that Novell is not on the list of creditors.
Yep, that's right - that is the good news. Why, you ask? (Even if you didn't ask, play along, or this post is fairly pointless.)
You see, the judgment that SCO needed to forward payments to Novell related to the MS and Sun deals has already been put on the books. Barring appeal, it means that the monies due Novell do not belong to SCO, and are not any part of the assets to be distributed by a bankruptcy. After all, if a thief goes bankrupt, it doesn't mean that your stolen property is not still your property. The thief can't legally sell it to raise funds for the bankruptcy. Neither can SCO use the funds owed Novell, since those funds do not belong to SCO.
Personally, I think that's pretty good news - the bankruptcy does not change SCO's loss in summary judgements to a rained-out game.
Anyways, it couldn't be any worse than Battlefield Earth, could it?
Oh dear.
You have no idea.
An MST3K of it? They couldn't do it. There was nothing they could do to it to make it (better|worse|funnier|stupider|more appalling). It would be like taking your absolute favorite meal *ever*, then adding caramel to it to "make it taste better".
Remember - we are talking a movie where Bela Lugosi died, and was replaced by a chiropractor - younger, taller, and blond - as "the Ghoul Man", who played his part crouched down with a cape over his face, so people wouldn't notice.
And the Octopus battle scene! This was conducted in a public park, at night (because they didn't have a stage, a budget, or a permit) with a *stolen* rubber octopus. Unfortunately, they forgot to take the motor(s) that made the octopus run, so "our hero" had to "battle" the octopus, in a shallow pool of water, under a car's headlights, and move the limbs of the octopus himself. It's really a classic scene.
As is the scene where the giant zombie knocks over the obviously cardboard tombstone.
As is the scene where they are "flying" in the "airplane" - the airplane never moves, but they bounce in their chairs to simulate flight.
As is... well, just about all of the movie, in fact.
And how can you beat this quote from the movie - "Future events such as these will affect us in the future" - absolutely classic!
Nope. Sorry. Pass over that geek card, son, and walk away. Just walk away.
To date, in the movies, we have never seen a 'Force Push' (to use a term from the games) start anywhere other than at the palm / fingers of the person exerting the Force. Assuming this is the case, then let's see what happens:
The droids start attacking Obi Wan's ship. In reaction, he uses a 'Force Push' to push away the droids....
And blasts out the side or window of his own fighter.
Not smart.
(This does not appear to apply to the 'Force choke', by the way, which could be a non-physical mental effect).
Considering that this question has come up for me in other contexts, I can answer this more easily than I would have been able to before. The violation comes because all four aspects must be considered, not just one, when making the determination of infringement.
To give an exaggerated example, let us copy the entirity of Star Wars Episode (choose your favorite) into a digital format, and digitally replace the heads of the main characters with other heads (say, famous politician's heads) for the purpos of parody, using advanced CGI techniques to synchronize the motions of the heads with the real motions from the film. Now, release this tour-de-force of parody upon the internet, safe in the assurance that the intent was parody.
Trust me, LucasArts will sue, and they will win, because you only have one of the four legs of the fair use test - Purpose and Character.
You clearly have failed the Amount and substantiality test, since you copied the entire film. You fail the Nature of the work test, since it is a commercial product that you are copying. I have no idea what the courts would decide for the Effect of use test, since I have no idea what that effect would be, but a reaonable court could conclude that some sales, at least, had been lost to the parody, which may be sufficient to fail the fourth test.
Thus, the preponderance of the tests rule towards, not away from, copyright infringement, even though the intent was parody.
In this case, the link to Publaw and their article on Parody (which was present in my original comment) would have been a good place to look for information. Looking there, you will see a discussion of the "Oh, Pretty Woman" case which, while not identical, is a reasonable parallel with this case. In this case, the four point assessment went as follows:
Purpose and Character: Parody is transformative, and even in a commercial context, parody is allowed
Nature of work: No help here, "since a parody by its very nature would only be based upon an "expressive" work"
Amount and Substantiality: The court cited a "conjure up" test. This "... would deny a finding of fair use under this factor only when the parodist "has appropriated a greater amount of the original work than is necessary to 'recall or conjure up' the object of the [parody]." Here is where this case and the one cited at Publaw differ most greatly, as in this case the copying (IMO) was excessive.
Effect upon market: In the sample case, this element was remanded to the court for analysis. In this case, who knows, but there is at least a reasonable possibility of economic harm from a criticism site
That last bit brings up another point - this is not solely parody, but is also social criticism. How this would affect the court's analysis, I cannot say. But still, there is far more to this than simple "it's parody, so it's allowed".
This was probably a correct use of the DMCA (much as it pains me to type those words). Here's why I think so.
When looking at parody as a defense against copyright infringement, there is no hard-and-fast rule. Each judge goes by their own individual imperitives (sense of humor or the absurd, headaches, whatever) in evaluating a parody "fair use" defense for copyright infringement. However, each case that I examined emphasized that the differences between the original and the parody had to be such that no actual confusion would exist. Additionally, most parody cases are ones where the parody looks similar, but does not contain actual copies of copyrighted material, unedited and unaltered.
This is not the case here.
Take a look at the PDF of thw parody, compared to the original (as part of the DMCA complaint, linked from the user's site). You will see that, unlike valid parodies, he copied directly, unaltered, the top graphic, bottom graphic, and side newsbar from the WalMart Foundation site. Only the two stories in the center of the page were different.
A direct copy is, indeed, de jure and de facto copyright infringement. If he had created parodies of these major page elements as well, Wal-Mart would (IMO) have no valid legal reason to complain. However, with the direct copy of more than 50% of the visible page? Personally, I think that's too much.
This is supported by this article at Publaw on parody and fair use. Specifically, part three of the Fair Use analysis, states:
The third factor analyzes the amount and substantiality of the copying in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. The crucial determination is whether the quality and value of the material copied from the original copyrighted work is "reasonable" in relation to the purpose of copying. Regretfully, there is no black and white rule that sets forth an absolute ratio or quantity of words that may be used of the original work that would ensure a finding of fair use. Instead there have been circumstances where a court has found that the use of an entire work was fair use while under different circumstances the use of a small fraction of a work failed to qualify as a fair use. This factor not only evaluates the quantity that has been copied but also the quality and importance of the copied material. The courts when analyzing this factor evaluate whether the user of the original copyrighted material has taken any more of the original work than was necessary to achieve the purpose for which the material was copied from the original work.
I think that this student just made a mistake, but that mistake caused the creation of copyright infringement, rather than a valid parody. But that's just My Humble Opinion, and what do I know?
I like InuYasha because of the storytelling and character development
Bravo! I admit, it is one of the shows that I enjoy - along with Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai Jack, and One Piece (The Fansubbed version, not the abomination on "4Kids TV" - blecch!) among others.
In any case, the best thing about true anime shows, IMO, is that they are *not* designed for *American* kids. Ever since Johnny Quest went off the air, American Cartoons have been watered down dreck. If CN can actually capture some of the story depth and maturity of real Japanese Anime (even the lightest Anime is deeper than any Network cartood that I can think of), then I will do nothing but cheer them on. If they stick it with an 'american' depth and maturity, I'll turn it off.
Now that researchers realize that the so-called laws of computing are not rigorously formed, what else will be subject to attack?
Will we see Moore's law reduced to a log-based function as well? Will Brooks' Law be shown to be fallacious, leading to a large upsurge of temporary IT jobs? And how about Godwin's Law. Will we no longer have to fear the inevitability of Nazis or Hitler?
What will this all lead to... nothing but anarchy. Anarchy, I tell you!
LISP is, indeed, right there on the diagram. RPG doesn't seem to show on any of the diagrams... odd. Report Program Generator came out in '64, and RPG II in '69.
As for MAPPER -- well, there seems to be a disagreement as to whether or not it was a language. Unisysworld.com mentions it solely as a software product, probably based on the fact that it was a combination DB and report writing package. If this is a language, then so is any programmable DB is my opinion -- YMMV.
You may be behind the times with this information. I have the dual-receiver DISH PVR (where one TV is direct connected, and the other is remote in another location in the house). I frequently will have show "A" recording on one receiver, show "B" on the second, and be playing pre-recorded show "C" (and D, if someone else is watching on the other TV).
IMO, Dish could use someone to clean up their user interface (e.g. making the "Record All Episodes" option the default was a stupid choice -- it should be Once, or All New, not All.) But their basic box, at least now, is definitely worth considering.
Now, if only they would enable the USB port on the back of the DVR.....
One would think that an article published in the Jan, 2003 issue of MSDN Magazine, by Microsoft itself, noting the existence and use of the IsNot operator in XPath would be considered Prior Art, wouldn't one?
And XPath 2.0 was under construction well before January, 2003 (does anyone know when the isnot operator was included in the XPath spec?
Do NOT use Code 39. Or, if you do, use one of the variants that has a check digit or two.
We use Code39 here at work for some barcoding, and scanning errors happen all the time. Code128 is much more reliable, and leads to faster processing (in fact, some processes now require double scanning of some barcodes, to ensure that the scan is correct.)
The first opinion that seems to stand out is that e-voting seems to be a Republican (read that as "right wing") conspiracy to harness elections. If these folks do their homework, they'd note a preponderance of e-voting initiatives are being pushed in majority Democratic districts.
Well, assuming that this particular tinfoil-hat theory is correct, I would expect to see the majority of machines moved into majority Democratic districts. After all, under this theory, the Republicans would want to shift votes from Democrat to Republican, and a 1% shift in a primarily Democratic district is more significant than one in a primarily Republican district.
Actually, there is quite a lot more than this. The letter that SCO sent out went to a currently non-existant address, addressed to the President of Chrysler Corp (a non-existant corporation -- DaimlerChrysler is the current corporation), from a company that DC had never heard from, or had contact with, before, about a product that (a) they had not used in seven years, and which was licensed from soneone other than SCOX.
Given this, I would say that 120 days to respond would not be unreasonable. After all, first it has to get to DC (probably ~5 days), then get from the President's offices to someone who might be able to handle this (~10 working days), then get looked at for the "who the he** is this and why are they writing us" factor (5 to 20 working days), then send it over to Legal for review as to "what the he** should we do about this" review (5-20 working days). At this point, we are already more than 30 working days out from receipt. Why hurry now, when there is no way that we can meet this arbitrary deadline? And why not just ignore it, since we haven't even used this in a *long* time....
It's being called "painting the tape", or Painting, when holders of the stock trade blocks of the stock in an organized attempt to raise the price of the stock, or increase its apparent volume, in order to increase or maintain interest in the stock. Although the activity associated with SCOX's trades is not classical painting, it is close enough that no one has been upset with the usage. Usually fairly hard to detect, with SCO it has been really easy to see the patterns since it is such a lightly traded stock.
If you want some more information from people who have been following this, go to the Yahoo Message Board for SCOx and take a look at comments about painters. This has been going on at some level now for months, and SCOX board regulars always expect SCOX to be up at EOD on bad news, from the painters efforts.
Illegal? Yes. Provable? Hard. SEC interested in it? Who knows -- but a number of people following the stock have requested that the SEC look into allegations of illegal trading to maintain the price of the stock. The SEC rarely lets the cat out of the bag when it comes to who it will be investigating, but one can hope...
Oh, how I would love it if SCO is shown in court to not hold the copyrights on UNIX. Just think - Novell could Open Source (GPL preferred) some of the pieces of UNIX that MS needs to interoperate, and then any bridge software that MS writes would either need to be cleanroom-built, or GPL'd itself.
Then, MS must choose - a method to get UNIX users running on Windows, but that exposes their interfaces in GPL format; or not....
...there have been court decisions that would affect using this without either an 'active situation' (hostages, &c) or a court order. There was a case in Oregon where police were using passive IR monitoring to generate enough information on a potential pot growing operation inside a house. Their subsequent raid / arrest was thrown out as a violation of privacy. Somehow, I can't see *active* methods of surveillance being any less monitored.
What?
Did I hear someone in the audience mutter "Patriot Act"?
The calls for using the Stored Communications Act would probably have failed as well. Based on 18 USC 2701:
(c) Exceptions.
Subsection (a) [Offense] of this section does not apply with respect to conduct authorized -
(1) by the person or entity providing a wire or electronic communications service;
Since the person in question was the "... person... providing a wire or communications service", the Offense section of the act does not apply to him, if he authorized the access. No offense, no crime.
<bad music tune="Feelings"> Loopholes, Nothing more than Loopholes, Trying to prevent those, Criminal Aaaaaaaaaaaaacts! </bad music>
Looking over the ruling, it seems that this was based on an anomaly in writing the laws. Specifically, the section on 'Wire Communications' includes the phrase '... and such term includes any electronic storage of such communication...', whereas the section on 'Electronic Communication' (which includes e-mail) does not.
As noted in the decision, a standard of court interpretation of law is that, if restriction X is mentioned in context Y, but not in context Z, the restriction does not apply to context Z. Thus, although any Wire communication cannot be intercepted even if they are in storage (*whew - voicemail is safe*), anything else can be. The law only protects it while it is moving, not while it is stored.
So, what we got bit by here is a flaw in the amendment to the law. Instead of adding a section defining Electronic Communications, then stating "All restrictions on interception of Wire Communications enumerated in Section X.Y also apply to Electronic Communications. In addition...."
Congress likes being verbose. Instead of referencing, they 'cut and paste'd... badly.
Consider: If you are the SEC, and a number of people write you a number of different letters, all along the line of "Company X is pulling a Stock Scam. They don't have any real intention of staying in business. They just want to pump their stock, and sell their business.", one of the things you would look for is continuing investment in the company. And, certainly, R&D investment would count.
<TinfoilHat> What would be interesting would be to see where those $$ are being spent. Could they have contracted their R&D to some outside (Canopy) company as a way of pumping a bit more money out of the rapidly dying husk of a company?
... would be the subject of some national investigative news show, if I had my wish come true. Just think... national, prime-time coverage of how, if you have enough money, you can get a "highly respected conservative/liberal/defense/technology think tank" to say pretty much whatever you want them to.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this would lead to more critical examination of the 'studies' coming out of all of the think tanks....
Not only did they lose big bucks up front ($13 Mil back from an initial $20 mil + whatever they paid RBC for their shares), but they will be dumping this stuff for months!
From the PR:
The agreement includes a restriction on sales and dispositions by BayStar of the Company's common stock. BayStar may not exceed on any trading day, 10% of SCO's average daily trading volume on Nasdaq during the five trading days preceding such trading day. The agreement includes a mutual general release by the parties and has not required compensation to any outside agents.
If Baystar is lucky, right now that's about 250,000 shares a day average, or 25,000 shares a day that they can sell.
But, let's assume that they can get the sales up to 500,000 shares a day average, letting them sell 50,000 a day. With 2,846,004 shares to be sold, that means that Baystar, if they sold every day, would need 57 market days (about 11 1/2 weeks) to sell out... with 25,000 a day, you of course double that. This means that, if they could start selling next Monday, Baystar would be out of the stock around the First of September (around Thanksgiving if they sell at 25,000/day)
I am seriously concerned about S.2237, and the effects that it will have.
Generally, the difference between a Civil action and a Criminal action, besides the level of punishment, is that the Government brings criminal actions (because they are considered offenses against society), and the offended person or persons bring civil actions. S.2237 changes this balance by having the Federal Government bring civil actions in cases where the Federal Government is not the offended party.
This leads to a large inequity here. In criminal cases, government-paid lawyers represent defendants who want but can't afford an attorney. However, parties in civil cases usually have to represent themselves or pay for their own lawyers.
Thus, this bill has the effect of shifting the costs of prosecuting civil cases from the plaintiffs (the RIAA or Copyright holders in this case) to the Federal government, while leaving the costs of defending the cases with the defendent. Besides being inequitable, this also has the appearance of 'Corporate Welfare'.
I am strongly opposed to the passage of this bill, and would ask that you, too, oppose Senate Bill 2237.
Thank you, Bxxxxx Hxxx
P.S. GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE SITUATION THIS BILL ADDRESSES
The prevalence of copyright violations in our current society indicates to me that either the basic law needs re-thinking, or the organizations marketing the products being violated need to re-think their methods of marketing and/or distribution. However, neither of these are sufficient reason (in my opinion) for the federal government to get involved in potentially thousands of enforcement actions against citizens.
As in dozens or hundreds of cases in American history, mass societal 'rebellion' against a set of laws indicates that the law needs to change, not that society needs to increase its enforcement efforts. From Civil Rights to the right for women to smoke, from Women's suffrage to the ability to drive a car without requiring a flagger to walk in front of it, 'mass' rebellion against a law has shown that the law must change, not that the government must more stringently enforce the existing laws.
Currently, those still using the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) exchange sources must (mostly) be conciously choosing to do so, knowing that these actions are in violation of current statutes. Reading in appropriate venues on line, you can find that many have stated that they will continue with this, and boycott purchase of the copyrighted materials until such time as the manufacturers correct their (perceived) inequitable, unfair, and monopolistic practices, and (in some cases) start treating the artists and the public in a fair manner.
Yes, there are millions (estimated) of people using these P2P applications. Currrently, for example it appears that the average number of people connected to the KaZaa network (one of the larger networks) at any one time averages 2 to 3 million, with perhaps as many as 20 million people connecting to it sometime in a month, with indications that this number may be increasing. The question is: What, exactly, does this say?
Surveys of musicians indicate that P2P file sharing has helped more artists than it has hurt. A Pew survey of musicians indicated that 35% felt that file sharing had helped their careers, and 30% felt that it had increased attendance at concerts, as opposed to only 5% who felt that they had been hurt by file sharing.
However, the P2P programs do affect one group directly: The music distributors, members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). These companies cumulatively control the vast majority of the outlets and methods for distributing music... or they did before the internet and P2P applications became prevalent.
From MP3.Com (now a distribution source for independent musicians) to Napster (now a distribution source for some record companies) and KaZaa (still a P2P application/network), the RIAA has had its mon
... for SCOFud in the Business marketplace. It will be interesting to see how the ProSCO spinmeisters will work around this one.
Sure, they can talk about how this is just one organization, but it is a very large business organization, and I really don't think that they can convince the various investment managers that the National Retail Federation is in the practice of calling suits 'meritless' if it's not really clear that the suit is, in fact, meritless on its face.
Slashdot Mirror
that Novell is not on the list of creditors. Yep, that's right - that is the good news. Why, you ask? (Even if you didn't ask, play along, or this post is fairly pointless.) You see, the judgment that SCO needed to forward payments to Novell related to the MS and Sun deals has already been put on the books. Barring appeal, it means that the monies due Novell do not belong to SCO, and are not any part of the assets to be distributed by a bankruptcy. After all, if a thief goes bankrupt, it doesn't mean that your stolen property is not still your property. The thief can't legally sell it to raise funds for the bankruptcy. Neither can SCO use the funds owed Novell, since those funds do not belong to SCO. Personally, I think that's pretty good news - the bankruptcy does not change SCO's loss in summary judgements to a rained-out game.
Oh dear.
You have no idea.
An MST3K of it? They couldn't do it. There was nothing they could do to it to make it (better|worse|funnier|stupider|more appalling). It would be like taking your absolute favorite meal *ever*, then adding caramel to it to "make it taste better".
Remember - we are talking a movie where Bela Lugosi died, and was replaced by a chiropractor - younger, taller, and blond - as "the Ghoul Man", who played his part crouched down with a cape over his face, so people wouldn't notice.
And the Octopus battle scene! This was conducted in a public park, at night (because they didn't have a stage, a budget, or a permit) with a *stolen* rubber octopus. Unfortunately, they forgot to take the motor(s) that made the octopus run, so "our hero" had to "battle" the octopus, in a shallow pool of water, under a car's headlights, and move the limbs of the octopus himself. It's really a classic scene.
As is the scene where the giant zombie knocks over the obviously cardboard tombstone.
As is the scene where they are "flying" in the "airplane" - the airplane never moves, but they bounce in their chairs to simulate flight.
As is... well, just about all of the movie, in fact.
And how can you beat this quote from the movie - "Future events such as these will affect us in the future" - absolutely classic!
Nope. Sorry. Pass over that geek card, son, and walk away. Just walk away.
And watch out for those future events.
Let's consider the question carefully.
To date, in the movies, we have never seen a 'Force Push' (to use a term from the games) start anywhere other than at the palm / fingers of the person exerting the Force. Assuming this is the case, then let's see what happens:
The droids start attacking Obi Wan's ship. In reaction, he uses a 'Force Push' to push away the droids....
And blasts out the side or window of his own fighter.
Not smart.
(This does not appear to apply to the 'Force choke', by the way, which could be a non-physical mental effect).
To give an exaggerated example, let us copy the entirity of Star Wars Episode (choose your favorite) into a digital format, and digitally replace the heads of the main characters with other heads (say, famous politician's heads) for the purpos of parody, using advanced CGI techniques to synchronize the motions of the heads with the real motions from the film. Now, release this tour-de-force of parody upon the internet, safe in the assurance that the intent was parody.
Trust me, LucasArts will sue, and they will win, because you only have one of the four legs of the fair use test - Purpose and Character.
You clearly have failed the Amount and substantiality test, since you copied the entire film. You fail the Nature of the work test, since it is a commercial product that you are copying. I have no idea what the courts would decide for the Effect of use test, since I have no idea what that effect would be, but a reaonable court could conclude that some sales, at least, had been lost to the parody, which may be sufficient to fail the fourth test.
Thus, the preponderance of the tests rule towards, not away from, copyright infringement, even though the intent was parody.
In this case, the link to Publaw and their article on Parody (which was present in my original comment) would have been a good place to look for information. Looking there, you will see a discussion of the "Oh, Pretty Woman" case which, while not identical, is a reasonable parallel with this case. In this case, the four point assessment went as follows:
- Purpose and Character: Parody is transformative, and even in a commercial context, parody is allowed
- Nature of work: No help here, "since a parody by its very nature would only be based upon an "expressive" work"
- Amount and Substantiality: The court cited a "conjure up" test. This "... would deny a finding of fair use under this factor only when the parodist "has appropriated a greater amount of the original work than is necessary to 'recall or conjure up' the object of the [parody]." Here is where this case and the one cited at Publaw differ most greatly, as in this case the copying (IMO) was excessive.
- Effect upon market: In the sample case, this element was remanded to the court for analysis. In this case, who knows, but there is at least a reasonable possibility of economic harm from a criticism site
That last bit brings up another point - this is not solely parody, but is also social criticism. How this would affect the court's analysis, I cannot say. But still, there is far more to this than simple "it's parody, so it's allowed".When looking at parody as a defense against copyright infringement, there is no hard-and-fast rule. Each judge goes by their own individual imperitives (sense of humor or the absurd, headaches, whatever) in evaluating a parody "fair use" defense for copyright infringement. However, each case that I examined emphasized that the differences between the original and the parody had to be such that no actual confusion would exist. Additionally, most parody cases are ones where the parody looks similar, but does not contain actual copies of copyrighted material, unedited and unaltered.
This is not the case here.
Take a look at the PDF of thw parody, compared to the original (as part of the DMCA complaint, linked from the user's site). You will see that, unlike valid parodies, he copied directly, unaltered, the top graphic, bottom graphic, and side newsbar from the WalMart Foundation site. Only the two stories in the center of the page were different.
A direct copy is, indeed, de jure and de facto copyright infringement. If he had created parodies of these major page elements as well, Wal-Mart would (IMO) have no valid legal reason to complain. However, with the direct copy of more than 50% of the visible page? Personally, I think that's too much.
This is supported by this article at Publaw on parody and fair use. Specifically, part three of the Fair Use analysis, states:
The third factor analyzes the amount and substantiality of the copying in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. The crucial determination is whether the quality and value of the material copied from the original copyrighted work is "reasonable" in relation to the purpose of copying. Regretfully, there is no black and white rule that sets forth an absolute ratio or quantity of words that may be used of the original work that would ensure a finding of fair use. Instead there have been circumstances where a court has found that the use of an entire work was fair use while under different circumstances the use of a small fraction of a work failed to qualify as a fair use. This factor not only evaluates the quantity that has been copied but also the quality and importance of the copied material. The courts when analyzing this factor evaluate whether the user of the original copyrighted material has taken any more of the original work than was necessary to achieve the purpose for which the material was copied from the original work.
I think that this student just made a mistake, but that mistake caused the creation of copyright infringement, rather than a valid parody. But that's just My Humble Opinion, and what do I know?
If you think Monterey is cheesy, you don't know Jack.
Bravo! I admit, it is one of the shows that I enjoy - along with Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai Jack, and One Piece (The Fansubbed version, not the abomination on "4Kids TV" - blecch!) among others.
So I have eclectic tastes - so sue me. I also like "Hey! Spring Of Trivia" (SpikeTV - a Japanese Gameshow), Survivor, The Entertainer (just ended), Nova, Antiques Roadshow, and have a morbid fascination with Carpocalypse.
In any case, the best thing about true anime shows, IMO, is that they are *not* designed for *American* kids. Ever since Johnny Quest went off the air, American Cartoons have been watered down dreck. If CN can actually capture some of the story depth and maturity of real Japanese Anime (even the lightest Anime is deeper than any Network cartood that I can think of), then I will do nothing but cheer them on. If they stick it with an 'american' depth and maturity, I'll turn it off.
Will we see Moore's law reduced to a log-based function as well? Will Brooks' Law be shown to be fallacious, leading to a large upsurge of temporary IT jobs? And how about Godwin's Law. Will we no longer have to fear the inevitability of Nazis or Hitler?
What will this all lead to... nothing but anarchy. Anarchy, I tell you!
LISP is, indeed, right there on the diagram. RPG doesn't seem to show on any of the diagrams... odd. Report Program Generator came out in '64, and RPG II in '69.
As for MAPPER -- well, there seems to be a disagreement as to whether or not it was a language. Unisysworld.com mentions it solely as a software product, probably based on the fact that it was a combination DB and report writing package. If this is a language, then so is any programmable DB is my opinion -- YMMV.
You may be behind the times with this information. I have the dual-receiver DISH PVR (where one TV is direct connected, and the other is remote in another location in the house). I frequently will have show "A" recording on one receiver, show "B" on the second, and be playing pre-recorded show "C" (and D, if someone else is watching on the other TV).
IMO, Dish could use someone to clean up their user interface (e.g. making the "Record All Episodes" option the default was a stupid choice -- it should be Once, or All New, not All.) But their basic box, at least now, is definitely worth considering.
Now, if only they would enable the USB port on the back of the DVR.....
And XPath 2.0 was under construction well before January, 2003 (does anyone know when the isnot operator was included in the XPath spec?
Do NOT use Code 39. Or, if you do, use one of the variants that has a check digit or two.
We use Code39 here at work for some barcoding, and scanning errors happen all the time. Code128 is much more reliable, and leads to faster processing (in fact, some processes now require double scanning of some barcodes, to ensure that the scan is correct.)
Given this, I would say that 120 days to respond would not be unreasonable. After all, first it has to get to DC (probably ~5 days), then get from the President's offices to someone who might be able to handle this (~10 working days), then get looked at for the "who the he** is this and why are they writing us" factor (5 to 20 working days), then send it over to Legal for review as to "what the he** should we do about this" review (5-20 working days). At this point, we are already more than 30 working days out from receipt. Why hurry now, when there is no way that we can meet this arbitrary deadline? And why not just ignore it, since we haven't even used this in a *long* time....
If you want some more information from people who have been following this, go to the Yahoo Message Board for SCOx and take a look at comments about painters. This has been going on at some level now for months, and SCOX board regulars always expect SCOX to be up at EOD on bad news, from the painters efforts.
Illegal? Yes. Provable? Hard. SEC interested in it? Who knows -- but a number of people following the stock have requested that the SEC look into allegations of illegal trading to maintain the price of the stock. The SEC rarely lets the cat out of the bag when it comes to who it will be investigating, but one can hope...
Oh, how I would love it if SCO is shown in court to not hold the copyrights on UNIX. Just think - Novell could Open Source (GPL preferred) some of the pieces of UNIX that MS needs to interoperate, and then any bridge software that MS writes would either need to be cleanroom-built, or GPL'd itself.
Then, MS must choose - a method to get UNIX users running on Windows, but that exposes their interfaces in GPL format; or not....
Hmmm.....
...there have been court decisions that would affect using this without either an 'active situation' (hostages, &c) or a court order. There was a case in Oregon where police were using passive IR monitoring to generate enough information on a potential pot growing operation inside a house. Their subsequent raid / arrest was thrown out as a violation of privacy. Somehow, I can't see *active* methods of surveillance being any less monitored.
What?
Did I hear someone in the audience mutter "Patriot Act"?
(c) Exceptions.
Subsection (a) [Offense] of this section does not apply with respect to conduct authorized -
(1) by the person or entity providing a wire or electronic communications service;
Since the person in question was the "... person ... providing a wire or communications service", the Offense section of the act does not apply to him, if he authorized the access. No offense, no crime.
Looking over the ruling, it seems that this was based on an anomaly in writing the laws. Specifically, the section on 'Wire Communications' includes the phrase '... and such term includes any electronic storage of such communication...', whereas the section on 'Electronic Communication' (which includes e-mail) does not.
As noted in the decision, a standard of court interpretation of law is that, if restriction X is mentioned in context Y, but not in context Z, the restriction does not apply to context Z. Thus, although any Wire communication cannot be intercepted even if they are in storage (*whew - voicemail is safe*), anything else can be. The law only protects it while it is moving, not while it is stored.
So, what we got bit by here is a flaw in the amendment to the law. Instead of adding a section defining Electronic Communications, then stating "All restrictions on interception of Wire Communications enumerated in Section X.Y also apply to Electronic Communications. In addition...."
Congress likes being verbose. Instead of referencing, they 'cut and paste'd... badly.
*sigh*
To make the scam look better....
Consider: If you are the SEC, and a number of people write you a number of different letters, all along the line of "Company X is pulling a Stock Scam. They don't have any real intention of staying in business. They just want to pump their stock, and sell their business.", one of the things you would look for is continuing investment in the company. And, certainly, R&D investment would count.
<TinfoilHat>
What would be interesting would be to see where those $$ are being spent. Could they have contracted their R&D to some outside (Canopy) company as a way of pumping a bit more money out of the rapidly dying husk of a company?
Hmmmm.......
</TinfoilHat>
... would be the subject of some national investigative news show, if I had my wish come true. Just think... national, prime-time coverage of how, if you have enough money, you can get a "highly respected conservative/liberal/defense/technology think tank" to say pretty much whatever you want them to.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this would lead to more critical examination of the 'studies' coming out of all of the think tanks....
[I wish]
From the PR:
If Baystar is lucky, right now that's about 250,000 shares a day average, or 25,000 shares a day that they can sell.But, let's assume that they can get the sales up to 500,000 shares a day average, letting them sell 50,000 a day. With 2,846,004 shares to be sold, that means that Baystar, if they sold every day, would need 57 market days (about 11 1/2 weeks) to sell out... with 25,000 a day, you of course double that. This means that, if they could start selling next Monday, Baystar would be out of the stock around the First of September (around Thanksgiving if they sell at 25,000/day)
Poor Baystar....
NOT!
Senator Cantwell:
I am seriously concerned about S.2237, and the effects that it will have.
Generally, the difference between a Civil action and a Criminal action, besides the level of punishment, is that the Government brings criminal actions (because they are considered offenses against society), and the offended person or persons bring civil actions. S.2237 changes this balance by having the Federal Government bring civil actions in cases where the Federal Government is not the offended party.
This leads to a large inequity here. In criminal cases, government-paid lawyers represent defendants who want but can't afford an attorney. However, parties in civil cases usually have to represent themselves or pay for their own lawyers.
Thus, this bill has the effect of shifting the costs of prosecuting civil cases from the plaintiffs (the RIAA or Copyright holders in this case) to the Federal government, while leaving the costs of defending the cases with the defendent. Besides being inequitable, this also has the appearance of 'Corporate Welfare'.
I am strongly opposed to the passage of this bill, and would ask that you, too, oppose Senate Bill 2237.
Thank you,
Bxxxxx Hxxx
P.S.
GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE SITUATION THIS BILL ADDRESSES
The prevalence of copyright violations in our current society indicates to me that either the basic law needs re-thinking, or the organizations marketing the products being violated need to re-think their methods of marketing and/or distribution. However, neither of these are sufficient reason (in my opinion) for the federal government to get involved in potentially thousands of enforcement actions against citizens.
As in dozens or hundreds of cases in American history, mass societal 'rebellion' against a set of laws indicates that the law needs to change, not that society needs to increase its enforcement efforts. From Civil Rights to the right for women to smoke, from Women's suffrage to the ability to drive a car without requiring a flagger to walk in front of it, 'mass' rebellion against a law has shown that the law must change, not that the government must more stringently enforce the existing laws.
Currently, those still using the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) exchange sources must (mostly) be conciously choosing to do so, knowing that these actions are in violation of current statutes. Reading in appropriate venues on line, you can find that many have stated that they will continue with this, and boycott purchase of the copyrighted materials until such time as the manufacturers correct their (perceived) inequitable, unfair, and monopolistic practices, and (in some cases) start treating the artists and the public in a fair manner.
Yes, there are millions (estimated) of people using these P2P applications. Currrently, for example it appears that the average number of people connected to the KaZaa network (one of the larger networks) at any one time averages 2 to 3 million, with perhaps as many as 20 million people connecting to it sometime in a month, with indications that this number may be increasing. The question is: What, exactly, does this say?
Surveys of musicians indicate that P2P file sharing has helped more artists than it has hurt. A Pew survey of musicians indicated that 35% felt that file sharing had helped their careers, and 30% felt that it had increased attendance at concerts, as opposed to only 5% who felt that they had been hurt by file sharing.
However, the P2P programs do affect one group directly: The music distributors, members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). These companies cumulatively control the vast majority of the outlets and methods for distributing music... or they did before the internet and P2P applications became prevalent.
From MP3.Com (now a distribution source for independent musicians) to Napster (now a distribution source for some record companies) and KaZaa (still a P2P application/network), the RIAA has had its mon
... for SCOFud in the Business marketplace. It will be interesting to see how the ProSCO spinmeisters will work around this one.
Sure, they can talk about how this is just one organization, but it is a very large business organization, and I really don't think that they can convince the various investment managers that the National Retail Federation is in the practice of calling suits 'meritless' if it's not really clear that the suit is, in fact, meritless on its face.
Bye Bye, SCO
Are you sure that they wouldn't take GooHoo as a name? I think it's much more elegant and sophisticated.....