who the FSCK should I vote for? The lesser of several evils?
From a bumper sticker I saw the other day:
vote CTHULU in 1996
"why settle for the lesser evil?"
Seriously though, when the entire political system is infested with lawyers, who does one vote for in order to encourage reform? Everyone suggests all sorts of alternate presidential candidates, but face it: the prez will come from one of two parties for the forseeable future. Same thing (to a slightly lesser degree) for locally elected federal representatives. I'd love to work on a grassroots something-or-other, get something changed on a small scale, etc., but (like most) I'm just too dang tired.
I don't think it would be so hard to build a system where you put up 2 antennas for the same reciever and fire two mortar shells with a small transmitter.
Yes it would. LORAN uses fixed, known transmitter sites which can then be used as reference points. How do you calculate the exact location of these "transmitter shells" in order to use them as a baseline? Additionally, even if you did magically know exactly where these shells were once they landed, how many transmitters are these guys going to be carrying, in addition to the regular load of ammo? Mortar and tube artillery aren't fixed assets-- they move. In the case of mortar crews, they move a lot.
Loran of the day only used two recivers to get a fix once it decided which side of the line it was on.
Yep, it's amazing what kind of accuracy you can get with fixed assets transmitting signals intended for navigation. Getting DF shots in the field where the enemy is 1) moving, 2) hiding in RF obscuring ground clutter (LORAN was for air/sea nav; no obstructions), 3) burst transmitting packets at 4) low power that 5) frequency hop; well, that's not so easy. As a signal intelligence analyst in the Army I dealt with this crap all the time. When my unit was first issued freq-hopping SINCGARS radios, the first thing we did was try to pick one up on an intercept receiver. We heard one burst of noise once, but not long enough to get a single DF shot, much less a fix.
I still think detecting wired soldiers can be done by most countries in the world
I seriously doubt it. I do understand what you're saying-- setting up a reverse-GPS type system-- but the fact that it would require multiple fixed, precisely tuned, highly sophisticated, expensive pieces of equipment to implement pretty much renders it out of reach for anyone but the the US and UK/europe. Sure, such a system can be set up to work under ideal conditions, but that's the real rub when it comes to warfare: you can't set up ideal conditions, you have to operate under the conditions that are there.
Bullshit. In the 2002 election cycle, the RIAA gave more money to Republicans than to Democrats.
Bah! More money as in a 47%-53% split. Sounds to me like they're greasing both sides of the aisle and concentrating on incumbents. I mean, it's not like AOL/TW, who gave 100% to dems, or Curb Records, who gave 100% to reps.
If your in any army you have a topo map to give elevation. Sub nanosection timing is trivial today. Two antennas a few meters apart and a forward spotter is all you need to calibrate it. Radio astronomers have done 2 m DF at a distance of 6000 lightyears. If thats state of the art, how many orders of magnitude easier is it to 1 m at 1 km (which is in the range of mortars)
Re-read that Crab Nebula story. They didn't calculate the location of the emitter, they calculated its size. So no, you can't use "sub-nanosecond timing" with a "forward spotter" (?) to get accuracy like that.
This will work because the US has been targeting low tech areas. Anyone that can do good electromagnetic detection can use these systems to target the soldiers. If you can isolate a single signal at two different locations at the same time, you can id the target down to sub meter at distances over a hundred km.
First of all, a sub-meter accuracy triangulation requires three DF bearings. Second, only US and european militaries are equipped to do it with that degree of accuracy. Third, even the US military would run into difficulties trying to pin down a low-power, frequency hopping, burst-transmitting signal at 10km, much less 100.
The army has a long way to go in the equipment deparment like tents, food and weaponry.
Huh? How does a GP-medium tent need improvement (besides finding a way to get rid of the smell of ancient canvas)? MRE's sure beat the hell out of C-rats. And the M-16 seems to work pretty well. I'm not sure I see what you're getting at...
Give these systems to Marines at CAX, and give them an order to see how easy it is to break. I guarantee you the failure rate will be astronomical. Don't field it to regular forces until the Marine Corps cannot break it any more regularly than they can the current gear, AND don't field it until the weight is brought down.
Damn straight! When I was in the Army, I worked tactical signal intelligence. One day we had a visit from a rep for a contractor developing a manportable remote electronic warfare unit. He brought us a prototype to look at and "try on". This was a pre-production prototype that was supposed to be as rugged as the production model. Within 3 minutes we broke it. It was so heavy that the only safe way to get it off your back was to pull the quick-release tabs on the ruck straps. One guy did that and it dropped ~3 feet to the floor. The front panel popped loose and cracked and I'm sure the guts were damaged too. The rep was really annoyed, but hey, you can't build field-deployable devices that break that easily. In the field, we're all grunts, even the MI guys.
Anyone who has used the M-16 in rifle PT knows how quickly even a lightweight rifle can become extremely heavy.
heh. only 7.5 pounds, right? I remember it seemed like a lot more when held out at arms length... for several minutes... with a drill sergeant shouting "keep those arms up!"... ah, the good old days.
Nearly everyone knows a penny dropped off the Empire State Building can kill someone
Amend that to read "nearly everyone believes". It's wrong. Terminal velocity of a penny in air at 1ATM is pretty low. At most, a person hit by such a penny would say "ow" (no exclamation point).
They have discovered that the British Isles are tilting, with the north of the country gaining altitude and the south of the country 'sinking'.
They didn't discover this. The fact that the north is rising and the south sinking has been known for quite some time-- certainly longer than the GPS constellation has been up. I have a book here somewhere (can't find anything here!) that was written in the late sixties that mentions it as established fact, then positing the theory that ice age glaciers "pushed down" the island and it's "springing back". It shows a picture of some 400+ year old castle in the north that was originally built with its moat-gates open to the ocean but is now some 100 feet above sea level! Doesn't take GPS to tell you the island is tilting.
Many publishers amplify on this, stating that if you have purchased the book in question, it is stolen.
Yeah, but just because they say it doesn't mean it's true or relevant. Claiming that goods that were reported destroyed are "stolen" is already a dubious claim. Given that it's impossible to determine if a book's cover was sent back to the publisher for credit or just torn off accidentally, the publisher claiming that this is proof the book was stolen is laughable. Essentially, the publishers are trying to shame people into not buying cover-less books because they're too cheap to pay the costs of shipping them back and destroying the books themselves.
Does that mean that you are a criminal for possessing it? Beats me, but it seems to me that it puts you in a dubious position of being able to claim any right of ownership.
Since there's no law against having a book with no cover, you pretty much own it if you have it, regardless of how you got it. If you worked at a bookstore and pocketed a "destroyed" book, you might be fired if you boss finds out and the publisher might be able to demand payment from the seller who insufficiently destroyed the book, but a book with no cover is, on its own, not illegal to have.
Oh, and just to maintain a thread of topicality, in my city (Boise, Idaho), when you toss something into the dumpster, it becomes the property of the garbage company. Of course, "property", in the sense of the book issue described above seems to take on a rather confusing label. Maybe custody is a better term.
Usually garbage companies make it a matter of company policy that going through people's garbage is a strict no-no. Garbage collectors aren't supposed to take ANYTHING home (though you know they gotta run across something they can't resist once in a while!)
Are there asshole lawyers? Sure. But there are assholes in every profession - why single lawyers out?
Because lawyers have actually encouraged the creation of a legal system where advocates must use any dodge or ruse they can cook up under the rationalization that "the other guy's doing it too". Law school seems to encourage this sort of rationalization. I have two cousins and a high school friend who're lawyers and they've basically admitted to this, albeit under the rationalization that "they owe their client the best representation they can provide". One cousin, at least, also admits to the fact that it's rationalizing; but the other, he still proudly tells the following story: as a lawyer in the Army, he defended one soldier who robbed another soldier at gunpoint, which was seen by a third soldier. This third soldier was a key prosecution witness and repeatedly affirmed that yes, the gun was clearly a real gun. So my cousin gets the guy on the stand and, for forty minutes asks him a series of questions, all of which had been asked before, all of which were answered yes. So he's firing off these useless queries, and the guy is getting bored answering "yes...yes...yes...yes..." ad infinitum. So then my cousin slips in the question "is it possible the gun wasn't real?" and the guy says "yes...oh, sorry. I mean 'no'". He then hammered on this totally contrived "witness uncertainity" and got the guy down from "armed robbery" to just "robbery". He tells this story proudly at family gatherings. The fucking scumbag.
That's the problem with lawyers: they're encouraged to believe that the ends justify the means.
gasoline manufacturers putting MTBE in their product, even though it causes serious water pollution.
I don't know about other states, but in California the addition of MTBE was mandatory. It's an oxygenating additive intended to reduce air pollution. Now that the dingbats in state gov't realize they've traded a minor air pollution reduction for a major water pollution increase, they're "phasing it out". Not that I like oil companies (the gouging bastards), but the MTBE fiasco is a case of state stupidity.
Isn't it wonderful to see such innovation and progress being so thoughtfully encouraged by our beloved government?
Yeah, fun isn't it? You know, I was thinking (dangerous precedent there)-- so much of patent (and copyright, for that matter) abuse could be dealt with by simply applying both concept for the same reason it was enacted. If patent examiners were to stop for moment before they rubber-stamp the application and ask themselves "Is it something that would never see the light of day if they couldn't patent it?" Patents are, after all, limited monopolies granted by the government to encourage people to innovate. Patents are being granted too easily now, so it's turned into a gold-rush of sorts, where people try to stake a claim to every obvious variation on the " X -as-a-business model" and the " X -over-the-internet" themes.
(May they never be overthrown!)
Yes! May they never collapse under their own bureaucratic weight! I fervently hope everyone doesn't decide to not pay their taxes anymore! (heh heh)
Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.
Nah, that's just the mind control drugs in the water. (THEY call it fluoride, but I KNOW WHAT THY'RE UP TO!!!!!)
So dropping thousands of shards of extremely fine foil strip on top of advancing American soldiers seems like a good bet.
nah, no good. Chaff is only REALLY effective against radar, and then only while it's drifting down through the air. Once it hits the ground it's just litter.
That is usually the result of a four star Admiral to Captain conversation "Captain, get this done", response "Yes sir". Don't tell me "they have thought of everything" from personal experience I can tell you they haven't!
Large electronic warfare systems aren't developed on the basis of one Admiral/General saying something and everyone just hopping to it. I've worked both with defense R&D as a civilian and with the US Army as an NCO in signal intelligence. Little things don't get overlooked on the R&D side: big things do. Little things like encryption will be designed in from the start. It's big things (like where's the power gonna come from) that they overlook. Besides, your example was a simple problem in implementation. One guy forgetting to mention to another that the film cameras will be rolling is a minor operational fuckup, not a design flaw.
Not saying the poster is right, but your math sucks ass. For one thing, if there was one company that employed 99% of the people in the US, he'd be right and your figures wouldn't invalidate it.
Well, there isn't one company that employs 99% of the population, so he's not right. Large corps (using the generous definition of 500 or more employees = large corp) account for about 45% of the employment in the US.
Further, those numbers don't include subsidaries, so just because the corporation you work for has only 500 employees doesn't mean that it (and 100 like it) aren't owned by another, larger corporation (who you do ultimately work for).
Of course they don't count "subsidiary" companies. There's no way to. If IBM owns 50% of Company X and Westinghouse owns the other 50%, who does it "belong" to? I understand your point, but attmepting to analyze the impact of who owns controlling interest in what is an exercise in futility. Throw in the fact that the majority of stockholders are individuals with small investments who have thrown their proxy vote to someone else, who buy and sell that stock based on the advice of a third person, and you've got a picture that doesn't sit still long enough to look at all of it.
You said those are Small Business Administration stats, do they even COUNT corporations?
The stats are from the SBA's web site. They come originally from the 2000 US Census. They count class C Corporations, subchapter S Corporations, Partnerships, Individual Proprietorships, and Other (which includes cooperatives, estates, receiverships, and businesses classified as unknown legal forms of organization). Pretty inclusive.
So, in conclusion: Before you berate someone for making numbers up, make sure that yours are at least relevant.
Odds are that it was a fucking joke dude, get over yourself!
If it was a joke, then why wasn't it funny? Perhaps he was attempting to use exaggeration in order to make a humorous point, but the problem is, you must start with a truthful premise. His premise (that mega-corps employ a significant percentage of people) was totally incorrect. Therefore, no joke.
Odds are that you are employed by sizeable corporation thus proving that big corporations are indeed evil.
Pulling statistics out of our ass now, eh? "Odds are" that any given person is not employed by a big corp. According to US Small Business Administration stats for 2000, out of 5.8 million non-farm employer firms, about 100,000 had over 100 employees, and only about 16,000 had over 500 employees. You do the math.
Now, if you were to say that large corporations wield more power than their minority status should allow, then I'd agree...
So what if I just hack WEP to eavesdrop on your network, without ever sending any packets your way. What if I just use it to eavesdrop on conversations between your boss and you, or you and your wife, or you and your divorce attorney, or you and you gay lover, or if I use it to watch the webcam you have hooked up in your bedroom ? I'm not impacting your resourcs by eavesdropping. Is that OK ? Whether or not there is an impact on resources is, to me anyways, clearly immaterial.
None of that is illegal. Furthermore, it wouldn't cause you any trouble if you were already handing over all that info to anyone who gave you a dollar. Claiming I cheated you out of a dollar because I found out the same info without paying is the stupid argument DTV is making.
Economically, you're reducing the value of the service. Just like illegal software or music copying: losing a $10 CD sale doesn't actually cost the record label $10, but it doesn't cost $0 either.
That premise is ludicrous. The "reduction in value" argument demands that one accept as a given that, if the world were not as it is now, some subset of those getting free DTV would pay. Conclusions based upon the structure of fictional alternate universes are totally worthless.
I think I'll go to the patent office and patent the portion of the spectrum that encompases red light. That way, I can sue anyone who looks at a red object for using/decrypting my portion of the spectrum.
No, patents are for inventions/methods. What DTV has is a license to broadcast on that frequency. Furthermore, they aren't suing someone for receiving the signal, they are suing for conspiracy to unlawfully decrypt the signal. The suit is utter bullshit, and so are all the lame patent jokes. Knock it off, you idiots.
You Had that freedom. Your government sold that frequency to DirecTV
Incorrect. The FCC has given DTV permission to transmit on those frequencies. Reception of those RF signals is perfectly lawful. DTV doesn't "own" that band. The airwaves are public property under US law.
Don't try and justify signal theft* by using that "hey, it's out there so why can't I do what I like with the signal?" line. Because if you go down that route, you're accepting that your government (and anyone else for that matter) is just as entitled to spy on your communications using Echelon and other technologies
Any other individual does have the right to receive any RF transmissions I may release. The government, however, is strictly limited by the US Constitution (perhaps you've heard of it). It does not have rights like the people do. It is granted limited, enumerated powers, but rights? No. Saying no one should be permitted to receive RF signals without permission because that will somehow give the gov't the right to do the same is an asinine statement and shows total ignorance of federal law. Now, you could argue that the gov't is corrupt, and doesn't follow the constitution anyway-- but then that would invalidate the entire "they won't if we don't" argument you used in the first place.
Incorrect. One cannot use the site to crack the signal. Calling the site a circumvention device is as stupid as calling the English language a circumvention device.
...wireless keyboards, mouses and headphone, garage door openers, the EM emissions of my screen or anything else that happens to run across your airspace.
You do realize, don't you, that intercepting the RF emmissions from these sources is perfectly legal? In fact, The default is that we have the right to receive RF signals and any signals we are prohibitted from receiving are special exceptions. I'd argue the government has overstepped its bounds in regard to these prohibitted interceptions, as it is normally the emitter's responsibility whether or not "undesireables" get the signal.
Slashdot Mirror
From a bumper sticker I saw the other day:
vote CTHULU in 1996
"why settle for the lesser evil?"
Seriously though, when the entire political system is infested with lawyers, who does one vote for in order to encourage reform? Everyone suggests all sorts of alternate presidential candidates, but face it: the prez will come from one of two parties for the forseeable future. Same thing (to a slightly lesser degree) for locally elected federal representatives. I'd love to work on a grassroots something-or-other, get something changed on a small scale, etc., but (like most) I'm just too dang tired.
You know, editorial bias can also show up in the form of Choosing What Gets to the Front Page.
Yes it would. LORAN uses fixed, known transmitter sites which can then be used as reference points. How do you calculate the exact location of these "transmitter shells" in order to use them as a baseline? Additionally, even if you did magically know exactly where these shells were once they landed, how many transmitters are these guys going to be carrying, in addition to the regular load of ammo? Mortar and tube artillery aren't fixed assets-- they move. In the case of mortar crews, they move a lot.
Loran of the day only used two recivers to get a fix once it decided which side of the line it was on.
Yep, it's amazing what kind of accuracy you can get with fixed assets transmitting signals intended for navigation. Getting DF shots in the field where the enemy is 1) moving, 2) hiding in RF obscuring ground clutter (LORAN was for air/sea nav; no obstructions), 3) burst transmitting packets at 4) low power that 5) frequency hop; well, that's not so easy. As a signal intelligence analyst in the Army I dealt with this crap all the time. When my unit was first issued freq-hopping SINCGARS radios, the first thing we did was try to pick one up on an intercept receiver. We heard one burst of noise once, but not long enough to get a single DF shot, much less a fix.
I still think detecting wired soldiers can be done by most countries in the world
I seriously doubt it. I do understand what you're saying-- setting up a reverse-GPS type system-- but the fact that it would require multiple fixed, precisely tuned, highly sophisticated, expensive pieces of equipment to implement pretty much renders it out of reach for anyone but the the US and UK/europe. Sure, such a system can be set up to work under ideal conditions, but that's the real rub when it comes to warfare: you can't set up ideal conditions, you have to operate under the conditions that are there.
Bah! More money as in a 47%-53% split. Sounds to me like they're greasing both sides of the aisle and concentrating on incumbents. I mean, it's not like AOL/TW, who gave 100% to dems, or Curb Records, who gave 100% to reps.
Re-read that Crab Nebula story. They didn't calculate the location of the emitter, they calculated its size. So no, you can't use "sub-nanosecond timing" with a "forward spotter" (?) to get accuracy like that.
First of all, a sub-meter accuracy triangulation requires three DF bearings. Second, only US and european militaries are equipped to do it with that degree of accuracy. Third, even the US military would run into difficulties trying to pin down a low-power, frequency hopping, burst-transmitting signal at 10km, much less 100.
Huh? How does a GP-medium tent need improvement (besides finding a way to get rid of the smell of ancient canvas)? MRE's sure beat the hell out of C-rats. And the M-16 seems to work pretty well. I'm not sure I see what you're getting at...
Damn straight! When I was in the Army, I worked tactical signal intelligence. One day we had a visit from a rep for a contractor developing a manportable remote electronic warfare unit. He brought us a prototype to look at and "try on". This was a pre-production prototype that was supposed to be as rugged as the production model. Within 3 minutes we broke it. It was so heavy that the only safe way to get it off your back was to pull the quick-release tabs on the ruck straps. One guy did that and it dropped ~3 feet to the floor. The front panel popped loose and cracked and I'm sure the guts were damaged too. The rep was really annoyed, but hey, you can't build field-deployable devices that break that easily. In the field, we're all grunts, even the MI guys.
Anyone who has used the M-16 in rifle PT knows how quickly even a lightweight rifle can become extremely heavy.
heh. only 7.5 pounds, right? I remember it seemed like a lot more when held out at arms length... for several minutes... with a drill sergeant shouting "keep those arms up!"... ah, the good old days.
Amend that to read "nearly everyone believes". It's wrong. Terminal velocity of a penny in air at 1ATM is pretty low. At most, a person hit by such a penny would say "ow" (no exclamation point).
They didn't discover this. The fact that the north is rising and the south sinking has been known for quite some time-- certainly longer than the GPS constellation has been up. I have a book here somewhere (can't find anything here!) that was written in the late sixties that mentions it as established fact, then positing the theory that ice age glaciers "pushed down" the island and it's "springing back". It shows a picture of some 400+ year old castle in the north that was originally built with its moat-gates open to the ocean but is now some 100 feet above sea level! Doesn't take GPS to tell you the island is tilting.
Yeah, but just because they say it doesn't mean it's true or relevant. Claiming that goods that were reported destroyed are "stolen" is already a dubious claim. Given that it's impossible to determine if a book's cover was sent back to the publisher for credit or just torn off accidentally, the publisher claiming that this is proof the book was stolen is laughable. Essentially, the publishers are trying to shame people into not buying cover-less books because they're too cheap to pay the costs of shipping them back and destroying the books themselves.
Does that mean that you are a criminal for possessing it? Beats me, but it seems to me that it puts you in a dubious position of being able to claim any right of ownership.
Since there's no law against having a book with no cover, you pretty much own it if you have it, regardless of how you got it. If you worked at a bookstore and pocketed a "destroyed" book, you might be fired if you boss finds out and the publisher might be able to demand payment from the seller who insufficiently destroyed the book, but a book with no cover is, on its own, not illegal to have.
Oh, and just to maintain a thread of topicality, in my city (Boise, Idaho), when you toss something into the dumpster, it becomes the property of the garbage company. Of course, "property", in the sense of the book issue described above seems to take on a rather confusing label. Maybe custody is a better term.
Usually garbage companies make it a matter of company policy that going through people's garbage is a strict no-no. Garbage collectors aren't supposed to take ANYTHING home (though you know they gotta run across something they can't resist once in a while!)
Because lawyers have actually encouraged the creation of a legal system where advocates must use any dodge or ruse they can cook up under the rationalization that "the other guy's doing it too". Law school seems to encourage this sort of rationalization. I have two cousins and a high school friend who're lawyers and they've basically admitted to this, albeit under the rationalization that "they owe their client the best representation they can provide". One cousin, at least, also admits to the fact that it's rationalizing; but the other, he still proudly tells the following story: as a lawyer in the Army, he defended one soldier who robbed another soldier at gunpoint, which was seen by a third soldier. This third soldier was a key prosecution witness and repeatedly affirmed that yes, the gun was clearly a real gun. So my cousin gets the guy on the stand and, for forty minutes asks him a series of questions, all of which had been asked before, all of which were answered yes. So he's firing off these useless queries, and the guy is getting bored answering "yes...yes...yes...yes..." ad infinitum. So then my cousin slips in the question "is it possible the gun wasn't real?" and the guy says "yes...oh, sorry. I mean 'no'". He then hammered on this totally contrived "witness uncertainity" and got the guy down from "armed robbery" to just "robbery". He tells this story proudly at family gatherings. The fucking scumbag.
That's the problem with lawyers: they're encouraged to believe that the ends justify the means.
I don't know about other states, but in California the addition of MTBE was mandatory. It's an oxygenating additive intended to reduce air pollution. Now that the dingbats in state gov't realize they've traded a minor air pollution reduction for a major water pollution increase, they're "phasing it out". Not that I like oil companies (the gouging bastards), but the MTBE fiasco is a case of state stupidity.
Yeah, fun isn't it? You know, I was thinking (dangerous precedent there)-- so much of patent (and copyright, for that matter) abuse could be dealt with by simply applying both concept for the same reason it was enacted. If patent examiners were to stop for moment before they rubber-stamp the application and ask themselves "Is it something that would never see the light of day if they couldn't patent it?" Patents are, after all, limited monopolies granted by the government to encourage people to innovate. Patents are being granted too easily now, so it's turned into a gold-rush of sorts, where people try to stake a claim to every obvious variation on the " X -as-a-business model" and the " X -over-the-internet" themes.
(May they never be overthrown!)
Yes! May they never collapse under their own bureaucratic weight! I fervently hope everyone doesn't decide to not pay their taxes anymore! (heh heh)
Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.
Nah, that's just the mind control drugs in the water. (THEY call it fluoride, but I KNOW WHAT THY'RE UP TO!!!!!)
nah, no good. Chaff is only REALLY effective against radar, and then only while it's drifting down through the air. Once it hits the ground it's just litter.
Large electronic warfare systems aren't developed on the basis of one Admiral/General saying something and everyone just hopping to it. I've worked both with defense R&D as a civilian and with the US Army as an NCO in signal intelligence. Little things don't get overlooked on the R&D side: big things do. Little things like encryption will be designed in from the start. It's big things (like where's the power gonna come from) that they overlook. Besides, your example was a simple problem in implementation. One guy forgetting to mention to another that the film cameras will be rolling is a minor operational fuckup, not a design flaw.
Well, there isn't one company that employs 99% of the population, so he's not right. Large corps (using the generous definition of 500 or more employees = large corp) account for about 45% of the employment in the US.
Further, those numbers don't include subsidaries, so just because the corporation you work for has only 500 employees doesn't mean that it (and 100 like it) aren't owned by another, larger corporation (who you do ultimately work for).
Of course they don't count "subsidiary" companies. There's no way to. If IBM owns 50% of Company X and Westinghouse owns the other 50%, who does it "belong" to? I understand your point, but attmepting to analyze the impact of who owns controlling interest in what is an exercise in futility. Throw in the fact that the majority of stockholders are individuals with small investments who have thrown their proxy vote to someone else, who buy and sell that stock based on the advice of a third person, and you've got a picture that doesn't sit still long enough to look at all of it.
You said those are Small Business Administration stats, do they even COUNT corporations?
The stats are from the SBA's web site. They come originally from the 2000 US Census. They count class C Corporations, subchapter S Corporations, Partnerships, Individual Proprietorships, and Other (which includes cooperatives, estates, receiverships, and businesses classified as unknown legal forms of organization). Pretty inclusive.
So, in conclusion: Before you berate someone for making numbers up, make sure that yours are at least relevant.
They are.
If it was a joke, then why wasn't it funny? Perhaps he was attempting to use exaggeration in order to make a humorous point, but the problem is, you must start with a truthful premise. His premise (that mega-corps employ a significant percentage of people) was totally incorrect. Therefore, no joke.
Pulling statistics out of our ass now, eh? "Odds are" that any given person is not employed by a big corp. According to US Small Business Administration stats for 2000, out of 5.8 million non-farm employer firms, about 100,000 had over 100 employees, and only about 16,000 had over 500 employees. You do the math.
Now, if you were to say that large corporations wield more power than their minority status should allow, then I'd agree...
None of that is illegal. Furthermore, it wouldn't cause you any trouble if you were already handing over all that info to anyone who gave you a dollar. Claiming I cheated you out of a dollar because I found out the same info without paying is the stupid argument DTV is making.
That premise is ludicrous. The "reduction in value" argument demands that one accept as a given that, if the world were not as it is now, some subset of those getting free DTV would pay. Conclusions based upon the structure of fictional alternate universes are totally worthless.
No, patents are for inventions/methods. What DTV has is a license to broadcast on that frequency. Furthermore, they aren't suing someone for receiving the signal, they are suing for conspiracy to unlawfully decrypt the signal. The suit is utter bullshit, and so are all the lame patent jokes. Knock it off, you idiots.
Incorrect. The FCC has given DTV permission to transmit on those frequencies. Reception of those RF signals is perfectly lawful. DTV doesn't "own" that band. The airwaves are public property under US law.
Don't try and justify signal theft* by using that "hey, it's out there so why can't I do what I like with the signal?" line. Because if you go down that route, you're accepting that your government (and anyone else for that matter) is just as entitled to spy on your communications using Echelon and other technologies
Any other individual does have the right to receive any RF transmissions I may release. The government, however, is strictly limited by the US Constitution (perhaps you've heard of it). It does not have rights like the people do. It is granted limited, enumerated powers, but rights? No. Saying no one should be permitted to receive RF signals without permission because that will somehow give the gov't the right to do the same is an asinine statement and shows total ignorance of federal law. Now, you could argue that the gov't is corrupt, and doesn't follow the constitution anyway-- but then that would invalidate the entire "they won't if we don't" argument you used in the first place.
Incorrect. One cannot use the site to crack the signal. Calling the site a circumvention device is as stupid as calling the English language a circumvention device.
You do realize, don't you, that intercepting the RF emmissions from these sources is perfectly legal? In fact, The default is that we have the right to receive RF signals and any signals we are prohibitted from receiving are special exceptions. I'd argue the government has overstepped its bounds in regard to these prohibitted interceptions, as it is normally the emitter's responsibility whether or not "undesireables" get the signal.