If you think that you don't sign a contract when you enter a hospital, you haven't had medical treatment in a long time. The stuff you sign to get anything done nowadays is on par with the EULAs discussed recently on/.
Nonetheless, I would find it hard to believe that you couldn't request a copy be made made, or the originals loaned to a licensed doctor, for a small fee. (small is, of course, relative when you're talking the medical community).
If the corporation goes under, then the name is an asset which gets sold off. It's a piece of property, not the corporation as a whole. Most obligations are gone.
If, otoh, the company is purchased along with all the corporate obligations, then the new company must honor the warranty. If the obligations are not "purchased" in the transaction, then they must be assigned to a responsible party. That's who you would have to sue.
It's easier to sue the current owners, and make them prove they're not responsible. In their scramble to clear themselves, they'll likely have to finger the entity with the obligation.
I'd verify the parent's claim of being able to sue (in small calims court) for expenses not actually incurred. Besides, your troubleshooting time and lost productivity will likely not be part of the warranty. Almost nobody is stupid enough in this day to not explicitly exclude that from their terms.
That isn't to say that there aren't some technological hurdles. For example: - I don't have a smart card reader (or POS terminal) at home, how do I use my card on the internet?
Go buy one. For the price that card readers are nowadays, it should be doable for under $20 given the quantites sold. Actually, I already have one built into my Dell Laptop (M70). I wish it had been a memorycard reader instead, or a 1394 port, but there it is, on the left side of the keyboard.
- Are you going to give me a smart card reader? If so are you going to help out my father in law because he can type in a credit card but your new fangled reader is beyond him and might not support his ancient Mac that he uses.
Well, I was going to say "get a new computer" or buy a parallel or serial port version of the card reader, but how about this: Would it be so hard to create a callback system? If you attempt a charge, the approcal is withheld until an automated call is made to your registered home phone number, which states the vendor, time of transaction, and dollar amount. Press one to confirm or two to alert the fraud department of a fraudulent use of your card. Besides, how great would it be to never have to type in your number again?**
- When I go to the local vendor market they can take my credit card using carbon paper and such. They don't have power or communications and therefore no POS terminal.
Somebody needs to get into the 1990s. I've seen cellphone based POS terminals, and either a portable power supply or a battery powered POS terminal would be possible (I don't know if the latter exists...I don't do CC at my business - we're cash only). Otherwise, its back to paper with dead people's pictures.
How do I initially verify your identity when I give you the new card? Do I just mail it (think mail theft going up).
Well, the "call from your home phone" to activate is pretty good. It requires a bit more than just swiping somebodys mail. Once again, the automated response system might come into play as well. After your first charge, you get a call at your phone number of record verifying the purchase...if you don't verify the charge on the phone, the number is cancelled and the fraud department gets alerted. The nice thing about the call-back is that it can use your cell phone or VoIP number.
Everybody is moaning and complaining that the sale would be no good for the purchasing company, as all the good employees will leave. Well, from the seller's point of view, that's the problem of the new owner. The buyer, if they wish to keep the creative talent and continue making gobs of money with their new acquisition, needs to make sure the "new" employees stay happy hwere they are. If that means a variation in corporate policy for the Pixar division...well, that's what it takes. If you're going to cut benefits, you'd better be willing to pony up more cash in salaries.
While we bemoan the plight of the employees in the purchase, the simple fact is that they don't own the company, and are always subject to a sale when the owner(s) feel the price is right or that the value has peaked. That is business. If you don't like it, go make your own business. Then you can decide your own fate.
How can I make such harsh remarks from my cushy slashdot-posting-all-day-long job? I got tired of somebody else calling the shots three years ago, so I opened my own firm. Last summer I was contacted by a medium sized, regional company to sell my small practice to them and become the head of a new department, and built it from scratch. It took me about an hour to realize that, as much as I despise day to day business, I really like being the owner. I call the shots. I'm not making as much salary as I would for them, and insead of a wad of cash for my business, I've got a bunch of depreciating equipment, an office upfit loan, and a 4 year lease I've got to pay on every month. But I set my hours, determine which projects I take and which I don't want, and I set my own deadlines. Someday I plan on selling out. It may be to my employees, or it may be in a merger with another firm. It's just business, but in this case it's my business. The employees will have to deal with that.
Representative Boucher (D-Virginia) is on this commitee. He is a strong opponent of the restrictions sought by the RIAA/MPAA. There will be at least one voice on the committee that will tell them where they can put their draft.
No young person is going to download NBC Nightly News at 10 pm at night. Heck, if you're up and looking for a current events program, you might as well just watch The Daily Show. That's where most of the under-30 crowd gets its news anyway, right?
Just like Microsoft and Netscape, right? I know that the guy at the top back when they ripped netscape a new one isn't CEO anymore. He's just, well, unbelieveabley wealthy and just as arrogant. And that was before the republicans controlled the government - it's a bit more wink-wink to big business right now. Regardless, the fines and hand slaps would be minor in comparison to squeezing out a potential competitor.
But by then, VoIP will have a bad reputation, and the common man will avoid it. Especially when he can get service from comfy ma bell for just a few dollars more. You don't have to win the fight, you just have to fight long enough that the competitor dies of his own free will.
$0.25/min long distance, and if you didn't like it, you could write a letter - cause Ma Bell owned the system. Telephones? Oh, no, you couldn't buy them, they could only be leased from Ma Bell on a monthly basis.
There was a reason that Bell was broken up. It seems that everyone at the FCC was born after that decision, and only feels pity for the poor, destitute baby bells taht just can't compete as little guys. And they're so darned cute, wouldn't it be great if they were just one big company. Think of the efficency! Phone rates could be cut in half and in half again, if they just weren't made to compete with one another. *shakes head*
The whole separation of infrastructure from service is a good thing, in general, for prices (California's f*cked up electrical system notwithstanding). If you let one company control the lines and the service, all you'll get is lousy service and high prices.
This is where we're headed, and taking your business "elsewhere" won't mean much when most of the system ends op owned by one company, whether through buy-outs or mergers.
So, if she would have encircled the "sensor" with her arms and moved them from the base to the tip, would it have jerked back and forth rapidly? Aside from the obvious imagry, I'm guessing the result would have been about what we expect. It was clearly a bit "confused" and the motions erratic (two "r"s and an "a", keep your mind out of the gutter) is serveral areas where the dancer was close to multiple sensor areas.
It is quite difficult to believe that the scientist didn't manage to see the problem with the form of his "sensor".
The key line is, "Except in instances of direct infringement, it shall not be a violation of the Copyright Act to manufacture or distribute a hardware or software product capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
This is the dagger into the hearts of the content police. The fair use stuff is just smoke an mirrors if the end user can't code a hack themselves from scratch to circumvent the protections. Most of us can't, or don't have the time. This last line I quoted makes it explicitly legal for real programmers to code up decryption/backup/recompression programs for the masses to use. THIS is the holy grail. The only catch is that is has to have a legitimate use (backup/format shift) and be marketed as such. The non-infringing use can't be a mere byproduct of an illegal scheme, but since time shifting and/or backup of personally owned works has generally be estabilished as substantial noninfringing uses I'm guessing they're in the clear. I wouldn't include a yenc utility, or a public p2p client embeded in the software, though.
What's funny is that the bulk of the law looks like a mattress labeling law ("it shall be unlawful to remove or mutilate, or cause or participate in the removal or mutilation of, any label required by this section"). What really matters is the Section 5 Fair Use amendments. In just a few lines, Rep Boucher has probably sent most of the content industry apoplectic.
Unfortunately, there is one line missing from the law: "It shall be prohibited for an entity hold the patent on both a content control method and the associated mechanism for circumvention. It shall furthermore be prohibited for any entity with a business interest in or association with a business interest in content generation or content protection to hold a patent for a protection circumvention method or mechanism."
No doubt the policy wonks in DC can craft a less drafty version, but it's going to be necessary, I believe. Macrovision generally patents both protection methods and every possible workaround they can think of before they put a "product" on the market. It would be nice to try and stop that kind of restraint.
Don't worry about the unmarked bills in small denominations, just send a honkin' big check to T. Delay, he'll make sure the right people get the money they need;-)
The multiplier is too high, unfortunately. I have an issue like this, but it's for manpower. There are times during a year when I could use 10 architectural drafters per engineer, cranking away furiously for 2-3 days. Problem is, those times happen maybe once a quarter. I can't afford to hire even a single drafter full time and make money. If you could have "drafting on demand" from a pool of 1000 compentent drafters for double my normal cost ($25-$30/hr vs $12-$15) I'd jump at it. At 3x the cost, I'm scraping up against breakeven (remember - I can do it myself, in house, it just takes longer). At 5x the rate ($60-$75/hr), I can't bill out the service for what I pay for it. I'd rather take on less and have my lead times a bit longer than lose money on my biggest jobs.
Though you've been moded redundant, the core of your logic is right on topic - there's a limit to "need it right now" premium. Sun appears to have found a spot above that mark.
They make humongous lenses because (1) not all imaging areas are the size of a pinhead (eg: 35mm, 6cm) and (2) the larger the lens, the greater light collecting ability. While it is certainly true that you can cure certain quality ills with a larger lens, the principal reason is light gathering, with the size of the image being a factor in the light gathering equation. (a third is focal length, but that's another argument altogether, and tied up in the first two).
Zeiss makes good, small lenses, the Tessar in the old Yashica T4 coems to mind - every bit as sharp as lenses many times its size. Nonetheless, your point is valid that just saying it has a zeiss lens does not necessarily make it good.
Actually, they've measured black to black as fast as 0ms in the lab, but convinced that marketing folks that nobody would believe that they could achive those numbers. Next year, they're going to release the same panels at 2ms, with 1ms in 2Q2007, then again with a 250ns spec in 2H2008. By quoting a higher-than-actual response they hope to reduce user complaints of spec-fixing, as well as provide a path to better the specs each year without any additional research expenditures.
Rumor has it they have also tested the panel at 0ms white to white, but they're not releasing any data on "lit" pixel response until the 3Q2006 panels are ready to go into the distribution chain.
A man dies and finds himself at the end of a long line of people. At the front of the line is St. Peter, with the pearly gates behind. After hours in line, a man in surgeons scrubs appears and walks past everyone in line and straight up to St. Peter, who smiles and nods slightly as the surgeon walks through the pearly gates. Outraged, the man runs up to the front of the line and asks St. Peter why the surgeon was allowed to bypass the queue and go right into Heaven. "Do not fret, dear sir," replies St. Peter, "That was God. He just thinks he's a doctor."
Totally wrong. It's not "think of the children", it's "if you don't have children, you probably don't understand." If anything it's "think of the parents."
You see, I can control which video games - if any - are in my house. I can, and do, talk to my child. I can't control whether or not she gets a rare genetic defect (especially if I don't have genetic testing done prior to conception).
The child doesn't know and doesn't understand - they just expect their parents to help and make them well. It's the parents who bear this burden. So, if you want a stupid catch-phrase, "Think of the parents."
I hope you (or a loved one) never needs an organ transplant. Their life will depend on the death of another, possibly a child. That's what you're missing: to the recipient, the fetus would never have been viable anyway (through natural or intentional means). It's no different than receiving a liver or a heart from a victim in an accident - the donor will be just as dead if you refuse the transplant.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think that you don't sign a contract when you enter a hospital, you haven't had medical treatment in a long time. The stuff you sign to get anything done nowadays is on par with the EULAs discussed recently on /.
Nonetheless, I would find it hard to believe that you couldn't request a copy be made made, or the originals loaned to a licensed doctor, for a small fee. (small is, of course, relative when you're talking the medical community).
If the corporation goes under, then the name is an asset which gets sold off. It's a piece of property, not the corporation as a whole. Most obligations are gone.
If, otoh, the company is purchased along with all the corporate obligations, then the new company must honor the warranty. If the obligations are not "purchased" in the transaction, then they must be assigned to a responsible party. That's who you would have to sue.
It's easier to sue the current owners, and make them prove they're not responsible. In their scramble to clear themselves, they'll likely have to finger the entity with the obligation.
I'd verify the parent's claim of being able to sue (in small calims court) for expenses not actually incurred. Besides, your troubleshooting time and lost productivity will likely not be part of the warranty. Almost nobody is stupid enough in this day to not explicitly exclude that from their terms.
I'll bite:
That isn't to say that there aren't some technological hurdles. For example:
- I don't have a smart card reader (or POS terminal) at home, how do I use my card on the internet?
Go buy one. For the price that card readers are nowadays, it should be doable for under $20 given the quantites sold. Actually, I already have one built into my Dell Laptop (M70). I wish it had been a memorycard reader instead, or a 1394 port, but there it is, on the left side of the keyboard.
- Are you going to give me a smart card reader? If so are you going to help out my father in law because he can type in a credit card but your new fangled reader is beyond him and might not support his ancient Mac that he uses.
Well, I was going to say "get a new computer" or buy a parallel or serial port version of the card reader, but how about this: Would it be so hard to create a callback system? If you attempt a charge, the approcal is withheld until an automated call is made to your registered home phone number, which states the vendor, time of transaction, and dollar amount. Press one to confirm or two to alert the fraud department of a fraudulent use of your card. Besides, how great would it be to never have to type in your number again?**
- When I go to the local vendor market they can take my credit card using carbon paper and such. They don't have power or communications and therefore no POS terminal.
Somebody needs to get into the 1990s. I've seen cellphone based POS terminals, and either a portable power supply or a battery powered POS terminal would be possible (I don't know if the latter exists...I don't do CC at my business - we're cash only). Otherwise, its back to paper with dead people's pictures.
How do I initially verify your identity when I give you the new card? Do I just mail it (think mail theft going up).
Well, the "call from your home phone" to activate is pretty good. It requires a bit more than just swiping somebodys mail. Once again, the automated response system might come into play as well. After your first charge, you get a call at your phone number of record verifying the purchase...if you don't verify the charge on the phone, the number is cancelled and the fraud department gets alerted. The nice thing about the call-back is that it can use your cell phone or VoIP number.
Everybody is moaning and complaining that the sale would be no good for the purchasing company, as all the good employees will leave. Well, from the seller's point of view, that's the problem of the new owner. The buyer, if they wish to keep the creative talent and continue making gobs of money with their new acquisition, needs to make sure the "new" employees stay happy hwere they are. If that means a variation in corporate policy for the Pixar division...well, that's what it takes. If you're going to cut benefits, you'd better be willing to pony up more cash in salaries.
While we bemoan the plight of the employees in the purchase, the simple fact is that they don't own the company, and are always subject to a sale when the owner(s) feel the price is right or that the value has peaked. That is business. If you don't like it, go make your own business. Then you can decide your own fate.
How can I make such harsh remarks from my cushy slashdot-posting-all-day-long job? I got tired of somebody else calling the shots three years ago, so I opened my own firm. Last summer I was contacted by a medium sized, regional company to sell my small practice to them and become the head of a new department, and built it from scratch. It took me about an hour to realize that, as much as I despise day to day business, I really like being the owner. I call the shots. I'm not making as much salary as I would for them, and insead of a wad of cash for my business, I've got a bunch of depreciating equipment, an office upfit loan, and a 4 year lease I've got to pay on every month. But I set my hours, determine which projects I take and which I don't want, and I set my own deadlines. Someday I plan on selling out. It may be to my employees, or it may be in a merger with another firm. It's just business, but in this case it's my business. The employees will have to deal with that.
Representative Boucher (D-Virginia) is on this commitee. He is a strong opponent of the restrictions sought by the RIAA/MPAA. There will be at least one voice on the committee that will tell them where they can put their draft.
...We Got Us A CONVOY..."
No young person is going to download NBC Nightly News at 10 pm at night. Heck, if you're up and looking for a current events program, you might as well just watch The Daily Show. That's where most of the under-30 crowd gets its news anyway, right?
I was under the impression that the code was installed when you forgot to hold down the shift key. "tacit approval via convenience"
Just like Microsoft and Netscape, right? I know that the guy at the top back when they ripped netscape a new one isn't CEO anymore. He's just, well, unbelieveabley wealthy and just as arrogant. And that was before the republicans controlled the government - it's a bit more wink-wink to big business right now. Regardless, the fines and hand slaps would be minor in comparison to squeezing out a potential competitor.
But by then, VoIP will have a bad reputation, and the common man will avoid it. Especially when he can get service from comfy ma bell for just a few dollars more. You don't have to win the fight, you just have to fight long enough that the competitor dies of his own free will.
Oh, come on. You're userID is low enough to know that tech support for family members is never worth it, no matter what the price ;-)
$0.25/min long distance, and if you didn't like it, you could write a letter - cause Ma Bell owned the system. Telephones? Oh, no, you couldn't buy them, they could only be leased from Ma Bell on a monthly basis.
There was a reason that Bell was broken up. It seems that everyone at the FCC was born after that decision, and only feels pity for the poor, destitute baby bells taht just can't compete as little guys. And they're so darned cute, wouldn't it be great if they were just one big company. Think of the efficency! Phone rates could be cut in half and in half again, if they just weren't made to compete with one another. *shakes head*
The whole separation of infrastructure from service is a good thing, in general, for prices (California's f*cked up electrical system notwithstanding). If you let one company control the lines and the service, all you'll get is lousy service and high prices.
This is where we're headed, and taking your business "elsewhere" won't mean much when most of the system ends op owned by one company, whether through buy-outs or mergers.
...and thank God for Russian weather satellites.
So, if she would have encircled the "sensor" with her arms and moved them from the base to the tip, would it have jerked back and forth rapidly? Aside from the obvious imagry, I'm guessing the result would have been about what we expect. It was clearly a bit "confused" and the motions erratic (two "r"s and an "a", keep your mind out of the gutter) is serveral areas where the dancer was close to multiple sensor areas.
It is quite difficult to believe that the scientist didn't manage to see the problem with the form of his "sensor".
The key line is, "Except in instances of direct infringement, it shall not be a violation of the Copyright Act to manufacture or distribute a hardware or software product capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
This is the dagger into the hearts of the content police. The fair use stuff is just smoke an mirrors if the end user can't code a hack themselves from scratch to circumvent the protections. Most of us can't, or don't have the time. This last line I quoted makes it explicitly legal for real programmers to code up decryption/backup/recompression programs for the masses to use. THIS is the holy grail. The only catch is that is has to have a legitimate use (backup/format shift) and be marketed as such. The non-infringing use can't be a mere byproduct of an illegal scheme, but since time shifting and/or backup of personally owned works has generally be estabilished as substantial noninfringing uses I'm guessing they're in the clear. I wouldn't include a yenc utility, or a public p2p client embeded in the software, though.
What's funny is that the bulk of the law looks like a mattress labeling law ("it shall be unlawful to remove or mutilate, or cause or participate in the removal or mutilation of, any label required by this section"). What really matters is the Section 5 Fair Use amendments. In just a few lines, Rep Boucher has probably sent most of the content industry apoplectic.
Unfortunately, there is one line missing from the law: "It shall be prohibited for an entity hold the patent on both a content control method and the associated mechanism for circumvention. It shall furthermore be prohibited for any entity with a business interest in or association with a business interest in content generation or content protection to hold a patent for a protection circumvention method or mechanism."
No doubt the policy wonks in DC can craft a less drafty version, but it's going to be necessary, I believe. Macrovision generally patents both protection methods and every possible workaround they can think of before they put a "product" on the market. It would be nice to try and stop that kind of restraint.
Don't worry about the unmarked bills in small denominations, just send a honkin' big check to T. Delay, he'll make sure the right people get the money they need ;-)
The multiplier is too high, unfortunately. I have an issue like this, but it's for manpower. There are times during a year when I could use 10 architectural drafters per engineer, cranking away furiously for 2-3 days. Problem is, those times happen maybe once a quarter. I can't afford to hire even a single drafter full time and make money. If you could have "drafting on demand" from a pool of 1000 compentent drafters for double my normal cost ($25-$30/hr vs $12-$15) I'd jump at it. At 3x the cost, I'm scraping up against breakeven (remember - I can do it myself, in house, it just takes longer). At 5x the rate ($60-$75/hr), I can't bill out the service for what I pay for it. I'd rather take on less and have my lead times a bit longer than lose money on my biggest jobs.
Though you've been moded redundant, the core of your logic is right on topic - there's a limit to "need it right now" premium. Sun appears to have found a spot above that mark.
They make humongous lenses because (1) not all imaging areas are the size of a pinhead (eg: 35mm, 6cm) and (2) the larger the lens, the greater light collecting ability. While it is certainly true that you can cure certain quality ills with a larger lens, the principal reason is light gathering, with the size of the image being a factor in the light gathering equation. (a third is focal length, but that's another argument altogether, and tied up in the first two).
Zeiss makes good, small lenses, the Tessar in the old Yashica T4 coems to mind - every bit as sharp as lenses many times its size. Nonetheless, your point is valid that just saying it has a zeiss lens does not necessarily make it good.
Actually, they've measured black to black as fast as 0ms in the lab, but convinced that marketing folks that nobody would believe that they could achive those numbers. Next year, they're going to release the same panels at 2ms, with 1ms in 2Q2007, then again with a 250ns spec in 2H2008. By quoting a higher-than-actual response they hope to reduce user complaints of spec-fixing, as well as provide a path to better the specs each year without any additional research expenditures.
Rumor has it they have also tested the panel at 0ms white to white, but they're not releasing any data on "lit" pixel response until the 3Q2006 panels are ready to go into the distribution chain.
You shouldn't be angry, you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling, knowing that you have something in common with Sen. Ted Kennedy. ;-)
(the only difference is that he can bash political heads when this happens to him, you're kinda stuck)
A man dies and finds himself at the end of a long line of people. At the front of the line is St. Peter, with the pearly gates behind. After hours in line, a man in surgeons scrubs appears and walks past everyone in line and straight up to St. Peter, who smiles and nods slightly as the surgeon walks through the pearly gates. Outraged, the man runs up to the front of the line and asks St. Peter why the surgeon was allowed to bypass the queue and go right into Heaven. "Do not fret, dear sir," replies St. Peter, "That was God. He just thinks he's a doctor."
Totally wrong. It's not "think of the children", it's "if you don't have children, you probably don't understand." If anything it's "think of the parents."
You see, I can control which video games - if any - are in my house. I can, and do, talk to my child. I can't control whether or not she gets a rare genetic defect (especially if I don't have genetic testing done prior to conception).
The child doesn't know and doesn't understand - they just expect their parents to help and make them well. It's the parents who bear this burden. So, if you want a stupid catch-phrase, "Think of the parents."
I hope you (or a loved one) never needs an organ transplant. Their life will depend on the death of another, possibly a child. That's what you're missing: to the recipient, the fetus would never have been viable anyway (through natural or intentional means). It's no different than receiving a liver or a heart from a victim in an accident - the donor will be just as dead if you refuse the transplant.