One of the largest CC heists of all time happened last year when MASTERCARD lost I forget how many card numbers, it was > 1 million cards though. The Merchants who processed transactions with those stolen cards have to eat it?! How can that be proper?!
Further, as noted elsewhere, this does not penalize the proper people. If I am a merchant and someone buys something from me with a stolen card (even though I have great security, maybe I don't even store CC information, I just process the card and I'm done with it) I eat the chargeback even though it was www.flybynight.com who's site got hacked to provide the thief with the stolen card. flybynight.com doesn't pay a dime for their lack of security.
I disagree with your premise... If the point is to make it so you don't have to be admin to install programs anymore that will be a huge nightmare for sys admins everywhere. I suppose there is another way a group policy or something to keep people from installing things, but if all software suddenly doesn't need admin rights to install, how is the sys admin supposed to lock down systems and keep them from being flooded with hundreds of tetris games?
Further, UAC is annoying in so many more ways than installing programs. Changing your IP address requires a UAC authorization, I don't have Vista installed but a contractor that does some work for me has it installed on his laptop now, he was trying to show me some stuff the other day, and had to get on my wireless network (one UAC), install a program (3 UACs happened during download/install), and then use that program to access the internet (another UAC)... Right then I said I would never install Vista ever, there is nothing I hate more than Windows need to inform you of every single little issue or problem, even when you know it (I hate the popup informing you that your network card is unplugged for example in XP, 90% of the time I'm on wireless networks, but the other 10% I don't want to have to go in to network connections and enable the wired connection... Instead I get a big red x and a popup every time I start my computer "Your network cable is unplugged") UAC just takes this philosophy to astoundingly high levels.
The problem is the registry. To write to the registry you need admin privs, every stupid little piece of software I've ever installed in windows writes something to the registry.
"Mashup" is most possibly the worst word that has ever come out of the technology sector as a buzzword.
First it sounds like "an amalgamation of multiple different components into one" but when I look at all of the sites/services that are referred to as "mashups" none of them fit this description. QEDWiki is a wiki, it doesn't appear to be "a wiki with a calendar attached" and it certainly doesn't appear to be built from 10 different components or easily integrated.
the article mentions zillow, which is an online real estate directory.... It has no "mashy-ness" about it at all.
Anyway, its a stupid word that doesn't mean anything
So by your definition any editorialist, journalist, or news reporter of any type who receives any money falls under this law, and is providing "coerced" speech, and by your definition is now not eligible for protection under the 1st?
What about Authors? They aren't protected either? Obviously the first amendment clearly lays out a provision for the "press" so maybe you're just arguing that a paid blogger isn't press, and its paid, so it doesn't fall under the first amendment...
Well authors (like novelists, or even non-fiction writers) they are not press, they are paid, if I write a book espousing a political opinion and get paid more the 25k should I have to register as a lobbyist? That is essentially what you are saying. Anyone who is paid and espouses an opinion should have to register as a lobbyist. Further you are saying anyone who is paid and espouses an opinion is not protected by the first amendment, unless they are press (presumably since that is spelled out). This is obviously untrue.
Yeah all those great services like exchange and SQL server... That will only cause complexity, instability, slowness, and management overhead on a box that simply needs to serve files and printing....
On top of that, for 4 PCs a full AD Domain is such overkill is bizarre. I install both linux and windows solutions, I'm really not biased, but I wouldn't even think of adding the administrative overhead that SBS causes until I'm looking at 10-15 workstations, and even then, probably not, because 1) they already are using my hosted email service (which I never have to think about, and gets about 95% accuracy on spam filtering, and just works) I would be an idiot to move my customers to individual onsite exchange servers (besides the admin overhead, they are mostly on dsl connections, and they aren't 5 9s like my datacenter, so there would be a drop in service level), and I can't afford the licensing to centralize it (850+ exchange CALs required...)
2) Initially SBS is cheaper, but, as soon as a company starts growing, the CALS are pretty expensive.
3) All of the bundled services in SBS are nice, as long as you're using them, otherwise they just add so much complexity that anytime something breaks its nearly impossible to determine what it is/was, losing DNS resolution in SBS causes the system to take > 45 minutes to reboot (exchange takes that long to time out trying to get resolution). So you better hope your internet connection is always working...
Anyway, if there is a 10-20 seat company that isn't going to grow, needs email, web server, remote access, and a database server, and has a T1, I'll recommend SBS. Otherwise, its easier to do with a combination of hosted services on linux, and small standard windows 2k3 server running things locally.
Ok, so if I am using Tor, presumably I've got clients behind these servers.... so according to the article, he can detect a server? What good does that do him? That doesn't identify *MY* machine the client which is actually doing the browsing. So, he can see which server is running Tor... couldn't he just portscan to find that out?
I find your entire paragraph about interoperability to be false. I constantly curse MS products for their lack of interoperability. I still think Word, Excel, and Access have the poorest integration of any office suite I've used. The first Xbox worked better and more reliably than the second, to say that product line is "progressing" is false. IE, the problem with it isn't that it has poor integration, its that it exposes your entire computer to the internet because its your OS shell. Powerpoint? what does that integrate with? And PnP? HuH? do you mean PCI pnp? or UPnP? if the latter, I still disable it on every device that runs it, and I absolutely hate that technology. I maintain small business networks. I absolutely hate plugging my laptop in to a customer network and finding 10 new printers installed.
Next, your firewall still sucks, still completely disables small business networks in its default configuration and requires entirely too much work to get working well and still allowing access to necessary services. So I just disable it everywhere I go. A good linux (or better yet openbsd) firewall at the border is much more powerful, configurable, and sane than the forced XP2 firewall.
Wrong. Verizon CSRs uniformly quoted the price as.002 Cents/KB. If after the fact they charge $.002 then guess what: They are committing a scam/fraud. This whole thing is going to blow up on them. This is getting so much coverage, it will lead to a class action law suit. Employing idiots is not an excuse for defrauding your customers, quoting one price and then charging another. Just like you still get a speeding ticket even if you didn't see or even pass a posted speed limit sign on the street you were speeding on (IE you turn right onto a street and floor it, you're going 45 in ~300 feet and you haven't even passed the 25mph speed limit sign, the cop is still well within his rights to pull you over and ticket you even if you've never driven on the street before, and have no knowledge, and no possible way of knowing the speed limit of that street, your ignorance of the law does not excuse you). Ignorance is not a valid defense. Stupidity is not a valid defense. Verizon quoted.002 Cents ($.00002). They Charged $.002. The ignorance and stupidity of their CSRs does not excuse them from fraud. They are responsible to train their employees, if they have not done so, it is their fault.
The second amendment has very little to do with "self defense" from crime, or anything like that.
The second amendment is to protect us from 2 things: 1) In the event of foreign invasion, the populace has the means to effectively fight. 2) In the event of a tyrannical (read Bush Administration) government the populace has the ability to overthrow the government.
The liberals arguing for gun control have been staring at the best reason to allow people to own guns for the last 6 years. Anyone who argues that our liberties have been unduly restricted, infringed or otherwise violated should be 100% in favor of gun ownership. It is there to give us the means to insure our liberties. It is the final check/balance provided by our constitution. If it all starts to go to hell, well we can revolt and at least have a fighting chance of winning. Without guns, that right is effectively revoked.
In response to number 1.... Um that's why we have the House.
Sure the system isn't perfect, but it is a good compromise.
If we get rid of the Senate (basically what you are proposing, lets just add 100 seats to the house, and do it all based on population) we'd quickly see huge problems. First of all, companies looking to lobby would only have to concentrate on like 3 states... California, New York, and Florida could probably pass just about any legislation they wanted, so if you're a company, move your operations to those states in exchange for a law guaranteeing your profits forever... done, US over.
Well, since you live in Canada, you probably wouldn't know... The 2nd amendment has very little to do with self defense, or anything else. It is 100% about being able to overthrow the government.
If the gov't has m16s, m1a1 tanks, etc, and they decide that they are going to impose a police state on the populace (which is armed with pitch forks, or even single shot pump action shotguns, or muzzle loaders....) the gov't is going to have 0 problem imposing their will on the people.
If the populace can go buy the same weaponry as the military (or at least a similar level of weaponry at least automatic weapons) then the gov't is going to have a lot more problems imposing their will.
The founding fathers were not thinking about crime, robberies, or anything else. The were 100% concerned with providing the means to revolt to keep the government honest.
What do you mean by "access any database" do you mean a gui database administration tool that allows a user to create tables on any database? Or do you mean compatibility with any database server (oracle, mssql, postgresql)? Or do you mean a gui application with a database backend and along with picking the dev environment we pick a database server too and build the tables etc?
If you mean the last of those options (IE building a custom app that stores customer data in a database) I might take an extra day to build a simple app in Java... My app will run on windows, mac, linux, be web accessible (via standard browser or handheld), and will scale to millions of users by simply adding hardware.
Now try using Visual Studio to match that..
Sure anyone can open MS Access or Visual Studio and build a little database app for a 5 person company, but the data is now locked up in windows, building in web access is a pain, and you can't run anything but windows on your desktops.
True, but in the public sector, and in IT in general you aren't in a "production" environment. There isn't something else you are doing that is bringing in revenue. IT is budgeted all over the world in all kinds of companies as OVERHEAD. So, spending a little more overhead up front to reduce overhead over the long haul and get off the upgrade treadmill is almost always the right thing to do.
Now if you are a programmer, and your desktop linux is somehow reducing your ability to write code (IE you spend an hour each day dealing with software updates or something) then windows is a better fit... Although I'm much more productive coding under linux than windows....
unfortunately that's not what it means. You are paying a tax because digital music is "high risk" for piracy. if you actually priate, they will still sue you and take even more money from you.
I know very well what happens in a lawsuit. Yes it will be appealed, but again as long as he has a half decent lawyer, he will get 5 million+. If this case goes to a jury trial (I don't know the specific laws in california, any contracts he may have with UCLA, it may be in the school applications that something like this goes directly to arbitration if so he may get less, still >2-3 million but not as much as if it goes to trial...) but if it goes in front of a jury a jury will award this guy 5+million.
Then it will get appealed, the sides will bargain, and it will come in somewhere around 3-5 million. That is of course unless the defense wins an appeal, which in civil cases really isn't that likely. Basically the prosecution would have to do something really stupid (bribe witnesses, perjure themselves, etc). The defense can file appeals all they want, but the judge has to grant an appeal based on merit, and unless the defense can prove that the trial was somehow tampered with that won't happen.
Anyway, even if it is settled it won't be "oh ok, nevermind we don't want anything" if a jury came back with 5 million, the prosecution would be stupid to settle for anything less than 3-4. Yes, the appeals process can drag on a bit, but as I already stated you can't just indefinitely appeal something like this, you have to have grounds, and you have to have proof. Otherwise the judge will say "Nope, you can't appeal based on that, pay the money". Also civil cases of this sort generally have penalties for non-payment, normally >10% interest with pretty high compounding (weekly or monthly). Those penalties start the day the original trial/award is decided. So, the defense has a large disincentive to continue appealing... If its a 5 million dollar award, with 10% monthly compounded interest, it doesn't take long in "legal" terms before the interest payment is larger than the original award, and if you lose all your appeals then you're on the hook for a much larger sum, so its better to talk the prosecution down as much as you can, and close the deal. Of course the prosecution knows this and they won't come down very much from a jury award, that is what they are entitled to the court said so. And if you're UCLA, the city of LA, these large organizations have the money to just pay 5 million to be done with it, just like RIMM paid of NTP even though they were winning appeals against their patents at the USPTO, they paid to get it over with, to get rid of the uncertainty, and move on. That is what UCLA/LAPD/et al will do here too.
I hope these cops all lose their jobs, they are obviously not up to the task of controlling anyone.
I don't feel too sorry for the kid though. With any half decent lawyer he is looking at at least a 3-5 million dollar settlement. Hell, I see at least 3 suits here, UCLA itself will be sued, the UCLA campus police, and the LA police (from what I read both police corps were on the scene). He should easily get 1-2 million from each of those institutions, they are all equally culpable. I would be tased 5 times if it meant I never had to work again. This reminds me of Office Space a little bit, when the guy gets hit and gets his 7 figure settlement and says "If you just hold on good things can happen in this life".
Anyway... I don't mean to trivialize this incident, it was horrid, I was appalled watching the video. They've got the guy 5 on 1 and he's on the ground in handcuffs, and they tase him 4 more times because he won't stand up. BECAUSE HE WON'T STAND UP! After being Tased! What is it against the union contract for these cops to lift over 20lbs each? They could have easily picked him up, instead they were lazy assholes and kept tasing away.
On the bright side, the legal system will reward this guy handsomely for his efforts.
Maybe the fact that after the first tasing, when some of the students started to get upset and ask for badge numbers from the cops.. And the cops responded with "No, and if you ask again we'll hit you with a taser"... If these cops were so obviously into abusing power as to threaten tasing for the mere act of asking for badge numbers... well, I'm sure that would stop me from getting involved.
I don't know of anything, but I would be very surprised if they don't have anything, maybe a private agreement? Just because they don't make it public doesn't mean it doesn't exist..
I guess they might just be relying on MAD, but it seems to me that the holders of the 2 largest software patent portfolios would want more assurance than that. Maybe not though... the US and USSR relied on MAD for 40 years.
Can IBM really do this though? I am sure IBM and MS have cross licensing deals. I don't know how they are generally structured but if IBM has already licensed their patents to MS then it seems like IBM would not have this option open to them.
Do patent cross license deals usually specify specific patents or are they more on the line of "here's our portfolio, let us use yours"?
My statement simply tried to convey the fact that even a.1% increase or decrease in the sun's irradiance would cause more climate change on this planet than tripling CO2 concentrations. The Sun, the oceans, the orbit of the Earth, these are all having a much larger effect on climate than anything we are doing. There was a study recently linked on slashdot that proposes that the wobble in the earth's orbit could account for the ice age/non ice age cycle. Even a wobble of.05% causes a large change in global temperature.
The original article asked for a point by point analysis and evidence that the first article was wrong. This "believer" in global warming throws out a few personal attacks against the original author, and then boldly states that "The medieval warm period is accepted as having not happened" But gives no evidence whatsoever. I was taught about this period all through elementary school (in the early 80's). The leading theory then was it was this warm period that allowed the world to escape the dark ages because less people had to spend 100% of their time subsistence farming.
Basically this article says "Global warming is happening, accept it" while providing no evidence other than "This guy's an idiot, he doesn't even have a degree". He only tries (very weakly) to debunk one of his claims, that the world has been warmer in the past. A claim which if not confirmed by the warm period of 5-600 years ago, is certainly confirmed in the earth's history. I read an article in Scientific American or National Geographic just last month that conceded this point, stating that the fluctuation of the earth's temperature has a range of 15-20C over the past 3-5 million years. Obviously more than 5 9s of that data is pre-industrial revolution (thus not caused by man). Those articles also plainly laid out that we are at historical lows in both temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If this Stefan-Boltzmann equation is designed to model a "black body" how is the UN justifying any modification to this model? What are they basing their alterations on? How do they decide how "non-black" the earth is.
The only other thing he mentions is Hansen's predictions. Ok, so Hansen had 3 predictions low, middle, high and said it would probably be middle, and it was close to that (.1C). The UN itself had much higher predictions (3C-5C) so why are we supposed to believe the UN now when they say 5C-9C over the next 100 years if its going to be closer to.1C? or even.3C?
In short, this is a completely typical article to see from global warming believers. They pretty much all go like this "The world is over, if we don't turn off all electrical devices by tomorrow and start riding bikes then global warming will kill us all. If you don't believe this statement you are an idiot!". If you ask global warming advocates for evidence they say things like "The evidence is all around you! Look at the hurricanes! Look how many people died in the heat wave last year!" People die in heat waves every year, the temperature and localized weather events fluctuate wildly. The climate on the whole remains pretty steady, and if anything activity on the Sun is much more likely to change the climate than anything we do.
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One of the largest CC heists of all time happened last year when MASTERCARD lost I forget how many card numbers, it was > 1 million cards though.
The Merchants who processed transactions with those stolen cards have to eat it?! How can that be proper?!
Further, as noted elsewhere, this does not penalize the proper people. If I am a merchant and someone buys something from me with a stolen card (even though I have great security, maybe I don't even store CC information, I just process the card and I'm done with it) I eat the chargeback even though it was www.flybynight.com who's site got hacked to provide the thief with the stolen card. flybynight.com doesn't pay a dime for their lack of security.
Not true,
Move to Utah! There are many municipalities here rolling out FTTH and access is wonderfully cheap ( 50/mo for 100mbps sync)
I disagree with your premise... If the point is to make it so you don't have to be admin to install programs anymore that will be a huge nightmare for sys admins everywhere. I suppose there is another way a group policy or something to keep people from installing things, but if all software suddenly doesn't need admin rights to install, how is the sys admin supposed to lock down systems and keep them from being flooded with hundreds of tetris games?
Further, UAC is annoying in so many more ways than installing programs. Changing your IP address requires a UAC authorization, I don't have Vista installed but a contractor that does some work for me has it installed on his laptop now, he was trying to show me some stuff the other day, and had to get on my wireless network (one UAC), install a program (3 UACs happened during download/install), and then use that program to access the internet (another UAC)... Right then I said I would never install Vista ever, there is nothing I hate more than Windows need to inform you of every single little issue or problem, even when you know it (I hate the popup informing you that your network card is unplugged for example in XP, 90% of the time I'm on wireless networks, but the other 10% I don't want to have to go in to network connections and enable the wired connection... Instead I get a big red x and a popup every time I start my computer "Your network cable is unplugged") UAC just takes this philosophy to astoundingly high levels.
The problem is the registry. To write to the registry you need admin privs, every stupid little piece of software I've ever installed in windows writes something to the registry.
"Mashup" is most possibly the worst word that has ever come out of the technology sector as a buzzword.
First it sounds like "an amalgamation of multiple different components into one" but when I look at all of the sites/services that are referred to as "mashups" none of them fit this description. QEDWiki is a wiki, it doesn't appear to be "a wiki with a calendar attached" and it certainly doesn't appear to be built from 10 different components or easily integrated.
the article mentions zillow, which is an online real estate directory.... It has no "mashy-ness" about it at all.
Anyway, its a stupid word that doesn't mean anything
So by your definition any editorialist, journalist, or news reporter of any type who receives any money falls under this law, and is providing "coerced" speech, and by your definition is now not eligible for protection under the 1st?
What about Authors? They aren't protected either? Obviously the first amendment clearly lays out a provision for the "press" so maybe you're just arguing that a paid blogger isn't press, and its paid, so it doesn't fall under the first amendment...
Well authors (like novelists, or even non-fiction writers) they are not press, they are paid, if I write a book espousing a political opinion and get paid more the 25k should I have to register as a lobbyist? That is essentially what you are saying. Anyone who is paid and espouses an opinion should have to register as a lobbyist. Further you are saying anyone who is paid and espouses an opinion is not protected by the first amendment, unless they are press (presumably since that is spelled out). This is obviously untrue.
Yeah all those great services like exchange and SQL server... That will only cause complexity, instability, slowness, and management overhead on a box that simply needs to serve files and printing....
On top of that, for 4 PCs a full AD Domain is such overkill is bizarre. I install both linux and windows solutions, I'm really not biased, but I wouldn't even think of adding the administrative overhead that SBS causes until I'm looking at 10-15 workstations, and even then, probably not, because 1) they already are using my hosted email service (which I never have to think about, and gets about 95% accuracy on spam filtering, and just works) I would be an idiot to move my customers to individual onsite exchange servers (besides the admin overhead, they are mostly on dsl connections, and they aren't 5 9s like my datacenter, so there would be a drop in service level), and I can't afford the licensing to centralize it (850+ exchange CALs required...)
2) Initially SBS is cheaper, but, as soon as a company starts growing, the CALS are pretty expensive.
3) All of the bundled services in SBS are nice, as long as you're using them, otherwise they just add so much complexity that anytime something breaks its nearly impossible to determine what it is/was, losing DNS resolution in SBS causes the system to take > 45 minutes to reboot (exchange takes that long to time out trying to get resolution). So you better hope your internet connection is always working...
Anyway, if there is a 10-20 seat company that isn't going to grow, needs email, web server, remote access, and a database server, and has a T1, I'll recommend SBS. Otherwise, its easier to do with a combination of hosted services on linux, and small standard windows 2k3 server running things locally.
Ok, so if I am using Tor, presumably I've got clients behind these servers.... so according to the article, he can detect a server? What good does that do him? That doesn't identify *MY* machine the client which is actually doing the browsing. So, he can see which server is running Tor... couldn't he just portscan to find that out?
I find your entire paragraph about interoperability to be false. I constantly curse MS products for their lack of interoperability. I still think Word, Excel, and Access have the poorest integration of any office suite I've used. The first Xbox worked better and more reliably than the second, to say that product line is "progressing" is false. IE, the problem with it isn't that it has poor integration, its that it exposes your entire computer to the internet because its your OS shell. Powerpoint? what does that integrate with? And PnP? HuH? do you mean PCI pnp? or UPnP? if the latter, I still disable it on every device that runs it, and I absolutely hate that technology. I maintain small business networks. I absolutely hate plugging my laptop in to a customer network and finding 10 new printers installed.
Next, your firewall still sucks, still completely disables small business networks in its default configuration and requires entirely too much work to get working well and still allowing access to necessary services. So I just disable it everywhere I go. A good linux (or better yet openbsd) firewall at the border is much more powerful, configurable, and sane than the forced XP2 firewall.
Wrong. .002 Cents/KB. If after the fact they charge $.002 then guess what: They are committing a scam/fraud. This whole thing is going to blow up on them. This is getting so much coverage, it will lead to a class action law suit. Employing idiots is not an excuse for defrauding your customers, quoting one price and then charging another. Just like you still get a speeding ticket even if you didn't see or even pass a posted speed limit sign on the street you were speeding on (IE you turn right onto a street and floor it, you're going 45 in ~300 feet and you haven't even passed the 25mph speed limit sign, the cop is still well within his rights to pull you over and ticket you even if you've never driven on the street before, and have no knowledge, and no possible way of knowing the speed limit of that street, your ignorance of the law does not excuse you). Ignorance is not a valid defense. Stupidity is not a valid defense. Verizon quoted .002 Cents ($.00002). They Charged $.002. The ignorance and stupidity of their CSRs does not excuse them from fraud. They are responsible to train their employees, if they have not done so, it is their fault.
Verizon CSRs uniformly quoted the price as
The second amendment has very little to do with "self defense" from crime, or anything like that.
The second amendment is to protect us from 2 things:
1) In the event of foreign invasion, the populace has the means to effectively fight.
2) In the event of a tyrannical (read Bush Administration) government the populace has the ability to overthrow the government.
The liberals arguing for gun control have been staring at the best reason to allow people to own guns for the last 6 years.
Anyone who argues that our liberties have been unduly restricted, infringed or otherwise violated should be 100% in favor of gun ownership.
It is there to give us the means to insure our liberties. It is the final check/balance provided by our constitution. If it all starts to go to hell, well we can revolt and at least have a fighting chance of winning. Without guns, that right is effectively revoked.
In response to number 1....
Um that's why we have the House.
Sure the system isn't perfect, but it is a good compromise.
If we get rid of the Senate (basically what you are proposing, lets just add 100 seats to the house, and do it all based on population) we'd quickly see huge problems. First of all, companies looking to lobby would only have to concentrate on like 3 states... California, New York, and Florida could probably pass just about any legislation they wanted, so if you're a company, move your operations to those states in exchange for a law guaranteeing your profits forever... done, US over.
Well, since you live in Canada, you probably wouldn't know...
The 2nd amendment has very little to do with self defense, or anything else. It is 100% about being able to overthrow the government.
If the gov't has m16s, m1a1 tanks, etc, and they decide that they are going to impose a police state on the populace (which is armed with pitch forks, or even single shot pump action shotguns, or muzzle loaders....) the gov't is going to have 0 problem imposing their will on the people.
If the populace can go buy the same weaponry as the military (or at least a similar level of weaponry at least automatic weapons) then the gov't is going to have a lot more problems imposing their will.
The founding fathers were not thinking about crime, robberies, or anything else. The were 100% concerned with providing the means to revolt to keep the government honest.
What do you mean by "access any database" do you mean a gui database administration tool that allows a user to create tables on any database? Or do you mean compatibility with any database server (oracle, mssql, postgresql)? Or do you mean a gui application with a database backend and along with picking the dev environment we pick a database server too and build the tables etc?
If you mean the last of those options (IE building a custom app that stores customer data in a database) I might take an extra day to build a simple app in Java...
My app will run on windows, mac, linux, be web accessible (via standard browser or handheld), and will scale to millions of users by simply adding hardware.
Now try using Visual Studio to match that..
Sure anyone can open MS Access or Visual Studio and build a little database app for a 5 person company, but the data is now locked up in windows, building in web access is a pain, and you can't run anything but windows on your desktops.
True, but in the public sector, and in IT in general you aren't in a "production" environment. There isn't something else you are doing that is bringing in revenue. IT is budgeted all over the world in all kinds of companies as OVERHEAD. So, spending a little more overhead up front to reduce overhead over the long haul and get off the upgrade treadmill is almost always the right thing to do.
Now if you are a programmer, and your desktop linux is somehow reducing your ability to write code (IE you spend an hour each day dealing with software updates or something) then windows is a better fit... Although I'm much more productive coding under linux than windows....
unfortunately that's not what it means. You are paying a tax because digital music is "high risk" for piracy. if you actually priate, they will still sue you and take even more money from you.
I know very well what happens in a lawsuit.
Yes it will be appealed, but again as long as he has a half decent lawyer, he will get 5 million+. If this case goes to a jury trial (I don't know the specific laws in california, any contracts he may have with UCLA, it may be in the school applications that something like this goes directly to arbitration if so he may get less, still >2-3 million but not as much as if it goes to trial...) but if it goes in front of a jury a jury will award this guy 5+million.
Then it will get appealed, the sides will bargain, and it will come in somewhere around 3-5 million. That is of course unless the defense wins an appeal, which in civil cases really isn't that likely. Basically the prosecution would have to do something really stupid (bribe witnesses, perjure themselves, etc). The defense can file appeals all they want, but the judge has to grant an appeal based on merit, and unless the defense can prove that the trial was somehow tampered with that won't happen.
Anyway, even if it is settled it won't be "oh ok, nevermind we don't want anything" if a jury came back with 5 million, the prosecution would be stupid to settle for anything less than 3-4. Yes, the appeals process can drag on a bit, but as I already stated you can't just indefinitely appeal something like this, you have to have grounds, and you have to have proof. Otherwise the judge will say "Nope, you can't appeal based on that, pay the money". Also civil cases of this sort generally have penalties for non-payment, normally >10% interest with pretty high compounding (weekly or monthly). Those penalties start the day the original trial/award is decided. So, the defense has a large disincentive to continue appealing... If its a 5 million dollar award, with 10% monthly compounded interest, it doesn't take long in "legal" terms before the interest payment is larger than the original award, and if you lose all your appeals then you're on the hook for a much larger sum, so its better to talk the prosecution down as much as you can, and close the deal. Of course the prosecution knows this and they won't come down very much from a jury award, that is what they are entitled to the court said so. And if you're UCLA, the city of LA, these large organizations have the money to just pay 5 million to be done with it, just like RIMM paid of NTP even though they were winning appeals against their patents at the USPTO, they paid to get it over with, to get rid of the uncertainty, and move on. That is what UCLA/LAPD/et al will do here too.
I hope these cops all lose their jobs, they are obviously not up to the task of controlling anyone.
I don't feel too sorry for the kid though. With any half decent lawyer he is looking at at least a 3-5 million dollar settlement. Hell, I see at least 3 suits here, UCLA itself will be sued, the UCLA campus police, and the LA police (from what I read both police corps were on the scene). He should easily get 1-2 million from each of those institutions, they are all equally culpable. I would be tased 5 times if it meant I never had to work again. This reminds me of Office Space a little bit, when the guy gets hit and gets his 7 figure settlement and says "If you just hold on good things can happen in this life".
Anyway... I don't mean to trivialize this incident, it was horrid, I was appalled watching the video. They've got the guy 5 on 1 and he's on the ground in handcuffs, and they tase him 4 more times because he won't stand up. BECAUSE HE WON'T STAND UP! After being Tased! What is it against the union contract for these cops to lift over 20lbs each? They could have easily picked him up, instead they were lazy assholes and kept tasing away.
On the bright side, the legal system will reward this guy handsomely for his efforts.
Maybe the fact that after the first tasing, when some of the students started to get upset and ask for badge numbers from the cops.. And the cops responded with "No, and if you ask again we'll hit you with a taser"... If these cops were so obviously into abusing power as to threaten tasing for the mere act of asking for badge numbers... well, I'm sure that would stop me from getting involved.
That's fine, I'm a little surprised but cool. I was referring specifically to software patents, is MS really not in the top 10 in software patents?
I don't know of anything, but I would be very surprised if they don't have anything, maybe a private agreement? Just because they don't make it public doesn't mean it doesn't exist..
I guess they might just be relying on MAD, but it seems to me that the holders of the 2 largest software patent portfolios would want more assurance than that. Maybe not though... the US and USSR relied on MAD for 40 years.
Can IBM really do this though?
I am sure IBM and MS have cross licensing deals. I don't know how they are generally structured but if IBM has already licensed their patents to MS then it seems like IBM would not have this option open to them.
Do patent cross license deals usually specify specific patents or are they more on the line of "here's our portfolio, let us use yours"?
My statement simply tried to convey the fact that even a .1% increase or decrease in the sun's irradiance would cause more climate change on this planet than tripling CO2 concentrations. The Sun, the oceans, the orbit of the Earth, these are all having a much larger effect on climate than anything we are doing. There was a study recently linked on slashdot that proposes that the wobble in the earth's orbit could account for the ice age/non ice age cycle. Even a wobble of .05% causes a large change in global temperature.
Not just the prosperous. If it weren't for immigration the US would be in population decline just like Europe and Japan.
The original article asked for a point by point analysis and evidence that the first article was wrong. This "believer" in global warming throws out a few personal attacks against the original author, and then boldly states that "The medieval warm period is accepted as having not happened" But gives no evidence whatsoever. I was taught about this period all through elementary school (in the early 80's). The leading theory then was it was this warm period that allowed the world to escape the dark ages because less people had to spend 100% of their time subsistence farming.
.1C? or even .3C?
Basically this article says "Global warming is happening, accept it" while providing no evidence other than "This guy's an idiot, he doesn't even have a degree". He only tries (very weakly) to debunk one of his claims, that the world has been warmer in the past. A claim which if not confirmed by the warm period of 5-600 years ago, is certainly confirmed in the earth's history. I read an article in Scientific American or National Geographic just last month that conceded this point, stating that the fluctuation of the earth's temperature has a range of 15-20C over the past 3-5 million years. Obviously more than 5 9s of that data is pre-industrial revolution (thus not caused by man). Those articles also plainly laid out that we are at historical lows in both temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If this Stefan-Boltzmann equation is designed to model a "black body" how is the UN justifying any modification to this model? What are they basing their alterations on? How do they decide how "non-black" the earth is.
The only other thing he mentions is Hansen's predictions. Ok, so Hansen had 3 predictions low, middle, high and said it would probably be middle, and it was close to that (.1C). The UN itself had much higher predictions (3C-5C) so why are we supposed to believe the UN now when they say 5C-9C over the next 100 years if its going to be closer to
In short, this is a completely typical article to see from global warming believers. They pretty much all go like this "The world is over, if we don't turn off all electrical devices by tomorrow and start riding bikes then global warming will kill us all. If you don't believe this statement you are an idiot!". If you ask global warming advocates for evidence they say things like "The evidence is all around you! Look at the hurricanes! Look how many people died in the heat wave last year!" People die in heat waves every year, the temperature and localized weather events fluctuate wildly. The climate on the whole remains pretty steady, and if anything activity on the Sun is much more likely to change the climate than anything we do.