The proponents of campaign finance reform seem to be going on principle. Unless of course it is all a ploy to reduce the costs of lobbying groups.
There are plenty of example were politicians actually do act in the interest of the people they represent. The problem is that it is usually only a handful for any given issues, thus nothing ever gets done about it.
Well with the way the various delays have been going I'll make a really wild-assed guess and say it will come down on my birthday, 2001-06-30 09:42:30.
Here is an example of where the numbers may come from.
Assume your company got hit by the LoveBug virus.
You decide to shut down all PC's because it is early in the day and you do not yet know how much damage the virus can do.
Assume your employees can not use their PC's for 2 hours.
Assume your employees cost you $30/hours.
Assume you have 500 employees.
So your cost of the virus is (2 hours)*($30/hour)*(500 employees) = $30000.
Multiply that by 1000 companies and you have now 'lost' 30 million dollars. Inflate your numbers a bit more and multiple by 10-20 virus attacks per year and you end up in the billions pretty quick.
There are also a few other 'costs' thrown in, such as the time it takes your staff to clean things up, the phone bills for associated calls, the bandwidth to download virus updates, etc. These are small cost relative to the lost time listed above.
Now this is just an example and it not meant to be typical, or even accurate. It does show where the numbers come from however.
You may also laugh at the down time of 2 hours, particualrly in retrospect, but it does happen. The company work for was very conservative and had everyone shut down their PC until they could all be checked by IT personel. This took almost 14 hours to accomplish and most people had no PC access for their entry 8 hour work day.
This type of stuff has gone on much longer then computers have even been around. Lawyers are hired to win thier case. The best way to do that at times is to 'fool' the judge. That is why we have the appeals process though. The idea being that if you get one 'bad' judge you can hopefully get a better one the next time up.
The real problem with this is that it can take you many years and a lot of money to prove you were right in the first place and the big companies have much more money to throw away on such things then smaller companies or individuals.
So in that case they are saying that blind persons are not allowed to use text to speech software to enjoy said book. Still sounds like an overreaching restriction to me.
Yes, 60 hour work weeks are fairly common here in the US. Mostly for one of three reasons.
First, there are the type A personality types that think the only way to get ahead is to work more then the next guy.
Then there is the stupidity of managment that can't plan ahead to save their life. There are many companies that have more work then they can possibly do with the number of employees they have, and they know it, but they will still not hire the people they need.
Then there is the penny pinching of managment. The good old we can't afford to hire any more people excuse. While this may work with salaried people, who's wages are fixed, it is also very common in manufacturing where people are paid hourly. It amazes me how many companies can't afford to hire more people, but can afford to pay overtime at rates 1.5x, 2x, and even 3x every week for years.
Remember this company is telling this guy he has to take some time off. If they fire you for taking the time off that you have coming do you really want to continue working for them? I wouldn't.
Get a second person in and up to speed. Then take a well deserved break. If managment won't go for a second admin, tell them that is a very bad idea. If they still won't then take a couple of weeks off, perferably in a remote location where you can not be reached, and see if they have a different attitude when you get back.
Oh great, so the nuke will hit somewhere it isn't supposed to, just what we needed.
Exactly! Considering it would go down in the first 30 seconds or less the missile will still be over the launch area. Which would destroy an enemy missile launch site.
In reality the nuke would probably not detonate. You would have a conventional explosion that would spread nuclear amterial over a large area. Again probably the enemies teritory.
Thay 'lease' you the comic for $3 to start. A year later they tell you to pay another $3 to keep the comic for another year. Seeing as you have already read the comic you tell them no and give it back.
A little while later you realize that you really should have kept that particular comic for some reason and want it back. So you go shopping for a copy.
But alas Marvel has made it so that comic book stores can no longer sell back issues and the only place you can now buy that old comic is from Marvel for $300.
Oh by the way you are not buying that comic you are again leasing it and Marvel will want thier money again in another year.;(
Here in Illinois the same type of punch system is used. The card is inserted, you punch the holes, then pull out the card and put it in the ballot box. It is easy to check for 'chad' before putting it in the ballot box.
It is also pretty easy to make sure you punch the correct spot if you just pay attention to what you are doing.
The big thing this election is bringing to a greater light is the fact that these kinds of irregularities hanppen with EVERY election. It is just that they usually do not make enough of a difference to effect the outcome.
For example 2,000 ballots being thrown out is no big deal if one candidate is winning by 20,000 votes. It seems much more important when the margin is something like the 4 vote difference in New Mexico or the few hundred vote difference in Florida.
I'm guessing that the Register of Copyright's didn't want to make many exceptions for two reasons.
First, the decision was useless. Given the way the DMCA is written most exemptions would be useless in the real world anyway.
Second, with so few exceptions it is much more likely that the DMCA will go to the Supreme Court soon. Hopefully to be ruled unconstitutional, or at least parts of it.
Make sure you contact organizations like IEEE, ACM, etc. You would be suprized how much help they can be.
Also check with companies in your area. I went to a smallish school about an hour east of Mineapolis/St. Paul and we used to get people every week from companies like IBM, 3M, Honeywell, etc. They may not speak on exactly the topic you want, but you can get them for a meal and gas money at the most.
$500 is a steal for what you get in the C-75. Yeah it can't push the candle power of the big boys, but it doesn't cost that much for what it does. What I wouldn't have given to have a couple of these when I used to do lighting work back in the 80's.
I've worked with embedded systems since the early 80's. You can obfuscate stuff all you want, but it will not stop someone that really wants to copy something from doing it. All you can do is make it a little harder for them to do. In the end if they REALLY want the information they can get it.
As for legality it all depends on what they do exactly and where.
If they grab your copyrighted 'code' and just clone it, then that is a copyright violation in many countries.
If they reverse engineer your system by examining the i/o patterns, then it might by a violation in some countries, not many at this point.
Either way if you are going to try and rely on obscrutity to protect your market share, you will be in for a very rude awakening.
1) As mentioned elsewhere almost anyone can get into a college in the US. Regardless of how well you did before. I went to a state school in the 80's and the only requirement was that you were in the top two thirds of your graduating class, and if you weren't you could petition to get in anyway. Plus even if you go to a 'bad' school for undergraduate you can still get into a more prestegious grad school if you worked hard and score well on your entrance exams.
2) Huge amounts of money, both public and private, are spent on research in the US. Thus, the resources are available to do the basic research that leads to Nobel prize winners.
3) The attitude in the US that you have to out do others to prove you are superior. It's the "publish or perish" mechanism of getting a tenured teaching position. If you don't do research AND publish it you will not get the big paying professorship.
4) You also can't discount population. The US has a larger population then all but a handful of countries. Add this to the easy access to higher education and it makes all the difference in the world.
Miyazaki's work is very good. If you have children Kiki's Special Delivery and My Neighbor Totoro are a MUST. They are also fairly entertaining for adults.
Just so happens we are in the middle of the Tenchi OVA DVD set. According to the packaging the English dub was done by "Pioneer Entertainment (USA) LP. in association with Network. Not the original, but it is still a pretty good dub. Also the OVA is MUCH better then what they are showing on TV here in the US. Note the OVA is PG-13 due to nudity. The animated nudity is more funny then sexy though.
I have to agree with most of the comments, just go with plain old corragated boxes. The best I have found are the boxes that are used for shipping paper. The ones that hold 10 reams. They are designed to be completely filled with paper, which is what books are, and not break. The slide on covers mean you don't need to tape them closed or do the funky folding trick. They are also meant to be stacked. I have used this type of box for book storage for the past 20 years and they work great.
As for environmental factors follow the various other suggestions. Don't put the boxes directly on the floor. Don't completely seal things in plastic. Pack the books flat instead of on end.
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The proponents of campaign finance reform seem to be going on principle. Unless of course it is all a ploy to reduce the costs of lobbying groups.
There are plenty of example were politicians actually do act in the interest of the people they represent. The problem is that it is usually only a handful for any given issues, thus nothing ever gets done about it.
Well with the way the various delays have been going I'll make a really wild-assed guess and say it will come down on my birthday, 2001-06-30 09:42:30.
Shell accounts are easy to find. You can get this with many web hosting accounts.
The problem you will have is the 1-2 GB/account. That's going to cost a fair amount.
Here is an example of where the numbers may come from.
Assume your company got hit by the LoveBug virus.
You decide to shut down all PC's because it is early in the day and you do not yet know how much damage the virus can do.
Assume your employees can not use their PC's for 2 hours.
Assume your employees cost you $30/hours.
Assume you have 500 employees.
So your cost of the virus is (2 hours)*($30/hour)*(500 employees) = $30000.
Multiply that by 1000 companies and you have now 'lost' 30 million dollars. Inflate your numbers a bit more and multiple by 10-20 virus attacks per year and you end up in the billions pretty quick.
There are also a few other 'costs' thrown in, such as the time it takes your staff to clean things up, the phone bills for associated calls, the bandwidth to download virus updates, etc. These are small cost relative to the lost time listed above.
Now this is just an example and it not meant to be typical, or even accurate. It does show where the numbers come from however.
You may also laugh at the down time of 2 hours, particualrly in retrospect, but it does happen. The company work for was very conservative and had everyone shut down their PC until they could all be checked by IT personel. This took almost 14 hours to accomplish and most people had no PC access for their entry 8 hour work day.
You can't patent that because it would be considered a business plan not an object or process. ;)
This type of stuff has gone on much longer then computers have even been around. Lawyers are hired to win thier case. The best way to do that at times is to 'fool' the judge. That is why we have the appeals process though. The idea being that if you get one 'bad' judge you can hopefully get a better one the next time up.
The real problem with this is that it can take you many years and a lot of money to prove you were right in the first place and the big companies have much more money to throw away on such things then smaller companies or individuals.
So in that case they are saying that blind persons are not allowed to use text to speech software to enjoy said book. Still sounds like an overreaching restriction to me.
Yes, 60 hour work weeks are fairly common here in the US. Mostly for one of three reasons.
First, there are the type A personality types that think the only way to get ahead is to work more then the next guy.
Then there is the stupidity of managment that can't plan ahead to save their life. There are many companies that have more work then they can possibly do with the number of employees they have, and they know it, but they will still not hire the people they need.
Then there is the penny pinching of managment. The good old we can't afford to hire any more people excuse. While this may work with salaried people, who's wages are fixed, it is also very common in manufacturing where people are paid hourly. It amazes me how many companies can't afford to hire more people, but can afford to pay overtime at rates 1.5x, 2x, and even 3x every week for years.
Remember this company is telling this guy he has to take some time off. If they fire you for taking the time off that you have coming do you really want to continue working for them? I wouldn't.
Get a second person in and up to speed. Then take a well deserved break. If managment won't go for a second admin, tell them that is a very bad idea. If they still won't then take a couple of weeks off, perferably in a remote location where you can not be reached, and see if they have a different attitude when you get back.
Exactly! Considering it would go down in the first 30 seconds or less the missile will still be over the launch area. Which would destroy an enemy missile launch site.
In reality the nuke would probably not detonate. You would have a conventional explosion that would spread nuclear amterial over a large area. Again probably the enemies teritory.
A more appropriate Marvel senario would be this.
;(
Thay 'lease' you the comic for $3 to start. A year later they tell you to pay another $3 to keep the comic for another year. Seeing as you have already read the comic you tell them no and give it back.
A little while later you realize that you really should have kept that particular comic for some reason and want it back. So you go shopping for a copy.
But alas Marvel has made it so that comic book stores can no longer sell back issues and the only place you can now buy that old comic is from Marvel for $300.
Oh by the way you are not buying that comic you are again leasing it and Marvel will want thier money again in another year.
I believe Zeneth also used it in one of their multi-OS PC's in the mid 80's.
Here in Illinois the same type of punch system is used. The card is inserted, you punch the holes, then pull out the card and put it in the ballot box. It is easy to check for 'chad' before putting it in the ballot box.
It is also pretty easy to make sure you punch the correct spot if you just pay attention to what you are doing.
The big thing this election is bringing to a greater light is the fact that these kinds of irregularities hanppen with EVERY election. It is just that they usually do not make enough of a difference to effect the outcome.
For example 2,000 ballots being thrown out is no big deal if one candidate is winning by 20,000 votes. It seems much more important when the margin is something like the 4 vote difference in New Mexico or the few hundred vote difference in Florida.
Check out vservers.com . I use their *nix hosting, not NT, but they have been pretty good.
It depends on your school. My high school transcript had both attendance history and class ranking on it, in addition to classes and grades.
I'm guessing that the Register of Copyright's didn't want to make many exceptions for two reasons.
First, the decision was useless. Given the way the DMCA is written most exemptions would be useless in the real world anyway.
Second, with so few exceptions it is much more likely that the DMCA will go to the Supreme Court soon. Hopefully to be ruled unconstitutional, or at least parts of it.
Make sure you contact organizations like IEEE, ACM, etc. You would be suprized how much help they can be.
Also check with companies in your area. I went to a smallish school about an hour east of Mineapolis/St. Paul and we used to get people every week from companies like IBM, 3M, Honeywell, etc. They may not speak on exactly the topic you want, but you can get them for a meal and gas money at the most.
$500 is a steal for what you get in the C-75. Yeah it can't push the candle power of the big boys, but it doesn't cost that much for what it does. What I wouldn't have given to have a couple of these when I used to do lighting work back in the 80's.
I've worked with embedded systems since the early 80's. You can obfuscate stuff all you want, but it will not stop someone that really wants to copy something from doing it. All you can do is make it a little harder for them to do. In the end if they REALLY want the information they can get it.
As for legality it all depends on what they do exactly and where.
If they grab your copyrighted 'code' and just clone it, then that is a copyright violation in many countries.
If they reverse engineer your system by examining the i/o patterns, then it might by a violation in some countries, not many at this point.
Either way if you are going to try and rely on obscrutity to protect your market share, you will be in for a very rude awakening.
Four reasons would seem to contribute.
1) As mentioned elsewhere almost anyone can get into a college in the US. Regardless of how well you did before. I went to a state school in the 80's and the only requirement was that you were in the top two thirds of your graduating class, and if you weren't you could petition to get in anyway. Plus even if you go to a 'bad' school for undergraduate you can still get into a more prestegious grad school if you worked hard and score well on your entrance exams.
2) Huge amounts of money, both public and private, are spent on research in the US. Thus, the resources are available to do the basic research that leads to Nobel prize winners.
3) The attitude in the US that you have to out do others to prove you are superior. It's the "publish or perish" mechanism of getting a tenured teaching position. If you don't do research AND publish it you will not get the big paying professorship.
4) You also can't discount population. The US has a larger population then all but a handful of countries. Add this to the easy access to higher education and it makes all the difference in the world.
Miyazaki's work is very good. If you have children Kiki's Special Delivery and My Neighbor Totoro are a MUST. They are also fairly entertaining for adults.
Just so happens we are in the middle of the Tenchi OVA DVD set. According to the packaging the English dub was done by "Pioneer Entertainment (USA) LP. in association with Network. Not the original, but it is still a pretty good dub. Also the OVA is MUCH better then what they are showing on TV here in the US. Note the OVA is PG-13 due to nudity. The animated nudity is more funny then sexy though.
They have already started. Paypal and X.com merged some time ago. Expect to see tighter intigration and expansion of services as time goes.
I have to agree with most of the comments, just go with plain old corragated boxes. The best I have found are the boxes that are used for shipping paper. The ones that hold 10 reams. They are designed to be completely filled with paper, which is what books are, and not break. The slide on covers mean you don't need to tape them closed or do the funky folding trick. They are also meant to be stacked. I have used this type of box for book storage for the past 20 years and they work great.
As for environmental factors follow the various other suggestions. Don't put the boxes directly on the floor. Don't completely seal things in plastic. Pack the books flat instead of on end.