If that's the basis on which you decide which application vendor to use then you're nuts. (Sorry, don't mean to be offensive but there's no other nice way to say it.)
Forget about whether or not Microsoft has more ethics than Borland (a statement I, several US states, dozens of other countries and countless software and hardware vendors would dispute) just take in the facts.
1. Someone registers a piece of software with Borland. That someone seems to be from company X. 2. Borland contact company X about unpaid for software. 3. Company X says we don't have any such software; Borland has evidence (granted, we don't know how strong or how weak) to the contrary. 4. Borland insists that company X pay for the software that they honestly believe company X is using.
That's the story so far. I'm sure the same thing happens hundreds of times every day with Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe, Macromedia, Borland, etc and I'm sure that, 99% of the time, things get sorted out way before they get really nasty. I'm sure that'll be the case here too.
So why are you getting pissed at Borland because they're trying to protect their investment? Is making sure people pay for something they get really that hideous a concept? Or should Borland let everyone who tries to get something for nothing get away with it?
What do you think that'll do to the company's bottom line? To it's chances of being around to develop the next generation of its tools? To the price of the software for honest users?
As I've stated elsewhere in this Ask Slashdot, it might be that Borland's right, it might be that both parties are the victims of someone else's malicious scheming or it might simply be a clerical error.
Whatever the situation, don't blame Borland for trying to protect itself from what it obviously sees as a genuine attempt to pirate its software.
1. Double and triple check your systems, including servers, workstations, laptops and any remote installations (teleworkers, etc).
Better you find out yourself than have an expensive auditor find out for you.
Make sure that all employees know that you've been contacted by Borland in this manner and that they appreciate the seriousness of the situation. Make it clear that if someone has inadvertently installed some software that they shouldn't have that now is the time to come forward, at no penalty to them, rather than later, when severe disciplinary action may be taken.
If necessary, have employees sign a piece of paper stating that they have not installed any unapproved/unsupported/unregistered applications on their PCs.
Of course, now would be a good time to audit all your software. The last thing you want is to get hit by Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe, Macromedia, etc as well.
2. Make it clear to Borland that you are willing to cooperate in any way possible, but that you have verified that you're not using any of their software illegally.
Of course, this assumes that you find nothing incriminating.
Show Borland your auditing data. Show them the licenses for all the other software that you use and reiterate that you do not use their software.
Ask them to provide further evidence so that you may investigate more thoroughly. Perhaps you're the target of a disgruntled former employee, perhaps it's a clerical error and they've got the wrong guys (you're Acme Chemicals, they're really after Acme Chemical International). Either way, explain that you're just as concerned as they are as it's in your interest to make sure that this situation doesn't occur again in the future.
3. Offer to let them have your systems independently audited at their cost.
The onus is on Borland to prove you've committed software piracy, not on you to prove that you haven't. Remember, you're innocent until proven guilty.
Ask them to back up their accusations with facts, but do so in a non-aggressive manner - getting into a you-vs-us fight before anything has been proven won't help you solve the mystery and it certainly won't help you if litigation is started.
If the matter ever does go to court, a judge will look upon you far more favourably if you can show that you were cooperative from the get-go and tried to work with Borland rather than against them.
4. If necessary, be prepared to bill Borland for any expenses you incur.
Explain to Borland that you'll help them all you can but that, when they don't find anything, they should be prepared to reimburse you for your lost time, the inconvenience caused to your business, etc.
Of course, if you want to go down this route then you're going to have even more documentation available for scrutiny. Logs showing your unscheduled audits, tracking IT personnel time, etc will be a must, as will all relevant internal and external email traffic and any legal bills, etc.
5. Ask Borland why they picked on you.
They may have had some software registered in your company's name but why are they chasing you regarding piracy? Did someone mislead them into believing that you were doing something wrong or did you match some sort of profile that typically leads them to software pirates?
Again, explain that it's in both Borland and your interest to not have this happen again. Not only does it waste their time and yours but if it happens repeatedly it leaves them open to a harassment lawsuit, perhaps from you, perhaps from the next guy it happens to.
The ring tones don't use any samples from the music and the music composition is totally different, both through different timing of the notes and through playing only one (or a couple) of notes at a time. Therefore the person who makes the phone ring tone is making a completely new piece of work and shouldn't need to give any cash for the permission to distribute it.
Re-read that paragraph.
If a ringtone's "musical composition is totally different" from an existing musical work then, by definition, it doesn't sound the same. However, what we're talking about is works that do sound the same.
Note, there is a distinct difference between "identical" and "the same".
When I was a kid, I could play John William's Star Wars theme tune on my tinny Casio keyboard. Sure, it wasn't "identical" - nobody was ever going to mistake my performance on a kid's toy with that of a full, professional orchestra - but it was "the same" as far as any listener was concerned. My friends and family were impressed I could play Star Wars and, to a 6 year-old kid, that was all that mattered.
However, if I had tried to sell recordings of my rendition of the tune as an original work then the corporate lawyers representing John Williams (or his record label) would have stomped all over me, and rightly so. I would have been infringing on the copyright of an established artist, pure and simple.
The same is true today, and not just in the arts world - just because I could create a close (but not identical) copy of the classic Coca-Cola bottle that doesn't give me the right to use it commercially packaging my own brand of cola or other beverage.
Bottom line: there is a world of difference between composing an original work (even one that is inspired by or draws on previous works) and a simple reproduction of it, no matter how basic. (I won't even bother expanding on the argument that the next generation of phones that support polyphonic ringtones can produce tunes that are as good as 128kb/s MP3s.)
If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, then it's pretty likely to be a duck. Similarly, if a ringtone sounds like Run DMC's Walk This Way, The Prodigy's Firestarter, or whatever, then the same rule applies.
Finally, your assertion that "the only thing that you could even try and argue is under copyright is the songs name, which would/should get laughed out of any court", is laughable. You claim to be familiar with the arguments surrounding copyright ownership but yet you don't know that you can't copyright facts?
If what you said is true then the record labels would have shut down CDDB and FreeDB years ago. And artists (or their labels) would be suing each other left, right and centre over song titles. Last time I checked, Huey Lewis And The News weren't suing Frankie Goes To Hollywood over the name The Power Of Love, or vice versa.
1. As I've quoted elsewhere recently on Slashdot, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". Believe what you want but most economists agree that the tax burden on the individual doesn't drastically differ between developed countries.
2. You didn't say you wanted 144 stealth bombers; I never suggested that you did. But you do want to be defended and, as I was trying to point out in my original point, defence costs money.
I used the example of stealth bombers to illustrate more than one point: not only does the US spend a large chunk of money on defence, but a lot of that spending is excessive.
Ask yourself this, why does the USAF need a bomber that's designed to be invisible to radar, deliver 16 nukes for defence? Why on earth does it need 144 of them?
(Do you ever get the feeling that the US defence industry has a disproportionately large lobby in Washington?)
3. No matter how much the US spends on healthcare, as a proportion of GDP it ranks way below just about every other country in the developed world. On the flip side of that coin, as a proportion of GDP, the US spends more than just about everyone else.
Bottom line: you could spend more on doctors and less on nukes. But you don't.
4. Welfare programmes do a lot for you. You just don't realise it.
Fact: poverty and crime are related. More poverty leads to more crime. Less poverty leads to less crime. And that's just one example of how welfare helps you indirectly.
But, let's just suppose something nasty were to happen to you and you became sick and unable to work. Sure, insurance will help - for a while - but who are you going to turn to when your insurer says you're no longer their problem? Who's going to put a roof over your head and food on your table then?
5. Again with the lies, damned lies, and statistics.
German interest rates are tiered, and the highest rate, which kicks in above 55,007 Euros (roughly equivalent to the same number of US dollars) is 48.5%.
I don't know what the corporation rates are but your figure for personal income tax is out by almost 25%. Let's just say this doesn't encourage me to believe any of your figures are accurate.
6. You pay $760 a month for health care now. How much do you think you'd pay if you were diagnosed with a serious illness? How much do you think you'll pay in ten years time? Do you see that figure staying the same or going up?
And just how good do you think the level of care for someone unfortunate enough to be unemployed and uninsured might be?
Just about everywhere else in the western world, healthcare is free at the point of delivery. If you want to see your doctor, if you need some stiches or if you need a new heart then the tax payer pays. At no point is an insurance company's say-so, a credit card, or a bank statement needed before what might be life-saving treatment is given.
Which approach do you think is more enlightened? Which do you think is more moral? Which do you think is more humane?
7. I notice you conveniently forgot to mention a free education.
In Germany (I'll use Germany as an example as you have already done so), if you want to go to university then you have the right to do so. Automatically. The government not only guarantees you a university education, it also pays for your tuition fees and gives you grants so that you can fund yourself throughout your studies.
Consequently, while US students find themselves heavily in debt upon graduation ($60,000 is a pretty typical figure from what friends tell me), German students usually start their working lives unencumbered by a mountain of debt.
Bottom line: a higher proportion of Germans than Americans go to university (and hence enjoy a better education) simply because the cost doesn't hinder them.
Which do you think is better? Which do you think will lead to a better educated population, capable of contributing more to their society?
(Also, while we're on the subject of Germany, let's appreciate their superior healthcare system. When you register with your doctor in Germany, you automatically get a full medical check up. Blood tests, X-rays, the lot. How progressive is that?)
My original point stands. If you want emergency services, armed forces, welfare programmes, legal systems, healthcare, etc then you have to pay for them. The way you pay for them is taxes. Stop whining about it.
I don't know about whether spam is evil or not but, from my point of view, evil is additive.
You basically answered your own question when you talk about historical evils like the Nazis and Stalin. If the Nazis had killed a few hundred people rather than a few million, or if Stalin had done the same, then neither would be textbook examples of evil empires.
Now whether sending one million or even one billion spam messages makes someone evil is open for debate. By definition, spamming is morally wrong.
But spamming the users of a comic book forum inviting them to bid for your X-Men collection is several orders of magnitude away from indiscriminately spamming millions of anonymous users trying to sell them kiddie porn.
Hey, it's nice that you can be so smug and superior towards others. It must give you a warm rosy glow inside that helps you cut down on your heating bills.
Perhaps you might want to consider a couple of salient points.
1. The tax burden for individuals is pretty much the same in most western countries.
However much you pay in tax in the US, it's not that much different to how much you'd pay if you lived in Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia or just about every other developed nation.
2. How your tax dollars (or pounds, or euros, or whatever) significantly impacts how much disposable income you have.
If your government spends $2 billion on a stealth bomber then that's $2 billion less that it can spend on other things. If it buys 144 of the things, that's $288 billion gone.
(And you wonder where your taxes go?)
That $288 billion could have been spent on other things. In just about every other country in the western world a chunk of it would have been spent on free healthcare, free further education, social welfare programmes, etc.
Now you may argue that welfare programmes do nothing for you (and we'll leave aside how short-sighted that is for now) but surely you'd like not to have to spend a chunk of your salary (or the chunk that your employer pays on your behalf) on health insurance? And surely you'd like to be able to spend, save or invest the several thousand dollars a year that you plough into your kids' college funds?
Before you start spouting rubbish about "Yuro-peens" taxation perhaps you could check the facts.
The real problem to married couples with children isn't salaries, it's taxes.
Nowadays, the tax rate is so oppressive one person has to work just to pay the tax burden.
And yet, like the sheep that we are, we will continue voting for republicrats or demopublicans that'll just keep sticking it to us.
And just how exactly do you suggest that governments pay for everything?
Emergency services, armed forces, welfare programmes, legal systems, healthcare and other municipal services don't grow on trees you know. Or were you expecting policemen, firemen, soldiers, social workers, court clerks, doctors, nurses and garbage collectors to work for nothing?
" I'd suspect the number of non-combatants caught in the crossfire after the first 20 minutes or so would be fairly low. That type and number of "collateral damage" is much more tolerable to public opinion than 10's of thousands killed by leveling a city."
Gee, so nice of you to "suspect" that. How benevolent of you. Wait, did I say benevolent? I meant naive.
Let's face it, the US forces in the Battle of Mogadishu weren't supermen. They didn't acheive a near 100:1 kill ratio against an armed force many times their size.
For one thing, that kind of kill ratio is unheard of in any kind of ground warfare. Even the Nazi invasion of Poland, which pitted tanks against horse brigades wasn't that one-sided, and that was a surprise attack by the better-equipped force, not an unexpected street fight in unfamiliar territory.
Many of the Somali dead were innocent civilians. There only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accept it.
When I read your post I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Some facts you might want to absorb:
1) The Somalis (by which I assume you mean the handful of Somali warlords hostile to the US intervention in their country) didn't force the US out Somalia. Negative press and public reaction did.
If the US had had the resolve, the stomach for the fight if you will, then it would have triumphed.
2) The US Army paid little or no attention to civilian casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu. Just taking the numbers from the end credits of Black Hawk Down (quoted from the top of my head) gives us a body count of 1,000+ Somali dead to 18 American.
That sounds like a massacre to me. Frankly, if you think that all of the 1000+ Somalis that lost their lives that day were active combatants then you're certainly smoking far too much weed.
Of course there were an "incredible number of innocent casualties". It's just that it's convenient to ignore them and anyone else when a handful of Americans die too.
Sure, it starts as just one a day. But, before you know it, you're doing two, then five, then ten.
You stop going out with friends or even returning their calls, personal hygiene takes a back seat and even Counter Strike and Warcraft III become unappealling. And, finally, after countless chapters and hundreds of pages you realise that you're friends were right: you're an addict.
Just one page a day, huh? Yeah, right.
Opium. Pot. Cocaine. Now pages.
It might not be your older brother's drug, or your Daddy's or your grandfathers, but, trust me, this stuff can be dangerous.
get all the attendees to bring ID in 3 forms. Utility Bill, Photo ID (passport/driving license), and a Cashcard/Bank statment. These 3 forms of ID will get you pritty much anything in the UK, from loans to mobile phone contracts.
The odds are that the original questionner (Ask Slashdotter?) is American - only 5% of Americans own passports but, fortunately, most do have driving licenses that have a photograph on them. However, getting hold of a fake driving license is no problem in the US, and while a Texan might have no problem recognising a fake Texas license, s/he'll probably struggle to tell whether the license from Vermont that they've been presented with is the real mccoy.
Utility bills are useful - until you realise that only one, maybe two, of the occupants in the average household will be responsible for paying the bills. Which means you're probably shit out of luck if you live with family, friends or are at college.
Bank statements are also a mixed blessing. In the US, it's not uncommon for older kids (16+) to be issued with a credit card that's on their parents account. If you're a college student and this is you, then you probably never see a statement, and even if you do it's going to have one of your parents name on it not yours.
Bottom line is this: try to be a little bit flexible when asking for identification. Not everyone has the same life, with the same neatly pigeon-holed pieces of paper.
There is more silicon on an average graphics card nowadays (and has been for the last five years) than there is on the average CPU - comparing the price of the two it's clear that if anything, graphics cards are comparitively underpriced, not overpriced.
The original poster seems to have made several assumptions and ignored a few basic truths.
First of all, consoles are of fixed specification - today's PS2s are no more or no less powerful than the first units that shipped over two years ago. This lack of development gives the console makers three advantages:
1. No further research and development costs.
Develop a single product one year, reap the benefits for the next five. Try doing that with a graphics chipset. Five years ago, the 3dfx Voodoo chipset was the hottest thing out there; seen any system builders using that graphics engine recently?
Even the R&D costs for the graphics engine isn't something that the console makers truly have to worry about, as those are borne by the chipset manufacturers - who then fall over each other trying to secure supply agreements with Sony, etc.
2. Better fabrication and higher yields lead to lower costs.
Over time, graphics chips (and all other silicon) becomes cheaper to make, thanks to better fab plants and higher yields. A factory that initially churns out x chips a month might well be churning out 10x chips a month a year down the line, and at little extra cost. A newer factory will improve on that too.
3. The console makers don't have to worry about compatibility issues.
Every product that's aimed at the PC market space has to be thoroughly tested with a wide range of hardware and software to make sure that it works error-free. They will even need third party approval before they can ship (Microsoft Windows approved certification, FCC, CE testing, etc). Graphics cards are no exception to this rule.
Additionally, consoles are a lot easier to support.
If FIFA 2003 doesn't work in your PS2, then either your CD is faulty or your machine is, and it's not going to take more than five minutes to work out which is the problem. But if FIFA 2003 doesn't work out of the box on your PC then you've got a whole lot of work ahead of you before you can safely say what's at fault. Grahpics card (and other hardware and software) manufacturers have to support users in this situation - Sony, etc do not. Support costs money.
Also, early adoption has its price. Buy a PS2 as soon as it's launched and you know that it will cost you more than it would a year or even six months later. The same is true of state of the art graphics cards. PS2s cost less than half of what they did originally. But so do the graphics cards that shipped at the same time as the PS2 was launched.
Lastly, graphics card manufacturers have to turn a profit on every card they make. Console manufacturers don't have that issue - they'll happily loose money on the hardware and make it back on the software you'll be buying.
If you buy FIFA 2003 on the PC then EA makes money but nVidia, ATi, etc do not. If you buy FIFA 2003 on the PS2 then Sony, the people who make the console but don't make the game, do make a profit. It's a entirely different business model - something that you've failed to appreciate.
Was an excellent series until Daniele Jackson died, then it just went downhill. I wouldn't be suprised it it was continued, because of the trend that SciFi seems to be taking. But, if they do continue it, I will continue to watch it. KREE!
Daniele Jackson? Have you been watching SG-1 in a parallel universe where all the cast members are of the opposite gender?
The PIRA has assassinated journalists when it has suited them, as have other paramilitary organisations (both republican and loyalist) in Northern Ireland.
Silencing critical opposition has long been a strategy of terrorist groups, and the PIRA is no exception to this rule.
I can't find a link right now, but I do recall the PIRA claiming responsibility for the murder of a journalist who was investigating the links between paramilitaries and drugs running (organised crime is the main source of funds for these organisations). If I remember correctly, this murder was of a catholic woman, and took place in the Republic of Ireland, something the majority of vocal republicans found particularly distasteful.
Of course, the PIRA has killed over 1,800 men, women and children from various backgrounds - soldiers, policemen, emergency servicemen, politicians and ordinary men and women - so it's not surprising that there are a few reporters amongst its long list of victims.
And for those of you that can't get your hands on a python, the adder, asp, boa, cobra, diamondback, etc cookbooks are just as well packed with tasty recipes.
If you have all SCSI, and a drive dies on you, don't expect the local CompUSA or Staples to suddenly have a huge SCSI selection available.
Either way, you wait.
While I don't expect to be able to pick up a SCSI drive locally as readily as I would an IDE one, and thus can see your point, I think you might have missed my one.
In a regular drive-controller relationship, then there are two things that can go wrong: the drive or the controller. If the drive dies then (unless it's part of a RAID array or has recently been backed up) then you've lost some, perhaps all of your data. If the controller dies then your data is probably OK.
Either way, the solution is simple: replace the faulty part, which will always be readily available (for the foreseeable future). Problem solved.
But in a drive-converter-controller set-up there's an additional layer of compexity: a third device that can go wrong.
If your controller has failed then the solution may not be as simple: if the make and model of the faulty component is still available then you'll probably be OK but what happens if it isn't?
Let's face it, at the moment you'd be lucky if you can buy any kind of device that's more than two years old from the original manufacturer. That's fine when you're talking about a printer, scanner or a graphics card but it's a problem when you're talking about a component that's vital to your data integrity.
Who knows, perhaps these devices are easily interchangeable and that, at a pinch, you can substitute any IDE to SCSI converter with any other one, regardless of manufacturer or model. And perhaps they'll still be around in five years time.
Frankly though, I doubt that either statement is true. Devices like these are normally proprietary in some way or another and stop-gap technical fixes normally don't hang around forever - remember Stacker?
The bottom line is this: the most valuable part of your system is your data. It's not something that you should risk losing so lightly.
Re:What the high flyers will be doing next
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Careers After Tech?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
When you have billions giving away a few million is nothing.
When you have $50 billion (give or take), $100 million is only 0.2 percent of your net worth. It's like a guy who has $1000 giving away $2.
Granted, the Gates Foundation is bigger than that (according to their annual report they gave $1 billion in grants last year) but some of their reporting is misleading - a considerable proportion of their education-based aid is in the form of Microsoft software and/or has other Microsoft-related terms and conditions applied to it.
How much does a copy of Office notionally cost? $800? Well, give away 100,000 copies to education and there's $80 million already. And let's not forget Encarta, etc.
And while $1 billion dollars might sound like a lot, it's probably less than what the foundation earns in annual interest alone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the foundation is there and that it's doing something to help fight AIDs, improve literacy, etc, it's just that I don't like their accounting practices - a copy of Office isn't as valuable as a couple of hundred TB vaccinations.
What the high flyers will be doing next
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Careers After Tech?
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· Score: 3, Funny
Bill Gates - philanthropist (we can only hope) Steve Ballmer - dance instructor (he can only hope) Steve Jobs - playboy billionaire by day, super spy by night (he always gets the cool gigs) Paul Allen - sporting magnate (congrats Paul, you're already there) Larry Ellison - interior designer (daaling, I just love what you've done with the house) Philippe Kahn - TV chef (a good cook who knows how to make things from nothing is priceless) Carly Fiorina - take over the Martha Stewart empire (because it needs to re"invent" itself) Michael Dell - pro surfer (dude, you're getting a board!) Jean-Louis Gassee - paranoid schizophrenic (why won't they just let him Be?)
If you're thinking of buying one of these cards then you better have a foolproof backup system and make regular (ie, daily) backups.
Here's why.
If you have an IDE hard drive on an IDE controller and the controller fails at a critical juncture then all you have to need to do to get to your data is put the drive in another controller (perhaps in the same machine, perhaps in another one). Similarly if you have a SCSI drive on a SCSI controller.
But if you have an IDE drive attached to an IDE to SCSI converter on a SCSI controller, how do you get to your data quickly if your converter dies on you?
Sure, you can get a new converter card in a couple of days (assuming that you have the cash to buy a replacement, or if Addonics/whoever will courier an advanced warranty replacement to you - and that the cards are still available) but if you need your data now then you're up shit creek without a paddle.
And the worst part is that, by trying to save a few pennies, you're the one who put yourself in this situation.
Granted, there are a few situations where putting an IDE drive on a SCSI controller is a workable solution (the Apple crowd have been doing it for a while with some success) but before you make the commitment shouldn't you seriously examine whether or not it's neccessary and/or safe?
Most new motherboards have can support up to eight IDE devices. Add a third party controller or two - available from Adaptec, Promise, etc -and you can ramp that eight up to 16 or more. And external IDE drives are available too. So what does adding your IDE devices to your SCSI controller bring to the party?
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If that's the basis on which you decide which application vendor to use then you're nuts. (Sorry, don't mean to be offensive but there's no other nice way to say it.)
Forget about whether or not Microsoft has more ethics than Borland (a statement I, several US states, dozens of other countries and countless software and hardware vendors would dispute) just take in the facts.
1. Someone registers a piece of software with Borland. That someone seems to be from company X.
2. Borland contact company X about unpaid for software.
3. Company X says we don't have any such software; Borland has evidence (granted, we don't know how strong or how weak) to the contrary.
4. Borland insists that company X pay for the software that they honestly believe company X is using.
That's the story so far. I'm sure the same thing happens hundreds of times every day with Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe, Macromedia, Borland, etc and I'm sure that, 99% of the time, things get sorted out way before they get really nasty. I'm sure that'll be the case here too.
So why are you getting pissed at Borland because they're trying to protect their investment? Is making sure people pay for something they get really that hideous a concept? Or should Borland let everyone who tries to get something for nothing get away with it?
What do you think that'll do to the company's bottom line? To it's chances of being around to develop the next generation of its tools? To the price of the software for honest users?
As I've stated elsewhere in this Ask Slashdot, it might be that Borland's right, it might be that both parties are the victims of someone else's malicious scheming or it might simply be a clerical error.
Whatever the situation, don't blame Borland for trying to protect itself from what it obviously sees as a genuine attempt to pirate its software.
1. Double and triple check your systems, including servers, workstations, laptops and any remote installations (teleworkers, etc).
Better you find out yourself than have an expensive auditor find out for you.
Make sure that all employees know that you've been contacted by Borland in this manner and that they appreciate the seriousness of the situation. Make it clear that if someone has inadvertently installed some software that they shouldn't have that now is the time to come forward, at no penalty to them, rather than later, when severe disciplinary action may be taken.
If necessary, have employees sign a piece of paper stating that they have not installed any unapproved/unsupported/unregistered applications on their PCs.
Of course, now would be a good time to audit all your software. The last thing you want is to get hit by Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe, Macromedia, etc as well.
2. Make it clear to Borland that you are willing to cooperate in any way possible, but that you have verified that you're not using any of their software illegally.
Of course, this assumes that you find nothing incriminating.
Show Borland your auditing data. Show them the licenses for all the other software that you use and reiterate that you do not use their software.
Ask them to provide further evidence so that you may investigate more thoroughly. Perhaps you're the target of a disgruntled former employee, perhaps it's a clerical error and they've got the wrong guys (you're Acme Chemicals, they're really after Acme Chemical International). Either way, explain that you're just as concerned as they are as it's in your interest to make sure that this situation doesn't occur again in the future.
3. Offer to let them have your systems independently audited at their cost.
The onus is on Borland to prove you've committed software piracy, not on you to prove that you haven't. Remember, you're innocent until proven guilty.
Ask them to back up their accusations with facts, but do so in a non-aggressive manner - getting into a you-vs-us fight before anything has been proven won't help you solve the mystery and it certainly won't help you if litigation is started.
If the matter ever does go to court, a judge will look upon you far more favourably if you can show that you were cooperative from the get-go and tried to work with Borland rather than against them.
4. If necessary, be prepared to bill Borland for any expenses you incur.
Explain to Borland that you'll help them all you can but that, when they don't find anything, they should be prepared to reimburse you for your lost time, the inconvenience caused to your business, etc.
Of course, if you want to go down this route then you're going to have even more documentation available for scrutiny. Logs showing your unscheduled audits, tracking IT personnel time, etc will be a must, as will all relevant internal and external email traffic and any legal bills, etc.
5. Ask Borland why they picked on you.
They may have had some software registered in your company's name but why are they chasing you regarding piracy? Did someone mislead them into believing that you were doing something wrong or did you match some sort of profile that typically leads them to software pirates?
Again, explain that it's in both Borland and your interest to not have this happen again. Not only does it waste their time and yours but if it happens repeatedly it leaves them open to a harassment lawsuit, perhaps from you, perhaps from the next guy it happens to.
Good luck, and let us know how you get on.
The ring tones don't use any samples from the music and the music composition is totally different, both through different timing of the notes and through playing only one (or a couple) of notes at a time. Therefore the person who makes the phone ring tone is making a completely new piece of work and shouldn't need to give any cash for the permission to distribute it.
Re-read that paragraph.
If a ringtone's "musical composition is totally different" from an existing musical work then, by definition, it doesn't sound the same. However, what we're talking about is works that do sound the same.
Note, there is a distinct difference between "identical" and "the same".
When I was a kid, I could play John William's Star Wars theme tune on my tinny Casio keyboard. Sure, it wasn't "identical" - nobody was ever going to mistake my performance on a kid's toy with that of a full, professional orchestra - but it was "the same" as far as any listener was concerned. My friends and family were impressed I could play Star Wars and, to a 6 year-old kid, that was all that mattered.
However, if I had tried to sell recordings of my rendition of the tune as an original work then the corporate lawyers representing John Williams (or his record label) would have stomped all over me, and rightly so. I would have been infringing on the copyright of an established artist, pure and simple.
The same is true today, and not just in the arts world - just because I could create a close (but not identical) copy of the classic Coca-Cola bottle that doesn't give me the right to use it commercially packaging my own brand of cola or other beverage.
Bottom line: there is a world of difference between composing an original work (even one that is inspired by or draws on previous works) and a simple reproduction of it, no matter how basic. (I won't even bother expanding on the argument that the next generation of phones that support polyphonic ringtones can produce tunes that are as good as 128kb/s MP3s.)
If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, then it's pretty likely to be a duck. Similarly, if a ringtone sounds like Run DMC's Walk This Way, The Prodigy's Firestarter, or whatever, then the same rule applies.
Finally, your assertion that "the only thing that you could even try and argue is under copyright is the songs name, which would/should get laughed out of any court", is laughable. You claim to be familiar with the arguments surrounding copyright ownership but yet you don't know that you can't copyright facts?
If what you said is true then the record labels would have shut down CDDB and FreeDB years ago. And artists (or their labels) would be suing each other left, right and centre over song titles. Last time I checked, Huey Lewis And The News weren't suing Frankie Goes To Hollywood over the name The Power Of Love, or vice versa.
The UK uses 240 volts.
220 volts, if I remember correctly, is common elsewhere in Europe.
"ET smells, pass it on."
Oh, hang on a minute, that's chinese whispers...
1. As I've quoted elsewhere recently on Slashdot, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". Believe what you want but most economists agree that the tax burden on the individual doesn't drastically differ between developed countries.
2. You didn't say you wanted 144 stealth bombers; I never suggested that you did. But you do want to be defended and, as I was trying to point out in my original point, defence costs money.
I used the example of stealth bombers to illustrate more than one point: not only does the US spend a large chunk of money on defence, but a lot of that spending is excessive.
Ask yourself this, why does the USAF need a bomber that's designed to be invisible to radar, deliver 16 nukes for defence? Why on earth does it need 144 of them?
(Do you ever get the feeling that the US defence
industry has a disproportionately large lobby in Washington?)
3. No matter how much the US spends on healthcare, as a proportion of GDP it ranks way below just about every other country in the developed world. On the flip side of that coin, as a proportion of GDP, the US spends more than just about everyone else.
Bottom line: you could spend more on doctors and less on nukes. But you don't.
4. Welfare programmes do a lot for you. You just don't realise it.
Fact: poverty and crime are related. More poverty leads to more crime. Less poverty leads to less crime. And that's just one example of how welfare helps you indirectly.
But, let's just suppose something nasty were to happen to you and you became sick and unable to work. Sure, insurance will help - for a while - but who are you going to turn to when your insurer says you're no longer their problem? Who's going to put a roof over your head and food on your table then?
5. Again with the lies, damned lies, and statistics.
German interest rates are tiered, and the highest rate, which kicks in above 55,007 Euros (roughly equivalent to the same number of US dollars) is 48.5%.
I don't know what the corporation rates are but your figure for personal income tax is out by almost 25%. Let's just say this doesn't encourage me to believe any of your figures are accurate.
6. You pay $760 a month for health care now. How much do you think you'd pay if you were diagnosed with a serious illness? How much do you think you'll pay in ten years time? Do you see that figure staying the same or going up?
And just how good do you think the level of care for someone unfortunate enough to be unemployed and uninsured might be?
Just about everywhere else in the western world, healthcare is free at the point of delivery. If you want to see your doctor, if you need some stiches or if you need a new heart then the tax payer pays. At no point is an insurance company's say-so, a credit card, or a bank statement needed before what might be life-saving treatment is given.
Which approach do you think is more enlightened? Which do you think is more moral? Which do you think is more humane?
7. I notice you conveniently forgot to mention a free education.
In Germany (I'll use Germany as an example as you have already done so), if you want to go to university then you have the right to do so. Automatically. The government not only guarantees you a university education, it also pays for your tuition fees and gives you grants so that you can fund yourself throughout your studies.
Consequently, while US students find themselves heavily in debt upon graduation ($60,000 is a pretty typical figure from what friends tell me), German students usually start their working lives unencumbered by a mountain of debt.
Bottom line: a higher proportion of Germans than Americans go to university (and hence enjoy a better education) simply because the cost doesn't hinder them.
Which do you think is better? Which do you think will lead to a better educated population, capable of contributing more to their society?
(Also, while we're on the subject of Germany, let's appreciate their superior healthcare system. When you register with your doctor in Germany, you automatically get a full medical check up. Blood tests, X-rays, the lot. How progressive is that?)
My original point stands. If you want emergency services, armed forces, welfare programmes, legal systems, healthcare, etc then you have to pay for them. The way you pay for them is taxes. Stop whining about it.
Is evil additive?
I don't know about whether spam is evil or not but, from my point of view, evil is additive.
You basically answered your own question when you talk about historical evils like the Nazis and Stalin. If the Nazis had killed a few hundred people rather than a few million, or if Stalin had done the same, then neither would be textbook examples of evil empires.
Now whether sending one million or even one billion spam messages makes someone evil is open for debate. By definition, spamming is morally wrong.
But spamming the users of a comic book forum inviting them to bid for your X-Men collection is several orders of magnitude away from indiscriminately spamming millions of anonymous users trying to sell them kiddie porn.
Hey, it's nice that you can be so smug and superior towards others. It must give you a warm rosy glow inside that helps you cut down on your heating bills.
Perhaps you might want to consider a couple of salient points.
1. The tax burden for individuals is pretty much the same in most western countries.
However much you pay in tax in the US, it's not that much different to how much you'd pay if you lived in Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia or just about every other developed nation.
2. How your tax dollars (or pounds, or euros, or whatever) significantly impacts how much disposable income you have.
If your government spends $2 billion on a stealth bomber then that's $2 billion less that it can spend on other things. If it buys 144 of the things, that's $288 billion gone.
(And you wonder where your taxes go?)
That $288 billion could have been spent on other things. In just about every other country in the western world a chunk of it would have been spent on free healthcare, free further education, social welfare programmes, etc.
Now you may argue that welfare programmes do nothing for you (and we'll leave aside how short-sighted that is for now) but surely you'd like not to have to spend a chunk of your salary (or the chunk that your employer pays on your behalf) on health insurance? And surely you'd like to be able to spend, save or invest the several thousand dollars a year that you plough into your kids' college funds?
Before you start spouting rubbish about "Yuro-peens" taxation perhaps you could check the facts.
The real problem to married couples with children isn't salaries, it's taxes.
Nowadays, the tax rate is so oppressive one person has to work just to pay the tax burden.
And yet, like the sheep that we are, we will continue voting for republicrats or demopublicans that'll just keep sticking it to us.
And just how exactly do you suggest that governments pay for everything?
Emergency services, armed forces, welfare programmes, legal systems, healthcare and other municipal services don't grow on trees you know. Or were you expecting policemen, firemen, soldiers, social workers, court clerks, doctors, nurses and garbage collectors to work for nothing?
Try living in the real world for a change.
At least not until the price of buying 421 CDs has come down to the price that 156 CDs would cost you retail right now.
As Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". We all know which kind were looking at here.
" I'd suspect the number of non-combatants caught in the crossfire after the first 20 minutes or so would be fairly low. That type and number of "collateral damage" is much more tolerable to public opinion than 10's of thousands killed by leveling a city."
Gee, so nice of you to "suspect" that. How benevolent of you. Wait, did I say benevolent? I meant naive.
Let's face it, the US forces in the Battle of Mogadishu weren't supermen. They didn't acheive a near 100:1 kill ratio against an armed force many times their size.
For one thing, that kind of kill ratio is unheard of in any kind of ground warfare. Even the Nazi invasion of Poland, which pitted tanks against horse brigades wasn't that one-sided, and that was a surprise attack by the better-equipped force, not an unexpected street fight in unfamiliar territory.
Many of the Somali dead were innocent civilians. There only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accept it.
When I read your post I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Some facts you might want to absorb:
1) The Somalis (by which I assume you mean the handful of Somali warlords hostile to the US intervention in their country) didn't force the US out Somalia. Negative press and public reaction did.
If the US had had the resolve, the stomach for the fight if you will, then it would have triumphed.
2) The US Army paid little or no attention to civilian casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu. Just taking the numbers from the end credits of Black Hawk Down (quoted from the top of my head) gives us a body count of 1,000+ Somali dead to 18 American.
That sounds like a massacre to me. Frankly, if you think that all of the 1000+ Somalis that lost their lives that day were active combatants then you're certainly smoking far too much weed.
Of course there were an "incredible number of innocent casualties". It's just that it's convenient to ignore them and anyone else when a handful of Americans die too.
Sure, it starts as just one a day. But, before you know it, you're doing two, then five, then ten.
You stop going out with friends or even returning their calls, personal hygiene takes a back seat and even Counter Strike and Warcraft III become unappealling. And, finally, after countless chapters and hundreds of pages you realise that you're friends were right: you're an addict.
Just one page a day, huh? Yeah, right.
Opium. Pot. Cocaine. Now pages.
It might not be your older brother's drug, or your Daddy's or your grandfathers, but, trust me, this stuff can be dangerous.
Do what I do. Just say no.
get all the attendees to bring ID in 3 forms. Utility Bill, Photo ID (passport/driving license), and a Cashcard/Bank statment. These 3 forms of ID will get you pritty much anything in the UK, from loans to mobile phone contracts.
The odds are that the original questionner (Ask Slashdotter?) is American - only 5% of Americans own passports but, fortunately, most do have driving licenses that have a photograph on them. However, getting hold of a fake driving license is no problem in the US, and while a Texan might have no problem recognising a fake Texas license, s/he'll probably struggle to tell whether the license from Vermont that they've been presented with is the real mccoy.
Utility bills are useful - until you realise that only one, maybe two, of the occupants in the average household will be responsible for paying the bills. Which means you're probably shit out of luck if you live with family, friends or are at college.
Bank statements are also a mixed blessing. In the US, it's not uncommon for older kids (16+) to be issued with a credit card that's on their parents account. If you're a college student and this is you, then you probably never see a statement, and even if you do it's going to have one of your parents name on it not yours.
Bottom line is this: try to be a little bit flexible when asking for identification. Not everyone has the same life, with the same neatly pigeon-holed pieces of paper.
OS 5.0 is pretty good. I'd say it is 25% better than OS 4.0.
However, MacOS X 10.0 is twice as good as OS 5.0 and Mac)S X 10.2 is 104% better.
Pretty simple math, huh Bob?
There is more silicon on an average graphics card nowadays (and has been for the last five years) than there is on the average CPU - comparing the price of the two it's clear that if anything, graphics cards are comparitively underpriced, not overpriced.
The original poster seems to have made several assumptions and ignored a few basic truths.
First of all, consoles are of fixed specification - today's PS2s are no more or no less powerful than the first units that shipped over two years ago. This lack of development gives the console makers three advantages:
1. No further research and development costs.
Develop a single product one year, reap the
benefits for the next five. Try doing that with a graphics chipset. Five years ago, the 3dfx Voodoo chipset was the hottest thing out there; seen any system builders using that graphics engine recently?
Even the R&D costs for the graphics engine isn't something that the console makers truly have to worry about, as those are borne by the chipset manufacturers - who then fall over each other trying to secure supply agreements with Sony, etc.
2. Better fabrication and higher yields lead to lower costs.
Over time, graphics chips (and all other silicon) becomes cheaper to make, thanks to better fab plants and higher yields. A factory that initially churns out x chips a month might well be churning out 10x chips a month a year down the line, and at little extra cost. A newer factory will improve on that too.
3. The console makers don't have to worry about compatibility issues.
Every product that's aimed at the PC market space has to be thoroughly tested with a wide range of hardware and software to make sure that it works error-free. They will even need third party approval before they can ship (Microsoft Windows approved certification, FCC, CE testing, etc). Graphics cards are no exception to this rule.
Additionally, consoles are a lot easier to support.
If FIFA 2003 doesn't work in your PS2, then either your CD is faulty or your machine is, and it's not going to take more than five minutes to work out which is the problem. But if FIFA 2003 doesn't work out of the box on your PC then you've got a whole lot of work ahead of you before you can safely say what's at fault. Grahpics card (and other hardware and software) manufacturers have to support users in this situation - Sony, etc do not. Support costs money.
Also, early adoption has its price. Buy a PS2 as soon as it's launched and you know that it will cost you more than it would a year or even six months later. The same is true of state of the art graphics cards. PS2s cost less than half of what they did originally. But so do the graphics cards that shipped at the same time as the PS2 was launched.
Lastly, graphics card manufacturers have to turn a profit on every card they make. Console manufacturers don't have that issue - they'll happily loose money on the hardware and make it back on the software you'll be buying.
If you buy FIFA 2003 on the PC then EA makes money but nVidia, ATi, etc do not. If you buy FIFA 2003 on the PS2 then Sony, the people who make the console but don't make the game, do make a profit. It's a entirely different business model - something that you've failed to appreciate.
Was an excellent series until Daniele Jackson died, then it just went downhill. I wouldn't be suprised it it was continued, because of the trend that SciFi seems to be taking. But, if they do continue it, I will continue to watch it. KREE!
Daniele Jackson? Have you been watching SG-1 in a parallel universe where all the cast members are of the opposite gender?
I know a couple who are Irish. He's prodestant, she's catholic. Whenever they argue, she blows up his car.
Anything like that?
This is funny?
How about if we replace the prodestant (sic) with an American, the catholic with someone who's Islamic and the car with his office building.
Still funny now? Yeah, I didn't think so.
The PIRA has assassinated journalists when it has suited them, as have other paramilitary organisations (both republican and loyalist) in Northern Ireland.
Silencing critical opposition has long been a strategy of terrorist groups, and the PIRA is no exception to this rule.
I can't find a link right now, but I do recall the PIRA claiming responsibility for the murder of a journalist who was investigating the links between paramilitaries and drugs running (organised crime is the main source of funds for these organisations). If I remember correctly, this murder was of a catholic woman, and took place in the Republic of Ireland, something the majority of vocal republicans found particularly distasteful.
Of course, the PIRA has killed over 1,800 men, women and children from various backgrounds - soldiers, policemen, emergency servicemen, politicians and ordinary men and women - so it's not surprising that there are a few reporters amongst its long list of victims.
Is there such a thing?
Irony is a straight-forward, take-me-as-you-find-me word that has only one meaning.
You don't seem to have appreciated that fact.
Which, to be honest, is pretty ironic.
And for those of you that can't get your hands on a python, the adder, asp, boa, cobra, diamondback, etc cookbooks are just as well packed with tasty recipes.
If you have all SCSI, and a drive dies on you, don't expect the local CompUSA or Staples to suddenly have a huge SCSI selection available.
Either way, you wait.
While I don't expect to be able to pick up a SCSI drive locally as readily as I would an IDE one, and thus can see your point, I think you might have missed my one.
In a regular drive-controller relationship, then there are two things that can go wrong: the drive or the controller. If the drive dies then (unless it's part of a RAID array or has recently been backed up) then you've lost some, perhaps all of your data. If the controller dies then your data is probably OK.
Either way, the solution is simple: replace the faulty part, which will always be readily available (for the foreseeable future). Problem solved.
But in a drive-converter-controller set-up there's an additional layer of compexity: a third device that can go wrong.
If your controller has failed then the solution may not be as simple: if the make and model of the faulty component is still available then you'll probably be OK but what happens if it isn't?
Let's face it, at the moment you'd be lucky if you can buy any kind of device that's more than two years old from the original manufacturer. That's fine when you're talking about a printer, scanner or a graphics card but it's a problem when you're talking about a component that's vital to your data integrity.
Who knows, perhaps these devices are easily interchangeable and that, at a pinch, you can substitute any IDE to SCSI converter with any other one, regardless of manufacturer or model. And perhaps they'll still be around in five years time.
Frankly though, I doubt that either statement is true. Devices like these are normally proprietary in some way or another and stop-gap technical fixes normally don't hang around forever - remember Stacker?
The bottom line is this: the most valuable part of your system is your data. It's not something that you should risk losing so lightly.
When you have billions giving away a few million is nothing.
When you have $50 billion (give or take), $100 million is only 0.2 percent of your net worth. It's like a guy who has $1000 giving away $2.
Granted, the Gates Foundation is bigger than that (according to their annual report they gave $1 billion in grants last year) but some of their reporting is misleading - a considerable proportion of their education-based aid is in the form of Microsoft software and/or has other Microsoft-related terms and conditions applied to it.
How much does a copy of Office notionally cost? $800? Well, give away 100,000 copies to education and there's $80 million already. And let's not forget Encarta, etc.
And while $1 billion dollars might sound like a lot, it's probably less than what the foundation earns in annual interest alone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the foundation is there and that it's doing something to help fight AIDs, improve literacy, etc, it's just that I don't like their accounting practices - a copy of Office isn't as valuable as a couple of hundred TB vaccinations.
Bill Gates - philanthropist (we can only hope)
Steve Ballmer - dance instructor (he can only hope)
Steve Jobs - playboy billionaire by day, super spy by night (he always gets the cool gigs)
Paul Allen - sporting magnate (congrats Paul, you're already there)
Larry Ellison - interior designer (daaling, I just love what you've done with the house)
Philippe Kahn - TV chef (a good cook who knows how to make things from nothing is priceless)
Carly Fiorina - take over the Martha Stewart empire (because it needs to re"invent" itself)
Michael Dell - pro surfer (dude, you're getting a board!)
Jean-Louis Gassee - paranoid schizophrenic (why won't they just let him Be?)
If you're thinking of buying one of these cards then you better have a foolproof backup system and make regular (ie, daily) backups.
Here's why.
If you have an IDE hard drive on an IDE controller and the controller fails at a critical juncture then all you have to need to do to get to your data is put the drive in another controller (perhaps in the same machine, perhaps in another one). Similarly if you have a SCSI drive on a SCSI controller.
But if you have an IDE drive attached to an IDE to SCSI converter on a SCSI controller, how do you get to your data quickly if your converter dies on you?
Sure, you can get a new converter card in a couple of days (assuming that you have the cash to buy a replacement, or if Addonics/whoever will courier an advanced warranty replacement to you - and that the cards are still available) but if you need your data now then you're up shit creek without a paddle.
And the worst part is that, by trying to save a few pennies, you're the one who put yourself in this situation.
Granted, there are a few situations where putting an IDE drive on a SCSI controller is a workable solution (the Apple crowd have been doing it for a while with some success) but before you make the commitment shouldn't you seriously examine whether or not it's neccessary and/or safe?
Most new motherboards have can support up to eight IDE devices. Add a third party controller or two - available from Adaptec, Promise, etc -and you can ramp that eight up to 16 or more. And external IDE drives are available too. So what does adding your IDE devices to your SCSI controller bring to the party?