Except the article makes it sound that there's an unlimited amount of fossil fuels. Great, so we can burn all the coal, oil, tar, trees, and whatnot because now we have this incredible CO2 removal system, but the underlying problem of there being only so much dead goopy stuff underground remains. I doubt anybody smart enough to actually do something is reading this (Brains and gov't just don't seem to mix), but on the off chance...
Don't take cough syrup to hide the symptoms, cure the disease itself!
1. contract programmers working at home (which is something we encourage here with tax breaks for companies)
You're missing your own point here... If the contract programmer is working at home, then the company isn't using city resources to support that person. The work-at-home, though, IS paying taxes to support police/fire/medic/whatnot services by paying their own personal property taxes. Granted, it may not be the same city/state/country, but the services are being paid for.
2. foreign contract firms that outsource the coding elsewhere (but this taxes them)
I don't know enough about how foreign things work. I suppose I'm just a typically world-naive' American in this respect (Though I suspect if you asked a Brit or Frenchman how these things work, they'd be equally as clueless, unless they actually worked in foreign business)
3. the buildings - software development uses less square footage per product developed and thus pays fewer taxes, while incurring more city services for fire, police, libraries (especially this) and everything else that the human capital consumes.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here... Software dev does require less space than manufacturing, but there is an associated decrease in the public services required (When's the last time a hacker got their hand mangled by some piece of machinery?). You're right that software jobs typically "consume" more libraries, but even with that, few libraries I know of stock the kind of advanced programming books a coder would need. They'd have the beginner and intermediate stuff, because they're trying to appeal to as broad a population as possible. Dev would would require less in the way of fire support (save when those pesky UPS generators misbehave), less police (hackers generally don't resort to petty theft... they've already got the cheap stuff), and less medical support (No heavy machinery to eat people).
I can't say much for what Washington is trying to accomplish, because as a Midwest native, and an East Coast nerd, what WA is doing is totally counterintuitive to what I would see as good business sense. There is no free lunch (spoon?), and I suspect your politicians will learn this quickly, should your populace wield the weapon known as "voting" properly.
Software companies DO pay for the services you just mentioned, in the form of property taxes. Unless the company in question rents their facilities, they pay direct taxes on owning the land, as well as the appraised value of the facilities on that land. Even if they DO rent the building, those taxes (If the landlord has any brainpower) are integrated into the rent. While it is true that they likely don't pay taxes directly for pressing CD's and such, the facility that does is paying those property taxes, and again (with sufficient brainpower) should include those taxes in the price they charge the software house to press those CDs.
All joking aside, I really would like to know how the state intends to set a specific value on code. Clearly, source code such as a TCP/IP stack, VMM, or GUI toolkit are extremely valuable to a multitude of very intelligent people. But while I may be interested in seeing how the process of opening a socket or swapping a memory page works, my hacking skills are nothing compared to the people actually writing these things, and thus their code, while interesting, doesn't hold much value for me. For Joe Sixpack (clueless user extrodinaire), the sourcecode is totally worthless.
Clearly, the functional aspect of the code is what is being considered for taxation. But how do you set the value when nobody can agree on what it's actually worth?
Perhaps taxation by the size of the codebase would work. There is obviously a difference in the size (and inherent IP value) between a TCP stack and a "hello, world" exercise. But again, a "hello, world" program is worth more to the beginning C student than a complete TCP stack, because that small little program is exactly that: small. Being small, it is easy to understand, play with, debug, and do generally useless things with. Give a beginning student the full kernel source, and they'd probably give up within hours (maybe even minutes)
So we can see that taxation by the function of the code won't work, since everybody places a different value on each module (A network driver is useless to someone without a network, and a VMM is silly for someone just starting to learn assembly on an 8086). Taxation by the size of the codebase won't work, because again, smaller programs are more valuable to beginning students, while larger, more complex programs and libraries are more important to experienced developers.
Despite the obvious piracy whining from the usual sources, and the share and share alike from the oss/fs lobby, there is another, less recognized idea behind the "Information wants to be free" mantra... Any given piece of info is worth different amounts to different people, and because of this, attempting to place a fixed value (for taxes, or any other purpose) on a bit of data will ultimately be futile.
Your comments are certainly valid, but I again have to argue that unless MS accepts the patches submitted by the various experts, nothing will actually change. And again, in order for the IP not to be compromised, the source would have to be "sealed". If it isn't sealed, the same thing would happen here as happened in the DeCSS case, where John Hoy put the source code into evidence without sealing it, making it part of the public record.
Perhaps the more worrisome aspect of a complete source release is that while the white hats are finding, reporting, and patching security holes, there are probably just as many (or more) black hats who will search for holes to exploit.
Very interesting argument, wish I had a mod point to give you (Though I couldn't anyways, having already posted to this article).
As to the comment proper, the WINE developers would indeed have a difficult time arguing purity of emulation should the Win32 code be released. However, provided they interacted with only the published APIs and avoided any backdoor which could/would be revealed by a source release, they would still be legal.
IIRC, the Bleem crew used a similar defense with Sony, in that they performed the emulation not by copying the PS1 BIOS, but instead by studying how the software and hardware interacted, then figuring out how to reproduce those responses on the x86 platform. With the WINE crew, it would be studying how two different layers of software interact, then reproducing those results with a different software layer. As long as they don't go looking at the W32 source (just as Bleem didn't look at the PS1 BIOS), they should be clean. Again, IANAL.
Not going to rehash all the "It'll take years to understand..." comments, that's obvious enough. So what does all this mean? Insert IANAL disclaimer.
Source released openly: What the states are asking for. This really won't get them anywhere. MS has been declared a monopolist, and going back like this is akin to going back to the murder scene for more evidence after the killer's been convicted. It doesn't do them any good other than to cause MS nightmares about their IP being compromised. Needless to say, MS hates this idea. Expect to see a scathing rebuttal within a couple of days. (Historical note: This is what one prosecutor did in the DeCSS case... put the code in as open/unsealed evidence, making it part of the public record. oops!) OSS advocates would love this idea, but without the compilation capabilities, it doesn't do Joe Sixpack any good unless MS accepts patches submitted by the public and makes them available for download.
Source released under seal: Same as an open release, but the source code doesn't get published, and only those people approved by the court get to see it. Takes even more time, more money, and accomplishes just as little. Only here, MS doesn't have to lose sleep over IP loss, just take care of a nasty migraine. Joe Sixpack gains nothing.
No release: Obvious victory for MS, but the case moves on faster than it would have otherwise, which (as we all know) MS does't want. Joe Sixpack doesn't get anything here, either.
I don't care how big they are, I will not buy service from a company that spies on me (Isn't this part of the FS/OSS argument, no spying by closed source software?). Likewise, you forget the effect that lots of people with like mind can have... 200 years ago, the vast majority of British colonists didn't really care whether they were an independent nation or not. But a couple of people with an idea and the conviction to follow through with it started a revolution and created a totally new nation that now stands as the world's only superpower.
As for the classified content, there's some very nice encryption going on, so the content isn't in danger. But just having the URLs cached makes some people nervous, even though the data is unusuable.
"I am highly disturbed by the report I just saw at http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200202/msg00057.html. I expect to receive a formal, legally binding response to this comment immediately, or I will terminate not only my Comcast@home subscription, but my cable television subscription as well. I DO NOT TOLERATE any sort of spying on my activities. I work for a defense contractor, and some sites which I visit are, by their nature, *CLASSIFIED* in content. Encryption can only go so far, and any method of retrieving this information is a felony under the DMCA. Your legally binding response must be signed by someone of Vice-President rank or higher."
The only way to make ISP's understand that this sort of behavior is unacceptable is to hit them in the only place it matters... their pocketbook.
Re:Can someone answer this for me?
on
Apollo 1
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I believe the reason was the same that deep sea divers use pure O2, it was to prevent the bends
Close, but not quite. It is true that to a certain point, divers can use pure O2 to prevent the bends (And often do during their decompression stages), but after a certain point, pure oxygen becomes poisonous, and so an inert gas (almost always pure helium) must be put into the mix. Since helium is inert, it doesn't cause the nitrogen narcosis problems at depth.
Where did you get this idea? The question of whether or not the external pressure on the capsule is 1ATM or 0ATM is moot, because the whole idea of hatches and airlocks is to keep everything on the inside of the capsule in. In fact, the astronauts would have an EASIER time getting out here on earth because there would be a smaller pressure differential to work against in opening the airlock than there would be enroute to the moon. You can get a similar experience by trying to open a door in a facility with intentional pressure differences, such as a lab. If the door opens inward to the office, and the lab is kept at a lower pressure than the hallway (common precaution for vaporous chemicals and biotoxins), the door will be easy to open as hallway air rushes in to equalize the pressure. But what if your lab were pressurized higher than the hallway? The door would be harder to open, because you would not only have to work to open the door, but also work against the air trying to rush out (and pushing the door shut as it does so!)
So now that we've got that little bit of science out of the way, the next problem with your "analysis" is that a difference between 1ATM and 16.7PSI does not result in a *HUGE* difference in available O2. For the clueless, 1ATM=14.7 PSI, or a difference of just 2PSI. I'm not going to do the math here, but needless to say, a balloon has a higher PSI than that capsule did. Are you suggesting that a balloon filled with O2 will just smoulder in space? I think not.
The problem of using a pure O2 mixture is simply because O2 is such a volatile thing that the smallest spark can ignite the closest flammable object (wire insulation, if memory serves), and once that's started, anything else in the area is a juicy target for more combustion fun.
I'm in the USA, but the laws themselves don't really change all that much. Granted, the numbers and percentages jump around constantly, but the criteria for things like the EIC, what deductions you are and are not allowed to take, and all that stuff is relatively constant. And besides, that's the kind of stuff that would be updated by the subscription anyway.
The way I see things, Microsoft's "Software as a subscription" is doomed to failure because they're in the totally wrong area for this to work. I'm sorry, but I see no reason why I should have to continually renew my license to use Word. All the functionality I need was written into it by the early 90's. And even then, I was just as likely to use WordStar or WordPerfect, depending on whether I was at school (Word) or home (WS or WP). Same goes for practically every other app MS sells. The industries where subscriptions *could* work are ones that involve frequent updates, like anti-virus definitions (Buy the engine for $20 or so, and a yearly $5 definition subscription), or tax preparation. Why should I buy a new copy of TurboTax every year for $40, when there are so few changes to the tax laws. Again, sell me the engine for $20, and I'll subscribe to the federal and state(s) forms as I need them.
There are, surprisingly enough, a couple units. These are primarily their peripheral hardware groups... Stuff like mice, joysticks, and keyboards. They're out there, but with the sheer variety of shapes, styles, and whatnot produced by companies like Logitech, Gravis, and Kensington (Which I think is someone else's rebranded stuff), it takes a lot of work to really stand out on the high end (which only the SideWinder joysticks and Natural keyboards have done), and the willingness to live in the low/no margin low end (Free PCConcepts keyboards and mice if you play their rebates right during the Christmas season), which M$ simply does not have. So in these areas, they simply can't leverage their dominance in other areas, one the high end because there's already too much choice, and on the low because they can't stand breaking even.
Looking at the history involved with this auction, a couple of things got me to thinking... First, this auction ran for a month. While I'm not a usual customer to the real estate auctions, the longest I've seen any other eBay auction go for has been 10 days. Can someone shed some light on this? Second, I looked at the feedback on the winning bidder. The person is a music nut. What could (s)he want with a silo (apart from the intrinsic 'cool' value), and where are the coming up with the money? Unless this happens to be some famous artist/individual being discreet, this only makes me more suspicious.
Whether or not there is competition is irrelevant to truth in advertising. FWIW, there is competition in my area, in the form of Millenium Digital Media, another local cable company. But at least they say flat out on their website that they don't have broadband in my area yet, and it'll be a while before it happens. My decision to go with ComCast was based on the availability of broadband, which, unfortunately, was a sham. And that's why there are two letters of complaint now in the hands of Maryland regulatory officials. By themselves, they're not much. But with all the other letters people write, it speaks volumes. (Sorta like M$... it's not that they did one thing wrong, they made a habit of continuing to do things wrong. Just like ComCast seems to be)
What you are experiencing is likely the classic 'bait and switch.' I am experiencing something similar here in the Baltimore area with ComCast cable. Their website plainly states that cable broadband is available in my area, but when I try to order it, I'm told that their digital upgrade won't be finished until January, and their broadband for at least a month after that.
So what do you do? Cussing and whining about it on here won't help you a bit. Instead, take a screen image of their website, and print it out. Then write a (calm, logical, and objective) letter to your local and state public utilities commission complaining about their misleading advertising. Include the print-out of their website (make sure it has the date and time stamped on it, as well as the URL), and also include the name and (if they use them) service badge/number of whoever it was you talked to on their sales/support staff, along with the date and time of your call. With all the support services randomly taping the calls anyway, it's entirely possible that a record of your call exists, and this recording is admissible in court as evidence should the state (or a bored lawyer who's also getting the shaft) file suit. Again, you need to be courteous and respectful in your phone conversations. Being loud and obnoxious will get you nowhere.
Not necessarily. LTV Steel in Cleveland has been in and out of Ch. 11 a number of times in the past 20 years, primarily because of forces outside its control. Like many American steel companies (and the auto industry), it had grown fat on subsidies and protective tariffs. When those were cut out, it went into protection as it found ways to cut size without cutting production. This has been going on again lately with the question of foreign steel being dumped here. When you operate a massive, full-bore steel foundry and mill (like most steel companies did), your costs are enormous compared to the european mini-mills.
Chapter 11 is also similar in some ways to a debt consolidation loan. You're taking on a huge new debt, but getting rid of all your old ones at the same time. You still have to pay your old creditors, but once they've got their share, they're over with. All that's left is the guy/bank/venturist who spotted you the money to pay off the loan sharks.
(Snide comment at the risk of being modded down: Do you really think M$ needs a line of credit?)
The two fees being referred to are different. The 'legal fees' aspect is akin to being forced to pay to replace the signs you vandalized as a kid. Continuing the example, 'punitive damages' would be having to perform community service after you've paid to replace the signs. It's like telling a company to go sit in the corner (Without the massive headaches of an AT&T breakup)
Typically, punitive damages are greater than legal fees (Think McDonald's being forced to pay $5M for serving hot coffee), but in very high profile/technical cases like this, this kind of reversal isn't that uncommon.
Curing the disease by killing the patient. If I read their statement correctly, AT&T recognizes that the problem is unpatched IIS servers. But they've decided that because this is such a problem (Which I as a lowly dialup user haven't even noticed yet) that it merits shutting down all customer's ability to run webservers, even though they also recognize that most people run Win 9x. The legal basis is contained within their user agreement as a clause basically saying "you can't do anything that will mess up someone else's usage of the service", which really is pretty common.
Their "virus removal" instructions also seem flawed... why would I want to reconnect to the internet *before* the final reboot? Granted, not being connected during the early boot phase makes things take longer, but it will also make sure you can't be reinfected before the patch is fully applied.
This is the question we should really be asking not only among ourselves, but also of the institutions (police, security companies, DMV's, etc) that are considering this technology. I suspect the Ybor PD will be quite reluctant to implement this now that it has been shown to be rather badly flawed, but what about other cities that are considering it, or have already signed on? Who do you hold responsible for these kinds of mis-identifications should cameras be upheld by the courts? Do you blame the software manufacturer ('Their software called me Hannibal the Cannibal'), the police ('They should have been able to tell it wasn't me'), the politicians ('They just want to look good at my expense'), or someone/something else? What about recovering the costs of defending yourself in court because of a bad ID?
I think I would have to agree with this... As with any technology, the possibility of misuse/abuse is always present... I can just see these things being used as a weapon... release them into the air, and let them run around wherever they like unguarded. Truly the equivalent of a mechanical ebola, if even a couple of these got into a person, then began chewing "World is not enough" James Bond style. Their potential for good (cancer removal, artery roto-rooter, etc) is tremendous, but is this really a pandora's box we want opened?
Perhaps this just hasn't made it to my moderation threshhold, but the one comment I have yet to see made is that by placing their programs under the GPL, the students are effectively placing their programs on a huge bulliten board. Successive students will then be able to copy that code and re-submit it, which, under GPL, is permissible, but under university rules is plagarism. I would congratulate the students on their desire to use the GPL, but point out to them that they are undermining the quality of their degree by allowing students to legally (but unethically) copy their work for future programs.
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Except the article makes it sound that there's an unlimited amount of fossil fuels. Great, so we can burn all the coal, oil, tar, trees, and whatnot because now we have this incredible CO2 removal system, but the underlying problem of there being only so much dead goopy stuff underground remains. I doubt anybody smart enough to actually do something is reading this (Brains and gov't just don't seem to mix), but on the off chance...
Don't take cough syrup to hide the symptoms, cure the disease itself!
You're missing your own point here... If the contract programmer is working at home, then the company isn't using city resources to support that person. The work-at-home, though, IS paying taxes to support police/fire/medic/whatnot services by paying their own personal property taxes. Granted, it may not be the same city/state/country, but the services are being paid for.
I don't know enough about how foreign things work. I suppose I'm just a typically world-naive' American in this respect (Though I suspect if you asked a Brit or Frenchman how these things work, they'd be equally as clueless, unless they actually worked in foreign business)
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here... Software dev does require less space than manufacturing, but there is an associated decrease in the public services required (When's the last time a hacker got their hand mangled by some piece of machinery?). You're right that software jobs typically "consume" more libraries, but even with that, few libraries I know of stock the kind of advanced programming books a coder would need. They'd have the beginner and intermediate stuff, because they're trying to appeal to as broad a population as possible. Dev would would require less in the way of fire support (save when those pesky UPS generators misbehave), less police (hackers generally don't resort to petty theft... they've already got the cheap stuff), and less medical support (No heavy machinery to eat people).
I can't say much for what Washington is trying to accomplish, because as a Midwest native, and an East Coast nerd, what WA is doing is totally counterintuitive to what I would see as good business sense. There is no free lunch (spoon?), and I suspect your politicians will learn this quickly, should your populace wield the weapon known as "voting" properly.
Software companies DO pay for the services you just mentioned, in the form of property taxes. Unless the company in question rents their facilities, they pay direct taxes on owning the land, as well as the appraised value of the facilities on that land. Even if they DO rent the building, those taxes (If the landlord has any brainpower) are integrated into the rent. While it is true that they likely don't pay taxes directly for pressing CD's and such, the facility that does is paying those property taxes, and again (with sufficient brainpower) should include those taxes in the price they charge the software house to press those CDs.
Fist Prost!
All joking aside, I really would like to know how the state intends to set a specific value on code. Clearly, source code such as a TCP/IP stack, VMM, or GUI toolkit are extremely valuable to a multitude of very intelligent people. But while I may be interested in seeing how the process of opening a socket or swapping a memory page works, my hacking skills are nothing compared to the people actually writing these things, and thus their code, while interesting, doesn't hold much value for me. For Joe Sixpack (clueless user extrodinaire), the sourcecode is totally worthless.
Clearly, the functional aspect of the code is what is being considered for taxation. But how do you set the value when nobody can agree on what it's actually worth?
Perhaps taxation by the size of the codebase would work. There is obviously a difference in the size (and inherent IP value) between a TCP stack and a "hello, world" exercise. But again, a "hello, world" program is worth more to the beginning C student than a complete TCP stack, because that small little program is exactly that: small. Being small, it is easy to understand, play with, debug, and do generally useless things with. Give a beginning student the full kernel source, and they'd probably give up within hours (maybe even minutes)
So we can see that taxation by the function of the code won't work, since everybody places a different value on each module (A network driver is useless to someone without a network, and a VMM is silly for someone just starting to learn assembly on an 8086). Taxation by the size of the codebase won't work, because again, smaller programs are more valuable to beginning students, while larger, more complex programs and libraries are more important to experienced developers.
Despite the obvious piracy whining from the usual sources, and the share and share alike from the oss/fs lobby, there is another, less recognized idea behind the "Information wants to be free" mantra... Any given piece of info is worth different amounts to different people, and because of this, attempting to place a fixed value (for taxes, or any other purpose) on a bit of data will ultimately be futile.
Your comments are certainly valid, but I again have to argue that unless MS accepts the patches submitted by the various experts, nothing will actually change. And again, in order for the IP not to be compromised, the source would have to be "sealed". If it isn't sealed, the same thing would happen here as happened in the DeCSS case, where John Hoy put the source code into evidence without sealing it, making it part of the public record.
Perhaps the more worrisome aspect of a complete source release is that while the white hats are finding, reporting, and patching security holes, there are probably just as many (or more) black hats who will search for holes to exploit.
Very interesting argument, wish I had a mod point to give you (Though I couldn't anyways, having already posted to this article).
As to the comment proper, the WINE developers would indeed have a difficult time arguing purity of emulation should the Win32 code be released. However, provided they interacted with only the published APIs and avoided any backdoor which could/would be revealed by a source release, they would still be legal.
IIRC, the Bleem crew used a similar defense with Sony, in that they performed the emulation not by copying the PS1 BIOS, but instead by studying how the software and hardware interacted, then figuring out how to reproduce those responses on the x86 platform. With the WINE crew, it would be studying how two different layers of software interact, then reproducing those results with a different software layer. As long as they don't go looking at the W32 source (just as Bleem didn't look at the PS1 BIOS), they should be clean. Again, IANAL.
Not going to rehash all the "It'll take years to understand..." comments, that's obvious enough. So what does all this mean? Insert IANAL disclaimer.
Source released openly: What the states are asking for. This really won't get them anywhere. MS has been declared a monopolist, and going back like this is akin to going back to the murder scene for more evidence after the killer's been convicted. It doesn't do them any good other than to cause MS nightmares about their IP being compromised. Needless to say, MS hates this idea. Expect to see a scathing rebuttal within a couple of days. (Historical note: This is what one prosecutor did in the DeCSS case... put the code in as open/unsealed evidence, making it part of the public record. oops!) OSS advocates would love this idea, but without the compilation capabilities, it doesn't do Joe Sixpack any good unless MS accepts patches submitted by the public and makes them available for download.
Source released under seal: Same as an open release, but the source code doesn't get published, and only those people approved by the court get to see it. Takes even more time, more money, and accomplishes just as little. Only here, MS doesn't have to lose sleep over IP loss, just take care of a nasty migraine. Joe Sixpack gains nothing.
No release: Obvious victory for MS, but the case moves on faster than it would have otherwise, which (as we all know) MS does't want. Joe Sixpack doesn't get anything here, either.
I don't care how big they are, I will not buy service from a company that spies on me (Isn't this part of the FS/OSS argument, no spying by closed source software?). Likewise, you forget the effect that lots of people with like mind can have... 200 years ago, the vast majority of British colonists didn't really care whether they were an independent nation or not. But a couple of people with an idea and the conviction to follow through with it started a revolution and created a totally new nation that now stands as the world's only superpower.
As for the classified content, there's some very nice encryption going on, so the content isn't in danger. But just having the URLs cached makes some people nervous, even though the data is unusuable.
"I am highly disturbed by the report I just saw at http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200202/msg00057.html. I expect to receive a formal, legally binding response to this comment immediately, or I will terminate not only my Comcast@home subscription, but my cable television subscription as well. I DO NOT TOLERATE any sort of spying on my activities. I work for a defense contractor, and some sites which I visit are, by their nature, *CLASSIFIED* in content. Encryption can only go so far, and any method of retrieving this information is a felony under the DMCA. Your legally binding response must be signed by someone of Vice-President rank or higher."
The only way to make ISP's understand that this sort of behavior is unacceptable is to hit them in the only place it matters... their pocketbook.
Close, but not quite. It is true that to a certain point, divers can use pure O2 to prevent the bends (And often do during their decompression stages), but after a certain point, pure oxygen becomes poisonous, and so an inert gas (almost always pure helium) must be put into the mix. Since helium is inert, it doesn't cause the nitrogen narcosis problems at depth.
Where did you get this idea? The question of whether or not the external pressure on the capsule is 1ATM or 0ATM is moot, because the whole idea of hatches and airlocks is to keep everything on the inside of the capsule in. In fact, the astronauts would have an EASIER time getting out here on earth because there would be a smaller pressure differential to work against in opening the airlock than there would be enroute to the moon. You can get a similar experience by trying to open a door in a facility with intentional pressure differences, such as a lab. If the door opens inward to the office, and the lab is kept at a lower pressure than the hallway (common precaution for vaporous chemicals and biotoxins), the door will be easy to open as hallway air rushes in to equalize the pressure. But what if your lab were pressurized higher than the hallway? The door would be harder to open, because you would not only have to work to open the door, but also work against the air trying to rush out (and pushing the door shut as it does so!)
So now that we've got that little bit of science out of the way, the next problem with your "analysis" is that a difference between 1ATM and 16.7PSI does not result in a *HUGE* difference in available O2. For the clueless, 1ATM=14.7 PSI, or a difference of just 2PSI. I'm not going to do the math here, but needless to say, a balloon has a higher PSI than that capsule did. Are you suggesting that a balloon filled with O2 will just smoulder in space? I think not.
The problem of using a pure O2 mixture is simply because O2 is such a volatile thing that the smallest spark can ignite the closest flammable object (wire insulation, if memory serves), and once that's started, anything else in the area is a juicy target for more combustion fun.
I'm in the USA, but the laws themselves don't really change all that much. Granted, the numbers and percentages jump around constantly, but the criteria for things like the EIC, what deductions you are and are not allowed to take, and all that stuff is relatively constant. And besides, that's the kind of stuff that would be updated by the subscription anyway.
The way I see things, Microsoft's "Software as a subscription" is doomed to failure because they're in the totally wrong area for this to work. I'm sorry, but I see no reason why I should have to continually renew my license to use Word. All the functionality I need was written into it by the early 90's. And even then, I was just as likely to use WordStar or WordPerfect, depending on whether I was at school (Word) or home (WS or WP). Same goes for practically every other app MS sells. The industries where subscriptions *could* work are ones that involve frequent updates, like anti-virus definitions (Buy the engine for $20 or so, and a yearly $5 definition subscription), or tax preparation. Why should I buy a new copy of TurboTax every year for $40, when there are so few changes to the tax laws. Again, sell me the engine for $20, and I'll subscribe to the federal and state(s) forms as I need them.
There are, surprisingly enough, a couple units. These are primarily their peripheral hardware groups... Stuff like mice, joysticks, and keyboards. They're out there, but with the sheer variety of shapes, styles, and whatnot produced by companies like Logitech, Gravis, and Kensington (Which I think is someone else's rebranded stuff), it takes a lot of work to really stand out on the high end (which only the SideWinder joysticks and Natural keyboards have done), and the willingness to live in the low/no margin low end (Free PCConcepts keyboards and mice if you play their rebates right during the Christmas season), which M$ simply does not have. So in these areas, they simply can't leverage their dominance in other areas, one the high end because there's already too much choice, and on the low because they can't stand breaking even.
Simple... The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
Looking at the history involved with this auction, a couple of things got me to thinking... First, this auction ran for a month. While I'm not a usual customer to the real estate auctions, the longest I've seen any other eBay auction go for has been 10 days. Can someone shed some light on this? Second, I looked at the feedback on the winning bidder. The person is a music nut. What could (s)he want with a silo (apart from the intrinsic 'cool' value), and where are the coming up with the money? Unless this happens to be some famous artist/individual being discreet, this only makes me more suspicious.
Whether or not there is competition is irrelevant to truth in advertising. FWIW, there is competition in my area, in the form of Millenium Digital Media, another local cable company. But at least they say flat out on their website that they don't have broadband in my area yet, and it'll be a while before it happens. My decision to go with ComCast was based on the availability of broadband, which, unfortunately, was a sham. And that's why there are two letters of complaint now in the hands of Maryland regulatory officials. By themselves, they're not much. But with all the other letters people write, it speaks volumes. (Sorta like M$... it's not that they did one thing wrong, they made a habit of continuing to do things wrong. Just like ComCast seems to be)
What you are experiencing is likely the classic 'bait and switch.' I am experiencing something similar here in the Baltimore area with ComCast cable. Their website plainly states that cable broadband is available in my area, but when I try to order it, I'm told that their digital upgrade won't be finished until January, and their broadband for at least a month after that.
So what do you do? Cussing and whining about it on here won't help you a bit. Instead, take a screen image of their website, and print it out. Then write a (calm, logical, and objective) letter to your local and state public utilities commission complaining about their misleading advertising. Include the print-out of their website (make sure it has the date and time stamped on it, as well as the URL), and also include the name and (if they use them) service badge/number of whoever it was you talked to on their sales/support staff, along with the date and time of your call. With all the support services randomly taping the calls anyway, it's entirely possible that a record of your call exists, and this recording is admissible in court as evidence should the state (or a bored lawyer who's also getting the shaft) file suit. Again, you need to be courteous and respectful in your phone conversations. Being loud and obnoxious will get you nowhere.
Not necessarily. LTV Steel in Cleveland has been in and out of Ch. 11 a number of times in the past 20 years, primarily because of forces outside its control. Like many American steel companies (and the auto industry), it had grown fat on subsidies and protective tariffs. When those were cut out, it went into protection as it found ways to cut size without cutting production. This has been going on again lately with the question of foreign steel being dumped here. When you operate a massive, full-bore steel foundry and mill (like most steel companies did), your costs are enormous compared to the european mini-mills.
Chapter 11 is also similar in some ways to a debt consolidation loan. You're taking on a huge new debt, but getting rid of all your old ones at the same time. You still have to pay your old creditors, but once they've got their share, they're over with. All that's left is the guy/bank/venturist who spotted you the money to pay off the loan sharks.
(Snide comment at the risk of being modded down: Do you really think M$ needs a line of credit?)
The two fees being referred to are different. The 'legal fees' aspect is akin to being forced to pay to replace the signs you vandalized as a kid. Continuing the example, 'punitive damages' would be having to perform community service after you've paid to replace the signs. It's like telling a company to go sit in the corner (Without the massive headaches of an AT&T breakup)
Typically, punitive damages are greater than legal fees (Think McDonald's being forced to pay $5M for serving hot coffee), but in very high profile/technical cases like this, this kind of reversal isn't that uncommon.
Curing the disease by killing the patient. If I read their statement correctly, AT&T recognizes that the problem is unpatched IIS servers. But they've decided that because this is such a problem (Which I as a lowly dialup user haven't even noticed yet) that it merits shutting down all customer's ability to run webservers, even though they also recognize that most people run Win 9x. The legal basis is contained within their user agreement as a clause basically saying "you can't do anything that will mess up someone else's usage of the service", which really is pretty common.
Their "virus removal" instructions also seem flawed... why would I want to reconnect to the internet *before* the final reboot? Granted, not being connected during the early boot phase makes things take longer, but it will also make sure you can't be reinfected before the patch is fully applied.
This is the question we should really be asking not only among ourselves, but also of the institutions (police, security companies, DMV's, etc) that are considering this technology. I suspect the Ybor PD will be quite reluctant to implement this now that it has been shown to be rather badly flawed, but what about other cities that are considering it, or have already signed on? Who do you hold responsible for these kinds of mis-identifications should cameras be upheld by the courts? Do you blame the software manufacturer ('Their software called me Hannibal the Cannibal'), the police ('They should have been able to tell it wasn't me'), the politicians ('They just want to look good at my expense'), or someone/something else? What about recovering the costs of defending yourself in court because of a bad ID?
I think I would have to agree with this... As with any technology, the possibility of misuse/abuse is always present... I can just see these things being used as a weapon... release them into the air, and let them run around wherever they like unguarded. Truly the equivalent of a mechanical ebola, if even a couple of these got into a person, then began chewing "World is not enough" James Bond style. Their potential for good (cancer removal, artery roto-rooter, etc) is tremendous, but is this really a pandora's box we want opened?
Perhaps this just hasn't made it to my moderation threshhold, but the one comment I have yet to see made is that by placing their programs under the GPL, the students are effectively placing their programs on a huge bulliten board. Successive students will then be able to copy that code and re-submit it, which, under GPL, is permissible, but under university rules is plagarism. I would congratulate the students on their desire to use the GPL, but point out to them that they are undermining the quality of their degree by allowing students to legally (but unethically) copy their work for future programs.
If only i had the points to mod this "Funny"