, those evil doctors". Doctors are people to, and they run a business, and believe it or not, along with legitimate claims out there, there are a LOT of frivolous lawsuits against doctors... a lot of bogus malpractice claims. If you were a doctor, would you not want to know of your potential client had sued the last 5 doctors she dealt with?
Lawsuits are public record. The public is free to organize and create lists of doctors who have been sued for malpractice as well.
Why are you relying on the phone company for your phone? Find out what systme they use, then go get your own phone.. then go sign up with them. You don't have to get the phone from them.
That's what most of hte world does, outside the US.
Every good poker player already does that.. knows which cards he has seen that game, at least, any that matter (remember not all cards visible are always important).
The game of poker is ultimately a game of bluffing and one man -vs- the next.. a computer would not necessarily beat human players at poker.
Remember, the object is not to win each hand, but to win the other player's money.. and that COULD mean only winning one hand out of an entire sitting.
Email has always been legally acceptable.. the only issue is whether you can prove in court an email was really delivered or not.
ANY form of communication can constitute a valid contract, some are just harder to prove than others.
A written piece of paper with real original signatures, including several witnesses, is fairly hard to fake. That's why important legal documents have so many signatories.. it's to show that yes, all parties understood the contract, and yes, all parties willingly agreed to it.
In this case, AOL *registered* their email address with the copyright office as a valid way to contact them about copyright issues... that's the point. Had they not done this, they could have insisited on some other method probably.
But they said "this is the address that we will accept complaints on".. then they proceeded to ignore those complaints through mismanagement.
Note that many contracts (mine for instance) state that you are liable for a max $50 if the CARD is stolen...
that means if the card is no longer physically on you. If I still have the card in my pocket, and someone is using a copy, I am not liable at all...
Remember, even with fraudulent use, the merchant has to be able to prove that YOU authorized the transaction. Video evidence, your signature, something shipped to your home address... barring that, any disputed charges will generally be dropped with no hassle.
If someone takes your card, and goes on a shopping spree, yet no merchant can show your signature or any evidence that you weren't there, VISA won't pay the merchant, and the $50 liability doesn't even come into play.
"Now its obvious you're trolling. Say what you want about AC97-based onboard sound (which nearly everythign is), but its good enough. Your speakers are much more likely the problem. The long and short is that all PC sounds cards equally suck until you get to professional grade gear."
That is absolute BS.. I'm sorry. Plenty of on and offboard common sound cards and chipsets (all of which are ac97-based) sound like shit. Some, however, sound surprisingly good. Some older, ancient cards still DO sound better.. better dacs, better shielding, etc.
How is it my speakers are the problem, when I try both soundcards side by side, and the old one sounds much better, and closer to reference?
For that matter, my headphones were about $900... if they are the problem, i'll eat them.
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Re: Gucci.. bull.
The reason Gucci (or Rolex) doesn't like the fake versions has nothign to do with reflecting on the quality of their merchandise. As a customer, I know it's fake... the store told me so.
It has to do with someone else making money off a brand name that they paid money to produce.
The internet was never truly anonymous... and expecting that you can do something illegal and remain anonymous is absurd.
The internet has a good degree of casual anonymity, just as people walking on a city street do... you don't know who everyone is.
You can surf around on sites or go to chat rooms and expect that people generally can't find out who you are.. but you know damn well if the force of law is brought down they COULD find out who you are.
Probalby, but the locking thing is pretty simple.
GSM phones, unlike previous cellular phones, by convention do not have information like the phone's ESN and your phone settings and whatnot hardwired into the phone, instead they are on a little removalbe flash card, called a SIM.
You want to use your other phone? pop out the sim, pop it in another phone, that phone now has your number, and perhaps your stored directory, etc. Phone died? Want ot borrow someone elses? you can borrow their phone, use your sim, it all goes on your account (although most are prepaid)
North American phone provideres have a history of locking phones to their providers.... meaning the carrier sells you a phone super cheap, like free, or $50, etc... (when the phone is worth from $200 to $1000).. they make it up because the phone can only be used with them.
So when they start rolling out GSM.. well.. who's going to buy a $200 GSM phone when the competiting non-GSM phones seem to be $50? The fact that the $200 phone can be switched to multiple providers won't help... The US (and Canadian) market is conditioned to accept that the phone goes with the provider.
Locked GSM phones only accept a SIM from the provider they have been programmed for. You are still free to take that SIM and use it in any open phone (or PDA, laptop, etc)
And then someone just puts up some free porn sites, asking entrants to identify the shown text into a form to enter.... web surfers become your workforce, no need for fancy technical OCR when you have a few thousand humans working for you.
Yes, I realize that.. my point is only that purchases on the open market do not result in direct financial gains for the company being purchased.
This is a common misconception.
I realze there are plenty of very real secondary benefits to having a strong stock price...but that wasn't the topic.
Given a particular situation, a company man, in fact often will, realize benefits if their stock price rises.. increased flexibility with banks, the ability to issue new stock at rates that are good for the company, heck, increased publicity.... but there are also situations when the stock price cna climb or sick and it has little or no bearing whatsoever on the actual operation of the company.
Well two points.
I'm not saying there are no benefits to the company.. there most definately are real benefits.. but the cash from the sale of shares is not always one of them.
Further, if the company holds 50% in reserve, that is part of the stock price.. should they start selling that stock, the price would drop... just as if BillG dumped his MS stock, he would not necessarily be able to get anywhere near his paper value.. (though he'd still be a very, very, very, very wealthy man)
Executives have reason to keep up the fight for personal gain? Good! That's how I'd want MY executives to be as well... but the fact remains, just because DARL might see some personal wealth from a big stock trade, it does not follow that SCO will be on any better financial footing.
Yes, but the success or failure personally of those executives is not what keeps SCO afloat.
There is a common misconception out there that stock price directly affects a company... it does not.
If I purchase a milliion shares of SCO on the open market, SCO does not see a PENNY of that money. The only time SCO sees money from the sale of stock is when SCO issues NEW stock into the market.
So.. if the stock price goes up, it's good for a company, in that they can issue more stock, and get more capital without giving away such a large piece of the pie.
However, microsoft buying a million shares of SCO would not by itself fund sco at all.... unless they bought those shares FROM SCO, which it doesn't sound like they are doing.
IT does all depend how it was defined.
It would seem reasonable that by "Season" they mean the regular-season games.. not exhibition games and whatnot. That is commonly accepted.. though probably not all that heavily thought about.
As a business, though, there is MONEY in pre-season and post-season games... there is an audience, there is gambling, there is everything you get wiht normal season games.. so season could also be taken to mean one entire yearly cycle of the sport.
Sounds like this really is one for the lawyers though.
Pixar will switch to whatever is currently going to suit their needs the best... in their business, they aren't going to sit around and use "legacy" stuff just because of previous investment.. you will see them re-tool much more often than a traditional business.
Absolutely... because as time marches on for us, our observable universe gets larger, and the things we are watching get older... if we could fast forward, we would see more and more galaxies forming further and further away.
You are thinking of a 3-dimensional explosion / expansion.. everything moving away from some central point. This is not what is going on at all, though.
This is a 4-dimensional explosion / expansion.. everything is moving away from everything else.. there is no "middle". Or, if you like, any observer is smack in the middle of his own observable universe.
There center is you. The edge is the distance travelled at the speed of light times the age of the universe. Speculating on what "might" exist outside of that is irrelevant, if it is outside that boundary, it is not in your universe, and nothing happening there has any effect on your observable universe (which is expanding at this moment). IN fact to speak of it as a "place" where things could be is even erroneous.. the farther away we look, the farther back in time we are also looking. To think of it as a 3 dimensional boundary that we could just go to the edge of might seem logical at first, but in fact it's totally and competely inaccurate to think of it that way.
Private individuals are free to write C&D letters to these services as well.
Threatened with what? Putting up a legal database?
If people are too chickenshit to stand up for what is legally their right.. how can you blame that on doctors?
Though that logic makes sense at first, it's not true.
Certainly with a really loud car stereo, the effect is the same.. but there is somethin gabout the way headphones work that relatively quiet headphones really do cut you off from the outside world much more than speaker listening at the same volume... partly due to how your brain intereprets the sound, how your awareness focuses.
Try this.. get a little stereo, and some headphones, and adjust both so listening to the same tune seems to be at the same volume. Don't pick a high volume.. a medium, easy listening one. Then try to have a conversation with someone in the room... you will find it's a lot easier to talk to them when listening to the stereo as opposed to the headphones, despite having the same volume at the ear.
This is not a blacklist. IT's just a plain old list.
Just because you sued a doctor for malpractice does not mean you will be refused care.. but if it looks like you are in the habit of suing doctors for a living.... you should expect them to be wary, rightly so.
People are free to compile a complimentary database of doctors who have been sued...
First, it's not a blacklist.. it's just a list. I believe the front-page of the site even boldy states that THIS IS NOT A BLACKLIST.
It's there for information.
"Oh, those evil doctors". Doctors are people to, and they run a business, and believe it or not, along with legitimate claims out there, there are a LOT of frivolous lawsuits against doctors... a lot of bogus malpractice claims. If you were a doctor, would you not want to know of your potential client had sued the last 5 doctors she dealt with?
Lawsuits are public record. The public is free to organize and create lists of doctors who have been sued for malpractice as well.
Yeah.. I See also there is a difference between lumens and ansi lumens....
I was quoting lumens, which max out at 650lm/W (100% efficiency)
Why are you relying on the phone company for your phone? Find out what systme they use, then go get your own phone.. then go sign up with them. You don't have to get the phone from them.
That's what most of hte world does, outside the US.
Really?
So... at 100% conversion, how much power does, say, your average 17" monitor put out in terms of light? (not counting heat, etc)
You might be surprised just how bright 4 watts of pure light is.
a 100W tungsten incandescent light bulb is about 2.6% efficent.... or 17.5 lumens/watt so 1750 lumens.
Good tungsten halogen bulbs, 3.6% (3.6W) or 2500 lumens for a 100W source.
So.. a matchbox projector with 4W of output with a 100% luminous efficiency would give us, say, 650lm/W * 4W = 2600 lumens...
If you google around for projectors, you'll find that for $2000 you can get around a 2200 lumen projector.
That's a 200W lamp.
That won't help you win, not by much.
Every good poker player already does that.. knows which cards he has seen that game, at least, any that matter (remember not all cards visible are always important).
The game of poker is ultimately a game of bluffing and one man -vs- the next.. a computer would not necessarily beat human players at poker.
Remember, the object is not to win each hand, but to win the other player's money.. and that COULD mean only winning one hand out of an entire sitting.
Email has always been legally acceptable.. the only issue is whether you can prove in court an email was really delivered or not.
ANY form of communication can constitute a valid contract, some are just harder to prove than others.
A written piece of paper with real original signatures, including several witnesses, is fairly hard to fake. That's why important legal documents have so many signatories.. it's to show that yes, all parties understood the contract, and yes, all parties willingly agreed to it.
In this case, AOL *registered* their email address with the copyright office as a valid way to contact them about copyright issues... that's the point. Had they not done this, they could have insisited on some other method probably.
But they said "this is the address that we will accept complaints on".. then they proceeded to ignore those complaints through mismanagement.
Note that many contracts (mine for instance) state that you are liable for a max $50 if the CARD is stolen...
that means if the card is no longer physically on you. If I still have the card in my pocket, and someone is using a copy, I am not liable at all...
Remember, even with fraudulent use, the merchant has to be able to prove that YOU authorized the transaction. Video evidence, your signature, something shipped to your home address... barring that, any disputed charges will generally be dropped with no hassle.
If someone takes your card, and goes on a shopping spree, yet no merchant can show your signature or any evidence that you weren't there, VISA won't pay the merchant, and the $50 liability doesn't even come into play.
Not an elitist at all.. I realize that my tatste in headphones is eccentric. I also happen to use various other headphones nowhere near as expensive.
The average person can easily tell the difference between $10 headphones and, say, a good pair of $50 Grado Sr-60 headphones... far from elitist.
I'm only countering the argument that "all sound cards sound good". They do not, on anything above the run of the mill cheapest consumer gear.
If all you want is video games and some radio tunes, of course you won't notice, if you are actually listening to real music, you will.
True enough.
Now. Let's consider the database as a whole.
Do you feel that any database you take the time to put together should have no protection whatseover? As a whole, I mean..
We can probably agree that wholesale copying of my database should not be allowed... even if the individual facts are not copyrightable.
The question becomes, where do we draw the line? Should the DB owner get no protection?
"Now its obvious you're trolling. Say what you want about AC97-based onboard sound (which nearly everythign is), but its good enough. Your speakers are much more likely the problem. The long and short is that all PC sounds cards equally suck until you get to professional grade gear."
That is absolute BS.. I'm sorry. Plenty of on and offboard common sound cards and chipsets (all of which are ac97-based) sound like shit. Some, however, sound surprisingly good. Some older, ancient cards still DO sound better.. better dacs, better shielding, etc.
How is it my speakers are the problem, when I try both soundcards side by side, and the old one sounds much better, and closer to reference?
For that matter, my headphones were about $900... if they are the problem, i'll eat them.