Open sourcing it doesn't prevent someone from making a buck off of it. All the license agreements in the world don't prevent you form getting sued. As a result, no is the easiest answer.
We need to halt this immediately...and turn those dollars around to be spent on US citizens.....there's plenty of US citizens that can't seem to speak proper English.
I can't tell you how often I hear someone want to "ax" me a question.
I won't even get into the conversation that more and more these days, you have to almost speak fucking Spanish in the US.....just to get anything done.
Don't blame the ignorant fuck who is too lazy to enunciate proper English.
Blame the ignorant fuck who proposed that someone too lazy to enunciate proper English is somehow speaking their own language, and everyone else speaking English is wrong to correct them.
And yes, ebonics is nothing more than being fucking lazy and mispronouncing half the English language in some form of guttural shorthand. Yeah, there's a language barrier there alright, but it's one that should have been slapped out of the mouths of lazy kids everywhere decades ago.
Actually, no. Politics aside, linguists look for certain things that are characteristic of a language. Just because two languages share a similar root and may even have this same words in many cases does not mean they are the same language. German and Yiddish, or Portuguese and Spanish for example. The question is when does it move from a dialect to a separate language.
The court ordered them to talk and try to reach an agreement; something a judge can do. However, that does not mean they have to settle. Since it is both CEOs and senior council at the talks, you'd think they could reach an agreement. Cook seems like a rational person, and I assume the head of Samsung is as well. My guess is some sort of cross licensing deal with maybe an agreement to keep talking to avoid food fights in the future. This is a classic case of both sides needing the other and to try to find a way to put away the gun they've pointed at each others head without losing face.
The sad truth is that there are lots of opportunities for working with other people, and for having growing experiences outside of simple technophile interest. The women I work with in my job enjoy the collaborative parts of coming up with a solution, getting it to work and then getting it out the door. They enjoy what they do. But how do you communicate that to the women looking at career choices just now?
And if you don't believe me, then I urge you to sign up for an engineering program at your local university and find out for yourself - see if anyone tells you "Sorry you can't do engineering: you're a woman". I'm sure they won't. We'd love to have you.
Speaking as an engineer, i think there are several thing stat stop women from entering the field; even when they have a talent for it:
1) The lack of role models. If they know an engineer it's generally their or someone else's dad, brother or other male; so they really don't see engineering as an option for them.
2) The public perception of engineers as nerds. While we may embrace this stereotype, what young girl wants to tell her friends she is going to be a nerd? Don't underestimate the power of peer pressure in guiding career choices.
3) A misconception of what an engineer actually does. When people think of engineers they think of the guy designing something. They never see all the other things engineers do - from field engineers who fix problems the idiot design engineers created, to sales engineers who sell the products, and managers who herd all the cats on a daily basis.
4) Finally, they do not see engineering as a stepping stone to other careers. Engineering gives you a good foundation n problem solving, and engineers go on to do many things that are not engineering by any stretch of the imagination. They become CEOs, MDs, lawyers, pilots, as well as farmers and ministers. Some of the top consulting firms (BCG, Bain) were started and heavily staffed by people with engineering undergraduate degrees. An engineering degree does not mean you are stuck doing engineering work forever.
Now maybe there are macho software houses full of arrogant young men and pornographic decor that effectively scare most women away, much as they do in some blue collar workplaces. However I've never worked in or seen such a software house. In fact moving from blue to white collar the first thing that struck me was how polite people were to each other in an office, even the bosses say please and thankyou. Not saying white collar workers are better behaved than blue collar (there not, just ask any city waitress how ill-mannered 'suits' can be), but like waitressing, standard office politics requires people to be polite, even if it's through gritted teeth. Standard blue collar politics in a male only workplace is, "Any fist fights and you're both sacked".
Actually, you've hit on it indirectly. There is the same set of rules in an office as in a construction site; do not do anything to seriously damage a member of the group or else the group will meet out it's own justice. Keeping the peace is important and so behavior that seriously threatens it is implicitly, if not explicitly, punished. You lash out a Joe during a meeting and Sue may just "forget" to send you some important piece of information you need or not happen to see you to tell you a key meeting was rescheduled. A fist fight will still get you sacked; so other ways are used to maintain the social norms of the group.
Not sure you where you are, but in general most mods to cars would not void insurance coverage in the US.
I'm not in the US, thank Allah's left testicle, but any sane insurance company would improve their income:liability ratio by voiding any insurance policy for a vehicle with modifications. That is why the put the poison words in their policies about "any" modifications into the contract. You changed the carbs on your car... not an authorised or agreed modification... not detailed on your premium agreement... invalid insurance. You changed the suspension for [any of stiffer shocks, lowered springs, phase of the moon]... it's not the car we-the-insurance-company quoted you for, It's not on the description of the vehicle, so the insurance is not now (and never has been - you lied on your application) valid.
You keep saying this but that's simply not the case in the US, even if it is where you are. While you certainly could conceivably do something so extreme that your insurance company would drop coverage; many mods will have no effect beyond possibly recovering the value in the event of theft / fire / collision. Even then, most will not. For sample, a stereo mod would still be covered if it was stolen. My point is that many mods that were easily done w/o software mods now require mods to installed software and an auto update may have different results for a modded car than an unmoved one - adding risk to the process. BMW, for example, keeps a build order in software so any changes to many things requires changing settings and reflashing; which can be done outside of BMW's control.
at least giver users a choice wether to install it.
"whether", not "wether".
Potatoe, Tomatoe Someday sepal and grammer cheekers will work better...
Regardless, I cannot conceive that a car manufacturer would find it financially or politically (NB : description of electorate below) useful to allow users to do "X" (where "X" is nore than filling up the fluids containers - petrol, screen wash... that's it. Brake and engine oil are too complex for users.), when "X" can be cast as requiring the paid services of a trained dealer engineer.
In the US at least that is illegal - you cannot require dealer or manufacturer service to maintain a warranty; you just have to use OEM quality parts. Of course, manufacturers make it hard to DIY - BMW for example require reprogramming for a battery change; so it's a $400 job; or you buy a $200 after market programming kit and do it (along with many other things) yourself.
In the real world, modifications that don't appreciably change the vehicle's performance are unlikely to attract attention, but modifications that do, will. Your opinion, as a petrol-head counts for nothing against the opinion of the insurance company (who are not, corporately, petrol-heads).
True, but many performance mods do not void insurance coverage; even if they make measurable changes in performance. Warranty coverage is another issue.
IANAL, so can someone explain to me why a US court thinks it has any effect in Germany? Or is this some kind of 'threat'/'international business' thing that has some legal basis for multinational companies?
Probably because it involves two US based companies embroiled in a dispute in US court as well and therefore the US court has the power to issue an oder to the two parties. Motorola first rolled the dice in a US court, and then tried to get a second roll in Germany as a hedge against losing the first. A US judge said "no can do."Had Motorola not started in a US court this would not have happened.
I don't think this law does what you think it does. I believe the goal of this law is to allow teachers to present creationism as a legitimate scientific alternative to natural selection.
True, and the intelligent design folks are salivating at the thought of getting their viewpoint out as "scientific." However, all laws are double edged swords - what about the controversy over ancient astronauts? The Great Spaghetti Monster? If the state argues it only allows certain controversies to be taught then it's likely unconstitutional.
I would have appealed their decision. If that's the whole story you were smart, not an ass. I've always judged my planes against the baseline of a crumpled paper ball, and when I've run competitions, we always had an event specifically for crumpled balls. If your event organizers didn't want that design, they should have prohibited it before the event. If that design never occurred to them, then you taught them a valuable engineering lesson.
I'm slowly learning that is why us nerds don't get promoted.
In the corporate world: The best idea is not always the best idea. Sometimes you have to just shut up and play ball.
One time at my university the engineering department had this paper airplane competition, everyone was given a sheet of 8.5x11" paper and a paper clip. It was particularly windy that day and the event had been organized for better weather so we ended up having to throw the planes directly into the wind from ground level. The distance of the various planes people built ranged from -10 feet to 20 feet from launch point. Taking this into account I decided to modify my design at the last second. I stepped up to the launch area with my plane, aimed it at a 45 degree angle, crumbled it up into a ball and threw it as hard as I could. I got something like 40 feet and had the furthest distance. I kept saying that it was designed to minimize air resistance but In the end I was disqualified for being a smart ass.
You should have pointed out that the ball's rotation produced lift, and thus was a wing by definition; and an airplane since it was flying. My prof once entered a duration contest with a plane made like a helicopter blade - it rotated and slowly feel to the ground. they tried to DQ him when he beat everyone else by several minutes but he correctly pointed out that it was producing lift and thus as much of a plane as any of the other variants.
What's wrong with the concept you buy it, you keep it especially for items that cost hundreds of dollars. Since you assume that when you spend that kind of money you know what you're buying in the first place.
This whole 90 days return window is simply bullshit.
The policy is designed to get you to buy if you are on the fence. You think " if I don't like it I can return it" and buy stuff you might not if you couldn't return it. Since most stuff doesn't come back the store comes out ahead.
It's a pretty straightforward application of psychology and behavioral economics. A side benefit is people think your store is consumer friendly.
I can image the grief a wireless flash might cause on a factory car with mods, potentially rendering it undrivable;
And your question:
and leaving the owner fighting the factory over whose fault it is.
If the mods were manufacturer-approved and dealer-installed, then it's the manufacturer-dealer-network's problem. Otherwise, it's the problem of the person who designed or installed the unapproved modification.
Oh, and by driving the vehicle with unapproved modifications, you were almost certainly in violation of the terms and conditions of your insurance policy (unless you'd told them exactly what you'd done to the car). So, potentially you've been committing criminal offences of driving without insurance too.
That would be the way I read the law (in my jurisdiction) ; you may not like it, but that's not a problem I lose sleep over.
Not sure you where you are, but in general most mods to cars would not void insurance coverage in the US. Wether or not they cover damage or loss to them is another story.
At any rate, I was thinking about software mods - such as changing build codes to activate features not originally active or if you add something such as Bluetooth. On a BMW, you need to change the codes in the software to do this. My scenario is more what happens if the manufacturer overwrites your code with new code that causes problems? They are assuming a factory standard build which may not be the case; it's also possible that a dealer code install an option and reprogram and unless that change is reflected in whatever database is used to verify the standard confit they could even mess up a legitimate mod. Or, if they upload the car code and patch it how do they ensure the patch works for the car specific case?
To me it's a reasonably foreseeable possibility that the code in a car is no longer stock and thus an auto patch is not a good idea; at least giver users a choice wether to install it.
The companies are complaining not because the textbook is actually copying them (which would be a violation of copyright), but because the free texbooks are copying their ideas. The example TFA gives is that the copyrighted textbook uses a picture of a bear to illustrate the laws of thermodynamics, and the open-source version uses another different but similar picture of a bear (properly licensed under a CC license).
Basically, the companies are claiming they hold the copyright to the idea of using a bear to illustrate a law of thermodynamics. I call that "bullshit." They don't have a leg to stand on under copyright law, IMO (well, they shouldn't, IANAL so I cannot say for certain). Ideas can, infact, be freely copied: you cannot copyright them, and you never could.
Now, if they'd patented that idea, it'd still be bullshit, but maybe they'd have had a case legally speaking.
No, they're suing because the company used their layout, decisions on what to use to illustrate concepts, et
If Mercedes has cracked the trick of 100% successful upgrades over air, great! If not, I'd prefer to know that the systems controlling almost everything on the Mercedes hurtling towards me is not going to die at some arbitrary moment. Bricked iPhones are inconvenient. Bricked 2-ton vehicles moving at 70mph are very inconvenient!
No, MB has figured out how to avoid paying dealers to reflash cars for critical updates by bypassing the dealer. The dealer also gets to spend time on out of warranty repairs that actually make them money instead of spending valuable mechanic time own low reimbursement warranty work.
Many cars today have flash able computer systems that basically keep track of everything on the car such as bluetooth, headlights etc. With DIY mods, it's often necessary to reflect the software yourself or pay a dealer to do it. Unfortunately, it's often not as easy as pulling a part and reinstalling the upgraded one; for example a component pulled from a salvage vehicle may not properly register with the software, causing much grief as you troubleshot; even for a factory trained mechanic at the dealer who has all the equipment and manufacturer tech support on call.
I can image the grief a wireless flash might cause on a factory car with mods, potentially rendering it undrivable; and leaving the owner fighting the factory over whose fault it is.
If the product works as advertised then natural selection will ensure it comes to dominate the population.. how can you litigate against evolution? Surely the only winning move here is not to play?
Simple, this is clearly intelligent design at work, not some theory called evolution.
They aren't going to be married to a $60 price point. If they cut out the used game market, then it becomes a curve over time. Right now, we have a situation where a small number of die hards pay $100 + for a pre-release version with some extra trinkets, the first-day adopters pay $60 for a new game, a large number of people buy it at retail for $40 a year later, then it goes in the bargin bin for $20 or $30 a few years later. That's the curve. The problem for publishers is that they have to compete with their own used games at the end of this curve.
Actually, they don't have to compete with used game prices; they could effectively destroy the used game market if they wanted to by aggressive pricing. The margin on used games is huge; primarily for two reasons:
Initial prices are sticky remain high so there is a market for $40 games for long enough to justify taking a risk on buying them in enough quantity to have a reasonable used game selection to meet demand for $40 games
The prices paid for a used game are low enough that the company can survive a price drop on a new game and still make a profit on remaining inventory,/P.
If publishers aggressively dropped prices so that there was less certainty about being able to make money off fused games, because new game prices drip quickly and unpredictably, companies would pull back from the used game market and buy games at the price needed to make money after a few price drops; lowering the price a seller of a used game would get when they go to sell it to a GameStop. That would lessen the supply of used games further making a new game purchase likely.
The only question is the net present value of the profit on the total sales a publisher makes using an aggressive pricing policy more than what they currently make? If the answer is yes than they should adopt that strategy.
I think the key is that she offered to change it all for money. I think that's the part that should be illegal, not posting all that stuff in the first place. And threatening to post it unless you get money should be treated very similarly.
No, it's still liable; extortion gets added when you ask for money to "fix" the problem. Just because it's an online post does't mean it automatically gets a free pass form existing laws.
Lastly, this, in a small way, Google's fault. Their algorithm is fooled by stuff the human curating process would've had a much harder time being fooled by.
But I don't think we need any restraints on speech to handle this issue.
It isn't a constraint on free speech, she's free to post whatever she wants and suffer the consequences if it breaks the law; just as someone standing on a street corner would be liable for what they say even if they’re free to say it.
teachers actually have lives. If they become even more connected parents would expect 24 x 7 responses to every email they send, and bitch mightily if *gasp* a teacher didn't respond immediately to an email sent at 11pm on a Saturday. Most parents are reasonable, but all it takes is one or two idiots who seem to think that the teachers are their and their kid's personal servants who must drop everything to serve whatever need they perceive as having.
All Apple has done is clarify consumer's rights wrt to defects that exist at time of purchase. Apple is not saying they'll fix any problems that arise as they would with Applecare, they're saying if a defect is present when you buy an item that the seller is responsible for fixing it. Unlike Apple's warranty, you don't get worldwide coverage no matter where you bought it, nor is Apple obligated to fix it if you take it to an Apple store but bought it elsewhere.
So while it is nice to have such consumer protection laws (although you pay for them in prices) it's not like Apple is all of a sudden offering 2 year warranty in the EU.
The bus analogy is not quite right. A student is still under the School's authority when on a bus that is in operation. This is more like having the school bus parked unattended at your house over the weekend and you walk by and say the F word while the driver's radio happens to be keyed.
Maybe a better bus analogy would be he was authorized to drive the bus home and access it after hours, so he decides to get on the bus and start swearing while the mike is keyed; in which case the school could reasonably take disciplinary action.
At any rate, when he used the school's computer (which isn't clear as TFA contradict each other) he placed himself under the school's authority because he was using their property.
If they believe they need to wiretap childrens' laptops after they take them home, then they shouldn't give the kids laptops at all. Wiretapping them in them privacy of their own home is really creepy, and utterly unethical.
Except that it appears he used the school's VPN to post - at which point he was no longer using it in the privacy of his own home. If he uses someone else's computer he simply has no expectations of privacy; so what the school did was not unethical. I'd be surprised if they didn't have some sort of acceptable use policy that they informed the student and parents of prior to issuing the laptop.
I don't like what they do; but that's different from it being unethical.
I don't know why you think it's reasonable for the school to monitor what this kid is posting, privately, in his own home, to another person. There's no sense in which this is OK.
If the school find this policy to be necessary, then they should stop giving out laptops for children to take home altogether.
I think it's reasonable if he uses school supplied equipment since, as the owner of the equipment, they are responsible for how it is used. They have a responsibility to ensure school equipment is used in a responsible manner. Did they overreact? Certainly? Do they have a right to react? Certainly.
Slashdot Mirror
Open sourcing it doesn't prevent someone from making a buck off of it. All the license agreements in the world don't prevent you form getting sued. As a result, no is the easiest answer.
Geez, WTF?
We need to halt this immediately...and turn those dollars around to be spent on US citizens.....there's plenty of US citizens that can't seem to speak proper English.
I can't tell you how often I hear someone want to "ax" me a question.
I won't even get into the conversation that more and more these days, you have to almost speak fucking Spanish in the US.....just to get anything done.
Don't blame the ignorant fuck who is too lazy to enunciate proper English.
Blame the ignorant fuck who proposed that someone too lazy to enunciate proper English is somehow speaking their own language, and everyone else speaking English is wrong to correct them.
And yes, ebonics is nothing more than being fucking lazy and mispronouncing half the English language in some form of guttural shorthand. Yeah, there's a language barrier there alright, but it's one that should have been slapped out of the mouths of lazy kids everywhere decades ago.
Actually, no. Politics aside, linguists look for certain things that are characteristic of a language. Just because two languages share a similar root and may even have this same words in many cases does not mean they are the same language. German and Yiddish, or Portuguese and Spanish for example. The question is when does it move from a dialect to a separate language.
The court ordered them to talk and try to reach an agreement; something a judge can do. However, that does not mean they have to settle. Since it is both CEOs and senior council at the talks, you'd think they could reach an agreement. Cook seems like a rational person, and I assume the head of Samsung is as well. My guess is some sort of cross licensing deal with maybe an agreement to keep talking to avoid food fights in the future. This is a classic case of both sides needing the other and to try to find a way to put away the gun they've pointed at each others head without losing face.
The sad truth is that there are lots of opportunities for working with other people, and for having growing experiences outside of simple technophile interest. The women I work with in my job enjoy the collaborative parts of coming up with a solution, getting it to work and then getting it out the door. They enjoy what they do. But how do you communicate that to the women looking at career choices just now? And if you don't believe me, then I urge you to sign up for an engineering program at your local university and find out for yourself - see if anyone tells you "Sorry you can't do engineering: you're a woman". I'm sure they won't. We'd love to have you.
Speaking as an engineer, i think there are several thing stat stop women from entering the field; even when they have a talent for it:
1) The lack of role models. If they know an engineer it's generally their or someone else's dad, brother or other male; so they really don't see engineering as an option for them.
2) The public perception of engineers as nerds. While we may embrace this stereotype, what young girl wants to tell her friends she is going to be a nerd? Don't underestimate the power of peer pressure in guiding career choices.
3) A misconception of what an engineer actually does. When people think of engineers they think of the guy designing something. They never see all the other things engineers do - from field engineers who fix problems the idiot design engineers created, to sales engineers who sell the products, and managers who herd all the cats on a daily basis.
4) Finally, they do not see engineering as a stepping stone to other careers. Engineering gives you a good foundation n problem solving, and engineers go on to do many things that are not engineering by any stretch of the imagination. They become CEOs, MDs, lawyers, pilots, as well as farmers and ministers. Some of the top consulting firms (BCG, Bain) were started and heavily staffed by people with engineering undergraduate degrees. An engineering degree does not mean you are stuck doing engineering work forever.
Now maybe there are macho software houses full of arrogant young men and pornographic decor that effectively scare most women away, much as they do in some blue collar workplaces. However I've never worked in or seen such a software house. In fact moving from blue to white collar the first thing that struck me was how polite people were to each other in an office, even the bosses say please and thankyou. Not saying white collar workers are better behaved than blue collar (there not, just ask any city waitress how ill-mannered 'suits' can be), but like waitressing, standard office politics requires people to be polite, even if it's through gritted teeth. Standard blue collar politics in a male only workplace is, "Any fist fights and you're both sacked".
Actually, you've hit on it indirectly. There is the same set of rules in an office as in a construction site; do not do anything to seriously damage a member of the group or else the group will meet out it's own justice. Keeping the peace is important and so behavior that seriously threatens it is implicitly, if not explicitly, punished. You lash out a Joe during a meeting and Sue may just "forget" to send you some important piece of information you need or not happen to see you to tell you a key meeting was rescheduled. A fist fight will still get you sacked; so other ways are used to maintain the social norms of the group.
I'm not in the US, thank Allah's left testicle, but any sane insurance company would improve their income:liability ratio by voiding any insurance policy for a vehicle with modifications. That is why the put the poison words in their policies about "any" modifications into the contract. You changed the carbs on your car ... not an authorised or agreed modification ... not detailed on your premium agreement ... invalid insurance. You changed the suspension for [any of stiffer shocks, lowered springs, phase of the moon] ... it's not the car we-the-insurance-company quoted you for, It's not on the description of the vehicle, so the insurance is not now (and never has been - you lied on your application) valid.
You keep saying this but that's simply not the case in the US, even if it is where you are. While you certainly could conceivably do something so extreme that your insurance company would drop coverage; many mods will have no effect beyond possibly recovering the value in the event of theft / fire / collision. Even then, most will not. For sample, a stereo mod would still be covered if it was stolen. My point is that many mods that were easily done w/o software mods now require mods to installed software and an auto update may have different results for a modded car than an unmoved one - adding risk to the process. BMW, for example, keeps a build order in software so any changes to many things requires changing settings and reflashing; which can be done outside of BMW's control.
"whether", not "wether".
Potatoe, Tomatoe Someday sepal and grammer cheekers will work better...
Regardless, I cannot conceive that a car manufacturer would find it financially or politically (NB : description of electorate below) useful to allow users to do "X" (where "X" is nore than filling up the fluids containers - petrol, screen wash ... that's it. Brake and engine oil are too complex for users.), when "X" can be cast as requiring the paid services of a trained dealer engineer.
In the US at least that is illegal - you cannot require dealer or manufacturer service to maintain a warranty; you just have to use OEM quality parts. Of course, manufacturers make it hard to DIY - BMW for example require reprogramming for a battery change; so it's a $400 job; or you buy a $200 after market programming kit and do it (along with many other things) yourself.
In the real world, modifications that don't appreciably change the vehicle's performance are unlikely to attract attention, but modifications that do, will. Your opinion, as a petrol-head counts for nothing against the opinion of the insurance company (who are not, corporately, petrol-heads).
True, but many performance mods do not void insurance coverage; even if they make measurable changes in performance. Warranty coverage is another issue.
IANAL, so can someone explain to me why a US court thinks it has any effect in Germany? Or is this some kind of 'threat'/'international business' thing that has some legal basis for multinational companies?
Probably because it involves two US based companies embroiled in a dispute in US court as well and therefore the US court has the power to issue an oder to the two parties. Motorola first rolled the dice in a US court, and then tried to get a second roll in Germany as a hedge against losing the first. A US judge said "no can do."Had Motorola not started in a US court this would not have happened.
I don't think this law does what you think it does. I believe the goal of this law is to allow teachers to present creationism as a legitimate scientific alternative to natural selection.
True, and the intelligent design folks are salivating at the thought of getting their viewpoint out as "scientific." However, all laws are double edged swords - what about the controversy over ancient astronauts? The Great Spaghetti Monster? If the state argues it only allows certain controversies to be taught then it's likely unconstitutional.
All Hail Pasta!!!
I would have appealed their decision. If that's the whole story you were smart, not an ass. I've always judged my planes against the baseline of a crumpled paper ball, and when I've run competitions, we always had an event specifically for crumpled balls. If your event organizers didn't want that design, they should have prohibited it before the event. If that design never occurred to them, then you taught them a valuable engineering lesson.
I'm slowly learning that is why us nerds don't get promoted.
In the corporate world: The best idea is not always the best idea. Sometimes you have to just shut up and play ball.
He did. he lost.
One time at my university the engineering department had this paper airplane competition, everyone was given a sheet of 8.5x11" paper and a paper clip. It was particularly windy that day and the event had been organized for better weather so we ended up having to throw the planes directly into the wind from ground level. The distance of the various planes people built ranged from -10 feet to 20 feet from launch point. Taking this into account I decided to modify my design at the last second. I stepped up to the launch area with my plane, aimed it at a 45 degree angle, crumbled it up into a ball and threw it as hard as I could. I got something like 40 feet and had the furthest distance. I kept saying that it was designed to minimize air resistance but In the end I was disqualified for being a smart ass.
You should have pointed out that the ball's rotation produced lift, and thus was a wing by definition; and an airplane since it was flying. My prof once entered a duration contest with a plane made like a helicopter blade - it rotated and slowly feel to the ground. they tried to DQ him when he beat everyone else by several minutes but he correctly pointed out that it was producing lift and thus as much of a plane as any of the other variants.
What's wrong with the concept you buy it, you keep it especially for items that cost hundreds of dollars. Since you assume that when you spend that kind of money you know what you're buying in the first place. This whole 90 days return window is simply bullshit.
The policy is designed to get you to buy if you are on the fence. You think " if I don't like it I can return it" and buy stuff you might not if you couldn't return it. Since most stuff doesn't come back the store comes out ahead.
It's a pretty straightforward application of psychology and behavioral economics. A side benefit is people think your store is consumer friendly.
Your scenario, with my emphasis :
And your question :
If the mods were manufacturer-approved and dealer-installed, then it's the manufacturer-dealer-network's problem. Otherwise, it's the problem of the person who designed or installed the unapproved modification.
Oh, and by driving the vehicle with unapproved modifications, you were almost certainly in violation of the terms and conditions of your insurance policy (unless you'd told them exactly what you'd done to the car). So, potentially you've been committing criminal offences of driving without insurance too.
That would be the way I read the law (in my jurisdiction) ; you may not like it, but that's not a problem I lose sleep over.
Not sure you where you are, but in general most mods to cars would not void insurance coverage in the US. Wether or not they cover damage or loss to them is another story.
At any rate, I was thinking about software mods - such as changing build codes to activate features not originally active or if you add something such as Bluetooth. On a BMW, you need to change the codes in the software to do this. My scenario is more what happens if the manufacturer overwrites your code with new code that causes problems? They are assuming a factory standard build which may not be the case; it's also possible that a dealer code install an option and reprogram and unless that change is reflected in whatever database is used to verify the standard confit they could even mess up a legitimate mod. Or, if they upload the car code and patch it how do they ensure the patch works for the car specific case?
To me it's a reasonably foreseeable possibility that the code in a car is no longer stock and thus an auto patch is not a good idea; at least giver users a choice wether to install it.
I had the chance to see the Enterprise atop the 747 upon its successful drop tests back in the 80's. Truly a magnificent sight.
Let me second that - seeing the 747/Shuttle combo come in view and land is truly magnificent - eclipsed only by an up close look.
The companies are complaining not because the textbook is actually copying them (which would be a violation of copyright), but because the free texbooks are copying their ideas. The example TFA gives is that the copyrighted textbook uses a picture of a bear to illustrate the laws of thermodynamics, and the open-source version uses another different but similar picture of a bear (properly licensed under a CC license).
Basically, the companies are claiming they hold the copyright to the idea of using a bear to illustrate a law of thermodynamics. I call that "bullshit." They don't have a leg to stand on under copyright law, IMO (well, they shouldn't, IANAL so I cannot say for certain). Ideas can, infact, be freely copied: you cannot copyright them, and you never could.
Now, if they'd patented that idea, it'd still be bullshit, but maybe they'd have had a case legally speaking.
No, they're suing because the company used their layout, decisions on what to use to illustrate concepts, et
If Mercedes has cracked the trick of 100% successful upgrades over air, great! If not, I'd prefer to know that the systems controlling almost everything on the Mercedes hurtling towards me is not going to die at some arbitrary moment. Bricked iPhones are inconvenient. Bricked 2-ton vehicles moving at 70mph are very inconvenient!
No, MB has figured out how to avoid paying dealers to reflash cars for critical updates by bypassing the dealer. The dealer also gets to spend time on out of warranty repairs that actually make them money instead of spending valuable mechanic time own low reimbursement warranty work.
I can image the grief a wireless flash might cause on a factory car with mods, potentially rendering it undrivable; and leaving the owner fighting the factory over whose fault it is.
If the product works as advertised then natural selection will ensure it comes to dominate the population.. how can you litigate against evolution? Surely the only winning move here is not to play?
Simple, this is clearly intelligent design at work, not some theory called evolution.
They aren't going to be married to a $60 price point. If they cut out the used game market, then it becomes a curve over time. Right now, we have a situation where a small number of die hards pay $100 + for a pre-release version with some extra trinkets, the first-day adopters pay $60 for a new game, a large number of people buy it at retail for $40 a year later, then it goes in the bargin bin for $20 or $30 a few years later. That's the curve. The problem for publishers is that they have to compete with their own used games at the end of this curve.
Actually, they don't have to compete with used game prices; they could effectively destroy the used game market if they wanted to by aggressive pricing. The margin on used games is huge; primarily for two reasons:
Initial prices are sticky remain high so there is a market for $40 games for long enough to justify taking a risk on buying them in enough quantity to have a reasonable used game selection to meet demand for $40 games
The prices paid for a used game are low enough that the company can survive a price drop on a new game and still make a profit on remaining inventory,/P. If publishers aggressively dropped prices so that there was less certainty about being able to make money off fused games, because new game prices drip quickly and unpredictably, companies would pull back from the used game market and buy games at the price needed to make money after a few price drops; lowering the price a seller of a used game would get when they go to sell it to a GameStop. That would lessen the supply of used games further making a new game purchase likely.
The only question is the net present value of the profit on the total sales a publisher makes using an aggressive pricing policy more than what they currently make? If the answer is yes than they should adopt that strategy.
I think the key is that she offered to change it all for money. I think that's the part that should be illegal, not posting all that stuff in the first place. And threatening to post it unless you get money should be treated very similarly.
No, it's still liable; extortion gets added when you ask for money to "fix" the problem. Just because it's an online post does't mean it automatically gets a free pass form existing laws.
Lastly, this, in a small way, Google's fault. Their algorithm is fooled by stuff the human curating process would've had a much harder time being fooled by.
But I don't think we need any restraints on speech to handle this issue.
It isn't a constraint on free speech, she's free to post whatever she wants and suffer the consequences if it breaks the law; just as someone standing on a street corner would be liable for what they say even if they’re free to say it.
teachers actually have lives. If they become even more connected parents would expect 24 x 7 responses to every email they send, and bitch mightily if *gasp* a teacher didn't respond immediately to an email sent at 11pm on a Saturday. Most parents are reasonable, but all it takes is one or two idiots who seem to think that the teachers are their and their kid's personal servants who must drop everything to serve whatever need they perceive as having.
So while it is nice to have such consumer protection laws (although you pay for them in prices) it's not like Apple is all of a sudden offering 2 year warranty in the EU.
1) Round all totals requiring 2 cents and below down to next lowest unit
2) Round all requiring 3 or 4 cents up to next unit
3) Monitor sales and adjust prices so most totals end in 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents
4)No ?
5) Profit!
The bus analogy is not quite right. A student is still under the School's authority when on a bus that is in operation. This is more like having the school bus parked unattended at your house over the weekend and you walk by and say the F word while the driver's radio happens to be keyed.
Maybe a better bus analogy would be he was authorized to drive the bus home and access it after hours, so he decides to get on the bus and start swearing while the mike is keyed; in which case the school could reasonably take disciplinary action.
At any rate, when he used the school's computer (which isn't clear as TFA contradict each other) he placed himself under the school's authority because he was using their property.
If they believe they need to wiretap childrens' laptops after they take them home, then they shouldn't give the kids laptops at all. Wiretapping them in them privacy of their own home is really creepy, and utterly unethical.
Except that it appears he used the school's VPN to post - at which point he was no longer using it in the privacy of his own home. If he uses someone else's computer he simply has no expectations of privacy; so what the school did was not unethical. I'd be surprised if they didn't have some sort of acceptable use policy that they informed the student and parents of prior to issuing the laptop.
I don't like what they do; but that's different from it being unethical.
I don't know why you think it's reasonable for the school to monitor what this kid is posting, privately, in his own home, to another person. There's no sense in which this is OK.
If the school find this policy to be necessary, then they should stop giving out laptops for children to take home altogether.
I think it's reasonable if he uses school supplied equipment since, as the owner of the equipment, they are responsible for how it is used. They have a responsibility to ensure school equipment is used in a responsible manner. Did they overreact? Certainly? Do they have a right to react? Certainly.