Keep in mind that many states adopt the federal rules with little or no modification for use in state courts. Within the next few years, these changes will be incorporated into local rules for just about every jurisdiction.
The scariest parts of the new federal rules are:
26(b)(2) which says that a party can designate information as "not reasonably accessible". It's supposed to protect companies from having to spend huge amounts of money to restore backup tapes from ancient systems, but it's going to lead to a lot of additional motions (and more attorney's fees) to prove whether the data really is inaccessible.
The Committee Note for Rule 34(a) states that a party may be required to provide access and technical support to an opposing party for inspecting data (which would include things like a database, SAN, or other systems). Not only do you have to give them the info, you have to show them how to understand it as well.
There are other scary provisions, but the overall theme of these rule changes are a shift in the timing of dealing with discovery issues. Traditionally, many cases settle or are dismissed before the discovery process (usually the most expensive part of a case) begins. The new rules require the parties to evaluate and discuss these issues within the first 120 days. This means litigation gets more expensive for the big companies (usually a defendant), but the small plaintiffs won't see much of a change, other than getting bigger settlements earlier in the case!
You are TOTALLY right. I expect my car to run for five years without ever doing any sort of maintenance. And I also expect my microwave to continue to be useful and safe after I drill holes in it to install the aftermarket clock adapter that also plays CDs from the guy down the street. It MUST be Whirlpool's fault that this new detergent I bought from the guy going door to door ate through the enamel inside my washing machine. If I park my car under a tree everyday, I should blame GM because the bird shit I never washed off ate through the paint on the hood!
Microsoft created a product that, IF USED CORRECTLY (and programmed to correctly), works just fine. If Microsoft locked out applications that didn't behave the way Microsoft thought they should, everyone would be up in arms that they are using their monopoly power to push other companies out.
Finally, The products you compare against are purpose-built. They do one thing, and they do it well. They also don't allow extensibility. With the rare exception over at thinkgeek.com, I can't program my toaster to sing the star spangled banner.
I thought I had. I took them at their word- that they couldn't afford more salary, and that a PERMANENT job meant PERMANENT (as opposed to, we'll toss you for no reason when we feel like it). But they're liars- just like everybody else in this rotten economy.
So, following your logic here... If you can see that your employer is going down the tube, management is inept, bankruptcy is fast approaching... Are you going to stay with them to the "bitter end"?
How about if your interests change? The job isn't as much fun as it used to be? You want to go a new direction in life...
Still going to stay with the miserable job?
As long as the arrangement is mutually beneficial, neither party has a reason to end it. If one of them does, why should the other get to keep it going? (Wow, sounds like my last marraige!)
I'm a little confused by all of the comments crying foul and shouting about monopolistic practices.
Microsoft had to make SOMETHING the default, otherwise the search box wouldn't work (of course, then everyone here would be ridiculing them for shipping a product that doesn't work "out-of-the-box").
And why wouldn't they default the search to their own product? It's called CROSS-SELLING! Monopolistic practice would be to prevent users from changing the default engine, or to somehow tamper with the results from non MSN searches. The box even says "MSN Search" in it before you type anything.
Adding a search is ridiculously easy, and they even tell you how to add a link to your own site to add yourself as a search provider!
Microsoft offers plenty of obvious opportunities to attack them for anti-competitive practices, so why go looking for petty, borderline cases?
Nice try, but officers of a company are protected by something called the Business Judgement Rule. If an officer decides some action (not trading in EU) is warranted (releasing source code might, in his eyes, jeapordize their product), they cannot be punished just because the shareholders disagree with that action. As long as they acted in Good Faith, they are protected - even if the choice was wrong.
They could be ousted by the shareholds and replaced, but they would not be criminally liable.
Ok, I call BS. I handle litigation technology for a law firm, and have been in many E-courtrooms. There is no camera made to focus on the defendant.
Take a look here for a real view of the e-courtroom setups.
The cameras are voice activated, so only the person speaking will appear on the recording. Additionally, these are widely used in civil matters, so there is no "defendant" per se.
And a "nice behind-the-scenes" tidbit. The hardware used to capture all of this? Tivo.
Very true, and I miss those days too. BUT, you have to keep in mind WHY those computer controls are there. Anybody heard of CARB? Our good buddies at the California Air Resources Board set standards for emissions(most of which are adopted by the feds nationwide) that would make a car like the old GTO unsellable today. Remember, the slang meaning of GTO is Gas, Tires, and Oil because those are the three things they burn. The millions of dollars spent perfecting these components are needed to meet emissions standards so they can continue to sell cars in the US.
Even sillier, such gymnastics with the DMCA would be entirely unnecessary: it is perfectly valid for Yahoo to say unauthorized clients, whether they use encryption or not, are not allowed to access its servers and start suing under the usual hacking & contract regulations when people use such clients.
I disagree here. If I have a valid username/password on a system, regardless of the protocol, why should they be able to punish me for picking a different client? How would you like it if you got busted for using PuTTY instead of MS telnet to log into your account on a webserver?
As for the freeloading, I pay Yahoo every year for extra mailbox space, so they are already making cash from me.
Part of the Terms stated You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure.
Yes, but on a distributed scale. One person, running one copy of IE would be hard pressed to take down a network. Even Netscape only takes down the machine it's running on!
Trendmicro has a product called e-manager that does something similar. It sits between your mail server and the outside world. You(Admin) decide what attachment types to block. We block executables, jpgs, mp3s, and mpgs, since they usually aren't work related. The message goes through with a notice that some attachments were removed. The user can then call IT and we can forward the original message with attachments. Most users are afraid of getting in trouble, so they don't bother to ask for the attachments.
What if a U.S. state passes a law regulating what sort of material it is permissible to transmit to their citizens. Assuming the law were not struck down as unconstitutional, should everyone in the U.S. now have to follow this state law
Hmm, Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.
Hmm, if the software is really that bad, why run it at any price?
If you want/need it bad enough to use a stolen/pirate/warez copy, obviously you don't think it's all that worthless...
Let me clarify a couple of points...
I did not mean microsoft had a better product, or even the first (reference Betamax vs. VHS).
Microsoft is proof that marketing works. Regardless of what you think of their methods, they started at the beginning of the PC revolution, when there were no giants, and built a very large successful company.
Do you really think MS had the clout before Win95 to force PC makers into exclusive agreements?
Mac and Amiga suffered the same fate as Betamax, a better product ruined by mismanagement.
Do you really think Dell would be pulling in almost $32 BILLION dollars if we were still using Dr Dos?
Now, let's get clear about something: Microsoft always trailed the computing industry. Windows was late - very late. All other computers (Amiga, Apple and most Unix) had GUIs much earlier than Microsoft.
Different subjects. If Apple ruled the world, there would be no Dell, or any other pc maker. Even now, name me two successful Mac Clone builders. Again, marketing rules the world...
That's correct now, *BUT* on servers, most manufacturers support Linux as good as Windows and it's possible that a couple of years down the road, Microsoft will have to write drivers themselves for RAID, etc. and will support only a limited selection of server-hardware. (And this will eventually kill them) However this was meant, it comes across with quite a bit of arrogance. Once again, regardless of their business practices, MS has quite a few talented developers. (Please, no complaints about stolen BSD code or security vulnerabilities) Did MS force hardware makers to create device drivers for Win95 when it came out? Nope, they rolled their own (which weren't perfect, but neither are OS drivers for linux).
As far as MS dropping Alpha support, if your company had a fringe product(by market share, NOT quality) that was about to start consuming more resources than the sales merit, what would you do?
Once, their dominance is in danger it's just a big way down for MS without any hope for return.
They were once a small company, and i doubt they would fall into oblivion just because they have a decent competitor.
Well, regardless of highly restrictive OEM agreements, I'd say many PC makers (Dell, HP, Compaq to name a few) would be allies of MS. After all, like it or not, MS brought PCs into the realm of usability for the average idiot.
Do you really think Dell would be pulling in almost $32 BILLION dollars if we were still using Dr Dos?
The OS-community wrote almost all drivers itself, while Microsoft is dependent on the hardware manufacturer to do that.
Welcome to the joys of market share. MS and the "OS-community" are in much different positions. Since most people use Windows, if a hardware manufacturer wants it's product to sell, they have to make it work with Windows. OS developers write their own drivers because they have to. Until they have sufficient market share to justify the expense from the manufacturer of creating another set of drivers, this will be their only option.
I'm not looking for a karma whore, but could anyone see for sure what the product is? or what the company is?
The only company i see is OnTrack Data International. Anyone? I'm interested here cuz I do tech/litigation support in a law firm.
The article does miss one important little detail. The first level of sorting is done by clerks or paralegals. Associates do the law-related grunt work, but that's AFTER someone making $10-$15/hour has gone through and sorted out the pr0n(trust me, lawyers get A LOT!), and other pointless crap.
IIS doesn't run as system(root) by default.
I forget the user name, but it's equivelent to nobody on *nix. You have to go screw it up yourself before it runs as root.
If you're gonna spread FUD, at least get it right!
If you want to kill UCE, don't try to get the spammer. The guy who hits Send can hide behind bogus headers, but the company that's advertising is right out in the open. Make the company being advertised liable for fines and damages(when email crashes a mail server). Once they start getting hit with fines, they'll rethink the spam stradegy.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly! To me, the more interesting point is that over 40% already DO have plans to deploy Windows 7, before the RTM is even available.
Only 175 lbs? This is slashdot, so you must be referring to per cheek pressure, right?
The scariest parts of the new federal rules are:
Microsoft created a product that, IF USED CORRECTLY (and programmed to correctly), works just fine. If Microsoft locked out applications that didn't behave the way Microsoft thought they should, everyone would be up in arms that they are using their monopoly power to push other companies out.
Finally, The products you compare against are purpose-built. They do one thing, and they do it well. They also don't allow extensibility. With the rare exception over at thinkgeek.com, I can't program my toaster to sing the star spangled banner.
So, following your logic here... If you can see that your employer is going down the tube, management is inept, bankruptcy is fast approaching... Are you going to stay with them to the "bitter end"?
How about if your interests change? The job isn't as much fun as it used to be? You want to go a new direction in life...
Still going to stay with the miserable job?
As long as the arrangement is mutually beneficial, neither party has a reason to end it. If one of them does, why should the other get to keep it going? (Wow, sounds like my last marraige!)
I'm a little confused by all of the comments crying foul and shouting about monopolistic practices.
Microsoft had to make SOMETHING the default, otherwise the search box wouldn't work (of course, then everyone here would be ridiculing them for shipping a product that doesn't work "out-of-the-box").
And why wouldn't they default the search to their own product? It's called CROSS-SELLING! Monopolistic practice would be to prevent users from changing the default engine, or to somehow tamper with the results from non MSN searches. The box even says "MSN Search" in it before you type anything. Adding a search is ridiculously easy, and they even tell you how to add a link to your own site to add yourself as a search provider!
Microsoft offers plenty of obvious opportunities to attack them for anti-competitive practices, so why go looking for petty, borderline cases?
Nice try, but officers of a company are protected by something called the Business Judgement Rule. If an officer decides some action (not trading in EU) is warranted (releasing source code might, in his eyes, jeapordize their product), they cannot be punished just because the shareholders disagree with that action. As long as they acted in Good Faith, they are protected - even if the choice was wrong.
They could be ousted by the shareholds and replaced, but they would not be criminally liable.
Ok, I call BS. I handle litigation technology for a law firm, and have been in many E-courtrooms. There is no camera made to focus on the defendant.
Take a look here for a real view of the e-courtroom setups.
The cameras are voice activated, so only the person speaking will appear on the recording. Additionally, these are widely used in civil matters, so there is no "defendant" per se. And a "nice behind-the-scenes" tidbit. The hardware used to capture all of this? Tivo.
If you're looking for something really low end to use at home, check out NASLite
Check out Nexic's Personal Publisher. It doesn't give you a PST file, but it does archive your email.
Or if you really want a PST, open your GW mailbox with outlook as a front-end(assuming you are on a live system, and not just POP3).
Very true, and I miss those days too. BUT, you have to keep in mind WHY those computer controls are there. Anybody heard of CARB? Our good buddies at the California Air Resources Board set standards for emissions(most of which are adopted by the feds nationwide) that would make a car like the old GTO unsellable today. Remember, the slang meaning of GTO is Gas, Tires, and Oil because those are the three things they burn.
The millions of dollars spent perfecting these components are needed to meet emissions standards so they can continue to sell cars in the US.
Email the manufacturer's support. I got a neat little app that will rewrite the flash memory even if the box is totally dead.
Britney's not a boy. Not yet a woman, apparently, but certainly, not a boy.
Sorta like Michael Jackson?
I disagree here. If I have a valid username/password on a system, regardless of the protocol, why should they be able to punish me for picking a different client? How would you like it if you got busted for using PuTTY instead of MS telnet to log into your account on a webserver?
As for the freeloading, I pay Yahoo every year for extra mailbox space, so they are already making cash from me.
Part of the Terms stated You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure.
Does posting the link on Slashdot count?
Yes, but on a distributed scale.
One person, running one copy of IE would be hard pressed to take down a network. Even Netscape only takes down the machine it's running on!
Trendmicro has a product called e-manager that does something similar. It sits between your mail server and the outside world.
You(Admin) decide what attachment types to block. We block executables, jpgs, mp3s, and mpgs, since they usually aren't work related.
The message goes through with a notice that some attachments were removed.
The user can then call IT and we can forward the original message with attachments.
Most users are afraid of getting in trouble, so they don't bother to ask for the attachments.
Hmm, Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:
Sounds like a solid precedent to me!
Hmm, if the software is really that bad, why run it at any price?
If you want/need it bad enough to use a stolen/pirate/warez copy, obviously you don't think it's all that worthless...
I did not mean microsoft had a better product, or even the first (reference Betamax vs. VHS).
Microsoft is proof that marketing works. Regardless of what you think of their methods, they started at the beginning of the PC revolution, when there were no giants, and built a very large successful company.
Do you really think MS had the clout before Win95 to force PC makers into exclusive agreements?
Mac and Amiga suffered the same fate as Betamax, a better product ruined by mismanagement.
Do you really think Dell would be pulling in almost $32 BILLION dollars if we were still using Dr Dos?
Different subjects. If Apple ruled the world, there would be no Dell, or any other pc maker. Even now, name me two successful Mac Clone builders. Again, marketing rules the world...
That's correct now, *BUT* on servers, most manufacturers support Linux as good as Windows and it's possible that a couple of years down the road, Microsoft will have to write drivers themselves for RAID, etc. and will support only a limited selection of server-hardware. (And this will eventually kill them)
However this was meant, it comes across with quite a bit of arrogance. Once again, regardless of their business practices, MS has quite a few talented developers. (Please, no complaints about stolen BSD code or security vulnerabilities) Did MS force hardware makers to create device drivers for Win95 when it came out? Nope, they rolled their own (which weren't perfect, but neither are OS drivers for linux).
As far as MS dropping Alpha support, if your company had a fringe product(by market share, NOT quality) that was about to start consuming more resources than the sales merit, what would you do?
Once, their dominance is in danger it's just a big way down for MS without any hope for return.
They were once a small company, and i doubt they would fall into oblivion just because they have a decent competitor.
Well, regardless of highly restrictive OEM agreements, I'd say many PC makers (Dell, HP, Compaq to name a few) would be allies of MS. After all, like it or not, MS brought PCs into the realm of usability for the average idiot.
Do you really think Dell would be pulling in almost $32 BILLION dollars if we were still using Dr Dos?
The OS-community wrote almost all drivers itself, while Microsoft is dependent on the hardware manufacturer to do that.
Welcome to the joys of market share. MS and the "OS-community" are in much different positions. Since most people use Windows, if a hardware manufacturer wants it's product to sell, they have to make it work with Windows.
OS developers write their own drivers because they have to. Until they have sufficient market share to justify the expense from the manufacturer of creating another set of drivers, this will be their only option.
My two cents worth... Feel free to make change...
I'm not looking for a karma whore, but could anyone see for sure what the product is? or what the company is?
The only company i see is OnTrack Data International. Anyone?
I'm interested here cuz I do tech/litigation support in a law firm.
The article does miss one important little detail. The first level of sorting is done by clerks or paralegals. Associates do the law-related grunt work, but that's AFTER someone making $10-$15/hour has gone through and sorted out the pr0n(trust me, lawyers get A LOT!), and other pointless crap.
I forget the user name, but it's equivelent to nobody on *nix. You have to go screw it up yourself before it runs as root.
If you're gonna spread FUD, at least get it right!
That has to be the best veiled political statements in corporate america's history...
If you want to kill UCE, don't try to get the spammer. The guy who hits Send can hide behind bogus headers, but the company that's advertising is right out in the open. Make the company being advertised liable for fines and damages(when email crashes a mail server). Once they start getting hit with fines, they'll rethink the spam stradegy.
My two worth, and priced just right!