I hate to buy into conspiracy theories and I really don't believe any of the 9/11 ones.
It's rather hard to find a "lone nut" theory for 9/11. Especially when you have multiple hijackings of multiple planes. Any theory which requires two or more people to have worked together is by definition a "conspiracy theory". Which most definitly includes the whole "Al Quada did it" idea.
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances,
Even if there was some vast terrorist conspiracy random spying wouldn't be much use anyway. Indeed it might even be counter productive, were such an entity to exist they could create floods of bogus communications.
I've heard that argument but it's nonsense. When you listen to music on an old vinyl record player, a streaming copy is made and then translated into electical signals which is then copied into your brain (memory) as you listen. When you read a book, a temporary copy of the page is made at the back walls of your eye and a copy is made in your brain (memory).
None of those are copyright violations because it's implicit in fair use law that use of a book or record requires that a temporary copy be made in order for the book or record to be used. It would be useless otherwise.
More to the point virtually everyone knows that this kind of argument is nonsensical applied here.
The same can be said for software. You need to make a temporary copy into memory simply to use it. Otherwise, the CD it came on is a paperweight.
The problem comes in that some people managed to fool legislators and judges that software is somehow different, whilst at the same time arguing that the same concept of copyright applicable to books, vinyl and some magnetic tape recordings should apply to software. Having got this meme into software it has now spread into sound and video recordings such that CD/DVDs are legally viewed as different from compact cassette/vinyl and VHS cassette. Because of what amounts to technical details (which really should only be of interest to "techies") in how the data is stored and replayed. Somehow just because a recording is "digital" these morons think it should be treated completly differently, a bit like the way the US Patent Office appears to think that adding a computer to something people have been doing for a few thousand years makes an "innovation". This gets most daft with compact cassette and DAT which both use magnetic tape to store sound.
We don't need new cyber laws. The old ones work just fine. You just have to apply them properly and not get caught up in the smoke and mirrors of the BSA, *AA, and friends.
Might not be a bad idea to junk some of the new ones and go "back to basics".
Isn't that dilemma what every client faces with every IT implementation? Either find some off-the-shelf software (whether commercial or open-source) and adapt your needs/business model to that, or hire developers to write/customize solutions to fit your needs/business model.
In the second case, you need to hire developers anyway. In the first, open source at least gives you the option of making any modifications you want if you need them, where with commercial solutions you are bound by whatever the software provider allows.
There are also other potential nasties with the proprietary software route. Including being tied to suppliers, "viral" ownership claims on your property and data, etc
Don't get me wrong, I like Open Source software. However, it's very possible to leave people in the lurch in an Open Source project, just like a proprietary project, largely due to lack of accountability. You're (usually) not paying anyone anything, so they're maintaining it for their own satisifaction or self-interest. Once that's gone, you're up shits creek unless another maintainer is found, which is usually (but not always) the case.
If the program in question is that important to you then you can pay someone to do your maintenance, so long as it is open source, that would be in your self-interest. With a proprietary program you'd first need to get explicit permission from the copyright holder. To do this you have to find the copyright holder, ask them and have them agree to what you want to do. Proprietary software can be EOLed at the whim of it's producer, in that case you are unlikely to be given permission to do anything with it.
And I (as a UK citizen, a country in which they have an office) can sue them in the small claims court for recovery of the money I paid for my licence. It'd cost me no more than £60 to issue the claim,
But how much would it cost them to even answer the summons?
and if I lose I might face up to £100 in a costs award.
It's only a might anyway it's not going to be anything like the defendant's real costs.
Take them to state Small Claims Court. In Texas, IIRC that covers anything under $3000. sO sue them for $2999. If no Microsoft lawyer shows up, you win $3000. If they show up and you've done your homework, you'll win.
You imply that the court would not award any costs, so even if Microsoft won they'd be down the cost of their lawyer.
If they don't pay up, you can walk into any of Microsoft's offices in Texas with a sheriff or deputy constable and "attach" any item that you can then sell to get your money. A couple of copying machines and 5 or 6 PCs should cover the $3 grand nicely. Or perhaps the Lincoln towncar in the parking lot.
Having a sucessful plaintiff enforce their own judgment definitly sounds like a way to keep costs down:)
If 5,000 - 10,000 people did this at the same time, it might get Microsoft's attention.
They'd need a few thousand lawyers to start with. The cost, especially to a large corporation, of a lawsuit may well be much greater than the amount involved. Especially when involving "small claims", for one thing a "corporate person" cannot be a LIP, for another having their property siezed can be very disruptive to their business. (A "tech savvy" plaintiff is more likely to be able to pick goods for maximum inconvenience of the defendant compared with the average bailiff.)
EXACTLY. I see you've read up on software agreements. Basically, you buy it, you own it! Ofcourse, you cannot redistribute it for money, or something, because that would break laws.
You'd be breaking copyright law if you made and distributed copies to third parties. Simply selling it on would be covered by the "doctorine of first sale"...
But warranty is one of Microsofts only points of contention. No other products in the world besides software have these kinds of restrictions. I can open up my toaster and turn it into a space heater if I want to, I just void the warranty. Does the manufacturer care? Not one bit, as long as I don't ask them for a replacement due to my tinkering. In fact, they should be happy, because now if I want to make toast, I have to buy a new toaster!
The manufacturer's warranty on a physical machine typically limited in ways such as time, usage, etc. e.g. they will replace/repair a toster if it goes wrong within 12 months so long as it is used in a domestic environment. If it's after 12 months or you are using it in a commercial kitchen then they can turn around and say "tough". Manufacturer's warrantys are completly separate from statutory obligations on vendors, which can include being held to claims made by salesmen or advertisments. If a vendor or a manufacturer makes a specific claim about a product they may well be held to it dispite disclaimers by either statute or case law. Software is different from toasters in that it is trivial to both alter and duplicate. With something like Microsoft Windows it is sold as though it is a widget, but has this EULA which would only really make much sense if you had contracted Microsoft to produce Windows for you. Quite a lot of proprietary software (including some which is "free") has this split personality.
Problem is (for microsoft) even if you as a user agree to such an thing, you still have legal recourse. If they try to pull that bullshit about the EULA, the judge will laugh them out of court. "You can't sue us" clauses are purely there to discourage people too stupid to realize that, in the USA at least, YOU CAN ALWAYS SUE.
The problem for any potential plaintiffs would be that Microsoft can use all sorts of delaying tactics to keep cases out of a court room.
You may not win, but if Microsoft really started doing this, they'd probably lose a big Class Action lawsuit, unfortunately probably not big enough(In my opinion such a ruling, in order to actually fulfill its purpse would have to award a. cash, and b. be in the multi-billion dollar range.
However big a class action lawsuit is it would be only one lawsuit. Which Microsoft can easily either fight or settle. The only thing which Microsoft would have trouble with would be lots of lawsuits. If several million suits were to be filed the majority would probably end up with judgements, simply because Microsoft couldn't possibly turn up for every case.
Fining Microsft millions does nothing, if governments really wanted to have an effect, they need to lay down a $20billion or so fine. that would make a difference), but they'd still get a court order to stop in all probability.
If governments really wanted to they could make life very difficult for Microsoft. e.g. demand proof that they wern't laundering money for terrorists. "Demand" in this context meaning sending several hundred paramilitarry police to ramsack Microsoft's offices if Microsoft don't reply "how high" when told to jump.
If I've purchased a legitimate copy, and I installed it with a license agreement prior to the release of WGA, by what legal authority can Microsoft disable my operating system?
The original EULA probably said "we can change this however and whenever we feel like it." Anyway it definitly would have said that Microsoft disclaim any liability for the thing not working at all. The only thing which could be used against Microsoft would be laws against hacking, since these tend to be purely criminal statutes good luck trying to persuade the cops to do anything!
Innovation is hard, that's why so few companies do it very much.
There also appears to be an optimum size for innovation. If an company is too large there tends to be a corporate culture against risk taking, even if the actual level of risk is not that high.
What ground-breaking innovative features and functionality would you add to Office?
What's needed might be more taking away than adding.
Users can get admin access to both their workstations and their laptops anyway. The only good reason I can think of to not give them admin access is to keep them from accidentally breaking something, if they're extremely un-tech-savvy.
Which they are likely to do quite easily by installing malware and "junkware" on their machines.
The system is deeply flawed if it is possible to steal someone's identity with a mere handful of private information.
Quite a bit of the inforation involved isn't private in the first place. The likes of SSNs, dates of birth, names of parents, schools attended, etc are part of public records.
You trust Microsoft Windows "Last Accessed Date" on files, right? I mean there's absolutely positivity without a doubt no way no how no possible method of changing that "Last Accessed Date".
You can turn this off in Windows, as a performance enhancement. Hard disks typically have the ability to be placed into read only mode, Windows no doubt has the ability to mount a partition read only and there are plenty of utilities which can be booted from CDROM.
They need to fire all of the morons who made this possible in the first place. It's hard to say which is worse, having no data security or not even knowing if your data is secure.
Where would you put them all? These people probably number in the millions, since they include everyone who thinks that a SSN is anything other than a personal name.
I believe it said on the FBI's report that it looked like the data had not been looked at.
How can you possibly verify this? AFAIK this would require a secure OS and no physical access to the storage media. A laptop definitly fails the latter. If it was running Windows it also fails the former, indeed switching off NTFS file access stamping is a standard performance enhancement.
Well... If you are already pirating windows, I seriously doubt you are going to have any desire to buy a license or a new computer just because you can't get security updates.
I would imagine that it would not only be more expensive to install the initial cables but also to maintain them. Problem on the line? Go dig up the cables. Want to inspect something? Go dig up the cables.
The kind of places you tend to have underground power cables also tend to have lots of other underground services, so you also have to be careful not to disturb anything else. With an overground cable it is quite simple to inspect the cable without disturbing it at all from the air. With a single aircraft being able to survey hundreds of miles of cable in a day.
There's a slight difference between the two jobs. When you're working on something, you're standing on the ground. So when you touch something not-at-ground-potential, a current flows through your body (killing you instantly;). When you're working on the high tension lines, you touch the line, and you too become charged to whatever potential the lines are at. As long as you don't touch anything else (like the ground), you're perfectly fine.
Similarly birds can safely pirch on live powerlines. IIRC these people also wear conductive suits. Which means that any currents will flow though their clothes rather than their bodies.
There can be a lot of water in the ground - so you get corrosion, you get water leaking in and electricity arcing and melting the cable, you get land movement as amounts of water change which can break the cable.
With an above ground cable it's quite simple to inspect cables for signs of problems before they become serious. e.g. using an infrared camera to look for hot spots.
Once you have a break it would be hard to find it - unless it is caused by the natural enemy of all underground cables - the backhoe.
Depends how much power the broken cable is capable of supplying into the ground before something trips. Wet ground plus several megajoules of energy tends to make a nice explosion.
Here in Mexico, money for political campaigns is provided by taxes. It is scandalous because too much money is given to the parties - but in a way it's still healthier than lobbying.
What you are describing is financing for election campaigning. The situation in Mexico is probably not much different from Canada, even if the details are different. The major exception when it comes to campaign finance is the USA.
Because with lobbying, it's corporate interests which determine who gets advertised (and therefore, elected).
Lobbying is ongoing attempting to persuade politicans to a certain point of view, both from regular corporates and political preassure groups (some of which are "corporate" even if they are not business based). If anything lobbying activities may reduce around a general election, because lobbiests wait until after the results to know who they need to bribe, blackmail, intimidate, etc.
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I hate to buy into conspiracy theories and I really don't believe any of the 9/11 ones.
It's rather hard to find a "lone nut" theory for 9/11. Especially when you have multiple hijackings of multiple planes. Any theory which requires two or more people to have worked together is by definition a "conspiracy theory". Which most definitly includes the whole "Al Quada did it" idea.
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances,
Even if there was some vast terrorist conspiracy random spying wouldn't be much use anyway. Indeed it might even be counter productive, were such an entity to exist they could create floods of bogus communications.
That said, the MA politician in the article is a first-class tool, so I wouldn't count on ever educating his type, except through large wads of cash.
It might be easier to identify the politicans who arn't. Especially with respect to the US.
I've heard that argument but it's nonsense. When you listen to music on an old vinyl record player, a streaming copy is made and then translated into electical signals which is then copied into your brain (memory) as you listen. When you read a book, a temporary copy of the page is made at the back walls of your eye and a copy is made in your brain (memory).
None of those are copyright violations because it's implicit in fair use law that use of a book or record requires that a temporary copy be made in order for the book or record to be used. It would be useless otherwise.
More to the point virtually everyone knows that this kind of argument is nonsensical applied here.
The same can be said for software. You need to make a temporary copy into memory simply to use it. Otherwise, the CD it came on is a paperweight.
The problem comes in that some people managed to fool legislators and judges that software is somehow different, whilst at the same time arguing that the same concept of copyright applicable to books, vinyl and some magnetic tape recordings should apply to software. Having got this meme into software it has now spread into sound and video recordings such that CD/DVDs are legally viewed as different from compact cassette/vinyl and VHS cassette. Because of what amounts to technical details (which really should only be of interest to "techies") in how the data is stored and replayed. Somehow just because a recording is "digital" these morons think it should be treated completly differently, a bit like the way the US Patent Office appears to think that adding a computer to something people have been doing for a few thousand years makes an "innovation". This gets most daft with compact cassette and DAT which both use magnetic tape to store sound.
We don't need new cyber laws. The old ones work just fine. You just have to apply them properly and not get caught up in the smoke and mirrors of the BSA, *AA, and friends.
Might not be a bad idea to junk some of the new ones and go "back to basics".
Isn't that dilemma what every client faces with every IT implementation? Either find some off-the-shelf software (whether commercial or open-source) and adapt your needs/business model to that, or hire developers to write/customize solutions to fit your needs/business model.
In the second case, you need to hire developers anyway. In the first, open source at least gives you the option of making any modifications you want if you need them, where with commercial solutions you are bound by whatever the software provider allows.
There are also other potential nasties with the proprietary software route. Including being tied to suppliers, "viral" ownership claims on your property and data, etc
Don't get me wrong, I like Open Source software. However, it's very possible to leave people in the lurch in an Open Source project, just like a proprietary project, largely due to lack of accountability. You're (usually) not paying anyone anything, so they're maintaining it for their own satisifaction or self-interest. Once that's gone, you're up shits creek unless another maintainer is found, which is usually (but not always) the case.
If the program in question is that important to you then you can pay someone to do your maintenance, so long as it is open source, that would be in your self-interest.
With a proprietary program you'd first need to get explicit permission from the copyright holder. To do this you have to find the copyright holder, ask them and have them agree to what you want to do. Proprietary software can be EOLed at the whim of it's producer, in that case you are unlikely to be given permission to do anything with it.
And I (as a UK citizen, a country in which they have an office) can sue them in the small claims court for recovery of the money I paid for my licence. It'd cost me no more than £60 to issue the claim,
But how much would it cost them to even answer the summons?
and if I lose I might face up to £100 in a costs award.
It's only a might anyway it's not going to be anything like the defendant's real costs.
Take them to state Small Claims Court. In Texas, IIRC that covers anything under $3000. sO sue them for $2999. If no Microsoft lawyer shows up, you win $3000. If they show up and you've done your homework, you'll win.
:)
You imply that the court would not award any costs, so even if Microsoft won they'd be down the cost of their lawyer.
If they don't pay up, you can walk into any of Microsoft's offices in Texas with a sheriff or deputy constable and "attach" any item that you can then sell to get your money. A couple of copying machines and 5 or 6 PCs should cover the $3 grand nicely. Or perhaps the Lincoln towncar in the parking lot.
Having a sucessful plaintiff enforce their own judgment definitly sounds like a way to keep costs down
If 5,000 - 10,000 people did this at the same time, it might get Microsoft's attention.
They'd need a few thousand lawyers to start with.
The cost, especially to a large corporation, of a lawsuit may well be much greater than the amount involved. Especially when involving "small claims", for one thing a "corporate person" cannot be a LIP, for another having their property siezed can be very disruptive to their business. (A "tech savvy" plaintiff is more likely to be able to pick goods for maximum inconvenience of the defendant compared with the average bailiff.)
EXACTLY. I see you've read up on software agreements. Basically, you buy it, you own it! Ofcourse, you cannot redistribute it for money, or something, because that would break laws.
You'd be breaking copyright law if you made and distributed copies to third parties. Simply selling it on would be covered by the "doctorine of first sale"...
But warranty is one of Microsofts only points of contention. No other products in the world besides software have these kinds of restrictions. I can open up my toaster and turn it into a space heater if I want to, I just void the warranty. Does the manufacturer care? Not one bit, as long as I don't ask them for a replacement due to my tinkering. In fact, they should be happy, because now if I want to make toast, I have to buy a new toaster!
The manufacturer's warranty on a physical machine typically limited in ways such as time, usage, etc. e.g. they will replace/repair a toster if it goes wrong within 12 months so long as it is used in a domestic environment. If it's after 12 months or you are using it in a commercial kitchen then they can turn around and say "tough".
Manufacturer's warrantys are completly separate from statutory obligations on vendors, which can include being held to claims made by salesmen or advertisments.
If a vendor or a manufacturer makes a specific claim about a product they may well be held to it dispite disclaimers by either statute or case law.
Software is different from toasters in that it is trivial to both alter and duplicate. With something like Microsoft Windows it is sold as though it is a widget, but has this EULA which would only really make much sense if you had contracted Microsoft to produce Windows for you. Quite a lot of proprietary software (including some which is "free") has this split personality.
Problem is (for microsoft) even if you as a user agree to such an thing, you still have legal recourse. If they try to pull that bullshit about the EULA, the judge will laugh them out of court. "You can't sue us" clauses are purely there to discourage people too stupid to realize that, in the USA at least, YOU CAN ALWAYS SUE.
The problem for any potential plaintiffs would be that Microsoft can use all sorts of delaying tactics to keep cases out of a court room.
You may not win, but if Microsoft really started doing this, they'd probably lose a big Class Action lawsuit, unfortunately probably not big enough(In my opinion such a ruling, in order to actually fulfill its purpse would have to award a. cash, and b. be in the multi-billion dollar range.
However big a class action lawsuit is it would be only one lawsuit. Which Microsoft can easily either fight or settle. The only thing which Microsoft would have trouble with would be lots of lawsuits. If several million suits were to be filed the majority would probably end up with judgements, simply because Microsoft couldn't possibly turn up for every case.
Fining Microsft millions does nothing, if governments really wanted to have an effect, they need to lay down a $20billion or so fine. that would make a difference), but they'd still get a court order to stop in all probability.
If governments really wanted to they could make life very difficult for Microsoft. e.g. demand proof that they wern't laundering money for terrorists. "Demand" in this context meaning sending several hundred paramilitarry police to ramsack Microsoft's offices if Microsoft don't reply "how high" when told to jump.
If I've purchased a legitimate copy, and I installed it with a license agreement prior to the release of WGA, by what legal authority can Microsoft disable my operating system?
The original EULA probably said "we can change this however and whenever we feel like it." Anyway it definitly would have said that Microsoft disclaim any liability for the thing not working at all.
The only thing which could be used against Microsoft would be laws against hacking, since these tend to be purely criminal statutes good luck trying to persuade the cops to do anything!
A patent lawsuit may be the only option a small guy with an idea stolen by a big corp.
How many such cases have happened in the last 5-10 years?
I'm still using Office '97!
So in a decade what useful functionality has been added to Microsoft office?
Innovation is hard, that's why so few companies do it very much.
There also appears to be an optimum size for innovation. If an company is too large there tends to be a corporate culture against risk taking, even if the actual level of risk is not that high.
What ground-breaking innovative features and functionality would you add to Office?
What's needed might be more taking away than adding.
Users can get admin access to both their workstations and their laptops anyway. The only good reason I can think of to not give them admin access is to keep them from accidentally breaking something, if they're extremely un-tech-savvy.
Which they are likely to do quite easily by installing malware and "junkware" on their machines.
The system is deeply flawed if it is possible to steal someone's identity with a mere handful of private information.
Quite a bit of the inforation involved isn't private in the first place. The likes of SSNs, dates of birth, names of parents, schools attended, etc are part of public records.
You trust Microsoft Windows "Last Accessed Date" on files, right? I mean there's absolutely positivity without a doubt no way no how no possible method of changing that "Last Accessed Date".
You can turn this off in Windows, as a performance enhancement. Hard disks typically have the ability to be placed into read only mode, Windows no doubt has the ability to mount a partition read only and there are plenty of utilities which can be booted from CDROM.
They need to fire all of the morons who made this possible in the first place. It's hard to say which is worse, having no data security or not even knowing if your data is secure.
Where would you put them all? These people probably number in the millions, since they include everyone who thinks that a SSN is anything other than a personal name.
I believe it said on the FBI's report that it looked like the data had not been looked at.
How can you possibly verify this? AFAIK this would require a secure OS and no physical access to the storage media. A laptop definitly fails the latter. If it was running Windows it also fails the former, indeed switching off NTFS file access stamping is a standard performance enhancement.
Well... If you are already pirating windows, I seriously doubt you are going to have any desire to buy a license or a new computer just because you can't get security updates.
Or there's AutoPatcher, www.windizupdate.com, etc
I would imagine that it would not only be more expensive to install the initial cables but also to maintain them. Problem on the line? Go dig up the cables. Want to inspect something? Go dig up the cables.
The kind of places you tend to have underground power cables also tend to have lots of other underground services, so you also have to be careful not to disturb anything else.
With an overground cable it is quite simple to inspect the cable without disturbing it at all from the air. With a single aircraft being able to survey hundreds of miles of cable in a day.
There's a slight difference between the two jobs. When you're working on something, you're standing on the ground. So when you touch something not-at-ground-potential, a current flows through your body (killing you instantly ;). When you're working on the high tension lines, you touch the line, and you too become charged to whatever potential the lines are at. As long as you don't touch anything else (like the ground), you're perfectly fine.
Similarly birds can safely pirch on live powerlines.
IIRC these people also wear conductive suits. Which means that any currents will flow though their clothes rather than their bodies.
There can be a lot of water in the ground - so you get corrosion, you get water leaking in and electricity arcing and melting the cable, you get land movement as amounts of water change which can break the cable.
With an above ground cable it's quite simple to inspect cables for signs of problems before they become serious. e.g. using an infrared camera to look for hot spots.
Once you have a break it would be hard to find it - unless it is caused by the natural enemy of all underground cables - the backhoe.
Depends how much power the broken cable is capable of supplying into the ground before something trips. Wet ground plus several megajoules of energy tends to make a nice explosion.
Here in Mexico, money for political campaigns is provided by taxes. It is scandalous because too much money is given to the parties - but in a way it's still healthier than lobbying.
What you are describing is financing for election campaigning. The situation in Mexico is probably not much different from Canada, even if the details are different. The major exception when it comes to campaign finance is the USA.
Because with lobbying, it's corporate interests which determine who gets advertised (and therefore, elected).
Lobbying is ongoing attempting to persuade politicans to a certain point of view, both from regular corporates and political preassure groups (some of which are "corporate" even if they are not business based). If anything lobbying activities may reduce around a general election, because lobbiests wait until after the results to know who they need to bribe, blackmail, intimidate, etc.