I have a bit of a problem with the government forcing me to do something against my will. It's all a little too nannying.
I'm in the "if they don't want to vote, screw 'em" camp. Yes, they should vote, and it should be made as easy as possible to do so, but if people are too apathetic to do that, I don't see how forcing them to vote will benefit society.
A patent in a legal monopoly by definition. Until patent law is changed, they can't be hit with anti-trust or monopoly abuse quite so easily.
Actually, I think they can. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is.Of course, MS are licensing the technology at a reasonable price (just too much for free software developers), so they're not likely to be found to be abusing the monopoly.
It doesn't. But the police had no reason to be involved, unless he had reasonable suspicion that he was breaking the law.
While it was possible that he did violate the TOS, it is just as likely that he wasn't. Given this, the officer should have given him the benefit of the doubt unless a representative of the library had specifically requested police assistance. Since the library was closed, it's unlikely that the libraian had anything to do with it.
Not quite my point. I'm assuming that you would be pretty much stuck with losing, and that argument probably won't wash simply because the RIAA's lawyer is probably a lot better at splitting legal hairs than you.
My aim would be to reduce the damages. The plaintiff would no doubt insist that digital copies are perfect, and use that as part of the rationale for such high damages. Since these are lossy copies, this argument doesn't stand.
While it is probably true that you can't win (not certain though; It may be possible to claim that you were hacked, or discredit their evidence).
What a defendent may be able to do is argue that the damages are disproportionate. That the actual harm done is insignificant (according to reports that can be submitted as evidence), that the law that they're being sued under is intended for large scale commercial piracy operations, and that digital copies are not perfect (i.e. mp3s are lossy).
If you have a +R drive, you buy +R discs. If you have a -R drive, you buy -R discs. The market is easily big enough to support both formats, and as long as they can actually read each type of disc, it isn't going to make a huge difference unless you accidentally buy the wrong sort.
The camcorder industry has had a number of standards of media for years. Film cameras for decades. The only time compatibility comes in is when we're looking at pre-recorded media.
It sounded like the "journalist" cut and pasted the paragraph from the MPAA's press release to bump his word count up.
You'd be surprised just how many articles in major newspapers are provided by PR companies and departments, and simply printed more-or-less verbatim. The chances are, all the journalist did was write the first paragraph (if that).
Researchers also reported that the sunjects had great difficulty singing along to rock around the clock, and couldn't remember which Rocky movie was which.
Well, some people will claim that there's a difference between a geek and a nerd, but I think I'll just accept that you have a good point, since I'm somewhat intimidated by the size of your rack.
According to aopinion. I think they are excessively invasive. Presumably the people responsible for sacking this guy felt they were, and I'll bet the guy who was playing solitaire all day thought they were.
What type of monitoring wouldn't be excessively invasive?
Anything that involves a sysadmin looking at specific information that he has not been given access to.
Monitoring typically means remote viewing of the screen of the user, in addition to HTTP logs and other resources.
Monitoring to me means logging HTTP accesses, and possibly email recipients.
Most netadmins I know use Dameware NT Utilities, which allows for remote viewing without user notification if you roll your own INI file and force it on the user when you silently remotely install.
I'm sure its a very useful utility. but if those netadmins were taking random screengrabs from their users, I'd certainly urge them to stop doing so.
If the security guard had broken into some guy's office, and found that he'd stolen a couple of million dollars worth of company equipment, with reasonable suspicion that the user of the office had perpetrated a crime,
If the company has a policy that security guards should not be breaking into offices, then I'd expect him to be sacked at the very least. Company policy still applies even if you find someone else breaching company policy. I'd feel that the same rule applies to sysadmins as well.
It's not as if the computer the supervisor was using was a personal computer. It was ALDOT property, and it appears that it was a well know fact that the supervisor was abusing company property.
Yes. He was abusing company property, and was reprimanded for it. The sysadmin abused company property and a position of trust. He should not have had that much access to what may be confidential information. The fact that he didn't see any confidential information is not the point. The point is, he could have done. He took matters into his own hands without any thought of the potential consequences.
Did he spend a lot of time reading paper documents, or talking to people on the phone? It could have been that the computer was superfluous, and he just used it to unwind.
The company policy states network monitoring. Network monitoring is pretty much expected. Screengrabs are excessively invasive, especially without the target's supervisor's permission.
If the security guard had broken into some guys house, and found that he's stolen a couple of million dollars worth of company equipment, I'd still expect the security guard to be arrested for breaking and entering.
This is why so many people have such disdain for IT people. They expect the users to know more about computers than they do, and expect people to know the rules, when they just pick them up as they go along, and they refuse to have anything to do with anything outside their job.
If my car doesn't start, I'll try starting it again. I'll try a few more times before calling assistance. If the printer doesn't print, I'll do the same thing. Most people don't know a thing about printer queues. They don't know what magic happens with servers. They don't even know there is another compouter between them and the printer, let alone the fact that the printer has a computer inside it. Why would they even consider that trying to print again might cause problems?
And with error dialogues, people jsut learn what they're for. It's what people do. They try something and it doesn't work. 99% of error boxes are pointless, a waste of time, and interfere with what they're trying to do. If it's something important, then the programmers should add a warning that people are going to notice. If it was one or two people, you might have a point, but when this is a regular occuranbce, then the user interface is clearly broken, and bitching to the users isn't going to change that.
As for marking emails "important", why not just let the user decide what is and isn't important? If you're going to mark it important, when it isn't to a user, why should they expect the next one to one important? They're more likely to think that you're a self-obsessed nerd, who thinks anything he has to say is important. If this causes a problem, it's because you are unable to understand human nature. Human nature is the way it is. You can't change it.
And if peopel asking you to do something that's not in your job description is a regular occurance, then it's up to you to deal with it in as efficient a way as possible. Bitching about the users isn't going to help.
I find the self-righteousness of a lot of IT guys quite tedious. Strangely, the ones I've actually worked with are helpful and professional. There just seem to be so many "jokes" online about how useless their users are, and how life would be so much easier without them, when it's simply a case of users not being experts with a very complicated and fiddly tool.
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I have a bit of a problem with the government forcing me to do something against my will. It's all a little too nannying.
I'm in the "if they don't want to vote, screw 'em" camp. Yes, they should vote, and it should be made as easy as possible to do so, but if people are too apathetic to do that, I don't see how forcing them to vote will benefit society.
Well, it did take me over a year to discover that the floppy drive in one of my machines didn't work.
I see.
Do you think it's just a coincidence that the two names sound so similar?
A patent in a legal monopoly by definition. Until patent law is changed, they can't be hit with anti-trust or monopoly abuse quite so easily.
Actually, I think they can. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is.Of course, MS are licensing the technology at a reasonable price (just too much for free software developers), so they're not likely to be found to be abusing the monopoly.
It doesn't. But the police had no reason to be involved, unless he had reasonable suspicion that he was breaking the law.
While it was possible that he did violate the TOS, it is just as likely that he wasn't. Given this, the officer should have given him the benefit of the doubt unless a representative of the library had specifically requested police assistance. Since the library was closed, it's unlikely that the libraian had anything to do with it.
Not quite my point. I'm assuming that you would be pretty much stuck with losing, and that argument probably won't wash simply because the RIAA's lawyer is probably a lot better at splitting legal hairs than you.
My aim would be to reduce the damages. The plaintiff would no doubt insist that digital copies are perfect, and use that as part of the rationale for such high damages. Since these are lossy copies, this argument doesn't stand.
Firstly - IANAL.
While it is probably true that you can't win (not certain though; It may be possible to claim that you were hacked, or discredit their evidence).
What a defendent may be able to do is argue that the damages are disproportionate. That the actual harm done is insignificant (according to reports that can be submitted as evidence), that the law that they're being sued under is intended for large scale commercial piracy operations, and that digital copies are not perfect (i.e. mp3s are lossy).
I'd blame the increase in DVD and video game sales, but that's just wild speculation my my part.
If you have a +R drive, you buy +R discs. If you have a -R drive, you buy -R discs. The market is easily big enough to support both formats, and as long as they can actually read each type of disc, it isn't going to make a huge difference unless you accidentally buy the wrong sort.
The camcorder industry has had a number of standards of media for years. Film cameras for decades. The only time compatibility comes in is when we're looking at pre-recorded media.
They're making a different argument. The MPAA's argument is that they've breached a contract that was intended to prevent this from happening.
It sounded like the "journalist" cut and pasted the paragraph from the MPAA's press release to bump his word count up.
You'd be surprised just how many articles in major newspapers are provided by PR companies and departments, and simply printed more-or-less verbatim. The chances are, all the journalist did was write the first paragraph (if that).
And it's still more believable than an internet rumour.
Well, sort of true.
But there will be countless pop culture references to the new movies. People will discuss what's wrong with them ad-nauseum.
It's a choice between watching the films, or not having a clue what anyone is on about.
Researchers also reported that the sunjects had great difficulty singing along to rock around the clock, and couldn't remember which Rocky movie was which.
Well, some people will claim that there's a difference between a geek and a nerd, but I think I'll just accept that you have a good point, since I'm somewhat intimidated by the size of your rack.
It's not about ignorance of the law, but ignorance of the patents.
Intent is what's important here. If they can prove you deliberately violated the patents, the damages will be higher.
I was thinking the first of these. The other one could be funny.
Perhaps, but I suspect that most people wouldn't really consider you a nerd.
But if they have interests outside of their speciality, they're no longer nerds.
(Okay, so I'm redefining the argument to fit my position. This is the internet).
That would be painful to watch.
There's nothing more pathetic than a bunch of nrds trying to throw a punch.
According to what policy?
According to aopinion. I think they are excessively invasive. Presumably the people responsible for sacking this guy felt they were, and I'll bet the guy who was playing solitaire all day thought they were.
What type of monitoring wouldn't be excessively invasive?
Anything that involves a sysadmin looking at specific information that he has not been given access to.
Monitoring typically means remote viewing of the screen of the user, in addition to HTTP logs and other resources.
Monitoring to me means logging HTTP accesses, and possibly email recipients.
Most netadmins I know use Dameware NT Utilities, which allows for remote viewing without user notification if you roll your own INI file and force it on the user when you silently remotely install.
I'm sure its a very useful utility. but if those netadmins were taking random screengrabs from their users, I'd certainly urge them to stop doing so.
If the security guard had broken into some guy's office, and found that he'd stolen a couple of million dollars worth of company equipment, with reasonable suspicion that the user of the office had perpetrated a crime,
If the company has a policy that security guards should not be breaking into offices, then I'd expect him to be sacked at the very least. Company policy still applies even if you find someone else breaching company policy. I'd feel that the same rule applies to sysadmins as well.
It's not as if the computer the supervisor was using was a personal computer. It was ALDOT property, and it appears that it was a well know fact that the supervisor was abusing company property.
Yes. He was abusing company property, and was reprimanded for it. The sysadmin abused company property and a position of trust. He should not have had that much access to what may be confidential information. The fact that he didn't see any confidential information is not the point. The point is, he could have done. He took matters into his own hands without any thought of the potential consequences.
What did his job involve?
Did he spend a lot of time reading paper documents, or talking to people on the phone? It could have been that the computer was superfluous, and he just used it to unwind.
It's a matter of degree.
The company policy states network monitoring. Network monitoring is pretty much expected. Screengrabs are excessively invasive, especially without the target's supervisor's permission.
If the security guard had broken into some guys house, and found that he's stolen a couple of million dollars worth of company equipment, I'd still expect the security guard to be arrested for breaking and entering.
This is why so many people have such disdain for IT people. They expect the users to know more about computers than they do, and expect people to know the rules, when they just pick them up as they go along, and they refuse to have anything to do with anything outside their job.
If my car doesn't start, I'll try starting it again. I'll try a few more times before calling assistance. If the printer doesn't print, I'll do the same thing. Most people don't know a thing about printer queues. They don't know what magic happens with servers. They don't even know there is another compouter between them and the printer, let alone the fact that the printer has a computer inside it. Why would they even consider that trying to print again might cause problems?
And with error dialogues, people jsut learn what they're for. It's what people do. They try something and it doesn't work. 99% of error boxes are pointless, a waste of time, and interfere with what they're trying to do. If it's something important, then the programmers should add a warning that people are going to notice. If it was one or two people, you might have a point, but when this is a regular occuranbce, then the user interface is clearly broken, and bitching to the users isn't going to change that.
As for marking emails "important", why not just let the user decide what is and isn't important? If you're going to mark it important, when it isn't to a user, why should they expect the next one to one important? They're more likely to think that you're a self-obsessed nerd, who thinks anything he has to say is important. If this causes a problem, it's because you are unable to understand human nature. Human nature is the way it is. You can't change it.
And if peopel asking you to do something that's not in your job description is a regular occurance, then it's up to you to deal with it in as efficient a way as possible. Bitching about the users isn't going to help.
I find the self-righteousness of a lot of IT guys quite tedious. Strangely, the ones I've actually worked with are helpful and professional. There just seem to be so many "jokes" online about how useless their users are, and how life would be so much easier without them, when it's simply a case of users not being experts with a very complicated and fiddly tool.