Contempt findings usually result from witnesses refusing to answer questions on the stand, counsel wasting time in court. Playing games in front of a jury to cause a mistrial. Pretty much whatever the judge sitting on the case doesn't like (your hair, your attire). In rare cases, the opposing counsel can make a motion to the judge to do this, but it is pretty much at the judge's discretion.
The legal basis for contempt is similar to the right police have to hold people who get drunk in jail for 24 hours without charging them with a crime. Amazingly enough, this is not considered punishment under the law.
The only other recourse you have if a judge throws this on you is to take it up with another judge. Otherwize 24 hours in a holding cell or until court is back in session which ever is first.
Punishment for breaking laws in the US requires due process including the presentation of charges. In most juristictions, the judges cannot charge people so unless the district attorney's office thinks there is a case, nothing will happen and after 24 hours the person is released. Note that in most cases, things that you can do to draw a contempt finding are not actually illegal, so you really can't get charged with breaking any laws.
So in the MSFT case, the judge cannot charge the witness with perjury or anything like that so he's just letting it go. It's up to the procecution to make the case that the evidence is wrong. In addition, if the justice dept thinks that there is evidence tampering or lying, they can prosecute the people involved, and if it affects the current case they can probably get a new trial contingent of the procecution for perjury. Double whammy.
The moral is, it never pays to lie on the stand unless you are 110% sure you can get away with it!
Almost all processors of the current generation have branch prediction (Alpha, HP, PowerPC, MIPS).
Many processors also have speculative execution.
Very few processors have microcode for most instructions.
Apparently nobody (but you) knows how to design a microprocessor;^)
And yes, I have designed a microprocessor. Duh.
Real Reasons for Patent/Copyright Protection
on
Emulation Legality
·
· Score: 1
In a free market system, there is only one reason for patents:
- to promote widespread use of good ideas
There is only one reason for copyrights:
- to allow people to make a living from the work that they produce.
The main rational for granting patents in our free market system is to encourage people to publish their ideas instead of keeping all good ideas as trade secrets. The reason the government was allowed to grant patents is that in a true free market system, it was recognized that people would fear other people stealing their ideas which would result in people keeping all their ideas secret. With a law that says you can't steal ideas, more ideas flow, society benefits.
The main rational for granting copyrights in our free market system is to allow people who advance the arts (literature, music, painting, sculpting, etc.) make a living pursuing their craft. Without copyrights, other people could co-opt the work of artists or ruin their reputations. Then, artistans would be forced to make a living another way leaving our society culturally void.
Amazingly, two of the biggest flaws in a true free market system were corrected with these two simple principles. Notice that the main goal is to improve society, I didn't mention individual motivation or money at all. Also note, that ALL patents and copyrights revert to the public after some time (although it may be longer than you want).
At least the writers of the US Constitution were wise enough to recogize the flaw and do something about it. You may not like the solution they came up with, but their solution has proved workable for over 200 years. How many of you can say that about some code you hacked up?
IMHO, many people have a overblow notion of violating patents. If I was running a company, I would ignore all patents, get as many as I could and if anyone complains, cross license. Nearly all major corporations are run this way.
Copyright, is another story. Ironically the problem most people perceive with the copyright system is due to the big publishers (music, book, etc.), but almost everyone wants to get published by big publishers. If you think about it, we're getting exactly what we deserve.
Air pressure, no problem... no gravity, read on...
on
Space Station's LAN
·
· Score: 1
As long as you have air pressure, hard-drives have no problem, they use laptops on the space shuttle all the time.
Despite what some/.-ers will tell you, aerodynamic lift is not very dependent on gravity, which you can verify by spinning-up your hard-drive in various orientations (but not while it's spinning, angular momentum can do bad things).
No gravity, small problem, but not for the reason you might think. The biggest problem with any electronic or mechanical system in space is heat dissipation. On earth, hot air rises, causing the hot air to move away from the heat source (convection). In zero G, heat doesn't rise so you have to have fans or heat pipes.
Hard-drives probably go through many more thermal recalibration cycles in space, but this is minor.
Sorry, but the engineer in me hates to see science being confused with engineering solutions.
OLD-ethernet: Manchester encoding (one transition per bit) 1-2 bit encoding NEW-"ethernet"-(100baseT,etc): 4-5 bit encoding
The number of transitions you need to encode per bit only has to do with clock recovery and jitter.
With the ME2:1 scheme there is a clock with every bit. With the 4-5 scheme the 5 bit symbols are chosen to have the fewest concecutive same symbols. So you may not have a clock with each bit, but you interpolate time to get the clock you need. More sensitive to jitter, but higher bit density.
You can take this ad-infinitum and get RLL (run-length-limited). You can even just guess the patterns before they stabilize like PRML (partial response, maximum likelyhood). This has all been done with the hard disk in your computer.
Although this kind of stuff started out as science, it is so old, that now it is considered applied science or engineering.
If chaos modulation is really new science, it should rely on new scientific principles that are different from stuff that's been working for the last 10 years. This article is unclear on this point.
Commerce Law and Terms and Conditions
on
Toshiba and EULA
·
· Score: 1
Although IANAL, those of you familiar with commerce law, will note that there is already and "out".
Every purchase comes with an effective terms and conditions (Ts&Cs) usually in barely legible print on the back of a the order printed by a dot matrix printer or in microprint at the bottom. The Ts&Cs say things like how you will pay, how it will be shipped, and stuff like you can't ship it before September or if you don't have it in 30 days, I don't want it(mainly legalese).
The uniform commerce code (UCC) specifies that the purchase order or acknowlegement with the latest date determines the Ts&Cs.
The rule is simple, you send an order with Ts&Cs. The company either accepts these Ts&Cs or modifies them with a order acknowledgement with new Ts&Cs.
If you order a computer, just put your own Ts&Cs. In your Ts&Cs, you can put things like I want a refund for M$ stuff, or I want to run Linux on it. If the company sends you back an order acknowledgement with their own Ts&Cs. If you don't like their Ts&Cs just REJECT the order.
If the company doesn't send you an acknowledgement separate from the computer, just REJECT the shipment if it has different terms.
According to the UCC if you accept the shipment, you automatically agree to their Ts&Cs (including any term like you have to use M$ sw).
However, if you REJECT the order, and they ship it anyways, you have no responsibility for it. Just tell the FEDEX guy you don't want it. They can't even bill your credit card.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you...
on
Intel defocussed?
·
· Score: 1
Do you wonder where these analysts get money from? They sell reports to the companies who buy these processors. Nobody wants to hear what they just bought was junk, they want to hear it is the best. And, until recently, everyone bought Intel. Now that more companies are designing-in non-Intel processors, the coverage will probably reflect this.
You have to hand it to MDR, though. Almost everything they predict eventually happens (but not usually in the same timeframe). But this is probably just a result them printing the press-releases of Microsoft and Intel and post-hypnotic suggestion of the marketing guys who read their newsletters.
Actually, things were better in the US until the lastest trade negotiation round where the US caved in^H^H^H^H agreed to be more like the rest of the world and allow patents on math like the rest of the world was already doing.
Maybe people should check the laws in their own countries before complaining about the US.
It may surprise you to know, but most of the potential SAs that I've interviewed in the past year or so, don't even know how simple things like name resolution, remote mounting files, routers, cron jobs, rsh authentication, ftp chroot, automounting, email-routing, multiple httpd's, etc. work.
Also, a big pet peeve of mine, is that the UNIX SA's hate windows and the WINDOWS SA's hate unix. In a mixed environment, this is just plain stupid. (as for me, I hate them both equally:-)
My suggestion, don't be one of the SA's that rely on the IT vendors to tell you what to buy. Not all good software is free, but then you also don't always get what you pay for.
When an SA knows how things works, things like documentation, maintenence, security, usually fall into place. Anything that can go wrong, will. Also, be paranoid, very paranoid, since usually your "power" users will know all the passwords in under 1 month.
Slashdot Mirror
Contempt findings usually result from witnesses refusing to answer questions on the stand,
counsel wasting time in court. Playing games in front of a jury to cause a mistrial. Pretty much
whatever the judge sitting on the case doesn't like (your hair, your attire). In rare cases,
the opposing counsel can make a motion to the judge to do this, but it is pretty much at the
judge's discretion.
The legal basis for contempt is similar to the right police have to hold people who get drunk
in jail for 24 hours without charging them with a crime. Amazingly enough, this is not considered
punishment under the law.
The only other recourse you have if a judge throws this on you is to take it up with another judge.
Otherwize 24 hours in a holding cell or until court is back in session which ever is first.
Punishment for breaking laws in the US requires due process including the presentation of charges.
In most juristictions, the judges cannot charge people so unless the district attorney's office
thinks there is a case, nothing will happen and after 24 hours the person is released. Note that
in most cases, things that you can do to draw a contempt finding are not actually illegal, so
you really can't get charged with breaking any laws.
So in the MSFT case, the judge cannot charge the witness with perjury or anything like that so he's
just letting it go. It's up to the procecution to make the case that the evidence is wrong. In
addition, if the justice dept thinks that there is evidence tampering or lying, they can prosecute
the people involved, and if it affects the current case they can probably get a new trial contingent
of the procecution for perjury. Double whammy.
The moral is, it never pays to lie on the stand unless you are 110% sure you can get away with it!
Hmm,
;^)
Almost all processors of the current generation have branch prediction (Alpha, HP, PowerPC, MIPS).
Many processors also have speculative execution.
Very few processors have microcode for most instructions.
Apparently nobody (but you) knows how to design a microprocessor
And yes, I have designed a microprocessor. Duh.
In a free market system, there is only one reason for patents:
- to promote widespread use of good ideas
There is only one reason for copyrights:
- to allow people to make a living from the work that they produce.
The main rational for granting patents in our free market system is to encourage people to publish
their ideas instead of keeping all good ideas as trade secrets. The reason the government was
allowed to grant patents is that in a true free market system, it was recognized that people
would fear other people stealing their ideas which would result in people keeping all their ideas
secret. With a law that says you can't steal ideas, more ideas flow, society benefits.
The main rational for granting copyrights in our free market system is to allow people who advance
the arts (literature, music, painting, sculpting, etc.) make a living pursuing their craft. Without
copyrights, other people could co-opt the work of artists or ruin their reputations. Then, artistans
would be forced to make a living another way leaving our society culturally void.
Amazingly, two of the biggest flaws in a true free market system were corrected with these two
simple principles. Notice that the main goal is to improve society, I didn't mention individual
motivation or money at all. Also note, that ALL patents and copyrights revert to the public after
some time (although it may be longer than you want).
At least the writers of the US Constitution were wise enough to recogize the flaw and do something
about it. You may not like the solution they came up with, but their solution has proved workable
for over 200 years. How many of you can say that about some code you hacked up?
IMHO, many people have a overblow notion of violating patents. If I was running a company,
I would ignore all patents, get as many as I could and if anyone complains, cross license. Nearly
all major corporations are run this way.
Copyright, is another story. Ironically the problem most people perceive with the copyright
system is due to the big publishers (music, book, etc.), but almost everyone wants to get published
by big publishers. If you think about it, we're getting exactly what we deserve.
As long as you have air pressure, hard-drives have no problem, they use laptops on the space shuttle
/.-ers will tell you, aerodynamic lift is not very dependent on gravity,
all the time.
Despite what some
which you can verify by spinning-up your hard-drive in various orientations (but not while
it's spinning, angular momentum can do bad things).
No gravity, small problem, but not for the reason you might think. The biggest problem with any
electronic or mechanical system in space is heat dissipation. On earth, hot air rises, causing
the hot air to move away from the heat source (convection). In zero G, heat doesn't rise so
you have to have fans or heat pipes.
Hard-drives probably go through many more thermal recalibration cycles in space, but this is minor.
Sorry, but the engineer in me hates to see science being confused with engineering solutions.
OLD-ethernet: Manchester encoding (one transition per bit) 1-2 bit encoding
NEW-"ethernet"-(100baseT,etc): 4-5 bit encoding
The number of transitions you need to encode per bit only has to do with clock recovery and jitter.
With the ME2:1 scheme there is a clock with every bit. With the 4-5 scheme the 5 bit symbols are
chosen to have the fewest concecutive same symbols. So you may not have a clock with each
bit, but you interpolate time to get the clock you need. More sensitive to jitter, but higher bit
density.
You can take this ad-infinitum and get RLL (run-length-limited). You can even just guess the
patterns before they stabilize like PRML (partial response, maximum likelyhood). This has all been
done with the hard disk in your computer.
Although this kind of stuff started out as science, it is so old, that now it is considered
applied science or engineering.
If chaos modulation is really new science, it should rely on new scientific principles that
are different from stuff that's been working for the last 10 years. This article is unclear on
this point.
Although IANAL, those of you familiar with commerce law, will note that there is already
and "out".
Every purchase comes with an effective terms and conditions (Ts&Cs) usually in barely legible print
on the back of a the order printed by a dot matrix printer or in microprint at the bottom. The Ts&Cs
say things like how you will pay, how it will be shipped, and stuff like you can't ship it before
September or if you don't have it in 30 days, I don't want it(mainly legalese).
The uniform commerce code (UCC) specifies that the purchase order or acknowlegement with the latest
date determines the Ts&Cs.
The rule is simple, you send an order with Ts&Cs. The company either accepts these Ts&Cs or
modifies them with a order acknowledgement with new Ts&Cs.
If you order a computer, just put your own Ts&Cs. In your Ts&Cs, you can put things like I want a
refund for M$ stuff, or I want to run Linux on it. If the company sends you back an order
acknowledgement with their own Ts&Cs. If you don't like their Ts&Cs just REJECT the order.
If the company doesn't send you an acknowledgement separate from the computer, just REJECT the
shipment if it has different terms.
According to the UCC if you accept the shipment, you automatically agree to their Ts&Cs (including
any term like you have to use M$ sw).
However, if you REJECT the order, and they ship it anyways, you have no responsibility for it.
Just tell the FEDEX guy you don't want it. They can't even bill your credit card.
Do you wonder where these analysts get money from? They sell reports to the companies who buy these
processors. Nobody wants to hear what they just bought was junk, they want to hear it is the best.
And, until recently, everyone bought Intel. Now that more companies are designing-in non-Intel
processors, the coverage will probably reflect this.
You have to hand it to MDR, though. Almost everything they predict eventually happens (but
not usually in the same timeframe). But this is probably just a result them printing the press-releases
of Microsoft and Intel and post-hypnotic suggestion of the marketing guys who read their newsletters.
Actually, things were better in the US until the lastest trade negotiation round where the US
caved in^H^H^H^H agreed to be more like the rest of the world and allow patents on math like the
rest of the world was already doing.
Maybe people should check the laws in their own countries before complaining about the US.
It may surprise you to know, but most of the potential SAs that I've interviewed in the past
:-)
year or so, don't even know how simple things like name resolution, remote mounting files, routers,
cron jobs, rsh authentication, ftp chroot, automounting, email-routing, multiple httpd's,
etc. work.
Also, a big pet peeve of mine, is that the UNIX SA's hate windows and the WINDOWS SA's hate unix.
In a mixed environment, this is just plain stupid. (as for me, I hate them both equally
My suggestion, don't be one of the SA's that rely on the IT vendors to tell you what to buy. Not
all good software is free, but then you also don't always get what you pay for.
When an SA knows how things works, things like documentation, maintenence, security, usually fall
into place. Anything that can go wrong, will. Also, be paranoid, very paranoid, since usually
your "power" users will know all the passwords in under 1 month.