The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
This would not go down to well at all. I know the US economy/military is the biggest in the world - but I still think that a trade war/shooting war with every other country in the world isn't the best way of improving the lives of American citizens.
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time--not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
This would not go down to well at all. I know the US economy/military is the biggest in the world - but I still think that a trade war/shooting war with every other country in the world isn't the best way of improving the lives of American citizens.
It appears that the only way to even be allowed to negotiate with the US, is to have enough economic or military clout to resist the US directly. And that's one good reason for the Galileo system to go ahead.
Don't you hate it when someone completely proves your point:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time--not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets. At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
---------------------
This would not make us Europeans very happy at all.
However, I agree with one of the previous posters that this has more to do with American power in general. The Eurocrats are jealous of the fact that the U.S. has the power to act in its own interest with or without anyone's help, which makes them feel particularly irrelevant.
Irrelevant is a complete understatement. A more accurate picture would be scared and appalled.
Most people in Europe generally perceive that the war in Iraq was for the benefit of the US companies that will be given access to the oil in Iraq, and for the benefit of Dubya, who gets a war that satisfies his need for revenge and to distract from the fact that the war on terror isn't going too well (Bin Laden still free, Afghanistan fucked and on the edge on tribal warfare again, all sympathy for US from 911 having been dissapated by American agresssion).
We're also scared and appalled by the arrogance that the US administration has shown with it's mistreatment of France and Germany. These are countries that have been strongly allied with America for fifty years on most global issues. Now because of a single issue that they 'dared' disagree with the US on, the Bush administration has been making noises about how they no longer consider them to really be allies.
This is completely insane behaviour - If the US doesn't consider the countries of Western Europe to be it's natural allies, then it suggests the US will follow a path of having no allies in the world (apart from Mr Poodle Blair) and using it's sheer economic and military might to get whatever it wants.
It appears that the only way to even be allowed to negotiate with the US, is to have enough economic or military clout to resist the US directly. And that's one good reason for the Galileo system to go ahead.
Two other points, Europe is not jealous of the ability of the US to wage war anywhere in the world against any country - after having so many wars waged across Europe we are broadly opposed to all wars. This really is a cultural difference between the citizens of the US and the EU, probably because apart from the American Civil war, the US has not seen or had to bear the horrors of wars at close hand, and with the 'patriotic' news coverage of the Iraq war, you still won't.
Finally, France opposed the war both for it's own economic reasons and because it thought that the US was trying to manipulate the UN with false intelligence on the WMDs, massively overestimating Iraqs capabilities. Remember Colin Powell telling the UN how many thousands of litres of Anthrax the Iraqis had, and that they could assemble a nuclear bomb in a few hours ? Well turns out France was right and Colin Powell was either lying, or just repeating bullshit concocted by people in the US intelligence agencies that wanted an excuse to invade Iraq.
End result of the US decision to invade ? Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead (not to count tens of thousands of Iraqi army personnel), no WMDs found and the chances of terrorist attacks have increased as people see the US as invading and subjugating another muslim country.
Could be something to do with the fact that they can share the mobile phone.
The Economist has run a couple of stories on how development agencies can give micro-loans (~$100) to poor people in Africa and India, to allow them to buy a phone. That person then charges other people in their village a small fee to use the phone.
Result: massive improvement in quality of life for villagers as they can phone up to get day-to-day market prices to get the best prices for the foor they produce, can get medical assistance over the phone, can organise work etc.
Once a phone is shared between 30 people, the cost for each of them really does come down quite a bit....
1) Source code is 'stolen' from SCO and put into Linux without SCOs knowledge.
2) SCO download the latest kernel, modify it and release it as SCO Linux, without realising that they're distributing some of their proprierty code.
3) They're now claiming that they never intentionally released the code under the GPL, and that it was put their illegally by someone else.
Of course they probably have buggered things up by not stopping their distribution of their Linux as soon as they discovered and announced that they were going to sue everyone over it.
Also any court is going to seriously look down on the fact that they're prolonging the time that their code is being used, by refusing to say exactly what it is.
I can't remember when the law is changing (or if it has already changed) but to prevent descrimination between the salaries of men and women, companies will soon have to reveal how much people are paid to their employees.
I've always been of the opinion that it's in the long term interest of the company to be reasonably open about how much people are paid, so that the employees can see that people who work hard and work effectively for the company are rewarded with higher wages.
So how would it be possible to make a fixed structure to "drive" to a planet?
It's not. You have to constantly calculate where the low energy paths will be and and then choose one that will take you where you want to.
When the planets move around these paths will change and to get to the same place you may have to take a different 'route' for journeys that start at different times.
Calling it a 'network of tunnels' is a poor simile, lets see if I can do any better. It's more like a set of deep valleys connected to each other over a small rise. The valleys are formed by the gravity of the planets and moons, and the layout of the valleys change as the planets move around.
To get from point A to point B, you can either use lots of energy to go in a straight line up and down the deep sides of the valley or if you follow the bottoms of the valleys and aim carefully at the connection between different valleys you can use less energy to move.
As space is frictionless, not only do you have to spend a lot of energy to get up the side of the valley (ie getting the spaceship up to speed for the journey), you also have to spend a lot of energy to stop from rolling on past where you want to go to (ie slow the spaceship down once it there). This is a problem if you want to send a probe to go and look at several planet/moons in a mission and spend a reasonable amount of time around each one. If you just accelerate/decelerate to get to and from each orbit you'll need a lot of fuel.
What's cool about this is that if you want to, you can bounce around within the valley so long as you don't roll at the low connection to another valley. This means that the spaceship/satellite could stay in one orbit around a moon for a while, and then when the time comes to move on, it can fire its rocket for a very short time just to aim at the low connection to the next valley. This will then make the ship move into orbit around the next planet/moon and it will be in a stable orbit around that until it decides to move on again.
If you follow the TSS (tethered sattelite system) tests that were perfromed on (I think) STS-46 with Atlantis and then again a year or two ago, where they reeled a big globe out on a tether to test for A) static buildup/generating capability B) the opportunity to build a rotating generation ship using a tether to create the rotation, rather than a hub (at least if you believe Nimoy on Destiny in Space (filmed on Atlantis), you will see that a cable strung out in space builds up one HELL of a charge.
The cable in orbit generates electricity because it is a conductor that is moving through the Earths magnetic field. This is the same effect as an electric dynamo.
Because the cable for the Space Elevator would be fixed to the ground it would be moving at exactly the same speed as the magnetic field of the Earth and so wouldn't be moving with respect to the magnetic field and so no current would be generated.
Okay EA were optimisitic and thought that this game was going to generate shedloads of cash for them and be a massive it. It obviously isn't going to do that as it just isn't good enough.
However the article says they've sold just over 100,000 for a revenue of $30 a game for EA plus 40,000 people have subscribed to play the game online for $10 a month.
So total revenue so far is almost $3.5 million and climbing at half a million a month, so although it might not make much cash, it's certainly no Daikatana (or Xbox).
It looks like the ITworld article has got two different proposals mixed up.
The 'Directive on copyright and related rights in the Information Society' which alledgedly gives people fair-use rights, but then takes them away again by making it illegal to circumvent 'Technical Protection Measures'
The other directive ' of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights' is the gnarly one that gives the copyright holders lots more power in the courts.
Because a lot of European states, including the UK, do not have any meaningful right of Fair Use for consumers.
In the UK it is illegal to make an MP3 of a CD you have bought in a shop. It is illegal to make a backup copy of that CD, so you can take the cheap backup with you on holiday rather than the expensive original.
If the EU and governments want to enforce the previous EU directive on Copyright, which imposes restrictions on breaking 'Technical Protection Measure' aka DRM, then to keep the system of copyright balanced they need to give consumers more rights to use stuff how they want.
The resort has an amazing 7500 beds, which all adds up to a lot of visitors making a lot of human waste. Converting this into snow seemed a logical step.
Maybe I'm not as logical as I once thought.
I can't find exact figures, but I guess that each guest could easily produce 100 litres of waste 'liquid' each day, once you've taken into account all the water that is used in washing your teeth, showering, washing the plates you used for brekfast etc, etc.
If you could reclaim 95% of that water at a reasonable cost/efficiency then you're looking at 700,000 litres over water a day. Which would make quite a bit of snow.
Even if the resort saved just 1 cent per litre by not having to have more piped in that'd be a saving of $7000 dollars a day, definitely not to be sniffed at (or tasted:o).
Every person I know with an Xbox owns a PC and plays CS. I'm trying to think of one Xbox owner that doesn't own a PC... Nope, out of the people I know can't think of any off hand.
Can I think of any PS2 owners without a PC? Hmm, yea I can name about 6 or 7 off the top of my head. Mainly people under 12 or so.
The demographic of Xbox owners is quite different to other games consoles. Apparently something like 50% of Xbox owners have broadband, compared to 5%? of the general population. They also have more money to buy games, as demonstrated by the huge attachment level for the Xbox.
The Xbox only has 800k units in the US right? PS2 has like 2million. So with that in mind, why would MS restrict itself to the Xbox only? I don't think they would shoot themselves in the foot by excluding PC players, it's their biggest market right now, and it sells 2 products.
Nope, Xbox has an installed base of almost 6million in the US, PS2 has a base of 21.5 million in the US.
The problem with the PC market is that it's shrinking and that games can be released for linux so Microsoft would get no cash at all. Console games sales are much larger than PC sales, but the real prize Microsoft is after is subscriptions for online games and content.
All these studies...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
seem to ignore the costs of upgrading. They always assume that you buy your fixed number of computers and then operate them for a fixed task over a period of time. They never seem to take into account that later on you may want to add more capacity to your computer system. Or you may be forced into upgrading your software, which may require new hardware or OS.
For example:
If for instance if your deploying any machines with Windows 2000 Server/Professional now, then you will only have two years and three months of mainstream support. What happens if there's a critical exploit discovered (or released) one week after that ? Tough, you should have upgraded your OS by now.
Or how about if you developed and deployed an online conferencing systems with Windows Media encoder 7.1 just a year ago ? Well unless you want to be using unsupported software, your going to have to upgrade the software you developed to Windows Media Encoder 9 before the end of this year.
And even if it's acceptable to your company to run unsupported software, it's going to become harder and harder to find legitimater copies of the software you need. For example Office 97 would suffice for my word processing needs, but Microsoft have stopped selling it, and most of the copies on sale now are illegitimate. How much would a Microsoft inspection cost your company ?
From the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies--
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,
as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
And seeing as the UK has no provision for fair use with regards to space shifting copyrighted material, then this guy could be pretty boned if he's sued.
Slashdot Mirror
Dupe post for dupe story....
Tragically we know how the US would like to react:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
This would not go down to well at all. I know the US economy/military is the biggest in the world - but I still think that a trade war/shooting war with every other country in the world isn't the best way of improving the lives of American citizens.
Tragically we know how the US would like to react:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time--not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
This would not go down to well at all. I know the US economy/military is the biggest in the world - but I still think that a trade war/shooting war with every other country in the world isn't the best way of improving the lives of American citizens.
Don't you hate it when someone completely proves your point:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S005
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time--not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
---------------------
This would not make us Europeans very happy at all.
Irrelevant is a complete understatement. A more accurate picture would be scared and appalled.
Most people in Europe generally perceive that the war in Iraq was for the benefit of the US companies that will be given access to the oil in Iraq, and for the benefit of Dubya, who gets a war that satisfies his need for revenge and to distract from the fact that the war on terror isn't going too well (Bin Laden still free, Afghanistan fucked and on the edge on tribal warfare again, all sympathy for US from 911 having been dissapated by American agresssion).
We're also scared and appalled by the arrogance that the US administration has shown with it's mistreatment of France and Germany. These are countries that have been strongly allied with America for fifty years on most global issues. Now because of a single issue that they 'dared' disagree with the US on, the Bush administration has been making noises about how they no longer consider them to really be allies.
This is completely insane behaviour - If the US doesn't consider the countries of Western Europe to be it's natural allies, then it suggests the US will follow a path of having no allies in the world (apart from Mr Poodle Blair) and using it's sheer economic and military might to get whatever it wants.
It appears that the only way to even be allowed to negotiate with the US, is to have enough economic or military clout to resist the US directly. And that's one good reason for the Galileo system to go ahead.
Two other points, Europe is not jealous of the ability of the US to wage war anywhere in the world against any country - after having so many wars waged across Europe we are broadly opposed to all wars. This really is a cultural difference between the citizens of the US and the EU, probably because apart from the American Civil war, the US has not seen or had to bear the horrors of wars at close hand, and with the 'patriotic' news coverage of the Iraq war, you still won't.
Finally, France opposed the war both for it's own economic reasons and because it thought that the US was trying to manipulate the UN with false intelligence on the WMDs, massively overestimating Iraqs capabilities. Remember Colin Powell telling the UN how many thousands of litres of Anthrax the Iraqis had, and that they could assemble a nuclear bomb in a few hours ? Well turns out France was right and Colin Powell was either lying, or just repeating bullshit concocted by people in the US intelligence agencies that wanted an excuse to invade Iraq.
End result of the US decision to invade ? Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead (not to count tens of thousands of Iraqi army personnel), no WMDs found and the chances of terrorist attacks have increased as people see the US as invading and subjugating another muslim country.
Could be something to do with the fact that they can share the mobile phone.
The Economist has run a couple of stories on how development agencies can give micro-loans (~$100) to poor people in Africa and India, to allow them to buy a phone. That person then charges other people in their village a small fee to use the phone.
Result: massive improvement in quality of life for villagers as they can phone up to get day-to-day market prices to get the best prices for the foor they produce, can get medical assistance over the phone, can organise work etc.
Once a phone is shared between 30 people, the cost for each of them really does come down quite a bit....
Just to check
1) how long would you have to stick these in a microwave for to burn out the chips.
2) If you built a transmitter that broadcast at the RFID response-request frequency, at what distance could you burn the chips out ?
How much trouble could you cause walking down Oxford Street dsetroying everyone's money.....
You've almost got it but you need one extra step:
1) Source code is 'stolen' from SCO and put into Linux without SCOs knowledge.
2) SCO download the latest kernel, modify it and release it as SCO Linux, without realising that they're distributing some of their proprierty code.
3) They're now claiming that they never intentionally released the code under the GPL, and that it was put their illegally by someone else.
Of course they probably have buggered things up by not stopping their distribution of their Linux as soon as they discovered and announced that they were going to sue everyone over it.
Also any court is going to seriously look down on the fact that they're prolonging the time that their code is being used, by refusing to say exactly what it is.
Won't making a crack this big in the Earths surface let all the gravity out ?
You mean drown, right ?
Unless of course you find a winter season that lasts from September to June a bit too depressing and kill yourself.
I can't remember when the law is changing (or if it has already changed) but to prevent descrimination between the salaries of men and women, companies will soon have to reveal how much people are paid to their employees.
I've always been of the opinion that it's in the long term interest of the company to be reasonably open about how much people are paid, so that the employees can see that people who work hard and work effectively for the company are rewarded with higher wages.
Yeah but which one is easier for a non-mathemetician to imagine ?
Three dimensional manifolds which have varying potential energy and limits on velocity to be contained within the manifold.
OR
Valleys
btw is there a word for the connection between two separate valleys ?
It's not. You have to constantly calculate where the low energy paths will be and and then choose one that will take you where you want to.
When the planets move around these paths will change and to get to the same place you may have to take a different 'route' for journeys that start at different times.
Calling it a 'network of tunnels' is a poor simile, lets see if I can do any better. It's more like a set of deep valleys connected to each other over a small rise. The valleys are formed by the gravity of the planets and moons, and the layout of the valleys change as the planets move around.
To get from point A to point B, you can either use lots of energy to go in a straight line up and down the deep sides of the valley or if you follow the bottoms of the valleys and aim carefully at the connection between different valleys you can use less energy to move.
As space is frictionless, not only do you have to spend a lot of energy to get up the side of the valley (ie getting the spaceship up to speed for the journey), you also have to spend a lot of energy to stop from rolling on past where you want to go to (ie slow the spaceship down once it there). This is a problem if you want to send a probe to go and look at several planet/moons in a mission and spend a reasonable amount of time around each one. If you just accelerate/decelerate to get to and from each orbit you'll need a lot of fuel.
What's cool about this is that if you want to, you can bounce around within the valley so long as you don't roll at the low connection to another valley. This means that the spaceship/satellite could stay in one orbit around a moon for a while, and then when the time comes to move on, it can fire its rocket for a very short time just to aim at the low connection to the next valley. This will then make the ship move into orbit around the next planet/moon and it will be in a stable orbit around that until it decides to move on again.
have a Legalese -> English translation.
Can anyone tell the non-lawyers here what the main claims of the patent are ? or are all the claims just rediculously broad
The cable in orbit generates electricity because it is a conductor that is moving through the Earths magnetic field. This is the same effect as an electric dynamo.
Because the cable for the Space Elevator would be fixed to the ground it would be moving at exactly the same speed as the magnetic field of the Earth and so wouldn't be moving with respect to the magnetic field and so no current would be generated.
Okay EA were optimisitic and thought that this game was going to generate shedloads of cash for them and be a massive it. It obviously isn't going to do that as it just isn't good enough.
However the article says they've sold just over 100,000 for a revenue of $30 a game for EA plus 40,000 people have subscribed to play the game online for $10 a month.
So total revenue so far is almost $3.5 million and climbing at half a million a month, so although it might not make much cash, it's certainly no Daikatana (or Xbox).
It looks like the ITworld article has got two different proposals mixed up.
The 'Directive on copyright and related rights in the Information Society' which alledgedly gives people fair-use rights, but then takes them away again by making it illegal to circumvent 'Technical Protection Measures'
The other directive ' of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights' is the gnarly one that gives the copyright holders lots more power in the courts.
Because a lot of European states, including the UK, do not have any meaningful right of Fair Use for consumers.
In the UK it is illegal to make an MP3 of a CD you have bought in a shop. It is illegal to make a backup copy of that CD, so you can take the cheap backup with you on holiday rather than the expensive original.
If the EU and governments want to enforce the previous EU directive on Copyright, which imposes restrictions on breaking 'Technical Protection Measure' aka DRM, then to keep the system of copyright balanced they need to give consumers more rights to use stuff how they want.
Wow, that's a lot of water. I thought I might be overestimating at 100 litres.
So that changes the numbers above to 3.5 mega-litres of water a day and savings probably in the range of tens of thousands of dollars a day.
Definitely a case where the enivironmentally friendly choice is also the wallet friendly choice.
I can't find exact figures, but I guess that each guest could easily produce 100 litres of waste 'liquid' each day, once you've taken into account all the water that is used in washing your teeth, showering, washing the plates you used for brekfast etc, etc.
If you could reclaim 95% of that water at a reasonable cost/efficiency then you're looking at 700,000 litres over water a day. Which would make quite a bit of snow.
Even if the resort saved just 1 cent per litre by not having to have more piped in that'd be a saving of $7000 dollars a day, definitely not to be sniffed at (or tasted
the behind the scenes documentary - 'The making of the crop circles'
The demographic of Xbox owners is quite different to other games consoles. Apparently something like 50% of Xbox owners have broadband, compared to 5%? of the general population. They also have more money to buy games, as demonstrated by the huge attachment level for the Xbox.
Nope, Xbox has an installed base of almost 6million in the US, PS2 has a base of 21.5 million in the US.
The problem with the PC market is that it's shrinking and that games can be released for linux so Microsoft would get no cash at all.
Console games sales are much larger than PC sales, but the real prize Microsoft is after is subscriptions for online games and content.
I can see my house from here !
seem to ignore the costs of upgrading. They always assume that you buy your fixed number of computers and then operate them for a fixed task over a period of time. They never seem to take into account that later on you may want to add more capacity to your computer system. Or you may be forced into upgrading your software, which may require new hardware or OS.
; en-us;LifeWin
For example:
If for instance if your deploying any machines with Windows 2000 Server/Professional now, then you will only have two years and three months of mainstream support. What happens if there's a critical exploit discovered (or released) one week after that ? Tough, you should have upgraded your OS by now.
Or how about if you developed and deployed an online conferencing systems with Windows Media encoder 7.1 just a year ago ? Well unless you want to be using unsupported software, your going to have to upgrade the software you developed to Windows Media Encoder 9 before the end of this year.
And even if it's acceptable to your company to run unsupported software, it's going to become harder and harder to find legitimater copies of the software you need. For example Office 97 would suffice for my word processing needs, but Microsoft have stopped selling it, and most of the copies on sale now are illegitimate. How much would a Microsoft inspection cost your company ?
Btw support lifetimes here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh
And seeing as the UK has no provision for fair use with regards to space shifting copyrighted material, then this guy could be pretty boned if he's sued.