So why not falsely accuse everysingle police force member, and all politicians, and all JPs and Judges and CEOS, then that will make enough of a dent to fix the laws. Better yet, just do it to all stock brokers & sub prime lenders;)
If this were an effective technique for dealing with a "witch hunt" you'd expect there to be plenty of historical examples of it being used effectivly. Whilst a "patrician" being suspected can bring things to a halt it appears quite hard for a "pleb" to make such an acusation stick.
Most rapes go unreported. I'd hazard a guess that the least-reported types of rape are the most common ones too-- those that would cause embarrassment and legal problems within a family, which makes sexual assault by strangers appear to be a larger part of the problem than it actually is by proportion.
If most go unreported you can't really infer much from the minority which are reported. One possible reason for a rape being unreported is if the perpetrator was the "wrong gender", especially if that also applied to the victim.
That's what happens when you get involved in a witch hunt, which is exactly what this bullshit is. Anyone who calls it anything else is a closet pedophile.
In any witch hunt the safest thing for any actual "witch" to do is to become a "witch finder".
Why else do they fight so hard "to protect the children"? They mean, to protect the children from hypocrite lying shitheads like themselves.
IIRC there have been cases of "child abuse experts" turning out to be experts in abusing children as opposed to experts in finding child abusers.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux.
The only reason XP is obsolete is because Microsoft want it to be.
This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end.
Maybe instead they should be working on improving XP or ensuring that they produce something which is 100% XP compatable.
It seems that Microsoft made the decision to extend XP based on an attempt to prevent manufacturers switching, after previously ignoring pleas from the end-users to extend XP.
However it's only XP Home, which for many possible users of these kind of laptops may not be much use, because of its crippled networking.
I can't see a way of reducing the punishment that society doles out to people charged with crimes, however I think you might be able to remove some of the more dubious charges by introducing some kind of negative incentive for charging someone only to have them found innocent.
How about the judge says something like "The charges against you would usually carry a sentence of... would you like this sentence to be applied to the prosecuting lawyer(s) and the police officers who arrested you? You can say yes, no, or request a lower sentence".
It keeps getting worse in this respect in the US.....they'll confiscate most any and ALL property if you're suspected of a number of crimes. It started out as a way to battle the 'drug lords'...but, now, if they catch you with a roach,
Presumably you don't mean an insect. Though "catch you with" could easily mean "one is planted by police".
they'll impound your car and whatever else they think is connected to your drug money. Now.this spills over into many more areas. Suspected of Child Pron? You go to jail,do not pass go...do not collect $200. And your assets and computers are all seized.
The obvious solution here would be to have an entity charged with policing the police. With all the same resources as regular police have, but only able to arrest and investigate police officers.
Maybe they'd wait if, I dunno, we didn't advertise the details of suspects publicly on the basis of some random allegation that has yet to be proven in court?
Maybe it's time for the civil law concept being "counter sued" to be brought into criminal law. e.g. innocent people can request that the police officers who arrested them serve whatever sentence they faced.
The authoritarian UK police who are apparently accountable to no one, were the primary problem in this case however. Mr. Bunce could probably have survived the identity theft without the loss of his job, reputation, etc., had it not been for government intervention. The primary cause of Mr. Bunce's problem was not the "identity theft", it was instead the government's "guilty until proven innocent" attitude of assuming we are all criminals that caused Mr. Bunce's problem.
Whilst at the same time failing to carry out their own jobs. As was demonstrated by Mr. Bunce being able to carry out a far more effective investigation than the police did. Dispite the police having considerably more resources and supposedly people specifically trained in investigating criminal activities. This may be a case where reducing police powers would result in more effective policing. Dispite the frequent claims that police need increased powers...
Each data broker intentionally has all of the information that's required to open any kind of loan account, from a credit card to a car loan to a marker at a casino. And so all it takes is one clever hacker to get that data out for a few thousand (or a few tens of thousands) of customers and *poof* he's able to create tens of thousands of fake loans by impersonating the customers whose information he just stole.
It dosn't actually need to be a "hacker" a dishonest empolyee/contractor or one who can be bribed/blackmailed/manipulated/etc is all that is needed. This has definitly happened before, e.g. "phantom" cash withdrawls due to bank employees ordering an additional card against a customer's account.
Until we see some legislation regulating security for data brokers we'll never see the end of identity theft.
It would probably be more effective to make them liable for all the costs of leaking information. As well as making it illegal to store the data without good reason, e.g. bringing the US up to at least the level of data protection which exists within the EU.
I'm not putting some stupid sticker on my IBM-compatible just to make Apple jolly. I'll buy and use Safari whenever I feel like it, even though I am not using Apple hardware.
Where it starts to get silly is that if you have Windows Itunes and/or Quicktime installed the "Apple Update" goes and finds Safari. Added to which the Itunes EULA a few weeks ago would sometimes display in a completly unreadable font.
Well, it technically doesn't HAVE to go somewhere. It could just as easily not go anywhere. That is to say it could just as easily not leave the consumers' wallets.
In truth most of these "loses" are complete fiction. To be otherwise you'd actually need to find out something like the real number of "lost sales" (many people currently using "pirated" anything would otherwise do without, thus were never "potential customers" in the first place) then use an amount of money actually related to the profit on a typical sale. Maybe the reason they don't is that actually getting the sums right, which is rather harder than plucking random numbers out of thin air, would cost more than their probable losses. Indeed it might make far more sense to find a way to make their product more attractive to people who currently pirate, but could be persuaded to buy. IMHO the vast majority of people who pirate are not actually "potential customers" in the first place. Possibly to the point where attempts to make things harder to copy or persuing people who pirate are actually a waste of money. The latter may explain the inflated claims, that being the only way suing lots of people isn't going to make a loss.
Now, about what Mr. Mukasey said, it's overgeneralizing to say that ALL piracy gains are invested in terrorism. While *SOME* criminal groups (i.e. druglords) use piracy to fund themselves (I've seen a few cases on the news here in Mexico), it's plain ridiculous to say that all pirates are linked to the cartels.
It's probably more likely that "legitimate sales" help terrorists far more than any piracy. Since legitimage sales tend to be taxed and many governments appear quite willing to use their taxpayer's money to fund terrorists (along with other undesirables). Even if you could find country where the government has "clean hands" (most are "dirty", except the permenent members of the UN security council which tend to be "very dirty") in this respect to buy your software from you'd then face import duties.
The bigger problem for game companies than people downloading torrents, is illegal factories which are producing pirated versions of games (and other types of software) which can be sold at lost cost, are hard to tell apart from the real deal.
Especially if both versions are produced on the same production line, even more so if the pirates are prepared to pay the factory more than the regular customer.
When has the government ever presented a shred of evidence for any of their radical claims and crusades?
The US Government hasn't even yet provided much in the way of credible evidence to backup their 9/11 conspiracy theory. So it would be expecting a lot to expect them to provide any evidence for anything more recent than about 7 years ago.
You don't by any chance mean Cadbury do you? There was a case here in Australia where they tried to sue for trademark infringement against another chocolate manufacturer for using their Trademarked purple. Lets just say Cadbury lost.
Maybe they forgot to register their purople with the Australian authorities. Maybe they tried and were told that even if they could do that in the UK they couldn't in Australia. Maybe the Australians (quite sensibly) only consider an entire logo or packaging to be trademarkable.
No, but they regularly enga(d)ge in phone reviews and commentary on the industry in which T-Mobile operates. They are part of the mobile phone business.
No more than a TV news station becomes part of the airline business when they report on an aircraft crashing or the movie business when they carry stories about movies (or people involved in movies). Even if they have regular segments to cover movies.
Note that in general, trademarking a color is specific to the business. Other shippers can't use UPS's Brown, but you can make a tractor in UPS Brown.
Trademarks are ment to be specific to both a type of business and a geographic area. They must also be distinctive, something which is simply a description of a business or its products is unlikely to be defendable as a trademark. (Unless it contains unique spelling or gramatical errors.)
Similarly, other tractor makers can't use John Deer Green, but a package shipper isn't prohibited from using the color.
Unless John Deer have that green trademarked everywere on the planet then there be many companies supplying agricultural machinary which could use it.
The letter is a combination of the TMobile trademark lawyers doing what lawyers do...billing hours. Plus, they are protecting the TMoblie trademark. With Trademark law you must prove that you have diligently protect your TM by notifying parties of infringement. In every suspected case. With Endgadget there is no confusion or dilution of the TM. But, if someday TMobile has to defend their TM in court against another mobile provider who might use the color..they can haul out the big box of all the letters they sent to everyone who used Magenta and prove they diligently protected their TM
Who are they going to go after next, anyone who makes magenta toner? Maybe such a bogus accusations should count against them as much as wilfully ignoring an actual infringer.
Sure. Donate 1000 copies of some software that is sold retail at $100 but which have marginal cost of production $1.
On paper, you've donated $100,000 worth of software and migth get a $30,000 tax-deduction assuming you pay 30% taxes.
In reality, you've donated something that cost you $1000 to produce, and scored a $30,000 tax-deduction.
Things look even better for the likes of drug companies doing this kind of thing. They can get rid of drugs which are about to expire without having any disposal costs.
No, it's the number of people who have used the software, depending on the license (most business software is moving to per-user licensing, and I'm sure they have a licensing option like that)
Why would someone selling software want to do something which would drastically cut their sales?
Now, multiply by how many people have ever worked for the company, or visited it, since the software was released.BR> Except that that would be a bogus number. Unless this is happening anywhere corporate entities are not "people". Where you have "corporate personhood" it will always make sense, to the seller, to go "per computer".
I don't condone piracy by any means. I just avoid it by using open source software with an OSI approved license.
Actually it is perfectly possible to "pirate" open source software. However the risk tends to be exclusivly on the party distributing it. So long as you arn't distributing the software then there isn't an issue, even if whoever you got it from didn't do everything they should.
The legal traps these corporations put into their proprietary products is burdensome. To go through procurement for every little text editor or utility is absurd in any large corporation. You'll wait 5 weeks to get something you just needed to use for a single day.
If this is happening then at least the corporation in question is protecting itself from the risks associated with proprietary software.
And procurement doesn't like it either.
It probably isn't cheap to have a suitably qualified lawyer check an EULA either.
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So why not falsely accuse everysingle police force member, and all politicians, and all JPs and Judges and CEOS, then that will make enough of a dent to fix the laws. Better yet, just do it to all stock brokers & sub prime lenders ;)
If this were an effective technique for dealing with a "witch hunt" you'd expect there to be plenty of historical examples of it being used effectivly. Whilst a "patrician" being suspected can bring things to a halt it appears quite hard for a "pleb" to make such an acusation stick.
Most rapes go unreported. I'd hazard a guess that the least-reported types of rape are the most common ones too-- those that would cause embarrassment and legal problems within a family, which makes sexual assault by strangers appear to be a larger part of the problem than it actually is by proportion.
If most go unreported you can't really infer much from the minority which are reported. One possible reason for a rape being unreported is if the perpetrator was the "wrong gender", especially if that also applied to the victim.
That's what happens when you get involved in a witch hunt, which is exactly what this bullshit is. Anyone who calls it anything else is a closet pedophile.
In any witch hunt the safest thing for any actual "witch" to do is to become a "witch finder".
Why else do they fight so hard "to protect the children"? They mean, to protect the children from hypocrite lying shitheads like themselves.
IIRC there have been cases of "child abuse experts" turning out to be experts in abusing children as opposed to experts in finding child abusers.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux.
The only reason XP is obsolete is because Microsoft want it to be.
This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end.
Maybe instead they should be working on improving XP or ensuring that they produce something which is 100% XP compatable.
It seems that Microsoft made the decision to extend XP based on an attempt to prevent manufacturers switching, after previously ignoring pleas from the end-users to extend XP.
However it's only XP Home, which for many possible users of these kind of laptops may not be much use, because of its crippled networking.
I can't see a way of reducing the punishment that society doles out to people charged with crimes, however I think you might be able to remove some of the more dubious charges by introducing some kind of negative incentive for charging someone only to have them found innocent.
... would you like this sentence to be applied to the prosecuting lawyer(s) and the police officers who arrested you? You can say yes, no, or request a lower sentence".
How about the judge says something like "The charges against you would usually carry a sentence of
It keeps getting worse in this respect in the US.....they'll confiscate most any and ALL property if you're suspected of a number of crimes. It started out as a way to battle the 'drug lords'...but, now, if they catch you with a roach,
Presumably you don't mean an insect. Though "catch you with" could easily mean "one is planted by police".
they'll impound your car and whatever else they think is connected to your drug money. Now.this spills over into many more areas. Suspected of Child Pron? You go to jail,do not pass go...do not collect $200. And your assets and computers are all seized.
The obvious solution here would be to have an entity charged with policing the police. With all the same resources as regular police have, but only able to arrest and investigate police officers.
Maybe they'd wait if, I dunno, we didn't advertise the details of suspects publicly on the basis of some random allegation that has yet to be proven in court?
Maybe it's time for the civil law concept being "counter sued" to be brought into criminal law. e.g. innocent people can request that the police officers who arrested them serve whatever sentence they faced.
The authoritarian UK police who are apparently accountable to no one, were the primary problem in this case however. Mr. Bunce could probably have survived the identity theft without the loss of his job, reputation, etc., had it not been for government intervention. The primary cause of Mr. Bunce's problem was not the "identity theft", it was instead the government's "guilty until proven innocent" attitude of assuming we are all criminals that caused Mr. Bunce's problem.
Whilst at the same time failing to carry out their own jobs. As was demonstrated by Mr. Bunce being able to carry out a far more effective investigation than the police did. Dispite the police having considerably more resources and supposedly people specifically trained in investigating criminal activities.
This may be a case where reducing police powers would result in more effective policing. Dispite the frequent claims that police need increased powers...
Each data broker intentionally has all of the information that's required to open any kind of loan account, from a credit card to a car loan to a marker at a casino. And so all it takes is one clever hacker to get that data out for a few thousand (or a few tens of thousands) of customers and *poof* he's able to create tens of thousands of fake loans by impersonating the customers whose information he just stole.
It dosn't actually need to be a "hacker" a dishonest empolyee/contractor or one who can be bribed/blackmailed/manipulated/etc is all that is needed.
This has definitly happened before, e.g. "phantom" cash withdrawls due to bank employees ordering an additional card against a customer's account.
Until we see some legislation regulating security for data brokers we'll never see the end of identity theft.
It would probably be more effective to make them liable for all the costs of leaking information. As well as making it illegal to store the data without good reason, e.g. bringing the US up to at least the level of data protection which exists within the EU.
I'm not putting some stupid sticker on my IBM-compatible just to make Apple jolly. I'll buy and use Safari whenever I feel like it, even though I am not using Apple hardware.
Where it starts to get silly is that if you have Windows Itunes and/or Quicktime installed the "Apple Update" goes and finds Safari. Added to which the Itunes EULA a few weeks ago would sometimes display in a completly unreadable font.
T-Mobile is going after engadget because the two of them are in the same industry and hence are fighting over the same trademarks.
How are they in the same industry? Engaget isn't providing any kind of telephone service. The former is "telecoms", the latter is "news and reviews".
Well, it technically doesn't HAVE to go somewhere. It could just as easily not go anywhere. That is to say it could just as easily not leave the consumers' wallets.
In truth most of these "loses" are complete fiction. To be otherwise you'd actually need to find out something like the real number of "lost sales" (many people currently using "pirated" anything would otherwise do without, thus were never "potential customers" in the first place) then use an amount of money actually related to the profit on a typical sale.
Maybe the reason they don't is that actually getting the sums right, which is rather harder than plucking random numbers out of thin air, would cost more than their probable losses. Indeed it might make far more sense to find a way to make their product more attractive to people who currently pirate, but could be persuaded to buy. IMHO the vast majority of people who pirate are not actually "potential customers" in the first place. Possibly to the point where attempts to make things harder to copy or persuing people who pirate are actually a waste of money. The latter may explain the inflated claims, that being the only way suing lots of people isn't going to make a loss.
When have they ever NEEDED to present evidence when they can scare the public?
Most are sheep, and believe the garbage fed to them by the media.
As well as often disbelieving any information from other sources. Regardless of such factors as actual evidence or rational argument.
Now, about what Mr. Mukasey said, it's overgeneralizing to say that ALL piracy gains are invested in terrorism. While *SOME* criminal groups (i.e. druglords) use piracy to fund themselves (I've seen a few cases on the news here in Mexico), it's plain ridiculous to say that all pirates are linked to the cartels.
It's probably more likely that "legitimate sales" help terrorists far more than any piracy. Since legitimage sales tend to be taxed and many governments appear quite willing to use their taxpayer's money to fund terrorists (along with other undesirables). Even if you could find country where the government has "clean hands" (most are "dirty", except the permenent members of the UN security council which tend to be "very dirty") in this respect to buy your software from you'd then face import duties.
The bigger problem for game companies than people downloading torrents, is illegal factories which are producing pirated versions of games (and other types of software) which can be sold at lost cost, are hard to tell apart from the real deal.
Especially if both versions are produced on the same production line, even more so if the pirates are prepared to pay the factory more than the regular customer.
When has the government ever presented a shred of evidence for any of their radical claims and crusades?
The US Government hasn't even yet provided much in the way of credible evidence to backup their 9/11 conspiracy theory. So it would be expecting a lot to expect them to provide any evidence for anything more recent than about 7 years ago.
Actually, it must be installed on "Apple labeled hardware". That's what the stickers that came with your iPod are for.
They probably couldn't complain if you used fruit sticker, so long as it came from an apple.
You don't by any chance mean Cadbury do you? There was a case here in Australia where they tried to sue for trademark infringement against another chocolate manufacturer for using their Trademarked purple. Lets just say Cadbury lost.
Maybe they forgot to register their purople with the Australian authorities. Maybe they tried and were told that even if they could do that in the UK they couldn't in Australia. Maybe the Australians (quite sensibly) only consider an entire logo or packaging to be trademarkable.
No, but they regularly enga(d)ge in phone reviews and commentary on the industry in which T-Mobile operates. They are part of the mobile phone business.
No more than a TV news station becomes part of the airline business when they report on an aircraft crashing or the movie business when they carry stories about movies (or people involved in movies). Even if they have regular segments to cover movies.
Note that in general, trademarking a color is specific to the business. Other shippers can't use UPS's Brown, but you can make a tractor in UPS Brown.
Trademarks are ment to be specific to both a type of business and a geographic area. They must also be distinctive, something which is simply a description of a business or its products is unlikely to be defendable as a trademark. (Unless it contains unique spelling or gramatical errors.)
Similarly, other tractor makers can't use John Deer Green, but a package shipper isn't prohibited from using the color.
Unless John Deer have that green trademarked everywere on the planet then there be many companies supplying agricultural machinary which could use it.
The letter is a combination of the TMobile trademark lawyers doing what lawyers do...billing hours. Plus, they are protecting the TMoblie trademark. With Trademark law you must prove that you have diligently protect your TM by notifying parties of infringement. In every suspected case. With Endgadget there is no confusion or dilution of the TM. But, if someday TMobile has to defend their TM in court against another mobile provider who might use the color..they can haul out the big box of all the letters they sent to everyone who used Magenta and prove they diligently protected their TM
Who are they going to go after next, anyone who makes magenta toner? Maybe such a bogus accusations should count against them as much as wilfully ignoring an actual infringer.
Sure. Donate 1000 copies of some software that is sold retail at $100 but which have marginal cost of production $1.
On paper, you've donated $100,000 worth of software and migth get a $30,000 tax-deduction assuming you pay 30% taxes.
In reality, you've donated something that cost you $1000 to produce, and scored a $30,000 tax-deduction.
Things look even better for the likes of drug companies doing this kind of thing. They can get rid of drugs which are about to expire without having any disposal costs.
No, it's the number of people who have used the software, depending on the license (most business software is moving to per-user licensing, and I'm sure they have a licensing option like that)
Why would someone selling software want to do something which would drastically cut their sales?
Now, multiply by how many people have ever worked for the company, or visited it, since the software was released.BR>
Except that that would be a bogus number. Unless this is happening anywhere corporate entities are not "people". Where you have "corporate personhood" it will always make sense, to the seller, to go "per computer".
I don't condone piracy by any means. I just avoid it by using open source software with an OSI approved license.
Actually it is perfectly possible to "pirate" open source software. However the risk tends to be exclusivly on the party distributing it. So long as you arn't distributing the software then there isn't an issue, even if whoever you got it from didn't do everything they should.
The legal traps these corporations put into their proprietary products is burdensome. To go through procurement for every little text editor or utility is absurd in any large corporation. You'll wait 5 weeks to get something you just needed to use for a single day.
If this is happening then at least the corporation in question is protecting itself from the risks associated with proprietary software.
And procurement doesn't like it either.
It probably isn't cheap to have a suitably qualified lawyer check an EULA either.