That's not a massive hole. The case hasn't yet reached a point where Ceglia's attorneys are obligated to provide such documentation. Zuckerberg's lawyers will get it in due time. Meanwhile, certainly Zuckerberg has to have his own copy of the contract. Simply produce that contract showing it in the original version and THEN we can talk about massive holes.
Assuming he wins the case, can the investors take him to court for allowing someone who is essentially an employee of the company he holds the majority of to engage in fraud (with respect to said investors)?
I don't think so. He held an investment share in the company, but Zuckerberg was fully responsible for the operation of the company. Ceglia can't personally be responsible for anything. However, if the VC firm wants to take the company to court to try and extract their investment money back out of the company (as much as they can, which may not be much), they can do so. If they succeed, the value of the company will drop and thus Ceglia (as a shareholder) will lose value on his investment, which is the only way a shareholder can be held accountable for a businesses wrongdoing.
That just is not logical. 1000 dollar for 3 days work and 1000 dollar for 9 months work.
Simple explanation: He didn't pay him for the labor, but only to cover the expenses Zuckerberg would incur while supplying the labor. Zuckerberg was happy to supply the labor for free (on the expectation it would pay off long term). However, by focusing all of his free time on this project, he probably couldn't hold down a real job. So he had no income but needed money to pay for food, nor to pay for the expenses incurred getting the business off the ground (registering the business, hosting fees, development tools, advertising, etc). In steps Ceglia who says "here's another $1000 so you don't need to worry about all those things...keep doing what you do best and we'll both get rich"
they should have offered this guy 10 or 20 million bucks to just go away rather than taking the risk that this guy will end up seizing a big chunk of equity.
"Plaintiff's counsel approached us and offered to discuss ways to make this go away," says Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt. "We declined."
P.S. Despite the title of that article being "The massive hole in Facebook's latest legal challenge", it fails to mention exactly what the "massive hole" is. It mentions the lawyers have never seen the contract, but then goes on to say the contract was included in the legal filing. It says that the contract occurred before the facebook idea was even thought up, even though the contract clearly references "the face book". I can't see any holes pointed out in that article.
Knowing as they do that the signature is legitimate, they should have offered this guy 10 or 20 million bucks to just go away rather than taking the risk that this guy will end up seizing a big chunk of equity.
How do you know they didn't? If this guy believes he has a really good case, he'd probably want a heck of a lot more than 10-20 million to settle. If he wins, he may stand to gain 10-20 (or more) BILLION based on facebook's valuation
Yes, DDWRT is vulnerable (as is OpenWRT). However, on the plus side, as I understand it from the article, this exploit can only take place if the attacker is able to gain admin access on the router itself***. As long as you've changed the default password to something secure and there are no unpatched exploits, then you should be safe. Someone who bothers to install DDWRT/OpenWRT almost certainly has enough sense to change the password, so it's only patching the exploits you need to worry about.
That has been patched already, and if you can't apply the patch, there is a workaround in that article for older firmware.
***The fact that the attacker needs to gain admin access almost makes this story a non-issue in my eyes, as I assume that if they have admin access then they already have almost limitless ways to attack me from there.
Never do this. There's a reason the brake and throttle are on the same side, so you can only press one at a time. You are a bad driver and should not be allowed on the road until you can drive properly.
Funny, I've been driving automatics with 2 feet for 20 years and I never any problem with it. I really hate people like you, who think "people shouldn't be allowed to do things differently than I do them". Why is it such a big deal that someone drives an automatic using 2 feet? There are 2 advantages to doing so: 1) Braking reaction time is clearly faster. 2) You don't have to worry about your foot missing (or getting caught) moving from one pedal to the other. There are 2 disadvantages to doing so: 3) You could accidentally press both at the same time 4) You have to change your driving style when driving a manual transmission
And that's it. I can't think of any others. You can say you never have a problem with 2 (even though some people do) and I can tell you that I never have problem with 3 (even though some people do). Number 4 is a point I don't care about (never had to drive a manual in my life, and really don't care to). As for point #1, I really don't think you can argue that one.
So if somebody wants to drive with both feet, and is capable of doing so safely, why is it such an issue for you?
Just how many people that you know manage to make it to their death bed without getting cancer? Virtually everyone I know has had cancer and several have had it multiple times. A 100 years ago it was fairly rare.
100 years ago, life expectancy was around 50, not 80.
It seems to me that if adults typically are exposed to 1200 times what is considered a safe level, then either every adult should be seriously ill from exposure, or the EPA standard for what is a safe level is a bit unreasonable.
I can't tell what you're referring to but if you are talking about the faulty Wiimote wrist-straps that they replaced for everybody shortly after launch, those weren't optional accessories that you had to pay extra for.
I think he was referring to the rubber sleeve that they included with all later Wii systems (several months after the strap replacement) and offered for free for all previously purchased systems.
Everything I've ever thrown at 64 bit windows runs just fine, and usually somewhat smoother than 32 bit. Even some really old stuff. The only software I ever found that don't run on 64-bit are some really old dos games and utilities, but then they didn't even run under 32-bit XP either.
It boggles my mind why so many people with 64-bit hardware would still install a 32-bit version of windows. I wonder how much of this is actually ignorance and/or just force of habit rather than actual knowledge that they have something that actually doesn't work under 64 bit.
Don't forget that upgrading from 32 to 64 requires a fresh install (you can't just upgrade in place).
Well, you might be one of few that aren't good candidates for SSDs. On the other hand, you may be surprised at how little writing actually takes place.
Is your DB running on a linux system? Has your system been running for quite a while without reboot, and received typical usage against the database during that time? If so, do the following: 1)run uptime to see how long your system has been running since reboot. 2)run the following command: perl -e 'foreach(`grep sd/proc/diskstats`){split; printf "$_[2] = %d GB\n", $_[9]*512/1024**3; };'
this will tell you how much writing has been done on each partition since bootup. 3) Take the value for the partition your DB is on, divide it by the number of days your system has been up, and that will give you an average of how much writing your system does each day.
Intel's spec sheet (http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/322296.pdf section 3.5.4) says that their drives should be able to handle 20GB in writes per day for 5 years. Although it doesn't say so, I'm pretty sure the 160GB drive should be double that (40GB for 5 years or 20GB for 10 years).
So compare your figures against that and see if it's something that will work for you.
Thats because the write-cycle limitation is pretty much a moot point these days. Considering the better reliability of flash memory, coupled with better wear leveling, reserved space, etc it takes a hell of a lot of writing to use up that life span. The thing is, drives that are very heavily written to tend to also need tons of storage (such as A/V editing)...much more than would be economical in SSDs. So the systems which would likely have a chance at wearing out an SSD are also usually the systems that cannot realistically use an SSD for data storage. At the moment (current cost of SSDs), the problem sort of solves itself.
You say U2 isn't your favorite band, but you're still a 'real' fan?
No, I didn't say that. I like some U2 songs, but wouldn't call myself a fan. I was referring to a different band, and using my case to demonstrate that being a fan doesn't equal being a fan club member.
U2 initially sell concert tickets based on how long you've been a member of their fan club. Being a long-time member, I have the privilege of easily being able to get the best tickets days before, say, newer fan club members (and even longer than the general public). Scalper issue solved for 'real' fans.
I've been a fan of my favorite band for >20 years. I buy every record released the day it comes out. I've been to every single concert since I started listening (if they performed 3 times on a tour, I went to see them all 3 times, even if the shows were on consecutive nights). Yet I'm not a member of their fan club. I don't join fan clubs. It's just not my thing. I guess that makes me a 'fake' fan, huh? Thankfully U2 is not my favorite band. It's cool that they are trying to reward their fans, but don't trick yourself into thinking that 'real' fans don't get left out.
But you don't seem to understand...the point being made was that the system is better IN EVERY WAY with scalpers involved. I was indicating that is clearly false, and here you are arguing with me.
I never said there would be no sold out shows. I said that I've never not been able to get tickets. If you aren't into concerts the way I am, and you wait until a week after tickets go on sale to try and buy them, then sure, you may have a problem. I'm not like that. Whenever a band I am interested in is coming in concert, I ALWAYS know about it at least a week (usually more) before tickets go on sale. And I'm always right there waiting to get tickets the instant they go on sale (whether that means clicking refresh in my browser, or waiting in line for hours years ago before online ticket sales)
So it may be better for you, but I don't care about that...that's not the point. For me, it is NOT better in EVERY way...it's actually worse in every way.
Wait....so what you are telling me is that even with the scalpers I was able to buy a seat on my own, but if there had been no scalpers buying up a significant portion of the seats, there would have been NO seats available? Yeah, right. I can tell you from first hand experience (been going to concerts for a long time) that is absolutely false. These days, the tickets I get are consistently and significantly worse than they were years ago (back when scalpers actually had to pay people to stand in line to buy tickets). I've NEVER gone to buy tickets (no matter how big the act) and been told "sorry, it's sold out". So I can tell you that it's not better in EVERY way...not by a long shot. For me, I can't think of one way it's better having scalpers.
Allowing anyone to buy and sell tickets does in every way make it better for consumers.
In EVERY way? So how exactly is it better if I have to choose to either take a seat much further back or pay an inflated price to someone else to get a good seat?
So here's a possibility for scalpers (or anyone) to get around this. Buy a prepaid debit card for the amount of the ticket purchase, use that to purchase the tickets, and then give the prepaid card (which has no value anymore) to whoever you want to get the tickets. That will mostly solve the problem for scalpers. The only gotcha left will be that they'll need to resell them in the exact batch sizes that they bought them (so they can't buy 6 tickets and sell them 3+3).
I really wish there were a way to screw scalpers and put them out of business, but I just don't see a good way to do it.
From his wiki page: "At the TUG 2010 Conference, Knuth announced an XML-based successor to TeX, titled "iTeX", which would support features such as arbitrarily scaled irrational units, 3D printing, animation, and stereographic sound."
making some dweeb whine that his 9 year old computer can't easily interface with new stuff.
You are spot on there! For example, lets just look at one limitation: the 137GB barrier. Breaking that barrier required an upgrade to 48-bit LBA. The 48-bit LBA standard was made in 2002. Western digital shipped a 160GB hard drive in 2004. Lets see....2002 to 2004....yep, that seems to be about 9 years to me.
I don't get it. Why are the standards for hard drives always way too late to appear? I can't count the number of times over the years when new hard drives would come out and even relatively new machines needed hacks to work with the full capacity. It seems like every time they extend a standard they only plan a few years out and we've got to go through this process over and over again.
That's not a massive hole. The case hasn't yet reached a point where Ceglia's attorneys are obligated to provide such documentation. Zuckerberg's lawyers will get it in due time. Meanwhile, certainly Zuckerberg has to have his own copy of the contract. Simply produce that contract showing it in the original version and THEN we can talk about massive holes.
Assuming he wins the case, can the investors take him to court for allowing someone who is essentially an employee of the company he holds the majority of to engage in fraud (with respect to said investors)?
I don't think so. He held an investment share in the company, but Zuckerberg was fully responsible for the operation of the company. Ceglia can't personally be responsible for anything. However, if the VC firm wants to take the company to court to try and extract their investment money back out of the company (as much as they can, which may not be much), they can do so. If they succeed, the value of the company will drop and thus Ceglia (as a shareholder) will lose value on his investment, which is the only way a shareholder can be held accountable for a businesses wrongdoing.
That just is not logical. 1000 dollar for 3 days work and 1000 dollar for 9 months work.
Simple explanation: He didn't pay him for the labor, but only to cover the expenses Zuckerberg would incur while supplying the labor. Zuckerberg was happy to supply the labor for free (on the expectation it would pay off long term). However, by focusing all of his free time on this project, he probably couldn't hold down a real job. So he had no income but needed money to pay for food, nor to pay for the expenses incurred getting the business off the ground (registering the business, hosting fees, development tools, advertising, etc). In steps Ceglia who says "here's another $1000 so you don't need to worry about all those things...keep doing what you do best and we'll both get rich"
they should have offered this guy 10 or 20 million bucks to just go away rather than taking the risk that this guy will end up seizing a big chunk of equity.
Apparently, Ceglia offered to take a settlement, and the facebook team said no thanks:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/21/the-massive-hole-in-facebooks-latest-legal-challenge/
"Plaintiff's counsel approached us and offered to discuss ways to make this go away," says Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt. "We declined."
P.S. Despite the title of that article being "The massive hole in Facebook's latest legal challenge", it fails to mention exactly what the "massive hole" is. It mentions the lawyers have never seen the contract, but then goes on to say the contract was included in the legal filing. It says that the contract occurred before the facebook idea was even thought up, even though the contract clearly references "the face book". I can't see any holes pointed out in that article.
Knowing as they do that the signature is legitimate, they should have offered this guy 10 or 20 million bucks to just go away rather than taking the risk that this guy will end up seizing a big chunk of equity.
How do you know they didn't? If this guy believes he has a really good case, he'd probably want a heck of a lot more than 10-20 million to settle. If he wins, he may stand to gain 10-20 (or more) BILLION based on facebook's valuation
Yes, DDWRT is vulnerable (as is OpenWRT). However, on the plus side, as I understand it from the article, this exploit can only take place if the attacker is able to gain admin access on the router itself***. As long as you've changed the default password to something secure and there are no unpatched exploits, then you should be safe. Someone who bothers to install DDWRT/OpenWRT almost certainly has enough sense to change the password, so it's only patching the exploits you need to worry about.
I'm not aware of any current explots for DDWRT. There was one vunerability last year:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/content/dd-wrt-httpd-vulnerability-milw0rmcom-report
That has been patched already, and if you can't apply the patch, there is a workaround in that article for older firmware.
***The fact that the attacker needs to gain admin access almost makes this story a non-issue in my eyes, as I assume that if they have admin access then they already have almost limitless ways to attack me from there.
Never do this. There's a reason the brake and throttle are on the same side, so you can only press one at a time. You are a bad driver and should not be allowed on the road until you can drive properly.
Funny, I've been driving automatics with 2 feet for 20 years and I never any problem with it. I really hate people like you, who think "people shouldn't be allowed to do things differently than I do them". Why is it such a big deal that someone drives an automatic using 2 feet? There are 2 advantages to doing so:
1) Braking reaction time is clearly faster.
2) You don't have to worry about your foot missing (or getting caught) moving from one pedal to the other.
There are 2 disadvantages to doing so:
3) You could accidentally press both at the same time
4) You have to change your driving style when driving a manual transmission
And that's it. I can't think of any others. You can say you never have a problem with 2 (even though some people do) and I can tell you that I never have problem with 3 (even though some people do). Number 4 is a point I don't care about (never had to drive a manual in my life, and really don't care to). As for point #1, I really don't think you can argue that one.
So if somebody wants to drive with both feet, and is capable of doing so safely, why is it such an issue for you?
Clearly, we must set up a cabinet-level Department of Intellectual Property
Well, we've already got a copyright czar, so that's a start.
Just how many people that you know manage to make it to their death bed without getting cancer? Virtually everyone I know has had cancer and several have had it multiple times. A 100 years ago it was fairly rare.
100 years ago, life expectancy was around 50, not 80.
It seems to me that if adults typically are exposed to 1200 times what is considered a safe level, then either every adult should be seriously ill from exposure, or the EPA standard for what is a safe level is a bit unreasonable.
I can't tell what you're referring to but if you are talking about the faulty Wiimote wrist-straps that they replaced for everybody shortly after launch, those weren't optional accessories that you had to pay extra for.
I think he was referring to the rubber sleeve that they included with all later Wii systems (several months after the strap replacement) and offered for free for all previously purchased systems.
Everything I've ever thrown at 64 bit windows runs just fine, and usually somewhat smoother than 32 bit. Even some really old stuff. The only software I ever found that don't run on 64-bit are some really old dos games and utilities, but then they didn't even run under 32-bit XP either.
It boggles my mind why so many people with 64-bit hardware would still install a 32-bit version of windows. I wonder how much of this is actually ignorance and/or just force of habit rather than actual knowledge that they have something that actually doesn't work under 64 bit.
Don't forget that upgrading from 32 to 64 requires a fresh install (you can't just upgrade in place).
I was reading an article about mountaineers with laptops...
...why is this relevant? I thought the purpose of a pressurised airliner cabin was...
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that most mountaineers do NOT have a pressurized airliner cabin with them on the mountain.
Well, you might be one of few that aren't good candidates for SSDs. On the other hand, you may be surprised at how little writing actually takes place.
Is your DB running on a linux system? Has your system been running for quite a while without reboot, and received typical usage against the database during that time? If so, do the following: /proc/diskstats`){split; printf "$_[2] = %d GB\n", $_[9]*512/1024**3; };'
1)run uptime to see how long your system has been running since reboot.
2)run the following command:
perl -e 'foreach(`grep sd
this will tell you how much writing has been done on each partition since bootup.
3) Take the value for the partition your DB is on, divide it by the number of days your system has been up, and that will give you an average of how much writing your system does each day.
Intel's spec sheet (http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/322296.pdf section 3.5.4) says that their drives should be able to handle 20GB in writes per day for 5 years. Although it doesn't say so, I'm pretty sure the 160GB drive should be double that (40GB for 5 years or 20GB for 10 years).
So compare your figures against that and see if it's something that will work for you.
Thats because the write-cycle limitation is pretty much a moot point these days. Considering the better reliability of flash memory, coupled with better wear leveling, reserved space, etc it takes a hell of a lot of writing to use up that life span. The thing is, drives that are very heavily written to tend to also need tons of storage (such as A/V editing)...much more than would be economical in SSDs. So the systems which would likely have a chance at wearing out an SSD are also usually the systems that cannot realistically use an SSD for data storage. At the moment (current cost of SSDs), the problem sort of solves itself.
You say U2 isn't your favorite band, but you're still a 'real' fan?
No, I didn't say that. I like some U2 songs, but wouldn't call myself a fan. I was referring to a different band, and using my case to demonstrate that being a fan doesn't equal being a fan club member.
U2 initially sell concert tickets based on how long you've been a member of their fan club. Being a long-time member, I have the privilege of easily being able to get the best tickets days before, say, newer fan club members (and even longer than the general public). Scalper issue solved for 'real' fans.
I've been a fan of my favorite band for >20 years. I buy every record released the day it comes out. I've been to every single concert since I started listening (if they performed 3 times on a tour, I went to see them all 3 times, even if the shows were on consecutive nights). Yet I'm not a member of their fan club. I don't join fan clubs. It's just not my thing. I guess that makes me a 'fake' fan, huh? Thankfully U2 is not my favorite band. It's cool that they are trying to reward their fans, but don't trick yourself into thinking that 'real' fans don't get left out.
But you don't seem to understand...the point being made was that the system is better IN EVERY WAY with scalpers involved. I was indicating that is clearly false, and here you are arguing with me.
I never said there would be no sold out shows. I said that I've never not been able to get tickets. If you aren't into concerts the way I am, and you wait until a week after tickets go on sale to try and buy them, then sure, you may have a problem. I'm not like that. Whenever a band I am interested in is coming in concert, I ALWAYS know about it at least a week (usually more) before tickets go on sale. And I'm always right there waiting to get tickets the instant they go on sale (whether that means clicking refresh in my browser, or waiting in line for hours years ago before online ticket sales)
So it may be better for you, but I don't care about that...that's not the point. For me, it is NOT better in EVERY way...it's actually worse in every way.
Wait....so what you are telling me is that even with the scalpers I was able to buy a seat on my own, but if there had been no scalpers buying up a significant portion of the seats, there would have been NO seats available? Yeah, right. I can tell you from first hand experience (been going to concerts for a long time) that is absolutely false. These days, the tickets I get are consistently and significantly worse than they were years ago (back when scalpers actually had to pay people to stand in line to buy tickets). I've NEVER gone to buy tickets (no matter how big the act) and been told "sorry, it's sold out". So I can tell you that it's not better in EVERY way...not by a long shot. For me, I can't think of one way it's better having scalpers.
Allowing anyone to buy and sell tickets does in every way make it better for consumers.
In EVERY way? So how exactly is it better if I have to choose to either take a seat much further back or pay an inflated price to someone else to get a good seat?
So here's a possibility for scalpers (or anyone) to get around this. Buy a prepaid debit card for the amount of the ticket purchase, use that to purchase the tickets, and then give the prepaid card (which has no value anymore) to whoever you want to get the tickets. That will mostly solve the problem for scalpers. The only gotcha left will be that they'll need to resell them in the exact batch sizes that they bought them (so they can't buy 6 tickets and sell them 3+3).
I really wish there were a way to screw scalpers and put them out of business, but I just don't see a good way to do it.
From his wiki page:
"At the TUG 2010 Conference, Knuth announced an XML-based successor to TeX, titled "iTeX", which would support features such as arbitrarily scaled irrational units, 3D printing, animation, and stereographic sound."
Not paypal...google checkout. If you choose the "add a credit card" option, it takes you to google checkout.
making some dweeb whine that his 9 year old computer can't easily interface with new stuff.
You are spot on there! For example, lets just look at one limitation: the 137GB barrier. Breaking that barrier required an upgrade to 48-bit LBA. The 48-bit LBA standard was made in 2002. Western digital shipped a 160GB hard drive in 2004. Lets see....2002 to 2004....yep, that seems to be about 9 years to me.
I don't get it. Why are the standards for hard drives always way too late to appear? I can't count the number of times over the years when new hard drives would come out and even relatively new machines needed hacks to work with the full capacity. It seems like every time they extend a standard they only plan a few years out and we've got to go through this process over and over again.