I think the funnier (if unlikely) explanation I heard earlier is that the martians are now monitoring and intercepting spacecraft of unknown origin after a small, wheeled probe vehicle was discovered in a desolate region of the martian outback.
Daily news broadcasts from MNN featuring 'expert' guests speculating on the origin of this probe as a prelude to interplanetary invasion forced the Martian Supreme Council into funding a crash program of SDMI (Strategic Martian Defense Initiative), or "Star Wars" programs to develop and deploy a system capable of detecting and obliterating any small probe spacecraft approaching the red-planet by instantaneously re-programming the onboard computers with unit-of-measure conversion 'virus' that would render the craft unable to navigate, causing it crash violently into the planet's surface.
Exclusive footage of the latest alien probe to be destroyed by SDMI technology was paraded around to the news media in a highly-covered press conference conducted last tuesday at the Martian Defence Departments spectacular headquarters, known as the 'Do-deca-hedron'. Martian Generals were seen to show slow-motion footage of what appeared to be a small alien lander probe jettisoning two smaller free-fall probes immediately before it augered into the side of a huge canyon in the polar region of the planet.
Unnamed officials also told MNN that several other alien probe vehicles had been detected and obliterated in recent weeks, citing a 99% effictive kill rate.
"With a virtual barrage of these alien craft, we at the Martian Defense Agency feel completely vindicated in the quintillion-dollar overrun of this program, as the vital interests and security of the citizens of this planet are being well protected." said uber-General Vlad Quabuchi
"Our success in wiping out the tools of out unknow hostile invader is clear validation of the entire SDMI program as a successful and essential asset in the overall Martian Defense arsenal."
1) Successful dating techniques with Ruhipnol 2) Proper preparaion and deployment of large fertilizer bombs at federal buildings 3) Print yor own counterfeit money for fun and profit 4) How to overthrow small island nations
Yeah, but your cordless phone ain't disguised as a toaster. The phone had a legit use, the fact that it leaks RF for anyone with a scanner to pick up is a design flaw, IMO.
Making a little camera housed in a smoke detector casing seems prettly clearly intended to capture images of someone without their knowledge.
Oh, I know - I want one of these, would be cool to see what goes on in the house whil I'm gone.
I would imagine there is a world of difference between selling little cameras that can be hidden anywhere, and selling a device like this that is obviously intended for that purpose alone.
"Check out our smoke detector! Uses our popular "Cube" video transmitter and one of our quality B&W CCD cameras, all expertly and cleverly hidden in the everyday object. Units run on a standard 9VDC battery. Please note, the smoke detector does not function as a operable smoke detector! Use this for your video projects, but get a real smoke detector so your house doesn't burn down! All units transmit on cable channel 59, easily received on any cable-ready TV set. Completely assembled, wired, tested, and ready to hang."
Screams "Surreptitious Surviellance Device" as far as I see.
>The illegality of such devices is questionable-- they most likely *aren't* used for interception of conversations and such. They're used by kiddies who want to learn how a crystal set AM receiver works.
While I want to agree with you and I question the heavy-handed tactics of the g-men, I can't quite get past these little items available for sale:
Now, I'm not legal expert by any means, but if your product is listed as being disguised as something other than it's primary purpose, I think you may be on shaky ground!
>. It puts multiple windows inside a "Desktop" area, perpetuating the Star Office mistake
Isn't this the age old MDI vs SDI argument?
Some people (myself not included) prefer to have all the windows related to a given application within a parent application desktop, presumably so you can do things like minimize/restore all of them at the same time. (most of these people seem to still like Windows 3.1, though;-) I prefer top level windows, but the best compromise, IMO, is to allow the user to select this as a preference.
Lotus Notes used to be my least favorite tool on my work machine (NT, yeuck!) until version 4.5 came along with the option to run each new window as a separate process. I like this. Now I can actually use this as God intended with separate windows for databases, mail, phone book, etc.
Seems like Opera could offer this and have it both ways.
>If its crap, I let 'em know it by heckling and vocally abusing the rubbish
This is my tactic as well. My wife doesn't understand why I let my kids turn on shows like Cow and Chicken, Ed Edd and Eddy and Two Stupid Dogs only to sit there and constantly bitch about how bad it is. I'm trying to pass on my sense of what is good to watch and what is crap so they'll learn to distinguish for themselves. Beats just telling them 'no' and snapping off the program. That just makes them more intrigued.
When we turn on the learning channel and dad sits there and says 'wow, that's cool, huh?' they seem to pick up on it and pay more attention to the show. If my son is going to insist on flipping Johnny Bravo for 1/2 hour, I don't begrudge him that. Sometimes you do need a short amount of mindless crap to just veg out.
>I only know about pokemon because I have a four year old!
Yeah, that's the excuse I use! I have 3 year old daughter and 6 year old son who really like the show, but I gotta admit that I watch it with them and try to keep up on which Poke'mon evolves into what and keep track of how many Gym Badges Ash has.:-)
Sucks though that the WB station here in Chicago shows the episodes all out of order. They air it twice each weekday and probably 3 times over the weekend. They mix current episodes with older ones and it's confusing as hell.
It's one of my "Guilty Pleasures". I always use the excuse that I watch the show with my kids and that's the only reason I know anything about it - but a couple weeks ago my wife took the kids out to the library early in the morning and came home to find me sitting in the kitchen sipping coffee and eating breakfast cereal with the show on.:-)
There's something really fun about being the only adult in a room full of first graders that 'gets' poke'mon. They seem facinated by "Andrew's Dad" who has a Pikachu keychain and understands what they are talkingabout when they debate the relative coolness of Mewtwo and Mew. Blew their minds when they asked me what was my favorite Poke'mon and I answered "Jiggly-Puff - he's the one that puts everyone to sleep when he sings and then gets mad and scribbles on everyone's faces."
In some wierd way its kind of a prestige thing for my son. All of his 1st grade classmates are really impressed.
Oh, I wouldn't say that. It's no worse than speed racer or any number of other cartoon shows we all watched as kids. I have a 6 year old and a three and I watch the show with them most mornings as they eat their breakfast before school and daycare. It's not all that bad. Some of the story lines are actually pretty good and while there is a lot of repitition for sure, (team rocket tries to capture pikachu almost every episode) there are also a lot of 'moral of the story' type things that I find to be of value.
I see a lot of good character traits displayed in the three principles - strength, compassion, dedication, respect for nature and living things, selflessness, good personal freindship and other things that I consider to be a positive message for my kids to watch. A lot better than a show like Dragon Ballz that is pure violence.
The thing that I do hate about this whole frachise is the endless merchandise tie-ins. A couple posters, some cards and the occasional t-shirt to go with the tv show and the video game would be allright, what kills me is the endless Burger-King promotions, 12 different varieties of plastic or stuffed dolls, the stickers, board games, bed sheets and underwear that is constantly shoved in my kids' faces.
No, I don't buy each and every one of these things for my kids, of course not. My son likes the cards, my daughter the stuffed dolls, not too much beyond that. Its the neverending 'gotta catch 'em all' mentality with 150+ of these things that kinda wears thin real fast.
To summarize:
Badly animated -- about on par with average stuff we watched growing up. Empty, worthless crap -- not in my opinion. Not the best stuff for my kids to watch (PBS, Discovery Kids and the Learning Channel are on a *lot* in my house) but far from the worst. Fairly entertaining with positive message. Over-hyped merchandising machine -- without a doubt. Added bonus -- the identical female characters of Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny as a running gag in the series is actually kinda funny.
Actually, he is suing (according to the article) for 60 million pounds (which works out to what, like $97 million?) Still way to much, though. Maybe when he wins again he'll get another huge award like the one buck he got previously (or, should that be one quid?):-)
>This is the kind of stuff that lends our legal system to ridicule.
For sure. But is it our (I assume you me the US) system that will be subject to ridicule or Japan's?
Anyone know where the suit is filed? Isn't Nintendo a Japanese company? Please fill us in on how that works - do you file suit in a US court against a foreign company, or do you have to go to court in that company's country?
(then again, there *is* a "Nintendo America" subsidiary that is based in the US and presumably subject to US legal jurisdiction?)
Oh, wait - no the article says he is suing for 60 million *pounds*. Does that imply that he's filed suit in the UK? If so, I think "our justice system" isn't going to become part of this?
>but one character out of 150 has a bent spoon and you can sue them for it? *sigh*
Yeah, but the article says he once tried to sue timex for a commercial where a psychic tried to destroy a watch. Sounds like publicity stunts to me?
>I really wish there was some way to show these people who are calling the event a hoax the parallel universe on 1/3/2000 that did not invest the money in fixing this problem! I'm sure they'd change their tune.
Kinda like a Frank Capra "Wonderful Life" kind of thing. "Peter DeJager was never born, and so the pleas from IT managers for budget money to fix a 1999 rollover problem fell on deaf ears".
Really though, from what I've experienced here at my company, we would have never got the top brass' attention to start doing something about this 4 years ago if there weren't lots of dire predictions in the media about Y2K disasters. Had we not done anything, our 30,000+ employess would be looking at service order screens that were unable to take new orders, or pretty much do anything productive at all. We'd have the phone lines jammed with customers that we couldn't take care of. It was real. The world would not have ended, but we would probably have gone out of business.
What got old was the hysterical screaming in the last 18 months or so when we were already working on it and had a pretty good plan in place to deal with it. Every schmoe came out of the woodwork asking for a briefing on our progress, or a demo of the latest builds so they could go back and tell their bosses (who had only just seen a report on CNN that talked about some Y2K bug) that we were taking care of it. It took on a life of its own. I think we actually spent less time actually fixing code than we did convincing management that we needed to do something in the first place, and then once we got started, that what were were doing was actually going to be done in time and fix everything.
Exactly. CNN's Healine News was running a blurb about the judges's ruling over the weekend - sounded like the plaintiff's lawyers had written the copy...
(paraphrased) "a judges decision will not force dozens of web-page operators from removing software make by hackers that allows users to copy the contents of DVD movies to their hard drives..."
Well, I for one have forwarded his text to CNN.com - I couldn't believe my ears the other night when they read their copy on this story "the DVDCA went to court to prevent the spread of a program which was created by hackers to make illegal copies of DVD movies to exchange on the internet". What?!? Usually you say some thing like "the suit alleges that the software infringes on the copyright holders... blah blah blah" but this sounded like they read the DVDCA's complaint as fact. I sent off an email to CNN trying to point out that DeCSS was for playing, not copying DVD movies, a fact that seems to be lost on the media, but thankfully not on the Judge.
So, I for one welcome a coherent summary from ESR as it probably does carry a little more credibility outside of the "community" than a collection of AC posts on this fine site. (no, that came out wrong, I'm not slamming AC's or anyone else). I guess I don't see the harm in having a "spokesmodel" like Raymond put a communique (sp?) out to the wire with a coherent position statement, even if it just echoes what has been said here for a while. Goody - maybe some not-too-lazy reporter will pick it up and sniff about a little harder to figure out if what ESR says carries water or not, and possibly something a little closer to the objective "truth" of this situation will appear on CNN as opposed to the one-sided headline story that I heard the other day.
Ah, yes, but if you have a portable generator, you are probably in the very small minority of those who may not care too much about when the power is restored. Catch 22
I bought from them, then sent it all back, risked having to brave toys-r-us or the mall in the midst of peak brain-less shopper hunting season.
Had to pay overnight from amazon and a couple others (noodle-kidoodle) to get stuff in time. Plus, I haven't got credited yet for the returned merchandise, and I doubt I'll get anything for my shipping charges to return the stuff. But you gotta make a point.
And, BTW, although I have two children who I buy for online, I also regularly partake in Pokemon and other crap myself - just can't help disposing of that disposable income!:-)
This always makes me laugh. Sure, it's really easy to argue back and forth if the person we know as Jesus of Nazareth was really the son of God, but to claim that he never existed at all...
That would be a great trick indeed, the pinnacle of scams to completely invent his existance to the point that Constantine and most of the anglo world was converted to a religeon based on someone that never even existed. Think about it. Our world-wide calendar is based on the date of birth of an individual that was never born. *boggle*
You know, I saw that in the complaint, and was waiting for someone to mention it, so here goes...
29. DVD CCA is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that each of the Doe defendants 55 through 72 operate Internet web sites, at the below addresses, which provide "links" to other web sites which disseminate confidential proprietary CSS information:
So... lemme get this straight...
they name a bunch of guys who have the software available on their sites in the complaint. OK. I don't agree with them on the merits of their complaint, but I guess I understand this.
Then they name like, 17 "John Doe's" that have web sites that link to DeCSS stuff. Huh? It's illegal to link now? They gonna name search engines in their complaint as well?
Because they are plowing money into their 'product' instead of controlling expenses instead to make a profit. They are very early in their lifetime as a companyand are spending money expanding and ramping up their offering and r&d in anticipation of future revenues.
Someone in the market thinks that they will be making _far_ more that $54 million in revenue per year in years to come. So they pour all that capital into expenses like paying salaries, hiring talent, etc and in 5 years their revenue should be in hundreds of millions, then they will dial back on expenses to generate a net of 30% or more. That kind of a return will be what corporate investors will probably be looking for from a semi-mature growth company. I dunno. If I had cash on hand I would buy up some shares.
Hmm... interesting point. I bet though if your screwdriver had been in a zippered pouch with a couple other tools, rather than just stuffed into your back pocket, it might have been viewed differently.
I'm not saying that the cops are right to run you in for having a tool in your pocket, but at the same time I can see how I might want to make sure I'm not putting myself in a situation where I've given them an excuse to harass me. It sucks, but that seems to happen in a lot of situations in life.
>On the other hand, a lockpick is clearly designed with the sole intent of breaking into areas one shouldn't be in. There isn't any real, legal use of lockpicks (at least, not without stretching the imagination). Napster and lockpicks are not really in the same ballpark.
Well, true enough - I see your point. Like I said, I have no first-hand experience in napster, was going bysome of the posts here that it was 99.999% used for distributing illegal mp3's.
I hate to stretch a bad analogy to the breaking point, but a lockpic might be a perfectly legal item for a locksmith to posess. A slim-jim for a cop on "locked my keys in the car duty".
I'm not siding with the RIAA on this, but I can see how they would try to shut down the guy handing out do-it-yourself mp3 copying software just as fast as the cops shut down a guy that sells lockpicks, slimjims and latex gloves.
Ok, I was holding off on this comment, but this is a perfect lead in. Nice and clear example for what I'm thinking.
Crowbar: tool devised for multiple applications, primarily for demoltion of wooden structures, but also handy for halving cranial cavities and breaking into people's homes.
Lockpick: tool devised for a singular purpose, that of bypassing a secutity measure as implemented by a system of raised bumps on a metal device (key) and spring actuated differentiated cylindars (lock) which work together to limit access to a physical space to those in posession of said key.
Software: tools such as web browsers, FTP clients and email programs provided for multiple uses, generally transferring and displaying digital information such as web pages, files, images and electronic messages, but also handy for sending e-mail bombs, warez and pirated mp3 files.
Napster: (well, I've never used this so I can't provide a description here, but it sounds like this has a pretty narrowly defined purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
So I agree that the RIAA is going after the makers of the tools rather than the users, but c'mon - putting Napster in the same broad category as other file transfer mechanisms doesn't really make a point, does it?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the funnier (if unlikely) explanation I heard earlier is that the martians are now monitoring and intercepting spacecraft of unknown origin after a small, wheeled probe vehicle was discovered in a desolate region of the martian outback.
Daily news broadcasts from MNN featuring 'expert' guests speculating on the origin of this probe as a prelude to interplanetary invasion forced the Martian Supreme Council into funding a crash program of SDMI (Strategic Martian Defense Initiative), or "Star Wars" programs to develop and deploy a system capable of detecting and obliterating any small probe spacecraft approaching the red-planet by instantaneously re-programming the onboard computers with unit-of-measure conversion 'virus' that would render the craft unable to navigate, causing it crash violently into the planet's surface.
Exclusive footage of the latest alien probe to be destroyed by SDMI technology was paraded around to the news media in a highly-covered press conference conducted last tuesday at the Martian Defence Departments spectacular headquarters, known as the 'Do-deca-hedron'. Martian Generals were seen to show slow-motion footage of what appeared to be a small alien lander probe jettisoning two smaller free-fall probes immediately before it augered into the side of a huge canyon in the polar region of the planet.
Unnamed officials also told MNN that several other alien probe vehicles had been detected and obliterated in recent weeks, citing a 99% effictive kill rate.
"With a virtual barrage of these alien craft, we at the Martian Defense Agency feel completely vindicated in the quintillion-dollar overrun of this program, as the vital interests and security of the citizens of this planet are being well protected." said uber-General Vlad Quabuchi
"Our success in wiping out the tools of out unknow hostile invader is clear validation of the entire SDMI program as a successful and essential asset in the overall Martian Defense arsenal."
You can do this though with hardware costing about US$500
Geez, all you need to make that list complete:
1) Successful dating techniques with Ruhipnol
2) Proper preparaion and deployment of large fertilizer bombs at federal buildings
3) Print yor own counterfeit money for fun and profit
4) How to overthrow small island nations
Gawd.
Yeah, but your cordless phone ain't disguised as a toaster. The phone had a legit use, the fact that it leaks RF for anyone with a scanner to pick up is a design flaw, IMO.
Making a little camera housed in a smoke detector casing seems prettly clearly intended to capture images of someone without their knowledge.
Oh, I know - I want one of these, would be cool to see what goes on in the house whil I'm gone.
I would imagine there is a world of difference between selling little cameras that can be hidden anywhere, and selling a device like this that is obviously intended for that purpose alone.
and take a look at this
"Check out our smoke detector! Uses our popular "Cube" video transmitter and one of our quality B&W CCD cameras, all expertly and cleverly hidden in the everyday object. Units run on a standard 9VDC battery. Please note, the smoke detector does not function as a operable smoke detector! Use this for your video projects, but get a real smoke detector so your house doesn't burn down! All units transmit on cable channel 59, easily received on any cable-ready TV set. Completely assembled, wired, tested, and ready to hang."
Screams "Surreptitious Surviellance Device" as far as I see.
>The illegality of such devices is questionable-- they most likely *aren't* used for interception of conversations and such. They're used by kiddies who want to learn how a crystal set AM receiver works.
While I want to agree with you and I question the heavy-handed tactics of the g-men, I can't quite get past these little items available for sale:
PB-1
Telephone Transmitter
CLK-3000WT
Disguised Clock w/audio
ME-2000
MicroEye Camera/Transmitter
SMK-3000WT
Disguised Smoke w/audio
Now, I'm not legal expert by any means, but if your product is listed as being disguised as something other than it's primary purpose, I think you may be on shaky ground!
>. It puts multiple windows inside a "Desktop" area, perpetuating the Star Office mistake
;-) I prefer top level windows, but the best compromise, IMO, is to allow the user to select this as a preference.
Isn't this the age old MDI vs SDI argument?
Some people (myself not included) prefer to have all the windows related to a given application within a parent application desktop, presumably so you can do things like minimize/restore all of them at the same time. (most of these people seem to still like Windows 3.1, though
Lotus Notes used to be my least favorite tool on my work machine (NT, yeuck!) until version 4.5 came along with the option to run each new window as a separate process. I like this. Now I can actually use this as God intended with separate windows for databases, mail, phone book, etc.
Seems like Opera could offer this and have it both ways.
>If its crap, I let 'em know it by heckling and vocally abusing the rubbish
This is my tactic as well. My wife doesn't understand why I let my kids turn on shows like Cow and Chicken, Ed Edd and Eddy and Two Stupid Dogs only to sit there and constantly bitch about how bad it is. I'm trying to pass on my sense of what is good to watch and what is crap so they'll learn to distinguish for themselves. Beats just telling them 'no' and snapping off the program. That just makes them more intrigued.
When we turn on the learning channel and dad sits there and says 'wow, that's cool, huh?' they seem to pick up on it and pay more attention to the show. If my son is going to insist on flipping Johnny Bravo for 1/2 hour, I don't begrudge him that. Sometimes you do need a short amount of mindless crap to just veg out.
>I only know about pokemon because I have a four year old!
:-)
:-)
Yeah, that's the excuse I use! I have 3 year old daughter and 6 year old son who really like the show, but I gotta admit that I watch it with them and try to keep up on which Poke'mon evolves into what and keep track of how many Gym Badges Ash has.
Sucks though that the WB station here in Chicago shows the episodes all out of order. They air it twice each weekday and probably 3 times over the weekend. They mix current episodes with older ones and it's confusing as hell.
It's one of my "Guilty Pleasures". I always use the excuse that I watch the show with my kids and that's the only reason I know anything about it - but a couple weeks ago my wife took the kids out to the library early in the morning and came home to find me sitting in the kitchen sipping coffee and eating breakfast cereal with the show on.
There's something really fun about being the only adult in a room full of first graders that 'gets' poke'mon. They seem facinated by "Andrew's Dad" who has a Pikachu keychain and understands what they are talkingabout when they debate the relative coolness of Mewtwo and Mew. Blew their minds when they asked me what was my favorite Poke'mon and I answered "Jiggly-Puff - he's the one that puts everyone to sleep when he sings and then gets mad and scribbles on everyone's faces."
In some wierd way its kind of a prestige thing for my son. All of his 1st grade classmates are really impressed.
Oh, I wouldn't say that. It's no worse than speed racer or any number of other cartoon shows we all watched as kids. I have a 6 year old and a three and I watch the show with them most mornings as they eat their breakfast before school and daycare. It's not all that bad. Some of the story lines are actually pretty good and while there is a lot of repitition for sure, (team rocket tries to capture pikachu almost every episode) there are also a lot of 'moral of the story' type things that I find to be of value.
I see a lot of good character traits displayed in the three principles - strength, compassion, dedication, respect for nature and living things, selflessness, good personal freindship and other things that I consider to be a positive message for my kids to watch. A lot better than a show like Dragon Ballz that is pure violence.
The thing that I do hate about this whole frachise is the endless merchandise tie-ins. A couple posters, some cards and the occasional t-shirt to go with the tv show and the video game would be allright, what kills me is the endless Burger-King promotions, 12 different varieties of plastic or stuffed dolls, the stickers, board games, bed sheets and underwear that is constantly shoved in my kids' faces.
No, I don't buy each and every one of these things for my kids, of course not. My son likes the cards, my daughter the stuffed dolls, not too much beyond that. Its the neverending 'gotta catch 'em all' mentality with 150+ of these things that kinda wears thin real fast.
To summarize:
Badly animated -- about on par with average stuff we watched growing up.
Empty, worthless crap -- not in my opinion. Not the best stuff for my kids to watch (PBS, Discovery Kids and the Learning Channel are on a *lot* in my house) but far from the worst. Fairly entertaining with positive message.
Over-hyped merchandising machine -- without a doubt.
Added bonus -- the identical female characters of Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny as a running gag in the series is actually kinda funny.
total score - 3 out of 5
>and he ought to win, but $97 is far too much
:-)
Yeah, maybe more like US$0.97 ??
Actually, he is suing (according to the article) for 60 million pounds (which works out to what, like $97 million?) Still way to much, though. Maybe when he wins again he'll get another huge award like the one buck he got previously (or, should that be one quid?)
>This is the kind of stuff that lends our legal system to ridicule.
For sure. But is it our (I assume you me the US) system that will be subject to ridicule or Japan's?
Anyone know where the suit is filed? Isn't Nintendo a Japanese company? Please fill us in on how that works - do you file suit in a US court against a foreign company, or do you have to go to court in that company's country?
(then again, there *is* a "Nintendo America" subsidiary that is based in the US and presumably subject to US legal jurisdiction?)
Oh, wait - no the article says he is suing for 60 million *pounds*. Does that imply that he's filed suit in the UK? If so, I think "our justice system" isn't going to become part of this?
>but one character out of 150 has a bent spoon and you can sue them for it? *sigh*
Yeah, but the article says he once tried to sue timex for a commercial where a psychic tried to destroy a watch. Sounds like publicity stunts to me?
>I really wish there was some way to show these people who are calling the event a hoax the parallel universe on 1/3/2000 that did not invest the money in fixing this problem! I'm sure they'd change their tune.
Kinda like a Frank Capra "Wonderful Life" kind of thing. "Peter DeJager was never born, and so the pleas from IT managers for budget money to fix a 1999 rollover problem fell on deaf ears".
Really though, from what I've experienced here at my company, we would have never got the top brass' attention to start doing something about this 4 years ago if there weren't lots of dire predictions in the media about Y2K disasters. Had we not done anything, our 30,000+ employess would be looking at service order screens that were unable to take new orders, or pretty much do anything productive at all. We'd have the phone lines jammed with customers that we couldn't take care of. It was real. The world would not have ended, but we would probably have gone out of business.
What got old was the hysterical screaming in the last 18 months or so when we were already working on it and had a pretty good plan in place to deal with it. Every schmoe came out of the woodwork asking for a briefing on our progress, or a demo of the latest builds so they could go back and tell their bosses (who had only just seen a report on CNN that talked about some Y2K bug) that we were taking care of it. It took on a life of its own. I think we actually spent less time actually fixing code than we did convincing management that we needed to do something in the first place, and then once we got started, that what were were doing was actually going to be done in time and fix everything.
Exactly. CNN's Healine News was running a blurb about the judges's ruling over the weekend - sounded like the plaintiff's lawyers had written the copy...
(paraphrased) "a judges decision will not force dozens of web-page operators from removing software make by hackers that allows users to copy the contents of DVD movies to their hard drives..."
Sheesh.
Well, I for one have forwarded his text to CNN.com - I couldn't believe my ears the other night when they read their copy on this story "the DVDCA went to court to prevent the spread of a program which was created by hackers to make illegal copies of DVD movies to exchange on the internet". What?!? Usually you say some thing like "the suit alleges that the software infringes on the copyright holders... blah blah blah" but this sounded like they read the DVDCA's complaint as fact. I sent off an email to CNN trying to point out that DeCSS was for playing, not copying DVD movies, a fact that seems to be lost on the media, but thankfully not on the Judge.
So, I for one welcome a coherent summary from ESR as it probably does carry a little more credibility outside of the "community" than a collection of AC posts on this fine site. (no, that came out wrong, I'm not slamming AC's or anyone else). I guess I don't see the harm in having a "spokesmodel" like Raymond put a communique (sp?) out to the wire with a coherent position statement, even if it just echoes what has been said here for a while. Goody - maybe some not-too-lazy reporter will pick it up and sniff about a little harder to figure out if what ESR says carries water or not, and possibly something a little closer to the objective "truth" of this situation will appear on CNN as opposed to the one-sided headline story that I heard the other day.
Ah, yes, but if you have a portable generator, you are probably in the very small minority of those who may not care too much about when the power is restored. Catch 22
You're kidding?
:-)
I bought from them, then sent it all back, risked having to brave toys-r-us or the mall in the midst of peak brain-less shopper hunting season.
Had to pay overnight from amazon and a couple others (noodle-kidoodle) to get stuff in time. Plus, I haven't got credited yet for the returned merchandise, and I doubt I'll get anything for my shipping charges to return the stuff. But you gotta make a point.
And, BTW, although I have two children who I buy for online, I also regularly partake in Pokemon and other crap myself - just can't help disposing of that disposable income!
This always makes me laugh. Sure, it's really easy to argue back and forth if the person we know as Jesus of Nazareth was really the son of God, but to claim that he never existed at all...
That would be a great trick indeed, the pinnacle of scams to completely invent his existance to the point that Constantine and most of the anglo world was converted to a religeon based on someone that never even existed. Think about it. Our world-wide calendar is based on the date of birth of an individual that was never born. *boggle*
no, not really - both are green-ish - that's where any similarity seems to end
You know, I saw that in the complaint, and was waiting for someone to mention it, so here goes...
29. DVD CCA is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that each of the Doe defendants 55 through 72 operate Internet web sites, at the below addresses, which provide "links" to other web sites which disseminate confidential proprietary CSS information:
So... lemme get this straight...
they name a bunch of guys who have the software available on their sites in the complaint. OK. I don't agree with them on the merits of their complaint, but I guess I understand this.
Then they name like, 17 "John Doe's" that have web sites that link to DeCSS stuff. Huh? It's illegal to link now? They gonna name search engines in their complaint as well?
Because they are plowing money into their 'product' instead of controlling expenses instead to make a profit. They are very early in their lifetime as a companyand are spending money expanding and ramping up their offering and r&d in anticipation of future revenues.
Someone in the market thinks that they will be making _far_ more that $54 million in revenue per year in years to come. So they pour all that capital into expenses like paying salaries, hiring talent, etc and in 5 years their revenue should be in hundreds of millions, then they will dial back on expenses to generate a net of 30% or more. That kind of a return will be what corporate investors will probably be looking for from a semi-mature growth company. I dunno. If I had cash on hand I would buy up some shares.
Hmm... interesting point. I bet though if your screwdriver had been in a zippered pouch with a couple other tools, rather than just stuffed into your back pocket, it might have been viewed differently.
I'm not saying that the cops are right to run you in for having a tool in your pocket, but at the same time I can see how I might want to make sure I'm not putting myself in a situation where I've given them an excuse to harass me. It sucks, but that seems to happen in a lot of situations in life.
>On the other hand, a lockpick is clearly designed with the sole intent of breaking into areas one shouldn't be in. There isn't any real, legal use of lockpicks (at least, not without stretching the imagination). Napster and lockpicks are not really in the same ballpark.
Well, true enough - I see your point. Like I said, I have no first-hand experience in napster, was going bysome of the posts here that it was 99.999% used for distributing illegal mp3's.
I hate to stretch a bad analogy to the breaking point, but a lockpic might be a perfectly legal item for a locksmith to posess. A slim-jim for a cop on "locked my keys in the car duty".
I'm not siding with the RIAA on this, but I can see how they would try to shut down the guy handing out do-it-yourself mp3 copying software just as fast as the cops shut down a guy that sells lockpicks, slimjims and latex gloves.
Ok, I was holding off on this comment, but this is a perfect lead in. Nice and clear example for what I'm thinking.
Crowbar: tool devised for multiple applications, primarily for demoltion of wooden structures, but also handy for halving cranial cavities and breaking into people's homes.
Lockpick: tool devised for a singular purpose, that of bypassing a secutity measure as implemented by a system of raised bumps on a metal device (key) and spring actuated differentiated cylindars (lock) which work together to limit access to a physical space to those in posession of said key.
Software: tools such as web browsers, FTP clients and email programs provided for multiple uses, generally transferring and displaying digital information such as web pages, files, images and electronic messages, but also handy for sending e-mail bombs, warez and pirated mp3 files.
Napster: (well, I've never used this so I can't provide a description here, but it sounds like this has a pretty narrowly defined purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
So I agree that the RIAA is going after the makers of the tools rather than the users, but c'mon - putting Napster in the same broad category as other file transfer mechanisms doesn't really make a point, does it?