There is a slightly different perspective on it that most gun fanatics fail to acknowledge. Guns are for killing. It's their entire purpose, it's why they were created and it's what they're used for. Handguns are for killing people, it's their entire purpose. Yes target and skeet shooting exists, for the primary purpose of becoming a more accurate shot. Making handguns illegal in the UK did nothing to decrease violence. There are essentially the same percentage of attempted murders in the US as there is in the UK. The primary difference in the UK is that because one of the major tools for killing, a tool that makes killing far easier, is restricted people are forced to commit their acts of violence using less deadly means. The incidences of stabbings in the UK dwarfs the attempts in the US. It's precisely because people can't use guns that when looking at crime statistics you see similar rates but MUCH lower fatality rates in the UK versus the US.
So although you may argue the attack on the tool is the same, it's not. Guns have almost no legitimate purpose outside dealing in death. Unless you're Homer Simpson you don't use your gun to turn the TV on and you don't use it to pound nails. It's only real purpose is to discharge bullets at high rates of speed at living things with the intent to deprive said living thing of existence. Competative shooting exists and can still exist under gun banning laws (some countries just require that the gun be kept at the shooting club and it's removal from the premises restricted by said gun club.
There is no question your right about the possibility of the spamming conviction. But there's a money laundering charge in there. Not only that but they are going to take him on paying capital gains taxes on what was income (IRS violations are nasty, you don't normally avoid jail). Given that he was running a corrupt organization they are going to take him down and put him away for a long time on RICO, money laundering and tax evasion charges. All of which will net him time in a max security prison, not a white collar prison.
He needs to be very afraid, a 3 year investigation by the feds means they have a VERY well documented case and that they have also stacked charges to the point that if he fights and loses he'll spend life in prison. Being the arrogant prick he is, he'll fight the charges rather than make a deal and it's going to cost him everything.
[blockquote]The scary thing is that there is absolutely no way to oversight this. These officers could start plucking people for absolutely any reason they want, they are being asked to make a value judgment with an expected accuracy of 1%!! It would take thousands of abuses before an officer's abusive behavior could be successfully identified, and the outcome of that could then simply be, "He needs more training." Further, anyone he finds who really is acting fairly suspicious, he could also pluck, an keep closer to a normal success rate, perhaps close enough that the officer's behavior was never abnormal enough to warrant investigation, while he's actively abusing his power the whole time.[/blockquote]
This isn't scary in the least. Right now they can arbitrarily recommend you for secondary screening for no reason whatsoever and without the training that is exactly what has been happening since 2001. I would much rather have people trained in recognizing unusual, nervous or otherwise suspicious behavior making the recommendations for secondary screening rather than the random "check everyone" system they have had implemented since 2001.
You act as if the secondary screening is some form of imprisonment, when in fact it's just the secondary screening that exists right now (some questions, some wiping of your bags to check for explosives, xraying your shoes and hand wanding with the metal detector). Right now multitudes of people are getting this screening randomly on every flight. I would much rather have them target these secondary screenings at people who are exhibiting suspicious behavior (rather than the 90year old man in the wheelchair).
So why don't you find something real to get offended about, like the loss of habeas corpus rather than airport security recommending people for secondary screenings based on behavior rather than randomly.
Glonass and Galileo won't be free. Each plan to charge for each reciever. This is the reason neither system will obtain any kind of market share once NASA gets GPS mark II up and running. The US system will always be free, the EU and Russian system will cost $$ and offer no serious benefit over the enhanced GPS that is going to be deployed over the next few years.
Your wrong. TMI will always dictate work relationships. In 10 years or so you will understand that you don't want to know that co-worker X (a 45 year old hairy fat man) is into BDSM and oil wrestling. You don't want to know, you don't want to imagine and you have no desire to even have the barest knowledge of certain personal aspects of the people you work with because you will know that it will impede and interfere with your ability to work with them, regardless of how good of a coworker they are. And you don't want your boss knowing that you "used a lot of hard drugs in college" or that you are an "atheist", because just like your opinion of your coworkers would be colored by that perception, so will your Bosses. For example you could have a Boss that under appearance is a friendly non-judgmental kind of person, but in fact is a radical Christian who doesn't promote atheists or drug users. And for all you know the CEO fires anyone he finds out has ever used drugs because he read some book that told him drug users cost businesses on average $10,000 per year.
People discuss far too much about their personal lives on easy to find sites that are often indexed by the major search engines. A quick search of a few major sites even without using Google could reveal information that would normally be a EEO violation for the employer to ask but is voluntarily being disclosed by hundreds of thousands of young people without the work experience to realize how damaging this information can be in the wrong hands. Not only is the disclosure voluntary but it makes it trivial to discriminate because the information is so easily obtained BEFORE being hired. The worst part is that because it's done preemployment the discrimination will be virtually untraceable and impossible to prove. You simply can't do anything but hurt yourself by baring your personal life to the world.
And it's going to be 20 years or more before Gen Y is in "control". Heck the baby boomers are still running the show with the first Gen-X'rs barely reaching that tier. And don't think for a minute that the same ideals and ideas your generation has while in college will even remotely be similar to the ones you have when you reach the peak of your influence on the nation (45-70).
People forget the advantage of the 700mhz spectrum. It provides close to a 30 mile range, whereas cellular towers in the other parts of the spectrum top out at a few miles. If Google takes all their dark fiber, light it up and build towers, or better yet hook into the current TV transmision towers the capital expense will be 1/4 what it takes to build out a cellular network, simply because they will need 1/4 the towers. Set a price of $30 a month for unlimited access (VOIP and data) and they will absolutely kill verizion, att, comcast and every other internet and phone provider. Not only that but they would probably make a fortune on the investment. All these articles about Google NOT bidding is simply stock analysts trying to convince the market that Google won't enter the market and that the incumbent providers are still a good investment.
Frankly I think they will bid, and it will be a very serious bid meant on winning. And after they win and build the network out no other provider will be able to go against network neutrality as if they do Google will run ads about switching to Google Internet for unrestricted internet. Not only that but they will likely drive the price of mobile internet down such that everyone can afford it, something they VERY much want (think google maps and search for local businesses, competition against the local yellow pages). Think about cheap unlimited mobile Internet that just happens to be google based and serves advertisements based on where you are. Imagine driving by a store and having your phone pop up and advertisement (to that store) for a product you were searching for on the Internet earlier along with a map of the store to show you where it is in the store and how much it costs.
I think it would be crazy for them NOT to make a serious bid and win.
Every single person who was actually involved in the negotiations (from both sides) testified in support of Novell's interpretation of the sale. About half the people NOT involved in the negotiations testified that they thought SCO (as opposed to TSCOG) was buying the whole business. All the board meeting notes, all the lawyers and all the executives in charge supported the conclusion that SCO didn't have enough money to buy the business outright so they were sold an exclusive license to use and develop. The contract language confirms that, it's extremely clear. Darl and TSCOG also confirmed it when they called Novell, and Ralph Yarro (head of TSCOG board) met with Novell before the IBM suit all of them asking Novell to transfer the copyrights.
You read the right, TSCOG asked Novell to transfer the copyrights BEFORE they filed the lawsuit against IBM. This is admission of the fact that they KNEW they didn't own the copyrights. Combine that with the clear language of the contract and the testimony of those involved in the negotiations and there was no way the Judge COULDN'T issue a summary judgement ruling in favor of Novell. The evidence was overwhelming that Novell owned the copyrights AND that TSCOG knew it and acknowledged it.
Now you can continue to get distracted by minor details while ignoring the big picture if you like, but the facts of the case are such that the ruling couldn't be reversed as there is no factual dispute. As someone else said, Juries rule on facts in dispute, without a dispute it's a matter of law for a judge to rule on.
Egypt has no oil. Never has. I can affirmatively say the US has never purchased a Barrel of oil from them and suspending our purchase of oil would have no effect on Egypt. You wanna hurt Egypt, stop touring the pyramids and going to their beaches. The Egyptian economy is almost 100% driven by tourism. This is the reason that anyone attacking tourists sites in Egypt usually disappears permanently.
How often does this happen? Do you routinely see Phishing sites in the first 5 pages when googling? If not I would say google is doing their job admirably. Not to mention that although this went on for a few days (as in sites were continued to be added for a period of days) that the sites were out of the rankings within 24 hours. That's impressive, for such a large scale attack on Googles ranking system they only managed to get into the top page for less than 24 hours. I remember some of the old search engines were so gamed that you couldn't find a decent search result in the first 10 pages. With an attack of this size, with the amount of domains used, and the coordination of it all (it probably took a number of people working full time to register the domains, set them up and get the metadata/site in place and get the google-bot to hit them and the best they got was a top page (not number one listing) rank for 24 hours. Not only that but the with the summary that showed up and the domain listed I bet hardly any of them got clicked as it was obvious they were just plain garbage. In fact it was probably so obvious human tips probably came in immediately (as opposed to routine bot scans).
I'm amazed it went that quickly, frankly it would have taken any other site/search engine a month to fix and google had it fixed in 24 hours is a testament to how good they really are.
The general population is in general considered to be ~10% homosexual with an additional 10% or so that are likely to be homosexual and an unknown % of bisexual (some studies have indicated 40% of the population has had at least one sexual encounter with the same sex). Because so many gay people stay in the closet their whole lives and refuse to answer questions about it truthfully it's difficult to pin the number down accurately but most research indicates it's higher than 10% and probably close to 20% if you could get people to actually tell the truth about it. Given 6 out of 112 (heterosexual + homosexual, eliminating those where no determination could be made) the percentage is actually significantly lower than the actual percentage of gays in the population. This would seem to indicate that gay people have LESS chance of being engaged in espionage.
As others have pointed out the company is US based. Others also pointed out that the IBM legal team is going to find out who they are ordering from and pass that information on Lenovo. Lenovo being a premier Chinese company with extensive government contacts will likely take action within the political/judicial system in China. It should also be noted that they execute executives and company chairman for behavior that damages the reputation of China. For instance the chairman that put all that melamine in dog food that ended up killing all those pets was sentenced to death and has likely already been executed. So if you think this is no big deal, think again. The American company will be utterly destroyed by IBM and the suppliers of these counterfeit batteries are likely going to face the justice system in China (not because of IBM, but because of Lenovo who has exclusive rights to the IBM name).
You don't get disbarred for making lawyers look bad, lawyers in general always look bad because one side always loses. You get disbarred for ethical violations. His use of deliberately misleading, unscientific and downright false data in his lawsuits along with frivolous and baseless lawsuits simply apparently only for press attention is what's going to bring him down.
They file suit using the signed affidavit they got from the employee that turned them in. Then they show up using their newly acquired subpoena and seize all the computer gear. After they have this evidence of infringement they then tell the company that the fee schedule for voluntary compliance no longer exists and they are going to for the full $150K per violation. Given that the average small business typically owns one set of licenses on 10 or more computers the BSA typically goes for damages in excess of a million. Those that play hard ball (refuse BSA audit that all commercial software includes in their EULA) usually end up out of business.
IMO String theory has always been a round peg square hole problem.
It's always seemed to me that by sheer force of will the people involved have been trying to force a mathematical solution onto the problem. Not in the normal sense of looking for math that describes the problem, but taking a specific set of math and forcing it onto the problem of unified theory. Even when experiments show it's wrong, rather than abandon they just modify the theory so it accounts for the new "evidence". It's always felt like they have their red round peg of a solution and they keep forcing it into the square hole of the answer and when someone shows them the gap on the corner they pull out a knife and carve another round peg and paint it blue instead of red and pretend it solved the problem and that the peg now fits the hole. In looking at history I don't really see that ever happening, the real discoveries that have been made were found by people developing either new math that answers the problem or finding existing math that describes the situation rather than assuming an answer (strings) and then developing math that explains the assumed answer but only marginally is related to the real answer.
I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but I've always felt that string theory just wasn't right, no matter how much they modify it to fit the evidence it seems every test anyone makes of the theory invalidates it or doesn't disprove it but doesn't validate it either. It's always felt as I said, as if it's a round peg they are trying to fit into a square hole.
Who puts butter AND honey on toast? Your analogy leads me to believe that it's a bunk theory, as butter and honey on toast sounds terrible and horrifying at the same time. Let me guess, your English, or Australian.
Carrier's don't float alone. Don't underestimate the knowledge and abilities of the USN. The US played cat and mouse with the soviets for 30 years. It just means the USN is going to start playing cat and mouse with the Chinese now that their sub-tactics are improving. Chances are they were trying to surface to see if they could surface for a strike and re-submerge without being detected. In fact it would surprise me if there was a Los Angelos class sitting behind the Chinese when they did it. If not the Los Angeles class sub's will be getting their cat-n-mouse time with the Chinese in the near future.
The USN is well aware of supersonic attack missiles and torpedoes, it's the entire reason that AEGIS exists and has the ability to track and fire on 100's of incoming targets simultaneously from every vessel in the fleet. The first principle of carrier doctrine is that carriers are huge slow moving targets, but they are also huge slow moving targets with 20 support ships and hundreds of aircraft aboard. For example, in a conflict with Iran the carriers aren't going to start the conflict while in the gulf, it will start with them outside the limits of the Iranians weapons while they bomb the living hell out of every defensive emplacement within 100 miles of coast. Then you move the carrier groupings in further so the aircraft can strike further. The carrier isn't there to sail up to the coast so the sailors can fire their machine gun at the ground or so the destroyers can fire their 12" guns, the carrier exists to support the aircraft which are the extension of the carrier's power (and that range is in the 100's of miles). I don't think you would dare argue that the Iranian's air defenses could withstand full assault by modern warplanes. Iraq had the best air defenses outside Russia in '91 (with the best systems the Russians sold) and it was picked clean in less than 100 days.
The same is true of submarines, even diesels, given modern anti-sub warfare the Chinese wouldn't approach a carrier let alone fire on one, active sensors would be well outside the limits of the grouping actively pinging such that a yellowfin couldn't sneak up on the grouping. And no submarine can actively defend against helicopter based torpedoes and active floating sensors (except for sitting on the bottom next to something that conceals their shape), and fortunately the USN is smart enough to keep a couple anti-sub ships with two helicopters each and a hold full of sensors in every grouping. In the event of a conflict there would be a sensor net all the way from the Philippines to Alaska that would track every submarine in the water.
The page has a reference, there are 5? specific countries that will see the donated laptops, Afghanistan and Cambodia are the only two that jump to mind.
Most of the management that selected the technology were former MS employees. The selection was based on DRM and the belief that MS knew more about DRM than anyone else. This DRM is tied to windows DRM and is inseparable, as in there can never be a player on other OS's because the technology is MS's and patented. Working in other browsers doesn't allow the player to work in other operating systems.
The stupid player cost over 100 million pounds to develop. That's outrageous.
Your right they are responsible for containing costs. Producing this microsoft only player cost them over 100 million dollars. They also paid for direct assistance from Microsoft in it's development. For the dollars they spent they could have licensed a cross-platform player from the open market for every single person in the UK for 1/10th the cost they spent developing this MS only client. Not only that but because of budget issues they are going to sell one of their London offices which is a historic and traditional site for the BBC. The value of the land was appraised at 100-200 million. In essence the iPlayer has cost them one of their historic properties that they have owned since the BBC was formed.
And just so you know the decision to create the iPlayer went something like this. "We need DRM. MS is the expert in DRM. Therefore we will hire MS to write the software.". It's no coincidence that the gentleman that headed development of the iplayer, and those on the committee that picked the methodology are former MS employees.
There is a reason this story is big news in the UK. It's a huge scandal of mismanagement. The BBC trustee's are very upset about how much money was spent locking in this closed format to Windows only (not even Mac's can play). The linux connection exists only because Linux users were the ones who complained about the player and caused the investigation by the Trustee's which revealed the lack of fiscal discipline and exposed bad management. This was such a big mistake the Trustee's are likely to fire a good percentage of management over this.
If you want business service at home you should pay for and acquire business service, either that or vote with your feet. I don't have a lot of sympathy for a construction company running their business over a residential cable connection or even a business connection with clearly defined limits then complaining about those limits. It's very easy and not terribly expensive to acquire a real business connection with an SLA and guaranteed open network access. It's silly complaining like YOURS that raises the noise level to the point that real issues like network neutrality are lost in the noise. In summary, your issue is EASILY solved by paying for a real business connection, that you don't only exhibits how you run your business in an unprofessional way.
Just keep buying American, the lower the dollar goes the more the trade imbalance will shift to the US. I remember when the dollar was at it's peak and everyone was buying European products. It's a cycle and it's a little painful for the consumer on the currency sliding but the jobs shift.
DRM isn't all evil. DRM in the case of Steam gives you MORE rights than you have otherwise. I'm for the kind of DRM that gives me more access and more usability of my software. Steam is incredibly customer friendly. In fact the publishers hate Steam because it removes the middleman, puts more $$ in the hands of the game companies and gives you more rights to install the software than the traditional EULA of any game ever gives you.
I fail to see how Steam is bad, well unless you take your position that DRM is evil without regard to the law or logic. DRM on products that have never been traditionally licensed (ie music and movies) and DRM applied to licensed products (software) are completely different games.
If you read Groklaw you will note there are two prominent former MS executive heading the company 2 levels up from the bidder (company bidding is owned by company owned by company with 2 former exec's, incidentally IIRC they are also the same executives involved in the Baystar cash infusion). Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
What Theo is really saying is that virtualization is insecure until OpenBSD has a virtualization system integrated into the kernel in 2020.
Theo criticizes the security of every new technology until it's implemented into OpenBSD (I bet a quick search would show 100's of examples of this, in fact I think he said something similar about SMP when Linux first implemented it), it's part of his jealousy of the gnu/Linux system having more developers and resources than OpenBSD and his belief that only OpenBSD is secure.
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There is a slightly different perspective on it that most gun fanatics fail to acknowledge. Guns are for killing. It's their entire purpose, it's why they were created and it's what they're used for. Handguns are for killing people, it's their entire purpose. Yes target and skeet shooting exists, for the primary purpose of becoming a more accurate shot. Making handguns illegal in the UK did nothing to decrease violence. There are essentially the same percentage of attempted murders in the US as there is in the UK. The primary difference in the UK is that because one of the major tools for killing, a tool that makes killing far easier, is restricted people are forced to commit their acts of violence using less deadly means. The incidences of stabbings in the UK dwarfs the attempts in the US. It's precisely because people can't use guns that when looking at crime statistics you see similar rates but MUCH lower fatality rates in the UK versus the US.
So although you may argue the attack on the tool is the same, it's not. Guns have almost no legitimate purpose outside dealing in death. Unless you're Homer Simpson you don't use your gun to turn the TV on and you don't use it to pound nails. It's only real purpose is to discharge bullets at high rates of speed at living things with the intent to deprive said living thing of existence. Competative shooting exists and can still exist under gun banning laws (some countries just require that the gun be kept at the shooting club and it's removal from the premises restricted by said gun club.
There is no question your right about the possibility of the spamming conviction. But there's a money laundering charge in there. Not only that but they are going to take him on paying capital gains taxes on what was income (IRS violations are nasty, you don't normally avoid jail). Given that he was running a corrupt organization they are going to take him down and put him away for a long time on RICO, money laundering and tax evasion charges. All of which will net him time in a max security prison, not a white collar prison.
He needs to be very afraid, a 3 year investigation by the feds means they have a VERY well documented case and that they have also stacked charges to the point that if he fights and loses he'll spend life in prison. Being the arrogant prick he is, he'll fight the charges rather than make a deal and it's going to cost him everything.
[blockquote]The scary thing is that there is absolutely no way to oversight this. These officers could start plucking people for absolutely any reason they want, they are being asked to make a value judgment with an expected accuracy of 1%!! It would take thousands of abuses before an officer's abusive behavior could be successfully identified, and the outcome of that could then simply be, "He needs more training." Further, anyone he finds who really is acting fairly suspicious, he could also pluck, an keep closer to a normal success rate, perhaps close enough that the officer's behavior was never abnormal enough to warrant investigation, while he's actively abusing his power the whole time.[/blockquote]
This isn't scary in the least. Right now they can arbitrarily recommend you for secondary screening for no reason whatsoever and without the training that is exactly what has been happening since 2001. I would much rather have people trained in recognizing unusual, nervous or otherwise suspicious behavior making the recommendations for secondary screening rather than the random "check everyone" system they have had implemented since 2001.
You act as if the secondary screening is some form of imprisonment, when in fact it's just the secondary screening that exists right now (some questions, some wiping of your bags to check for explosives, xraying your shoes and hand wanding with the metal detector). Right now multitudes of people are getting this screening randomly on every flight. I would much rather have them target these secondary screenings at people who are exhibiting suspicious behavior (rather than the 90year old man in the wheelchair).
So why don't you find something real to get offended about, like the loss of habeas corpus rather than airport security recommending people for secondary screenings based on behavior rather than randomly.
Glonass and Galileo won't be free. Each plan to charge for each reciever. This is the reason neither system will obtain any kind of market share once NASA gets GPS mark II up and running. The US system will always be free, the EU and Russian system will cost $$ and offer no serious benefit over the enhanced GPS that is going to be deployed over the next few years.
Your wrong. TMI will always dictate work relationships. In 10 years or so you will understand that you don't want to know that co-worker X (a 45 year old hairy fat man) is into BDSM and oil wrestling. You don't want to know, you don't want to imagine and you have no desire to even have the barest knowledge of certain personal aspects of the people you work with because you will know that it will impede and interfere with your ability to work with them, regardless of how good of a coworker they are. And you don't want your boss knowing that you "used a lot of hard drugs in college" or that you are an "atheist", because just like your opinion of your coworkers would be colored by that perception, so will your Bosses. For example you could have a Boss that under appearance is a friendly non-judgmental kind of person, but in fact is a radical Christian who doesn't promote atheists or drug users. And for all you know the CEO fires anyone he finds out has ever used drugs because he read some book that told him drug users cost businesses on average $10,000 per year.
People discuss far too much about their personal lives on easy to find sites that are often indexed by the major search engines. A quick search of a few major sites even without using Google could reveal information that would normally be a EEO violation for the employer to ask but is voluntarily being disclosed by hundreds of thousands of young people without the work experience to realize how damaging this information can be in the wrong hands. Not only is the disclosure voluntary but it makes it trivial to discriminate because the information is so easily obtained BEFORE being hired. The worst part is that because it's done preemployment the discrimination will be virtually untraceable and impossible to prove. You simply can't do anything but hurt yourself by baring your personal life to the world.
And it's going to be 20 years or more before Gen Y is in "control". Heck the baby boomers are still running the show with the first Gen-X'rs barely reaching that tier. And don't think for a minute that the same ideals and ideas your generation has while in college will even remotely be similar to the ones you have when you reach the peak of your influence on the nation (45-70).
People forget the advantage of the 700mhz spectrum. It provides close to a 30 mile range, whereas cellular towers in the other parts of the spectrum top out at a few miles. If Google takes all their dark fiber, light it up and build towers, or better yet hook into the current TV transmision towers the capital expense will be 1/4 what it takes to build out a cellular network, simply because they will need 1/4 the towers. Set a price of $30 a month for unlimited access (VOIP and data) and they will absolutely kill verizion, att, comcast and every other internet and phone provider. Not only that but they would probably make a fortune on the investment. All these articles about Google NOT bidding is simply stock analysts trying to convince the market that Google won't enter the market and that the incumbent providers are still a good investment.
Frankly I think they will bid, and it will be a very serious bid meant on winning. And after they win and build the network out no other provider will be able to go against network neutrality as if they do Google will run ads about switching to Google Internet for unrestricted internet. Not only that but they will likely drive the price of mobile internet down such that everyone can afford it, something they VERY much want (think google maps and search for local businesses, competition against the local yellow pages). Think about cheap unlimited mobile Internet that just happens to be google based and serves advertisements based on where you are. Imagine driving by a store and having your phone pop up and advertisement (to that store) for a product you were searching for on the Internet earlier along with a map of the store to show you where it is in the store and how much it costs.
I think it would be crazy for them NOT to make a serious bid and win.
Every single person who was actually involved in the negotiations (from both sides) testified in support of Novell's interpretation of the sale. About half the people NOT involved in the negotiations testified that they thought SCO (as opposed to TSCOG) was buying the whole business. All the board meeting notes, all the lawyers and all the executives in charge supported the conclusion that SCO didn't have enough money to buy the business outright so they were sold an exclusive license to use and develop. The contract language confirms that, it's extremely clear. Darl and TSCOG also confirmed it when they called Novell, and Ralph Yarro (head of TSCOG board) met with Novell before the IBM suit all of them asking Novell to transfer the copyrights.
You read the right, TSCOG asked Novell to transfer the copyrights BEFORE they filed the lawsuit against IBM. This is admission of the fact that they KNEW they didn't own the copyrights. Combine that with the clear language of the contract and the testimony of those involved in the negotiations and there was no way the Judge COULDN'T issue a summary judgement ruling in favor of Novell. The evidence was overwhelming that Novell owned the copyrights AND that TSCOG knew it and acknowledged it.
Now you can continue to get distracted by minor details while ignoring the big picture if you like, but the facts of the case are such that the ruling couldn't be reversed as there is no factual dispute. As someone else said, Juries rule on facts in dispute, without a dispute it's a matter of law for a judge to rule on.
Egypt has no oil. Never has. I can affirmatively say the US has never purchased a Barrel of oil from them and suspending our purchase of oil would have no effect on Egypt. You wanna hurt Egypt, stop touring the pyramids and going to their beaches. The Egyptian economy is almost 100% driven by tourism. This is the reason that anyone attacking tourists sites in Egypt usually disappears permanently.
How often does this happen? Do you routinely see Phishing sites in the first 5 pages when googling? If not I would say google is doing their job admirably. Not to mention that although this went on for a few days (as in sites were continued to be added for a period of days) that the sites were out of the rankings within 24 hours. That's impressive, for such a large scale attack on Googles ranking system they only managed to get into the top page for less than 24 hours. I remember some of the old search engines were so gamed that you couldn't find a decent search result in the first 10 pages. With an attack of this size, with the amount of domains used, and the coordination of it all (it probably took a number of people working full time to register the domains, set them up and get the metadata/site in place and get the google-bot to hit them and the best they got was a top page (not number one listing) rank for 24 hours. Not only that but the with the summary that showed up and the domain listed I bet hardly any of them got clicked as it was obvious they were just plain garbage. In fact it was probably so obvious human tips probably came in immediately (as opposed to routine bot scans).
I'm amazed it went that quickly, frankly it would have taken any other site/search engine a month to fix and google had it fixed in 24 hours is a testament to how good they really are.
The general population is in general considered to be ~10% homosexual with an additional 10% or so that are likely to be homosexual and an unknown % of bisexual (some studies have indicated 40% of the population has had at least one sexual encounter with the same sex). Because so many gay people stay in the closet their whole lives and refuse to answer questions about it truthfully it's difficult to pin the number down accurately but most research indicates it's higher than 10% and probably close to 20% if you could get people to actually tell the truth about it. Given 6 out of 112 (heterosexual + homosexual, eliminating those where no determination could be made) the percentage is actually significantly lower than the actual percentage of gays in the population. This would seem to indicate that gay people have LESS chance of being engaged in espionage.
As others have pointed out the company is US based. Others also pointed out that the IBM legal team is going to find out who they are ordering from and pass that information on Lenovo. Lenovo being a premier Chinese company with extensive government contacts will likely take action within the political/judicial system in China. It should also be noted that they execute executives and company chairman for behavior that damages the reputation of China. For instance the chairman that put all that melamine in dog food that ended up killing all those pets was sentenced to death and has likely already been executed. So if you think this is no big deal, think again. The American company will be utterly destroyed by IBM and the suppliers of these counterfeit batteries are likely going to face the justice system in China (not because of IBM, but because of Lenovo who has exclusive rights to the IBM name).
You don't get disbarred for making lawyers look bad, lawyers in general always look bad because one side always loses. You get disbarred for ethical violations. His use of deliberately misleading, unscientific and downright false data in his lawsuits along with frivolous and baseless lawsuits simply apparently only for press attention is what's going to bring him down.
They file suit using the signed affidavit they got from the employee that turned them in. Then they show up using their newly acquired subpoena and seize all the computer gear. After they have this evidence of infringement they then tell the company that the fee schedule for voluntary compliance no longer exists and they are going to for the full $150K per violation. Given that the average small business typically owns one set of licenses on 10 or more computers the BSA typically goes for damages in excess of a million. Those that play hard ball (refuse BSA audit that all commercial software includes in their EULA) usually end up out of business.
IMO String theory has always been a round peg square hole problem.
It's always seemed to me that by sheer force of will the people involved have been trying to force a mathematical solution onto the problem. Not in the normal sense of looking for math that describes the problem, but taking a specific set of math and forcing it onto the problem of unified theory. Even when experiments show it's wrong, rather than abandon they just modify the theory so it accounts for the new "evidence". It's always felt like they have their red round peg of a solution and they keep forcing it into the square hole of the answer and when someone shows them the gap on the corner they pull out a knife and carve another round peg and paint it blue instead of red and pretend it solved the problem and that the peg now fits the hole. In looking at history I don't really see that ever happening, the real discoveries that have been made were found by people developing either new math that answers the problem or finding existing math that describes the situation rather than assuming an answer (strings) and then developing math that explains the assumed answer but only marginally is related to the real answer.
I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but I've always felt that string theory just wasn't right, no matter how much they modify it to fit the evidence it seems every test anyone makes of the theory invalidates it or doesn't disprove it but doesn't validate it either. It's always felt as I said, as if it's a round peg they are trying to fit into a square hole.
Who puts butter AND honey on toast? Your analogy leads me to believe that it's a bunk theory, as butter and honey on toast sounds terrible and horrifying at the same time. Let me guess, your English, or Australian.
Carrier's don't float alone. Don't underestimate the knowledge and abilities of the USN. The US played cat and mouse with the soviets for 30 years. It just means the USN is going to start playing cat and mouse with the Chinese now that their sub-tactics are improving. Chances are they were trying to surface to see if they could surface for a strike and re-submerge without being detected. In fact it would surprise me if there was a Los Angelos class sitting behind the Chinese when they did it. If not the Los Angeles class sub's will be getting their cat-n-mouse time with the Chinese in the near future.
The USN is well aware of supersonic attack missiles and torpedoes, it's the entire reason that AEGIS exists and has the ability to track and fire on 100's of incoming targets simultaneously from every vessel in the fleet. The first principle of carrier doctrine is that carriers are huge slow moving targets, but they are also huge slow moving targets with 20 support ships and hundreds of aircraft aboard. For example, in a conflict with Iran the carriers aren't going to start the conflict while in the gulf, it will start with them outside the limits of the Iranians weapons while they bomb the living hell out of every defensive emplacement within 100 miles of coast. Then you move the carrier groupings in further so the aircraft can strike further. The carrier isn't there to sail up to the coast so the sailors can fire their machine gun at the ground or so the destroyers can fire their 12" guns, the carrier exists to support the aircraft which are the extension of the carrier's power (and that range is in the 100's of miles). I don't think you would dare argue that the Iranian's air defenses could withstand full assault by modern warplanes. Iraq had the best air defenses outside Russia in '91 (with the best systems the Russians sold) and it was picked clean in less than 100 days.
The same is true of submarines, even diesels, given modern anti-sub warfare the Chinese wouldn't approach a carrier let alone fire on one, active sensors would be well outside the limits of the grouping actively pinging such that a yellowfin couldn't sneak up on the grouping. And no submarine can actively defend against helicopter based torpedoes and active floating sensors (except for sitting on the bottom next to something that conceals their shape), and fortunately the USN is smart enough to keep a couple anti-sub ships with two helicopters each and a hold full of sensors in every grouping. In the event of a conflict there would be a sensor net all the way from the Philippines to Alaska that would track every submarine in the water.
The page has a reference, there are 5? specific countries that will see the donated laptops, Afghanistan and Cambodia are the only two that jump to mind.
Most of the management that selected the technology were former MS employees. The selection was based on DRM and the belief that MS knew more about DRM than anyone else. This DRM is tied to windows DRM and is inseparable, as in there can never be a player on other OS's because the technology is MS's and patented. Working in other browsers doesn't allow the player to work in other operating systems.
The stupid player cost over 100 million pounds to develop. That's outrageous.
It cost over 100 million pounds to develop. That isn't cheap.
Your right they are responsible for containing costs. Producing this microsoft only player cost them over 100 million dollars. They also paid for direct assistance from Microsoft in it's development. For the dollars they spent they could have licensed a cross-platform player from the open market for every single person in the UK for 1/10th the cost they spent developing this MS only client. Not only that but because of budget issues they are going to sell one of their London offices which is a historic and traditional site for the BBC. The value of the land was appraised at 100-200 million. In essence the iPlayer has cost them one of their historic properties that they have owned since the BBC was formed.
And just so you know the decision to create the iPlayer went something like this. "We need DRM. MS is the expert in DRM. Therefore we will hire MS to write the software.". It's no coincidence that the gentleman that headed development of the iplayer, and those on the committee that picked the methodology are former MS employees.
There is a reason this story is big news in the UK. It's a huge scandal of mismanagement. The BBC trustee's are very upset about how much money was spent locking in this closed format to Windows only (not even Mac's can play). The linux connection exists only because Linux users were the ones who complained about the player and caused the investigation by the Trustee's which revealed the lack of fiscal discipline and exposed bad management. This was such a big mistake the Trustee's are likely to fire a good percentage of management over this.
If you want business service at home you should pay for and acquire business service, either that or vote with your feet. I don't have a lot of sympathy for a construction company running their business over a residential cable connection or even a business connection with clearly defined limits then complaining about those limits. It's very easy and not terribly expensive to acquire a real business connection with an SLA and guaranteed open network access. It's silly complaining like YOURS that raises the noise level to the point that real issues like network neutrality are lost in the noise. In summary, your issue is EASILY solved by paying for a real business connection, that you don't only exhibits how you run your business in an unprofessional way.
Just keep buying American, the lower the dollar goes the more the trade imbalance will shift to the US. I remember when the dollar was at it's peak and everyone was buying European products. It's a cycle and it's a little painful for the consumer on the currency sliding but the jobs shift.
DRM isn't all evil. DRM in the case of Steam gives you MORE rights than you have otherwise. I'm for the kind of DRM that gives me more access and more usability of my software. Steam is incredibly customer friendly. In fact the publishers hate Steam because it removes the middleman, puts more $$ in the hands of the game companies and gives you more rights to install the software than the traditional EULA of any game ever gives you.
I fail to see how Steam is bad, well unless you take your position that DRM is evil without regard to the law or logic. DRM on products that have never been traditionally licensed (ie music and movies) and DRM applied to licensed products (software) are completely different games.
If you read Groklaw you will note there are two prominent former MS executive heading the company 2 levels up from the bidder (company bidding is owned by company owned by company with 2 former exec's, incidentally IIRC they are also the same executives involved in the Baystar cash infusion). Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
What Theo is really saying is that virtualization is insecure until OpenBSD has a virtualization system integrated into the kernel in 2020.
Theo criticizes the security of every new technology until it's implemented into OpenBSD (I bet a quick search would show 100's of examples of this, in fact I think he said something similar about SMP when Linux first implemented it), it's part of his jealousy of the gnu/Linux system having more developers and resources than OpenBSD and his belief that only OpenBSD is secure.