Residential phone lines, and therefore dsl, isdn, and whatever other services they offer, are for RESIDENTIAL use. That typically means for home entertainment purposes and not as a high availability critical business resource. This means occasionally it might go down, or bandwidth might be limited. This means they might restrict your monthly bandwidth consumption, or restrict your use of servers. If you rely on this for your business needs, then you need to pay for guaranteed uptime or at the very least get yourself an alternative internet connection. If its REALLY that important, then thats just the sacrifice you have to make.
As the topic states, these ARE Aol'ers we're talking about here. The newbies of the internet. They're the ones that reply to spam. They're the ones that yell "me too!" in newsgroups, although in their defense I haven't seen it in a while. But how hard is it really. People get accustomed to clicking OK everytime they see an alert window pop up. Just send the user 10 different alert windows, nine of them being basic "here's a whole lot of information about your computer that you don't want to know and can't understand anyways", then one that says "Click ok to order some merchandise". Hey.. they agreed to it.
-Restil
Re:so, you people want to build a gun eh?
on
Homemade Gauss Gun
·
· Score: 2
You have about 50,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. 400km doesn't seem like a whole lot in the grande scheme of things.
5000 volts isn't hard to come by either. Ever hear of capacitors? You charge up the caps, then use them to release the power needed. Then charge them up again for the next shot. They could run off of wall current or any battery, it all depends on how much power it needs for the discharge that matters how often you could shoot.
This article hits on a number of issues I've had to deal with lately. My website is frequently getting 3000 visitors a day and on occasion reaches 10,000 daily visits. This is creeping close to the limits of my bandwidth. Since I support this completely out of pocket, its slowly starting to dawn on me that I really should at least ATTEMPT to gain some revenue through the website, even if it only pays for the bandwidth.
However, I am steadfastly opposed to traditional methods of obtaining revenue. Banner ads are a no brainer. I simply don't want them. Not only do they consume valuable screen realestate, many people block them anyways, and the rest ignore them. They pay a pittance in any case. Why annoy people for nothing.
Charging for access to the site simply isn't an option. As fun as it might be, nobody's going to pay for it. If some of the future projects of mine get finished, I might be able to charge subscriptions for some type of priority access, but I can't imagine offering anything that wouldn't be accessible freely to the general public.
Affiliate programs make for a nice, non intrusive option. But I feel like promoting products I have no interest in, as it goes against the theme of the site. And even if I DO support products that are in line with the message of inspiratation I attempt to convey, the companies that sell some of those products haven't exactly advertised in such a way that promotes good will. Anyone NOT seen an semi-lewd X10 ad lately?
The best option I have come up with is to manufacture or assemble my own products and sell them myself, and support the site and maybe myself through profits on those sales. Nobody will be compelled to buy them, but at least they will represent what I'm trying to accomplish. But before I can do that, I need to produce them in a more professional manner and with a higher quality than I do for the demonstration purposes.
The point I'm trying to make is, if I continue to gain in popularity, I'm going to need to find some way to make money to survive. But I don't want to lose respect in the process either. The day I start bringing in revenue should be a day of rejoince for my visitors because they realize it will bring about more fun toys to play with over the internet, not dismay because of greater restrictions.
The MPAA has two primary goals, which are typical of almost any agressive corporate entity. First, they want to make as much money as possible. And second, they want to reduce the possibility of losing any revenue from new technologies or competition.
In the spirit of competition, two entities would try to outdo the other by producing a better product and ultimately both products will enhance as a result. This works great, IF there's competition. But who does the MPAA compete with? Although the member organizations might in theory compete with each other, they choose to rally together to protect the industry as they have defined it, and marketing forces can do very little but sway which direction they go. They simply do not need to worry much about an outside entity in their industry depriving them of any signficant revenue.
That being said, the only threat they see is a reduction in established revenue. They worry about piracy, because although 300,000 free downloads a day might seem like a lot, if the technilogically inept were to discover and participate in these endevours, it might result in a 10 fold increase in piracy and that they most likely would feel as a serious pinch in their bottom line. So they figure, even though the cat is pretty well out of the bag, that they can at least stem the tide somewhat by setting some standards on software and hardware for future codecs that might prevent the less serious people from "stealing" their property.
However, those that will steal, will do so with or without these protections in place. People are a weird sort. They will go out of their way and spend a lot of money to acquire something for "free". Your average online movie collector probably spends more time and more money on his internet connection than it would cost him for a decent cable or dish option, and he ends up with lower quality media that he will probably watch once and erase. Chances are good, he's getting these very movies over the same lines provided by the same company that offers the same media for higher quality and less cost. I'm talking about the cable companies. The MPAA should already be in bed with them. How are they missing this glorious opportunity that sits right under their noses.
Just offer up the same low quality movies for free right from the cable company servers to subscribers to the internet service, free of any restrictions other than a copyright notice. Might they get copied? Sure. But they are anyways. At the very least, you'll cut way down on the required bandwidth needed as all the transfers will be over the local network. If the cable companies suddenly had a 50% drop in the uplink bandwidth requirements and could spread some of that love back to the MPAA, they'd probably end up BETTER than they are now.
The MPAA could silently chuckle and give the occasional antipiracy rant just for good measure. The pirates would be deleriously happy. And all these controls would be unnecessary.
But thats not really what its all about. The MPAA wants to have complete control of the industry so that they and ONLY they can dictate how it will function. They have to be able to control all media and stifle innovation so nobody dreams up a way to put them out of business unless they have full control over its deployment and operation. Because it COULD happen if they're slow to react and too worried all the wrong things to pay attention in time. And they don't want to risk that.
If you played on a rush map, then yes, rushing was the name of the game and zerg were best suited for rushing. But on a larger map, where it takes longer to locate your enemies, it is relatively simple to defend against a rush, especially with terrans.
I remember people bitching because I would load 8 firebats up in a dropship and dump them into the supply lines, and once all the peons were killed off, pick the bats up, and head off to the next enemy. It was always a good 10 minutes into the game before I was able to do this (due to the build order to get a starport for a dropship, and an academy for firebats). Yet, people still had undefended bases and bitched that this activity somehow represented rushing.
When you play, you have to take rushing into account. If you send out all your soldiers to attack some other base, leaving yours open for attack, thats your problem. Same as if someone uses a feature of a race you're unfamiliar with (like comsats), it doesn't mean they're cheating. It just means you haven't done enough research to "understand your enemy" and you deserve what you get.
Imagine the PRANKS you could pull with something like this. Nothing like talking to someone in their sleep from 100 meters away while the person sleeping next to them has no clue.
Keep someone thinking the phone is ringing, but everytime they answer it, only a dialtone.
And ringing the doorbell and running just got a lot less risky.:)
The problem with free sites is that the economy of the internet isn't currently capable of handling them. If we look at a parallel to normal society, the content sites would be like TV and radio stations and the ecommerce sites woudl be like the brick & morter retail and wholesale stores. Typically, brick&morter pay advertising fees that fund the media. However, on the internet, this is skewed. There is a far greater ratio of sites dedicated to content than ecommerce sites that find it profitable to advertise on the media sites. Many successful ecommerce sites advertise on more conventional radio and TV formats as they get better response than from banner ads which the bulk of the users of the internet have chosen to ignore or block out completely.
I have chosen to avoid ads alltogether on my site. If I get to the point that I need revenue to fund my site, I'll sell products from within to fund the bandwidth. Sure, I wouldn't get THAT many sales if the purpose of my site isn't to promote the products but rather content, but any sales are 100% mine I'm not feeding off pennies from banner ads purchased by other companies.
Then if you use paypal regularly, set up a bank account for that purpose. If you only recieve money through paypal, withdrawl any money as soon as you are able to, then move the money out of your spare account, except for a token amount to pay fees and whatnot. This way, the worst that can happen with such a problem is that you lose the most recent transaction.
Trapping and storing animatter is the first necessary step for utilizing it as an energy source. It wouldn't make much sense to use it planetside as it takes more energy to generate it than it would provide for us, but for space vehicles it would be invaluable.
You've fallen. Starcraft was one of my favorite games. In fact, its the last game I ever bought, as I'm no longer much of a gamer. Me sitting here vowing to never purchase another of your games will no doubt fall on deaf ears, and it would be a pointless guesture since I'm not buying them anyways.
But consider something. bnetd costs you nothing. If anything, it saves you bandwidth costs. You still sell the games. Oh, sure, you might complain that there's no cd key verification in bnetd and people can play cracked copies online with others now. Is this your reason? Perhaps it makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't. Maybe this gives cheaters the upper hand, maybe it doesn't. Maybe nobody really cares anyways.
What have you accomplished? Did the DMCA stop the proliferation of decss? No, it just moved it underground. You've taken a legal product and forced them to become outlaws. Now they have NO desire to cooperate with you, nor should they. Here is a group of people, who for NO MONEY WHATSOEVER have taken it upon themselves to provide services in your honor, to promote your products. And how do you respond?
What could these people have done for you? Its these same dedicated individuals who spend countless hours creating maps, who create all the fan sites. Creating for years on end an almost insatiable market of gamers who drool in anticipation of your next quality release, so they can start all over again starting with a purchase that puts money in your pocket and funds your next game. They're your customers. They're people who have a vested entertainment interest in prolonging the life and creative talents of your fine establishment. Without these people, your games would have no community. They would be played for a few months then forgotten. Your sales would never reach the levels you're used to seeing. These people are the reason you exist as you do today.
And you've just gone and pissed them all off. Great job. I truely admire your lack of vision.
Since PA requires all parties of a conversation to consent to, or at least be aware of the recording, if any single party is unaware then a court order would be required to access such information.
Here's the problem though, when you send someone an email, it should be assumed that it is saved. Its not the same thing as a phone conversation that as soon as the moment passes, the data is gone, unless its recorded. Email does not automatically disappear when read. It has to be deleted. And even then, it could be retrieved legitimately by the owner of the machine without consent of the sending party. In any event, it should be assumed that email is always saved unless known otherwise.
Although I know the windows version of AIM doesn't record conversations unless you specifically save them, my ICQ client does by default save the message history unless I disable it. Same goes with leaving messages on an answering machine. You KNOW its being recorded even if nobody states that fact. It sounds like the defendant is attempting to claim technological ignorance.
Another issue, and I don't know how PA law applies here, but if the girl reported a crime to the police, and the police then (with her permission) witnessed the crime taking place, they do not necessarily need a warrant. A law enforcement officer could be looking over her shoulder while he was was chatting with her, witness everything, then record it for evidence once he had witnessed the crime taking place. Same as the cop without a warrant that knocks on your front door. If you open the door and he sees a stash of MJ on your living room table, he now has knowledge of a crime and can enter without a warrant and charge the occupant with a possession charge, although he'd probably still need a warrant to search the rest of the premises, he now has all the probable cause he'd need.
As long as they're clearly marked as ads, which they are, who cares which one is more or less prominant? Gee. If one sponsor pays me $100 and another only pays me $50, which do you think I will give more preference to? Its simple supply and demand folks. Chill.
1/10000 of a second every century we shall slow down.
This means, that to gain ONE SECOND of our preciously short day, we will have to wait 1 MILLION years. This means, that by the time the
sun explodes, our day will be approximately 83 minutes longer. I'm sorry if I choose not to get excited about this.
In retrospect, the earth's rotation is slowing due to other factors, primarily tidal forces from the moon at a rate of 22 seconds every million years. It will eventually slow to the point where it takes one month to make a complete revolution, in perfect tidal lock with the moon. Or at least it would, although its still unlikely to make it before the sun goes.
Either way, I don't plan to lose any sleep over it. Of all the scares from global warming, this is one of the least disconcerting.
From what it sounds like. spammers delegate spamming to smaller, entities. Each of these enitites constantly scans its own set of pages, then sends spam to every address it finds. It might keep a list that it updates a master list with, or it might not. But the harvesting and spamming is done from many boxes on many networks.
This means, if there are enough of them, you could easily scan several tens of thousands of pages every day with little difficulty. And if one or even many of them get shut down, the spamming operation is not affected much. This is probably the first good example of a distributed network for profit. Too bad its such a slimy one.
Open source security may be a myth or a theory,
but the fact remains. For better or worse, at least I am 100% capable of finding the bugs or security holes if they need to be assured of such.
You can say all you like about how little guarantee there is with the code being open, but with the code closed, I can only find problems, I can't assure myself there aren't any more.
Back in the day, when programmers didn't even ponder the possibility of owning code, or patenting ideas. Back when multiuser operating systems had no passwords, and a commands called "KILL SYSTEM" that strangely enough, although being accessible to everyone, was never abused.
And from looking at the specs provided by the summary, it appears I could build an identical system for 1/4 the price, the only downside being size and perhaps power consumption.
As someone previously posted, for the lack of video options, a laptop would do just as nicely, although there aren't too many laptops with two ethernet adapters (but you could add an extra one via a pcmcia slot).
I suppose if they keep credit card receipts there might be records of WHO bought, but its unlikely to track exactly WHAT they bought. And since I pay with cash, there is no identifing information provided when I buy. Who cares about book purchasing anyways? True, the movie Seven showed a possible use of such records, although even there (and its all fiction mind you) they clearly stated there was absolutely no legal grounds for using that information against someone.
How much do you want to bet that after 9-11, there was a significant increases in purchases of "The Koran"?? I know Barnes&Nobel had that book prominantly displayed. And why not? I'm quite sure that most of the purchases weren't by potential terrorists but by citizens looking to understand their motives. But those people could be unfairly targeted for pure curiosity in a perfectly legal book.
They're pretty worthless anyways. If I need an LED or a common resistor, I can usually go the ratshack route for what I need. But any electronic components more diverse than that, you might as well forget about it.
I went in search of a 600:600 transformer the other day. No luck. I know WHERE I can get them, but rat shack is much closer. So I figured that's where I'd hunt.
However, it would appear that BT only discovered this patent in 2000. Therefore, they made absolutely no effort to enforce it over the last 15 or so year that it was being used by countless companies and organizations, not to mention end users. Even if they're able to extract royalties from this day forward, can they go back retroactively and enforce them on older products as well? Even the GIF patent, which I disagree with, only charged royalties from that day forward, not from the date they obtained the patent.
Can I do this legally? Patent something, hope someone else develops a similar technology, say nothing for 20 years until the patent is about to expire and economies depend on my product, then just raise my hand one day and say, "Excuse me! You have to pay me now".
I know the patent holder can selectively choose to license that patent for no charge and they coudlnt' come back later and change their minds retroactively. What about in this situation, where they've said nothing. Done nothing to enforce it. Didn't even realize they HAD the patent. Its almost as if they were purchasing patents for the sole purpose of hoping one of them would be a huge breadwinner in the future.
However, at least they had an actual product tied to the patent. Its not as bad as the idiot who patented "downloading music off the internet" as an idea with no product to back it up and trying to extort money out of companies as a result.
I took a job at UPS for the same reason. I recently quit because it wasn't where I wanted to be. However, just because the jobs aren't available does not mean you can't MAKE the job. Contract consulting isn't such a bad game. And you can purchase the monthly benefits that are so coveted with typical employment. So that might mean you can't live the lifestyle you're used to, but at least the subject of the article was able to go 8 months on savings before getting desparate. At least he seems like a smart guy. At least he's not afraid to swallow his pride and get a job, even if its less than desireable.
Why he's embarrased about it, I'll never understand. Its work. Its money. I used to love telling people I was a supervisor at UPS when they witnessed some technological marvel I was working on or had produced. With the resulting shock and explaination that I should consider a career change, I ask them if they're hiring. The subject doesn't typically come up again.
Its not all bad. The blue collar industries are delighted to get a flood of competant employees during a downturn. People who are used to working 80 hour weeks make wonderful workers. They show up every day, they never complain about working too much.
Slashdot Mirror
Residential phone lines, and therefore dsl, isdn, and whatever other services they offer, are for RESIDENTIAL use. That typically means for home entertainment purposes and not as a high availability critical business resource. This means occasionally it might go down, or bandwidth might be limited. This means they might restrict your monthly bandwidth consumption, or restrict your use of servers. If you rely on this for your business needs, then you need to pay for guaranteed uptime or at the very least get yourself an alternative internet connection. If its REALLY that important, then thats just the sacrifice you have to make.
-Restil
As the topic states, these ARE Aol'ers we're talking about here. The newbies of the internet. They're the ones that reply to spam. They're the ones that yell "me too!" in newsgroups, although in their defense I haven't seen it in a while. But how hard is it really. People get accustomed to clicking OK everytime they see an alert window pop up. Just send the user 10 different alert windows, nine of them being basic "here's a whole lot of information about your computer that you don't want to know and can't understand anyways", then one that says "Click ok to order some merchandise". Hey.. they agreed to it.
-Restil
You have about 50,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. 400km doesn't seem like a whole lot in the grande scheme of things.
5000 volts isn't hard to come by either. Ever hear of capacitors? You charge up the caps, then use them to release the power needed. Then
charge them up again for the next shot. They could run off of wall current or any battery, it all depends on how much power it needs for the discharge that matters how often you could shoot.
-Restil
This article hits on a number of issues I've had to deal with lately. My website is frequently getting 3000 visitors a day and on occasion reaches 10,000 daily visits. This is creeping close to the limits of my bandwidth. Since I support this completely out of pocket, its slowly starting to dawn on me that I really should at least ATTEMPT to gain some revenue through the website, even if it only pays for the bandwidth.
However, I am steadfastly opposed to traditional methods of obtaining revenue. Banner ads are a no brainer. I simply don't want them. Not only do they consume valuable screen realestate, many people block them anyways, and the rest ignore them. They pay a pittance in any case. Why annoy people for nothing.
Charging for access to the site simply isn't an option. As fun as it might be, nobody's going to pay for it. If some of the future projects of mine get finished, I might be able to charge subscriptions for some type of priority access, but I can't imagine offering anything that wouldn't be accessible freely to the general public.
Affiliate programs make for a nice, non intrusive option. But I feel like promoting products I have no interest in, as it goes against the theme of the site. And even if I DO support products that are in line with the message of inspiratation I attempt to convey, the companies that sell some of those products haven't exactly advertised in such a way that promotes good will. Anyone NOT seen an semi-lewd X10 ad lately?
The best option I have come up with is to manufacture or assemble my own products and sell them myself, and support the site and maybe myself through profits on those sales. Nobody will be compelled to buy them, but at least they will represent what I'm trying to accomplish. But before I can do that, I need to produce them in a more professional manner and with a higher quality than I do for the demonstration purposes.
The point I'm trying to make is, if I continue to gain in popularity, I'm going to need to find some way to make money to survive. But I don't want to lose respect in the process either. The day I start bringing in revenue should be a day of rejoince for my visitors because they realize it will bring about more fun toys to play with over the internet, not dismay because of greater restrictions.
-Restil
The MPAA has two primary goals, which are typical of almost any agressive corporate entity. First, they want to make as much money as possible. And second, they want to reduce the possibility of losing any revenue from new technologies or competition.
In the spirit of competition, two entities would try to outdo the other by producing a better product and ultimately both products will enhance as a result. This works great, IF there's competition. But who does the MPAA compete with? Although the member organizations might in theory compete with each other, they choose to rally together to protect the industry as they have defined it, and marketing forces can do very little but sway which direction they go. They simply do not need to worry much about an outside entity in their industry depriving them of any signficant revenue.
That being said, the only threat they see is a reduction in established revenue. They worry about piracy, because although 300,000 free downloads a day might seem like a lot, if the technilogically inept were to discover and participate in these endevours, it might result in a 10 fold increase in piracy and that they most likely would feel as a serious pinch in their bottom line. So they figure, even though the cat is pretty well out of the bag, that they can at least stem the tide somewhat by setting some standards on software and hardware for future codecs that might prevent the less serious people from "stealing" their property.
However, those that will steal, will do so with or without these protections in place. People are a weird sort. They will go out of their way and spend a lot of money to acquire something for "free". Your average online movie collector probably spends more time and more money on his internet connection than it would cost him for a decent cable or dish option, and he ends up with lower quality media that he will probably watch once and erase. Chances are good, he's getting these very movies over the same lines provided by the same company that offers the same media for higher quality and less cost. I'm talking about the cable companies. The MPAA should already be in bed with them. How are they missing this glorious opportunity that sits right under their noses.
Just offer up the same low quality movies for free right from the cable company servers to subscribers to the internet service, free of any restrictions other than a copyright notice. Might they get copied? Sure. But they are anyways. At the very least, you'll cut way down on the required bandwidth needed as all the transfers will be over the local network. If the cable companies suddenly had a 50% drop in the uplink bandwidth requirements and could spread some of that love back to the MPAA, they'd probably end up BETTER than they are now.
The MPAA could silently chuckle and give the occasional antipiracy rant just for good measure. The pirates would be deleriously happy. And all these controls would be unnecessary.
But thats not really what its all about. The MPAA wants to have complete control of the industry so that they and ONLY they can dictate how it will function. They have to be able to control all media and stifle innovation so nobody dreams up a way to put them out of business unless they have full control over its deployment and operation. Because it COULD happen if they're slow to react and too worried all the wrong things to pay attention in time. And they don't want to risk that.
-Restil
If you played on a rush map, then yes, rushing was the name of the game and zerg were best suited for rushing. But on a larger map, where it takes longer to locate your enemies, it is relatively simple to defend against a rush, especially with terrans.
I remember people bitching because I would load 8 firebats up in a dropship and dump them into the supply lines, and once all the peons were killed off, pick the bats up, and head off to the next enemy. It was always a good 10 minutes into the game before I was able to do this (due to the build order to get a starport for a dropship, and an academy for firebats). Yet, people still had undefended bases and bitched that this activity somehow represented rushing.
When you play, you have to take rushing into account. If you send out all your soldiers to attack some other base, leaving yours open for attack, thats your problem. Same as if someone uses a feature of a race you're unfamiliar with (like comsats), it doesn't mean they're cheating. It just means you haven't done enough research to "understand your enemy" and you deserve what you get.
-Restil
I know who's doing it. Or if its not him, he uses almost the exact same phrase on my site.
I'm almost tempted to give out contact info on him.
Almost.
-Restil
Imagine the PRANKS you could pull with something like this. Nothing like talking to someone in their sleep from 100 meters away while the person sleeping next to them has no clue.
:)
:)
Keep someone thinking the phone is ringing, but everytime they answer it, only a dialtone.
And ringing the doorbell and running just got a lot less risky.
Want to start a fight between two people? EASY!
-Restil
The problem with free sites is that the economy of the internet isn't currently capable of handling them. If we look at a parallel to normal society, the content sites would be like TV and radio stations and the ecommerce sites woudl be like the brick & morter retail and wholesale stores. Typically, brick&morter pay advertising fees that fund the media. However, on the internet, this is skewed. There is a far greater ratio of sites dedicated to content than ecommerce sites that find it profitable to advertise on the media sites. Many successful ecommerce sites advertise on more conventional radio and TV formats as they get better response than from banner ads which the bulk of the users of the internet have chosen to ignore or block out completely.
I have chosen to avoid ads alltogether on my site. If I get to the point that I need revenue to fund my site, I'll sell products from within to fund the bandwidth. Sure, I wouldn't get THAT many sales if the purpose of my site isn't to promote the products but rather content, but any sales are 100% mine I'm not feeding off pennies from banner ads purchased by other companies.
-Restil
Then if you use paypal regularly, set up a bank account for that purpose. If you only recieve money through paypal, withdrawl any money as soon as you are able to, then move the money out of your spare account, except for a token amount to pay fees and whatnot. This way, the worst that can happen with such a problem is that you lose the most recent transaction.
-Restil
Trapping and storing animatter is the first necessary step for utilizing it as an energy source. It wouldn't make much sense to use it planetside as it takes more energy to generate it than it would provide for us, but for space vehicles it would be invaluable.
-Restil
You've fallen. Starcraft was one of my favorite games. In fact, its the last game I ever bought, as I'm no longer much of a gamer. Me sitting here vowing to never purchase another of your games will no doubt fall on deaf ears, and it would be a pointless guesture since I'm not buying them anyways.
But consider something. bnetd costs you nothing. If anything, it saves you bandwidth costs. You still sell the games. Oh, sure, you might complain that there's no cd key verification in bnetd and people can play cracked copies online with others now. Is this your reason? Perhaps it makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't. Maybe this gives cheaters the upper hand, maybe it doesn't. Maybe nobody really cares anyways.
What have you accomplished? Did the DMCA stop the proliferation of decss? No, it just moved it underground. You've taken a legal product and forced them to become outlaws. Now they have NO desire to cooperate with you, nor should they. Here is a group of people, who for NO MONEY WHATSOEVER have taken it upon themselves to provide services in your honor, to promote your products. And how do you respond?
What could these people have done for you? Its these same dedicated individuals who spend countless hours creating maps, who create all the fan sites. Creating for years on end an almost insatiable market of gamers who drool in anticipation of your next quality release, so they can start all over again starting with a purchase that puts money in your pocket and funds your next game. They're your customers. They're people who have a vested entertainment interest in prolonging the life and creative talents of your fine establishment. Without these people, your games would have no community. They would be played for a few months then forgotten. Your sales would never reach the levels you're used to seeing. These people are the reason you exist as you do today.
And you've just gone and pissed them all off. Great job. I truely admire your lack of vision.
-Restil
Since PA requires all parties of a conversation to consent to, or at least be aware of the recording, if any single party is unaware then a court order would be required to access such information.
Here's the problem though, when you send someone an email, it should be assumed that it is saved. Its not the same thing as a phone conversation that as soon as the moment passes, the data is gone, unless its recorded. Email does not automatically disappear when read. It has to be deleted. And even then, it could be retrieved legitimately by the owner of the machine without consent of the sending party. In any event, it should be assumed that email is always saved unless known otherwise.
Although I know the windows version of AIM doesn't record conversations unless you specifically save them, my ICQ client does by default save the message history unless I disable it. Same goes with leaving messages on an answering machine. You KNOW its being recorded even if nobody states that fact. It sounds like the defendant is attempting to claim technological ignorance.
Another issue, and I don't know how PA law applies here, but if the girl reported a crime to the police, and the police then (with her permission) witnessed the crime taking place, they do not necessarily need a warrant. A law enforcement officer could be looking over her shoulder while he was was chatting with her, witness everything, then record it for evidence once he had witnessed the crime taking place. Same as the cop without a warrant that knocks on your front door. If you open the door and he sees a stash of MJ on your living room table, he now has knowledge of a crime and can enter without a warrant and charge the occupant with a possession charge, although he'd probably still need a warrant to search the rest of the premises, he now has all the probable cause he'd need.
But PA law might work differently.
-Restil
As long as they're clearly marked as ads, which they are, who cares which one is more or less prominant? Gee. If one sponsor pays me $100 and another only pays me $50, which do you think I will give more preference to? Its simple supply and demand folks. Chill.
-Restil
1/10000 of a second every century we shall slow down.
This means, that to gain ONE SECOND of our preciously short day, we will have to wait 1 MILLION years. This means, that by the time the
sun explodes, our day will be approximately 83 minutes longer. I'm sorry if I choose not to get excited about this.
In retrospect, the earth's rotation is slowing due to other factors, primarily tidal forces from the moon at a rate of 22 seconds every million years. It will eventually slow to the point where it takes one month to make a complete revolution, in perfect tidal lock with the moon. Or at least it would, although its still unlikely to make it before the sun goes.
Either way, I don't plan to lose any sleep over it. Of all the scares from global warming, this is one of the least disconcerting.
-Restil
From what it sounds like. spammers delegate spamming to smaller, entities. Each of these enitites constantly scans its own set of pages, then sends spam to every address it finds. It might keep a list that it updates a master list with, or it might not. But the harvesting and spamming is done from many boxes on many networks.
This means, if there are enough of them, you could easily scan several tens of thousands of pages every day with little difficulty. And if one or even many of them get shut down, the spamming operation is not affected much. This is probably the first good example of a distributed network for profit. Too bad its such a slimy one.
-Restil
Open source security may be a myth or a theory,
but the fact remains. For better or worse, at least I am 100% capable of finding the bugs or security holes if they need to be assured of such.
You can say all you like about how little guarantee there is with the code being open, but with the code closed, I can only find problems, I can't assure myself there aren't any more.
-Restil
Back in the day, when programmers didn't even ponder the possibility of owning code, or patenting ideas. Back when multiuser operating systems had no passwords, and a commands called "KILL SYSTEM" that strangely enough, although being accessible to everyone, was never abused.
How things have changed.
-Restil
More cats.
And now they'll all look alike too.
What a scary world this is turning out to be.
-Restil
First and last time I'll probably ever see a one word comment modded up to a 5. :)
-Restil
But at those prices, I'm unlikely to buy one.
And from looking at the specs provided by the summary, it appears I could build an identical system for 1/4 the price, the only downside being size and perhaps power consumption.
As someone previously posted, for the lack of video options, a laptop would do just as nicely, although there aren't too many laptops with two ethernet adapters (but you could add an extra one via a pcmcia slot).
-Restil
I suppose if they keep credit card receipts there might be records of WHO bought, but its unlikely to track exactly WHAT they bought. And since I pay with cash, there is no identifing information provided when I buy. Who cares about book purchasing anyways? True, the movie Seven showed a possible use of such records, although even there (and its all fiction mind you) they clearly stated there was absolutely no legal grounds for using that information against someone.
How much do you want to bet that after 9-11, there was a significant increases in purchases of "The Koran"?? I know Barnes&Nobel had that book prominantly displayed. And why not? I'm quite sure that most of the purchases weren't by potential terrorists but by citizens looking to understand their motives. But those people could be unfairly targeted for pure curiosity in a perfectly legal book.
-Restil
They're pretty worthless anyways. If I need an LED or a common resistor, I can usually go the ratshack route for what I need. But any electronic components more diverse than that, you might as well forget about it.
I went in search of a 600:600 transformer the other day. No luck. I know WHERE I can get them, but rat shack is much closer. So I figured that's where I'd hunt.
No dice.
Pity.
-Restil
However, it would appear that BT only discovered this patent in 2000. Therefore, they made absolutely no effort to enforce it over the last 15 or so year that it was being used by countless companies and organizations, not to mention end users. Even if they're able to extract royalties from this day forward, can they go back retroactively and enforce them on older products as well? Even the GIF patent, which I disagree with, only charged royalties from that day forward, not from the date they obtained the patent.
Can I do this legally? Patent something, hope someone else develops a similar technology, say nothing for 20 years until the patent is about to expire and economies depend on my product, then just raise my hand one day and say, "Excuse me! You have to pay me now".
I know the patent holder can selectively choose to license that patent for no charge and they coudlnt' come back later and change their minds retroactively. What about in this situation, where they've said nothing. Done nothing to enforce it. Didn't even realize they HAD the patent. Its almost as if they were purchasing patents for the sole purpose of hoping one of them would be a huge breadwinner in the future.
However, at least they had an actual product tied to the patent. Its not as bad as the idiot who patented "downloading music off the internet" as an idea with no product to back it up and trying to extort money out of companies as a result.
-Restil
I took a job at UPS for the same reason. I recently quit because it wasn't where I wanted to be. However, just because the jobs aren't available does not mean you can't MAKE the job. Contract consulting isn't such a bad game. And you can purchase the monthly benefits that are so coveted with typical employment. So that might mean you can't live the lifestyle you're used to, but at least the subject of the article was able to go 8 months on savings before getting desparate. At least he seems like a smart guy. At least he's not afraid to swallow his pride and get a job, even if its less than desireable.
Why he's embarrased about it, I'll never understand. Its work. Its money. I used to love telling people I was a supervisor at UPS when they witnessed some technological marvel I was working on or had produced. With the resulting shock and explaination that I should consider a career change, I ask them if they're hiring. The subject doesn't typically come up again.
Its not all bad. The blue collar industries are delighted to get a flood of competant employees during a downturn. People who are used to working 80 hour weeks make wonderful workers. They show up every day, they never complain about working too much.
-Restil