The problem with all these arguments is that due process is NOT being violated. Due process only applies to court procedings and elsewhere where it has been mandated by legislature. A good example of something that is morally wrong but does not violate due process is firing for any or no reason in "at-will" states.
Pointing out the facts is not being a "copyright troll." And if you are guilty, the $20 fee is a lot better than the $150,000 per song that copyright law allows. And by implementing this, ISPs are no longer at risk of being sued for contributory infringement, so their exposure to humongous fines that would necessitate jacking rates up through the roof is reduced.
Remember - without copyright law, even the GPL would be unenforceable. Don't be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If the company is doing wrong to so many people, then there's always a shark willing to take 30% for a class action. Now, what the company is doing is not illegal if they have proof of illegal downloading. To the contrary, it's better to have only violators pay rather than all users pay a "piracy tax" like we do now on CDs and other storage media. Why should you or I pay for someone else's actions?
You're just drawing conclusions and without precedent.
That sentence doesn't parse. If you meant "without justification", there's plenty of justification - and actually no other conclusion is possible given the facts. Their handset operation's bleeding them dry, and both they and investors know it. The $965 million loss on the writedown of the Z10 inventory shows just how "out of touch" Blackberry is with what the market wants in a smartphone. The creation of a new business unit that houses all the IP but does not have a thing to do with manufacturing smartphones, and their newfound zeal for this as the way to survive and prosper, should tell anyone thinking of buying a blackberry that they will not be able to afford devoting resources into making new phones in the future.
This is a company who sold fewer phones last year than in 2008. The market has exploded since 2008, and it doesn't want what Blackberry is offering. Their global market share is half of one percent, and expected to drop even further in the future. Obvious inference - they'll sell off the phone division now that the IP is protected elsewhere in the business. There's no business case to keep a legacy business that's bleeding cash when you can flip it.
The only risk is that they'll do like GM tried to do with the Hummer brand - ask a ridiculous amount of money, and end up getting nothing for it. More likely scenario is selling it, but keeping some equity in the new venture, to keep the cash price down. Now, if you can make a business case that argues contrary to this, and sees them continuing to be a phone manufacturer past 2018, go ahead.
Fatness is associated with Type 2 diabetes, not Type 1, aka Juvenile Diabetes. Genetic, not related to diet or calorie intake, and untreated leaves you skinny as a beanpole.
Educate yourself, APK
The editors can check the accounts you named - they haven't been active for several years. Go on, ask them to, APK.
Oh wait, you can't. You've been perma-banned and have to troll anonymously via proxies. And "those other users who tore me apart?" Everyone knows it's you, again posting anonymously, because I tore apart your stupid hosts file crapola. BTW - why would anyone dare to use a hosts file that is produced by you? After all, you post anonymously, and one way to monetize your hosts file is to put a few bogus entries in that go to bogus "monetizing" sites. Who has independently vetted it? Nobody.
Android and iOS accounted for 96.4 percent of all smartphone shipments in Q2 2014, leaving even less for the competition as the Google-Apple duopoly hit a new high. Android grew its share to 84.7 market share, while iOS fell to 11.7 percent, Windows Phone slipped to 2.5 percent, and BlackBerry tanked to 0.5 percent.
Even Windows Phone is selling 5x as many phones as Blackberry, and people are questioning the long-term viability of WinPhone.
And "Blackberry Shares Lead TSX". Come off it - if you read the article, it had nothing to do with phones:
The tech sector led advancers with BlackBerry Ltd. ahead 14 cents to $10.61 (Canadian) as the company said that it has created a new business unit that will combine some of its most innovative technology, including QNX embedded software, Certicom cryptography applications and its patent portfolio.
The story on blackberry buying the German security firm is more of the same - moving away from phone manufacturing and into software and services.
And it's market cap? 5.6 billion, a far cry from the peak of 83 billion.
If blackberry believed phones were its future, it wouldn't be making the moves it is. If investors believed blackberry's phones had any sort of future, they wouldn't be rewarding the company with a higher stock evaluation for moving away from phones as a core business. The sales numbers have spoken. That can't be faked or argued. We're into a smartphone duopoly - android and iOS - and android is winning.
... and your argument depends on people being sheeple. If people don't want to defend their rights, then maybe they don't deserve them - or "No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." -- General Douglas MacArthur.
We have freedoms because others fought for them; either pay it forward when your turn comes, or stop complaining, because by caving in, you're part of the problem.
Sometimes "paying it forward" just means inconvenience. Sometimes it costs money. Sometimes it means more... it's for each person to decide - and if they want to make that decision based on a cost-benefit analysis ("it costs more to fight than to give in") rather than what's right or wrong, that's their decision - but it means their principles are for sale.
Poor APK. Still doing everything he can (which ain't much).
Sure I'm playing with android. Given the choice of developing for blackberry or android, why would I play with a phone that's got almost zero market share?
Many of the most popular apps on the iPhone and Android are nowhere to be found. There's no Instagram, Netflix (NFLX), Candy Crush or Google (GOOG) Maps. Many of the big-brand apps that do exist for BlackBerry, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, are infrequently updated and have received dismal reviews from users.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry news site BerryReview revealed last month that a single developer is responsible for 48,000, or 40%, of BlackBerry's apps. Some of those apps developed by Hong Kong outfit S4BB many seem legit and functional. But many of them are either generic clones of other apps or possess minimal usefulness.
... and...
BlackBerry is also rapidly losing subscribers, so big app makers don't want to devote resources to a vanishing platform. But BlackBerry also gives free rein to small developers to fill its app store with spam apps.
Although the open-ended strategy may be mildly beneficial to BlackBerry and a few ambitious developers in the short term, encouraging such a large ratio of garbage apps to quality apps poses consequences in the long run: Smaller developers don't want to invest in BlackBerry, because it it's hard for consumers to stumble upon their apps in a diluted pool.
analysts remained sceptical about the future of the firm formerly known as Research in Motion. "If you wouldn't lend money to buy BlackBerry, why would you lend money to BlackBerry?" queried Benedict Evans, of Enders Analysis.
... and...
One major supplier, Jabil, warned in September that it might stop building parts for the company, which could completely kill off the handset business.
When such a critical supplier says they're thinking of bailing, there's no way to spin it.
The CBC story is just a part of the whole story. But if you read the story on the CBC web site (which I linked to) , it includes the following:
Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business.
"This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said.
"It suggests they are no longer as dependent on handset-based revenue as they once were and as a result they have both the financial foundation as well as the corporate organizational confidence to more concretely move away from those lines of businesses into areas that are largely based on its intellectual property."
He said the move was positive for Blackberry, noting that it has struggled with its product launches and faced stiff competition from other smartphone makers while it has received little credit for its range of capabilities, especially when it came to software.
We've seen this story before - a company decides to concentrate on software and services, and sells off their hardware lines. IBM and Lenovo with PCs, and now with servers, should ring a bell.
Blackberry moving all their IP into a separate business unit is the logical way to get ready to sell off their phone division for the maximum return. People have known for years that Blackberry was in trouble. Just look at their market share (but you might need a microscope - it's worse than WinPhone). Everyone I know who had a crackberry has switched away. It's why blackberry took $965 million in writedowns on their unsold inventory of Z10 phones. They can't even sell them at cost.
But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.
“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”
Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.
Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s A
I'm far from a "shill against blackberry." As a Canadian, I wanted them to continue their success. However, the writing was on the wall the day they caved in to Saudi Arabia and allowed government access to (and decryption of) user's secure messages.
You can't screw over your customers and not expect people to start looking at alternatives.
I considered a blackberry earlier this year, but it was so off the mainstream that I said to heck with it. If Blackberry had gone to android instead of qnx, I would probably have bought one just to encourage them, but there's no way that I'm going to buy something that's virtually an orphan. And everyone I know who loved their crackberries has switched. Judging by their market share, this is now an all-too-common occurrence.
I'd fight it, and hope that enough other people would that the whole approach would be dropped, preferably with compensation, and whoever thought up the bright idea would get fired/fined/thrown in jail under RICO (US) / Gangsterism (Canada) laws.
First, due process already interferes wit a person's life. Having to go to court to defend yourself is not something you do lightly - but if you're innocent, you should be ready to make the sacrifice in time and resources to prevent future abuse - to "pay it forward". As Thomas Paine said "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
All the alternatives are there - but not for something that's illegal, or, in your own words, "illegal downloading." The lesson is simple - don't do the crime unless you're ready to do the time. Someone who has been wrongfully blocked can use those alternatives legitimately and without fear while the fight for what's right.
The only "inaccuracies" in the past several years have been from BlackBerry. They've been trying - and failing - to push their phone platform. The first indication that they were making the shift was when they started offering BBM for non-BlackBerry phones. Now, focusing on their Intellectual Property - we all still remember when SCO started making the same noises.
After decimating their workforce, they're now hiring - but for non-hardware related services. For a company that renamed itself from RIM (Research In Motion) to BlackBerry in a failed effort to show "commitment" to their new line of cell phones, and a record loss of $6 billion, of which $934 million was for unsold Z10 phones, and their inability to sell themselves to a private investor when that investor couldn't get equity partners to pony up cash... there's simply no way that they can continue to devote more than "maintenance mode" funding to the cell phone business - and if they try to do both, not only will the markets hammer them, but they'll just burn through their remaining cash reserves that much faster, AND scare off any potential investors/partners.
Blackberry's phone div is now a distraction as they try to reinvent themselves. They don't dare say it publicly, but there are no reasons to believe they're stupid enough to continue when their smartphone market share is a rounding error. They'll sell the bones to a 3rd-party manufacturer, now that they've shielded the core IP in another division.
Sure you can. I was once falsely (and maliciously) accused of something, and was able to prove that I was 100 km away in a different city for the extended weekend, with hundreds of witnesses. 7 witnesses was more than sufficient.
So, if I say that I have evidence that you're using water flowing into your house to make drugs, I guess you're absolutely fine with having that water cut off until you can prove that you're not indeed using it to make drugs. If you are making drugs, I guess you're ok with your family going thirsty even though it's not their crime.
What's this - BadAnalogyGuy posting anon, or what? Seriously... if someone gets hit with a redirect, it's not like they still don't have other avenues to pursue. For one, they can fight the ban legally with their ISP (unless, of course, they're guilty and their ISP has the records to prove it). Then there's free wifi networks. Going to a friends. The library. Buying a data plan for your smartphone. Switching ISP.
What it boils down to is simple. If you're not guilty, you have both the right and the duty to fight. If you are, then maybe it's time to grow up and face the music, because these programs only exist because people ARE breaking the rules in the first place. And if you don't think a particular program/show/song is worth the asking price ("how much? What a ripoff"), that's not an excuse for downloading (ripping it off).
If you download stuff that the rights-holders don't want to sell you, and you end up paying $20, of which $10 goes to the copyright holder, that's pretty damn decent.
Without radiation, our planet wouldn't have a molten core, plate tectonics, or LIFE - at least not "life as we know it." And that's not counting solar radiation (infra-red through ultraviolet) that makes our orbit the "Goldilocks zone for life."
I've never denied I enjoy trolling the trolls, Fat Boy. And why should I bother with your "challenge" when the whole issue has been rendered moot by hardware advances?
As for my running for Parliament in the next federal election, there are plenty of people who are depending on me to continue to fight for their rights and against projects that are a waste of money and have results contrary to their stated goals. There IS life after programming, and the same problem-solving skills apply to "debugging" political problems.
But you can continue to "solve" a problem that nobody cares about any more. And now that I'm back you can continue to try to bug me. After all, like I said before I started going blind, someone has to keep you busy so you don't get distracted and start chewing more paint chips.
I can't fathom how slashdot fall to the point where people with ignorance on your level get modded up instead of into oblivion. Whats better is that you're claiming that Windows 8 drivers that don't work on Windows 7 caused the same problem for you. This is an ID10T or PBKAC error I think.
Before jumping on the previous poster for mentioning Windows 7, you might have wanted to read the linked article, or better yet Microsoft's own description of one of the updates that states it affects a LOT more than just Win8x, and it has nothing to do with drivers
Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows
... Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Seeing as I'm running for federal office in 2015, there's no need to "hide behind sockpupets." Or even nyms. That would be counter-productive, so might as well post under the name that's going to be on the ballot:-) And yes, the last few years I didn't read very well - or at all for much of the time. Kind of hard to when you're going blind. However, sight in my good eye has become good enough to use a computer again, and the doctors even managed to return significant sight to the other eye rather than it being completely blind.
When I bought this machine a couple of months ago at the local pharmacy (8 gig ram, quad core 2 ghz, hdmi out, etc) I didn't want to spend much because I was afraid I might still not be able to use it... it took a while, but I adapted. Kind of a surprise, but I'm not going to complain.
But like always, you failed to address my point - that today even the el cheapo laptops are so overpowered that there's no problem running a browser, etc., without problems. It's not the 20th century any more. Your "solution" is obsolete.
I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just that the two main app repositories (Apple and Google) are sooo chock-full of apps that the gold rush is over, and now people are stuck with an overabundance of choice, which has led to a market where a few apps make the vast majority of money, and the rest...
Sure, you can make money working for someone who wants an app - there are plenty of apps that business has commissioned so t"hey too can have an app" - and many of these suck, so there's a significant opportunity there, even for indies.
And they should lie in it. Microsoft's monopoly in IE was one of the principal causes of stagnation in the industry during the mid 2000s.
Then again, that stagnation arguably led to some great innovations by others in the industry, which is why we've witnessed the mobile revolution and downfall of IE since.
Microsoft was always playing the "short game" - after all, it was always about announcing the latest vapour-ware, future plans to pre-emptively ward off competitors, etc. to keep the stock price up, We saw how that played out in both the phone and tablet markets, which is where both current and future growth is.
"Never interfere with your opponent when he's making a mistake." Sure, the opponents often didn't have the resources to interfere significantly, but there's one resource Microsoft couldn't control - time. The accumulation of mistakes over time hurt them badly. Thank Ballmer. Also thank Gates for making sure Ballmer was CEO way past his best-before date. Just goes to show, we all bear the seeds of our own destruction.
Slashdot Mirror
... for pirating their upsell "do you want fries with that."
Pointing out the facts is not being a "copyright troll." And if you are guilty, the $20 fee is a lot better than the $150,000 per song that copyright law allows. And by implementing this, ISPs are no longer at risk of being sued for contributory infringement, so their exposure to humongous fines that would necessitate jacking rates up through the roof is reduced.
Remember - without copyright law, even the GPL would be unenforceable. Don't be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If the company is doing wrong to so many people, then there's always a shark willing to take 30% for a class action. Now, what the company is doing is not illegal if they have proof of illegal downloading. To the contrary, it's better to have only violators pay rather than all users pay a "piracy tax" like we do now on CDs and other storage media. Why should you or I pay for someone else's actions?
You're just drawing conclusions and without precedent.
That sentence doesn't parse. If you meant "without justification", there's plenty of justification - and actually no other conclusion is possible given the facts. Their handset operation's bleeding them dry, and both they and investors know it. The $965 million loss on the writedown of the Z10 inventory shows just how "out of touch" Blackberry is with what the market wants in a smartphone. The creation of a new business unit that houses all the IP but does not have a thing to do with manufacturing smartphones, and their newfound zeal for this as the way to survive and prosper, should tell anyone thinking of buying a blackberry that they will not be able to afford devoting resources into making new phones in the future.
This is a company who sold fewer phones last year than in 2008. The market has exploded since 2008, and it doesn't want what Blackberry is offering. Their global market share is half of one percent, and expected to drop even further in the future. Obvious inference - they'll sell off the phone division now that the IP is protected elsewhere in the business. There's no business case to keep a legacy business that's bleeding cash when you can flip it.
The only risk is that they'll do like GM tried to do with the Hummer brand - ask a ridiculous amount of money, and end up getting nothing for it. More likely scenario is selling it, but keeping some equity in the new venture, to keep the cash price down. Now, if you can make a business case that argues contrary to this, and sees them continuing to be a phone manufacturer past 2018, go ahead.
Fatness is associated with Type 2 diabetes, not Type 1, aka Juvenile Diabetes. Genetic, not related to diet or calorie intake, and untreated leaves you skinny as a beanpole. Educate yourself, APK
Oh wait, you can't. You've been perma-banned and have to troll anonymously via proxies. And "those other users who tore me apart?" Everyone knows it's you, again posting anonymously, because I tore apart your stupid hosts file crapola. BTW - why would anyone dare to use a hosts file that is produced by you? After all, you post anonymously, and one way to monetize your hosts file is to put a few bogus entries in that go to bogus "monetizing" sites. Who has independently vetted it? Nobody.
Some perspective
Android and iOS accounted for 96.4 percent of all smartphone shipments in Q2 2014, leaving even less for the competition as the Google-Apple duopoly hit a new high. Android grew its share to 84.7 market share, while iOS fell to 11.7 percent, Windows Phone slipped to 2.5 percent, and BlackBerry tanked to 0.5 percent.
Even Windows Phone is selling 5x as many phones as Blackberry, and people are questioning the long-term viability of WinPhone.
And "Blackberry Shares Lead TSX". Come off it - if you read the article, it had nothing to do with phones:
The tech sector led advancers with BlackBerry Ltd. ahead 14 cents to $10.61 (Canadian) as the company said that it has created a new business unit that will combine some of its most innovative technology, including QNX embedded software, Certicom cryptography applications and its patent portfolio.
The story on blackberry buying the German security firm is more of the same - moving away from phone manufacturing and into software and services. And it's market cap? 5.6 billion, a far cry from the peak of 83 billion.
If blackberry believed phones were its future, it wouldn't be making the moves it is. If investors believed blackberry's phones had any sort of future, they wouldn't be rewarding the company with a higher stock evaluation for moving away from phones as a core business. The sales numbers have spoken. That can't be faked or argued. We're into a smartphone duopoly - android and iOS - and android is winning.
We have freedoms because others fought for them; either pay it forward when your turn comes, or stop complaining, because by caving in, you're part of the problem.
Sometimes "paying it forward" just means inconvenience. Sometimes it costs money. Sometimes it means more ... it's for each person to decide - and if they want to make that decision based on a cost-benefit analysis ("it costs more to fight than to give in") rather than what's right or wrong, that's their decision - but it means their principles are for sale.
Sure I'm playing with android. Given the choice of developing for blackberry or android, why would I play with a phone that's got almost zero market share?
What killed Blackberry: Terrible apps.
Many of the most popular apps on the iPhone and Android are nowhere to be found. There's no Instagram, Netflix (NFLX), Candy Crush or Google (GOOG) Maps. Many of the big-brand apps that do exist for BlackBerry, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, are infrequently updated and have received dismal reviews from users.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry news site BerryReview revealed last month that a single developer is responsible for 48,000, or 40%, of BlackBerry's apps. Some of those apps developed by Hong Kong outfit S4BB many seem legit and functional. But many of them are either generic clones of other apps or possess minimal usefulness.
... and ...
BlackBerry is also rapidly losing subscribers, so big app makers don't want to devote resources to a vanishing platform. But BlackBerry also gives free rein to small developers to fill its app store with spam apps.
Although the open-ended strategy may be mildly beneficial to BlackBerry and a few ambitious developers in the short term, encouraging such a large ratio of garbage apps to quality apps poses consequences in the long run: Smaller developers don't want to invest in BlackBerry, because it it's hard for consumers to stumble upon their apps in a diluted pool.
BlackBerry isn't a "competitor" to anybody any more. They sold fewer phones last year than in 2008. And worse ...
analysts remained sceptical about the future of the firm formerly known as Research in Motion. "If you wouldn't lend money to buy BlackBerry, why would you lend money to BlackBerry?" queried Benedict Evans, of Enders Analysis.
... and ...
One major supplier, Jabil, warned in September that it might stop building parts for the company, which could completely kill off the handset business.
When such a critical supplier says they're thinking of bailing, there's no way to spin it.
Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business.
"This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said.
"It suggests they are no longer as dependent on handset-based revenue as they once were and as a result they have both the financial foundation as well as the corporate organizational confidence to more concretely move away from those lines of businesses into areas that are largely based on its intellectual property."
He said the move was positive for Blackberry, noting that it has struggled with its product launches and faced stiff competition from other smartphone makers while it has received little credit for its range of capabilities, especially when it came to software.
We've seen this story before - a company decides to concentrate on software and services, and sells off their hardware lines. IBM and Lenovo with PCs, and now with servers, should ring a bell.
Blackberry moving all their IP into a separate business unit is the logical way to get ready to sell off their phone division for the maximum return. People have known for years that Blackberry was in trouble. Just look at their market share (but you might need a microscope - it's worse than WinPhone). Everyone I know who had a crackberry has switched away. It's why blackberry took $965 million in writedowns on their unsold inventory of Z10 phones. They can't even sell them at cost.
Or you might want to read what the Globe and Mail had to say almost a year ago in "Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt." Here's just a part of it:
But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.
“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”
Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.
Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s A
You can't screw over your customers and not expect people to start looking at alternatives.
I considered a blackberry earlier this year, but it was so off the mainstream that I said to heck with it. If Blackberry had gone to android instead of qnx, I would probably have bought one just to encourage them, but there's no way that I'm going to buy something that's virtually an orphan. And everyone I know who loved their crackberries has switched. Judging by their market share, this is now an all-too-common occurrence.
I'd fight it, and hope that enough other people would that the whole approach would be dropped, preferably with compensation, and whoever thought up the bright idea would get fired/fined/thrown in jail under RICO (US) / Gangsterism (Canada) laws.
All the alternatives are there - but not for something that's illegal, or, in your own words, "illegal downloading." The lesson is simple - don't do the crime unless you're ready to do the time. Someone who has been wrongfully blocked can use those alternatives legitimately and without fear while the fight for what's right.
After decimating their workforce, they're now hiring - but for non-hardware related services. For a company that renamed itself from RIM (Research In Motion) to BlackBerry in a failed effort to show "commitment" to their new line of cell phones, and a record loss of $6 billion, of which $934 million was for unsold Z10 phones, and their inability to sell themselves to a private investor when that investor couldn't get equity partners to pony up cash ... there's simply no way that they can continue to devote more than "maintenance mode" funding to the cell phone business - and if they try to do both, not only will the markets hammer them, but they'll just burn through their remaining cash reserves that much faster, AND scare off any potential investors/partners.
Blackberry's phone div is now a distraction as they try to reinvent themselves. They don't dare say it publicly, but there are no reasons to believe they're stupid enough to continue when their smartphone market share is a rounding error. They'll sell the bones to a 3rd-party manufacturer, now that they've shielded the core IP in another division.
You cannot prove a negative.
Sure you can. I was once falsely (and maliciously) accused of something, and was able to prove that I was 100 km away in a different city for the extended weekend, with hundreds of witnesses. 7 witnesses was more than sufficient.
So, if I say that I have evidence that you're using water flowing into your house to make drugs, I guess you're absolutely fine with having that water cut off until you can prove that you're not indeed using it to make drugs. If you are making drugs, I guess you're ok with your family going thirsty even though it's not their crime.
What's this - BadAnalogyGuy posting anon, or what? Seriously ... if someone gets hit with a redirect, it's not like they still don't have other avenues to pursue. For one, they can fight the ban legally with their ISP (unless, of course, they're guilty and their ISP has the records to prove it). Then there's free wifi networks. Going to a friends. The library. Buying a data plan for your smartphone. Switching ISP.
What it boils down to is simple. If you're not guilty, you have both the right and the duty to fight. If you are, then maybe it's time to grow up and face the music, because these programs only exist because people ARE breaking the rules in the first place. And if you don't think a particular program/show/song is worth the asking price ("how much? What a ripoff"), that's not an excuse for downloading (ripping it off).
If you download stuff that the rights-holders don't want to sell you, and you end up paying $20, of which $10 goes to the copyright holder, that's pretty damn decent.
Without radiation, our planet wouldn't have a molten core, plate tectonics, or LIFE - at least not "life as we know it." And that's not counting solar radiation (infra-red through ultraviolet) that makes our orbit the "Goldilocks zone for life."
As for my running for Parliament in the next federal election, there are plenty of people who are depending on me to continue to fight for their rights and against projects that are a waste of money and have results contrary to their stated goals. There IS life after programming, and the same problem-solving skills apply to "debugging" political problems.
But you can continue to "solve" a problem that nobody cares about any more. And now that I'm back you can continue to try to bug me. After all, like I said before I started going blind, someone has to keep you busy so you don't get distracted and start chewing more paint chips.
I can't fathom how slashdot fall to the point where people with ignorance on your level get modded up instead of into oblivion. Whats better is that you're claiming that Windows 8 drivers that don't work on Windows 7 caused the same problem for you. This is an ID10T or PBKAC error I think.
Before jumping on the previous poster for mentioning Windows 7, you might have wanted to read the linked article, or better yet Microsoft's own description of one of the updates that states it affects a LOT more than just Win8x, and it has nothing to do with drivers
Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows
Buffer overflow in a character set table?
When I bought this machine a couple of months ago at the local pharmacy (8 gig ram, quad core 2 ghz, hdmi out, etc) I didn't want to spend much because I was afraid I might still not be able to use it ... it took a while, but I adapted. Kind of a surprise, but I'm not going to complain.
But like always, you failed to address my point - that today even the el cheapo laptops are so overpowered that there's no problem running a browser, etc., without problems. It's not the 20th century any more. Your "solution" is obsolete.
If you want real value, get a basket of eggs,
Putting all your eggs in one basket? You really ARE a contrarian investor, aren't you?
Sure, you can make money working for someone who wants an app - there are plenty of apps that business has commissioned so t"hey too can have an app" - and many of these suck, so there's a significant opportunity there, even for indies.
And they should lie in it. Microsoft's monopoly in IE was one of the principal causes of stagnation in the industry during the mid 2000s.
Then again, that stagnation arguably led to some great innovations by others in the industry, which is why we've witnessed the mobile revolution and downfall of IE since.
Microsoft was always playing the "short game" - after all, it was always about announcing the latest vapour-ware, future plans to pre-emptively ward off competitors, etc. to keep the stock price up, We saw how that played out in both the phone and tablet markets, which is where both current and future growth is.
"Never interfere with your opponent when he's making a mistake." Sure, the opponents often didn't have the resources to interfere significantly, but there's one resource Microsoft couldn't control - time. The accumulation of mistakes over time hurt them badly. Thank Ballmer. Also thank Gates for making sure Ballmer was CEO way past his best-before date. Just goes to show, we all bear the seeds of our own destruction.
Now that a quad-core 2 gigahertz 8 gig ram laptop is under $400 nobody' worried about "slow browsers." 1990 called - they want their 386 back.