Oh, please. If there are technical or financial consequences, then they are capable of being expressed in a spreadsheet that an MBA can understand
If the MBA was shown such a spreadsheet that had already been created by someone else then yes, but my point was that they often fail to see how important technical factors effect the cost outcomes until someone else with the requisite background knowledge brings it to their attention and even then they may choose to ignore it because their massive egos have difficult adjusting to the fact that someone else, even worse if they are not a fellow MBA, saw something that they didn't. It is not so much a matter of "wouldn't understand it if they saw it", but rather "doesn't think of it".
This experience speaks to a more general issue that I have with non-technical MBA types who tend to reduce everything to a dollars and cents issue without fully appreciating or even being able to fully appreciate either the technical OR the financial consequences of their decisions. They assume that their MBA piece-of-paper mail-order diploma makes them oh-so-much smarter than anyone else who doesn't have one, when in fact the smartest people tend to study mathematics, physics, engineering, other hard science, or even philosophy while the intellectual light-weights study social science and get their MBA. If anyone is actually a waste of time and resources then it is the middle management social climbers who produce a lot of hot air using the latest "management techniques" that they read about in a trade magazine on an airline flight or heard about at a conference held in a cheap hotel ballroom.
The folks at Paramount didn't want it. They felt it would be too dark for Star Trek and not have the hopeful feel that the rest of the series had.
That is because they were idiots and didn't see the potential for more realistic stories along the lines of the sixth and seventh seasons of DS9. The final seasons of DS9 were really among the best Star Trek stories ever produced because they reminded us that despite advanced technology and an "evolved understanding" (never really understood how that was supposed to work, human nature is human nature no matter how evolved we might become in our understanding) there were still wars, petty squabbles, treachery, and all of the other things which make the good guys just a little bad and the bad guys just a little good. As much as I enjoyed Star Trek, I always disagreed with the optimal "we have evolved beyond all human weaknesses" view of the future. After Gene passed, they began to take more risks with Star Trek and DS9 showed us how far they had come and could still go with a Star Trek series, but even then it does not begin to approach the sort of gritty no-nonsense reality that we see in Firefly and Serenity. The following recollections from Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore, two of the DS9 writers, really sums it up best concerning the conflict between the "optimistic we have overcome all need for violence" people and the "humans are humans 24th century and technology or not with flawed characters, relationships, wars, and all of the other gritty and real stuff" fans:
Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore were the writers most involved with the creation and development of the Dominion War. Rick Berman wanted the war to be over within three or four episodes at the most. Behr and Moore knew the series would never be able to wrap up the war in that many episodes. Berman also criticized the "depressing" and "violent" stories. Moore later said "It's a fuckin' war! What do you mean it's too violent?!"
In fact, my favorite Star Trek episode of all time is season 6 episode 19 of DS9: In the Pale Moonlight because it shows how tough situations can bring out the worst in people, even highly evolved Star Trek perfect people, and reveals some flaws in the DS9 characters that had always before that episode remained beneath the surface, often hinted at but never before fully exposed. The episode also makes really good use of the character Garek (one of my favorite Trek characters) and his unique Obsidian Order experience, training, and assassin/espionage talents.
"That's why you came to me, isn't it captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing. Well, it worked. And you'll get what you wanted: a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain." -Garek
This will only take jobs away from Mississippi and other states that pursue such policies.
The jobs left decades ago along with just about every other non-localized business in the state. Mississipi is famous for its unsophisticated rural jurors (who tend to hand out high punative damages awards), easy class action lawsuit certs, and busy federal court docket (albeit a bit less busy in recent years due to new Federal laws addressing "venue shopping" by ambitious and enterprising attorneys). Mississipi produces lawyers and lawsuits, but not much else; that is why no sane national or international company has any presence whatsoever in the state. Mississipi might as well hang a big notice out below each of the "Welcome to Mississipi" signs on the state lines that reads "but take your business elsewhere".
Wait a minute. If a lawsuit spanning "years" is not swift, how is IBM and Novell's legal battle with SCO--which lasted years--an example of swift action?
Swift relative to what? Relative to other legal actions of similar size and complexity, which have taken decades to settle from start to finish in some cases (i.e. the tobacco master settlement agreements), a few years is downright fast...er swift.
suit against the RIAA/MPAA will stretch on even longer, and in the end, a lot of people will be out Internet service for at least a decade, and in recompense, will each get $10 off their next music or movie purchase. Cost of doing business....
The customers will only be cut off if the MAFIAA can win an injunction to disconnect the subscribers in question while the litigation works its way through they system. Naturally, the ISPs (being opposed to losing 10 years of subscriber fees while they fight it out) will oppose any such injuction. IANAL, but it seems to me that it would be very difficult for the MAFIAA to prove immediate and irreperable harm (the gold standard for injunctive relief) if the subscribers are NOT cut off while the case works its way through the courts. This means that the ISP refuses to disconnect anyone, MAFIAA sues, and everyone stays connected while the case is litigated because MAFIAA fails to get an injunction. At least, that is my take.
The average person just doesn't buy into the idea that they'll ever be wrongfully accused.
That is true, unfortunately. The average American has lived a sheltered life compared to people in other less democratic nations and puts far too much trust in the government and its system of laws. Our founding fathers would truly be shocked if they could see what monster has become of the thing which they created to be limited and finite in power.
Such legislation would cause more economic loss than the actual infringement (businesses included).
Which is why the ISPs will challenge the law in court when and if the MAFIAA attempts to bring suit for failure to "cut off" a customer(s). If you were a business and some third party, who is not a paying customer, came to your place of business waving some piece of paper in your face and told you to "cut off" certain customers and never serve them again (resulting in a loss for your business) would you just do it? Certainly not, and neither will the ISPs. The negative PR from their customer base and the prospect of losing tens of thousands of dollars a month in subscription fees will put ISPs in a fighting mood, lawsuits be damned. A lawsuit might take years to work its way through the courts and in the meantime the ISP is losing tens of thousands of dollars per month in subscriber fees from customers that it has been forced to "cut off". The MAFIAA will be put in its place when it starts costing the large ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/Nextel real money. It will be like when SCO foolishly attempted to sue IBM and Novell, the MAFIAA will be swiftly crushed by the much larger telecom industry and their lobbyists/attorneys.
Just because I disagree with the Liberals, as the position has come to be understood in the American and British political discourse NOT Classical Liberalism as it was and is understood in Europe, does not mean that I automatically agree with the Republicans. If you an American and you still believe in smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom then why not join us and do something about it?
They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice
Liberals: They know what is best for you AND your money (or so they always claim) so if you like someone else to be in control of every meaningful detail of your life then just keep voting Labour because after all, they really do know what is best for you just like mum always did...right.
Fortunately, they are'nt as far along here in the United States as they are in Britain, but with Obama on board now we are pressing full steam ahead into a socialist trainwreck; boldy going down the path toward economic stagnation that has always gone hand and glove with the notion of, "spreading the wealth around". It didn't work for Russia, it didn't work for Cuba, it is'nt working for Bolivia or Venezuela or any other latin American country that has tried it and it won't work for us. Unfortunately, the young people of America seem determined to learn this lesson for themselves first hand and the hard way and by the time they realize that it isn't working we will have wasted another decade as a socialist backwater. If mega-beauracracy and socialism were the answers to the problems of the world then all of them would have been solved in the first half of the last century.
Perhaps their will be enough of us Libertarians and Ron Paul Revolutionaries to keep the torch of economic freedom from sputtering out completely in the midst of resurgent socialism, but I will take little comfort from being able to tell my Liberal friends, "See, I told you so" ten years from now when we are all poorer, less competitive, and worn out from our collective experiment in "21st century" socialism. Hint to the socialists: it didn't fail last century because socialists were not meticulous or scientific enough about organizing their governments. What makes you think it will be any different this time around?
When DIVX collapsed as everyone who knew anything about formats knew it was going to, CC took the brunt of it.
I distinctly remember being in a CC right after the DIVX collapse and seeing an irate customer with a plastic shopping bag full of now useless DIVX movies and his player arguing with a manager to get a full refund while the manager steadfastly refused to budge. Rarely before or since have I seen such extreme use of the f-bomb or numerous other and even more inventive words in a retail store while families and kids are standing around gawking. It was an early lesson for consumers in the dangers of DRM and not "owning" the media (DIVX tricked a lot of people into believing that because they had the physical disk and the player they would always be able to play their movies).
One angle that isn't really being discussed here is how a socialized medicine system, as for example the NHS in Britain, provides incentives for the government to spend tax dollars on ad campaigns and other measures against other legitimate businesses in the hopes that it may lower health care costs in the long run. What will be next in Britain? Ads reminding everyone that fast food kills and "don't eat a cheeseburger day"? One of the downsides of government provided or paid for healtchare is increased government involvement in the everyday lifestyle choices of private citizens because the government now has a direct incentive to see that you make the right choices. Better not have that pint in the pub or that cigarrete at the football match, the government is watching you. How about dangerous sports or other "risky" activities, should the government be involved in those too because accidents increase health care costs? Now, in the interest of disclosure I must say that I am an American and don't live in Britain, but are there any Brits out there who are concerned by the increasingly paternalistic nanny surveillance state that Britain is becomming and has become over the past 10 or more years?
So why is everybody complaining about it? Have I missed something?
TFA is complaining that Microsoft has altered UAC in Windows 7 so that certain signed Microsoft programs, like Explorer and run32dll, can silently auto-elevate their privileges without notifying the user or generating a prompt. This opens the door for various methods of piggy backing malicious or abitrary code into processes which automatically run with root privileges, potentially negating entirely the benefits of UAC since neither Microsoft nor clever mawlware authors (and those wiley Russian Business Network hackers are nothing if not clever) will now be blocked or even just inconvenienced by UAC. From TFA:
Unfortunately, the "Microsoft-signed application" restriction is easily bypassed using a standard Windows trick that allows one process to insert code into a second process, as long as both processes are being run by the same user. The limitations of the file management component are probably unavoidable (it can only do the things it has been programmed to do, after all), but it turns out it doesn't really matter. The file management component can place files into various locations on the system that an unelevated user cannot; an auto-elevate program can then be tricked into loading those files and executing code from them.
So basically people are complaining that the "do as I say, not as I do" approach that Microsoft is taking to UAC in Windows 7 for their own products sends the wrong message to 3d party developers and re-opens the door to malware bypassing UAC altogether via "special" windows programs that can bypass UAC to reduce "annoying prompts" because obviouslly Microsofts own software would never have flaws or need to ask permission...yeah right.
A lot of computers in Russia run cracked version of Windows. I do not know the exact figure, but I would think 99%.
I will grant that it is high, but probably not that high. I admit that I do not follow the software piracy numbers on a regular basis but I seem to remember that even china was only 97% or so. Yes, two (2) percentage points is a minor quible, but you know how we here on Slashdot are about minor technical points and hair splitting.
A CD with a cracked Windows, PhotoShop, AutoCad, etc. costs about USD 3.- at a street market. The same is for other countries of the FSU.
I can certainly believe that this is true, especially for individual private buyers. These people have almost nothing to lose if they do get caught and much to gain from an self-funded $3 education in computers and software. However, as a software developer I would prefer that they use free software products, such as linux, rather than pirating Windows. As much as Microsoft is burned in efigy here every day on Slashdot, Windows does belong to them and they are within their rights to sell it or give it away as they chose and that choice is theirs NOT ours until the money changes hands and the first sale doctrine takes effect.
Whose fault is this? When I try to use an alternative OS, like Linux, a lot of scanners, USB devices, video-cards, etc. just do not work, as drivers either non-existent or bad, made by rear-engineering. Because the hardware vendors provide drivers only for 1 and only OS.
Perhaps you should try a different distribution. I have not had any problems with hardware on Ubuntu, but I have had problems with both Windows XP and Vista. That might have been a valid gripe with Linux 10 years ago, but the problems have been largely resolved, at least for consumer hardware (if you want drivers for unique or custom hardware then complain to your hardware vendor, but don't blame Linux).
Hundreds of millions of PCs run this s*** and the blame is on the Russian government and "bad" people of the East, of course.
That is true, but the Russian government is not exactly without blame in this instance. The issues of cybercrime, software piracy, and financial crime seem to be fairly LOW priorities for the current Russian government. This gives the impression in the west that at best the Russian government cannot be bothered to lift a pinky finger over the problem OR at worst that Russian politicians are dealt a cut of the profits from these ill gotten gains (not the miniscule street vendor sales, but rather the results of all those keyloggers and other malicious programs infiltrating Russian networks and running scams targetting people abroad) in exchange for looking the other way.
It will be cheaper than the Volt, and most likely higher in reliability.
Does anyone else remember the scene in Who Killed the Electric Car? where the prototype VOLT (yes, it was a prototype, but even so) got about half way up the street at 10mph and then died? They had to push it back into the trailer and the GM reps suggested that the director "speed up the film" to give the illusion of a sporty Volt performance (and he thought that wouldn't make it into the documentary film, sheesh GM really is out of touch). I wouldn't take delivery of a new Volt in 2010 if they gave it to me FREE (I would still have to pay income taxes and registration on vehicle with a suggested retail value of $40,000...no thanks).
Ever since I was introduced to and began using the open source source control system Subversion, I have thought about how a source control server(s) for legislative bills would be one of the best ways to allow the public to stay informed about Congressional activities and, perhaps more importantly, to easily track changes in various pieces of legislation as they work their ways through Congress. So if the administration is serious about using open source AND they want to increase transparency in the legislature then it would be hard for them to go wrong with tool(s) like Subversion.
I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent on the phone to users who imagine that editing PDFs with Acrobat Professional is going to be easy.
The problem is that people do not understand the difference between a text editor or word processor and a print layout or typesetting program. Acrobat is more like the latter and less like the former. If people understood a bit more about the different goals of these different programs then they would not be as surprised that it isn't easy to use a professional print layout tool just like they would use a word processor.
It's all about child porn and terrorism now, guys - get with the program.
Maybe they can combine them to, you know, improve their pitch and make the effects of patent reform sound doubly scary and dire. If we don't all want to go home and lock our doors when they are through then this PR firm hasn't done their job to make patents safe for trolls everywhere.
Because it's really, really hard to compartmentalize your life that way.
It is a skill that can be taught and learned, just like any other. Compartmentalization is possible, you just have to train yourself to do, speak, and act in certain ways and avoid acting, speaking, or doing things in the wrong ways. If you are interested in learning how to do that then you might want to get started with this book.
Seriously, there are things you can post on the web that will HELP you get a job.
Perhaps, but there are downside risks too. I have never had a problem showing employers what I know, even though I am practically invisible on Google because my name is relatively common. So even if I wanted to post some information under my real name it would not rise very far to the top of the search results because of all the other people who share my name. If an employer asks then provide them specifically with whatever information they need and you are willing to divulge concerning your abilities and skills, but somehow I doubt that having a MySpace or Facebook page is going to be the clincher in a job interview.
Employers do not care about the web ethos or whether snooping is fair or not, they only care about risk, profit, and loss. Information, regardless of how it is obtained, has bottom line dollar value to marketers, insurance companies, potential employers etc so any information they find on the web, whether favorable or unfavorable, will be used in the hiring decision. That is just reality and no amount of legislation or penalties will stop that or put the web genie back in the bottle. Really, unless you are a public figure then why do you have to put your real name out there along with whatever it is that you say? Use a pseudonym and say what you want, but be careful to never connect it or allow it to be connected to your real name ever. First rule of the web: never provide your real identity when a fake will do.
Would a "reasonable man" conclude that those interests are in conflict? If the answer is yes (and it probably is) then why was Dr Jacobson not eliminated as an expert witness straight away by a defense attorney raising an objection in court and mentioning this conflict? Perhaps I am missing something here, but I am sure that NYCL can explain.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, please. If there are technical or financial consequences, then they are capable of being expressed in a spreadsheet that an MBA can understand
If the MBA was shown such a spreadsheet that had already been created by someone else then yes, but my point was that they often fail to see how important technical factors effect the cost outcomes until someone else with the requisite background knowledge brings it to their attention and even then they may choose to ignore it because their massive egos have difficult adjusting to the fact that someone else, even worse if they are not a fellow MBA, saw something that they didn't. It is not so much a matter of "wouldn't understand it if they saw it", but rather "doesn't think of it".
Yes, but did you remember to set the SCE to AUX before rebooting the E-MECs? (hint: only real geeks will get the joke)
This experience speaks to a more general issue that I have with non-technical MBA types who tend to reduce everything to a dollars and cents issue without fully appreciating or even being able to fully appreciate either the technical OR the financial consequences of their decisions. They assume that their MBA piece-of-paper mail-order diploma makes them oh-so-much smarter than anyone else who doesn't have one, when in fact the smartest people tend to study mathematics, physics, engineering, other hard science, or even philosophy while the intellectual light-weights study social science and get their MBA. If anyone is actually a waste of time and resources then it is the middle management social climbers who produce a lot of hot air using the latest "management techniques" that they read about in a trade magazine on an airline flight or heard about at a conference held in a cheap hotel ballroom.
The folks at Paramount didn't want it. They felt it would be too dark for Star Trek and not have the hopeful feel that the rest of the series had.
That is because they were idiots and didn't see the potential for more realistic stories along the lines of the sixth and seventh seasons of DS9. The final seasons of DS9 were really among the best Star Trek stories ever produced because they reminded us that despite advanced technology and an "evolved understanding" (never really understood how that was supposed to work, human nature is human nature no matter how evolved we might become in our understanding) there were still wars, petty squabbles, treachery, and all of the other things which make the good guys just a little bad and the bad guys just a little good. As much as I enjoyed Star Trek, I always disagreed with the optimal "we have evolved beyond all human weaknesses" view of the future. After Gene passed, they began to take more risks with Star Trek and DS9 showed us how far they had come and could still go with a Star Trek series, but even then it does not begin to approach the sort of gritty no-nonsense reality that we see in Firefly and Serenity. The following recollections from Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore, two of the DS9 writers, really sums it up best concerning the conflict between the "optimistic we have overcome all need for violence" people and the "humans are humans 24th century and technology or not with flawed characters, relationships, wars, and all of the other gritty and real stuff" fans:
Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore were the writers most involved with the creation and development of the Dominion War. Rick Berman wanted the war to be over within three or four episodes at the most. Behr and Moore knew the series would never be able to wrap up the war in that many episodes. Berman also criticized the "depressing" and "violent" stories. Moore later said "It's a fuckin' war! What do you mean it's too violent?!"
In fact, my favorite Star Trek episode of all time is season 6 episode 19 of DS9: In the Pale Moonlight because it shows how tough situations can bring out the worst in people, even highly evolved Star Trek perfect people, and reveals some flaws in the DS9 characters that had always before that episode remained beneath the surface, often hinted at but never before fully exposed. The episode also makes really good use of the character Garek (one of my favorite Trek characters) and his unique Obsidian Order experience, training, and assassin/espionage talents.
"That's why you came to me, isn't it captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing. Well, it worked. And you'll get what you wanted: a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain." -Garek
This will only take jobs away from Mississippi and other states that pursue such policies.
The jobs left decades ago along with just about every other non-localized business in the state. Mississipi is famous for its unsophisticated rural jurors (who tend to hand out high punative damages awards), easy class action lawsuit certs, and busy federal court docket (albeit a bit less busy in recent years due to new Federal laws addressing "venue shopping" by ambitious and enterprising attorneys). Mississipi produces lawyers and lawsuits, but not much else; that is why no sane national or international company has any presence whatsoever in the state. Mississipi might as well hang a big notice out below each of the "Welcome to Mississipi" signs on the state lines that reads "but take your business elsewhere".
But telling the House of Saud to go pound sand will still be priceless.
With our luck the final process will involve large amounts of sand, in which case the House of Saud will win the energy lottery yet again.
Wait a minute. If a lawsuit spanning "years" is not swift, how is IBM and Novell's legal battle with SCO--which lasted years--an example of swift action?
Swift relative to what? Relative to other legal actions of similar size and complexity, which have taken decades to settle from start to finish in some cases (i.e. the tobacco master settlement agreements), a few years is downright fast...er swift.
suit against the RIAA/MPAA will stretch on even longer, and in the end, a lot of people will be out Internet service for at least a decade, and in recompense, will each get $10 off their next music or movie purchase. Cost of doing business....
The customers will only be cut off if the MAFIAA can win an injunction to disconnect the subscribers in question while the litigation works its way through they system. Naturally, the ISPs (being opposed to losing 10 years of subscriber fees while they fight it out) will oppose any such injuction. IANAL, but it seems to me that it would be very difficult for the MAFIAA to prove immediate and irreperable harm (the gold standard for injunctive relief) if the subscribers are NOT cut off while the case works its way through the courts. This means that the ISP refuses to disconnect anyone, MAFIAA sues, and everyone stays connected while the case is litigated because MAFIAA fails to get an injunction. At least, that is my take.
The average person just doesn't buy into the idea that they'll ever be wrongfully accused.
That is true, unfortunately. The average American has lived a sheltered life compared to people in other less democratic nations and puts far too much trust in the government and its system of laws. Our founding fathers would truly be shocked if they could see what monster has become of the thing which they created to be limited and finite in power.
Such legislation would cause more economic loss than the actual infringement (businesses included).
Which is why the ISPs will challenge the law in court when and if the MAFIAA attempts to bring suit for failure to "cut off" a customer(s). If you were a business and some third party, who is not a paying customer, came to your place of business waving some piece of paper in your face and told you to "cut off" certain customers and never serve them again (resulting in a loss for your business) would you just do it? Certainly not, and neither will the ISPs. The negative PR from their customer base and the prospect of losing tens of thousands of dollars a month in subscription fees will put ISPs in a fighting mood, lawsuits be damned. A lawsuit might take years to work its way through the courts and in the meantime the ISP is losing tens of thousands of dollars per month in subscriber fees from customers that it has been forced to "cut off". The MAFIAA will be put in its place when it starts costing the large ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/Nextel real money. It will be like when SCO foolishly attempted to sue IBM and Novell, the MAFIAA will be swiftly crushed by the much larger telecom industry and their lobbyists/attorneys.
Libertarian NOT EQUAL TO Republican
Just because I disagree with the Liberals, as the position has come to be understood in the American and British political discourse NOT Classical Liberalism as it was and is understood in Europe, does not mean that I automatically agree with the Republicans. If you an American and you still believe in smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom then why not join us and do something about it?
They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice
Liberals: They know what is best for you AND your money (or so they always claim) so if you like someone else to be in control of every meaningful detail of your life then just keep voting Labour because after all, they really do know what is best for you just like mum always did...right.
Fortunately, they are'nt as far along here in the United States as they are in Britain, but with Obama on board now we are pressing full steam ahead into a socialist trainwreck; boldy going down the path toward economic stagnation that has always gone hand and glove with the notion of, "spreading the wealth around". It didn't work for Russia, it didn't work for Cuba, it is'nt working for Bolivia or Venezuela or any other latin American country that has tried it and it won't work for us. Unfortunately, the young people of America seem determined to learn this lesson for themselves first hand and the hard way and by the time they realize that it isn't working we will have wasted another decade as a socialist backwater. If mega-beauracracy and socialism were the answers to the problems of the world then all of them would have been solved in the first half of the last century.
Perhaps their will be enough of us Libertarians and Ron Paul Revolutionaries to keep the torch of economic freedom from sputtering out completely in the midst of resurgent socialism, but I will take little comfort from being able to tell my Liberal friends, "See, I told you so" ten years from now when we are all poorer, less competitive, and worn out from our collective experiment in "21st century" socialism. Hint to the socialists: it didn't fail last century because socialists were not meticulous or scientific enough about organizing their governments. What makes you think it will be any different this time around?
When DIVX collapsed as everyone who knew anything about formats knew it was going to, CC took the brunt of it.
I distinctly remember being in a CC right after the DIVX collapse and seeing an irate customer with a plastic shopping bag full of now useless DIVX movies and his player arguing with a manager to get a full refund while the manager steadfastly refused to budge. Rarely before or since have I seen such extreme use of the f-bomb or numerous other and even more inventive words in a retail store while families and kids are standing around gawking. It was an early lesson for consumers in the dangers of DRM and not "owning" the media (DIVX tricked a lot of people into believing that because they had the physical disk and the player they would always be able to play their movies).
Its 43.
Customers have gotten enraged over the fact that our discounts aren't good enough for them.
Just smile and say "yes", its better that way.
One angle that isn't really being discussed here is how a socialized medicine system, as for example the NHS in Britain, provides incentives for the government to spend tax dollars on ad campaigns and other measures against other legitimate businesses in the hopes that it may lower health care costs in the long run. What will be next in Britain? Ads reminding everyone that fast food kills and "don't eat a cheeseburger day"? One of the downsides of government provided or paid for healtchare is increased government involvement in the everyday lifestyle choices of private citizens because the government now has a direct incentive to see that you make the right choices. Better not have that pint in the pub or that cigarrete at the football match, the government is watching you. How about dangerous sports or other "risky" activities, should the government be involved in those too because accidents increase health care costs? Now, in the interest of disclosure I must say that I am an American and don't live in Britain, but are there any Brits out there who are concerned by the increasingly paternalistic nanny surveillance state that Britain is becomming and has become over the past 10 or more years?
So why is everybody complaining about it? Have I missed something?
TFA is complaining that Microsoft has altered UAC in Windows 7 so that certain signed Microsoft programs, like Explorer and run32dll, can silently auto-elevate their privileges without notifying the user or generating a prompt. This opens the door for various methods of piggy backing malicious or abitrary code into processes which automatically run with root privileges, potentially negating entirely the benefits of UAC since neither Microsoft nor clever mawlware authors (and those wiley Russian Business Network hackers are nothing if not clever) will now be blocked or even just inconvenienced by UAC. From TFA:
Unfortunately, the "Microsoft-signed application" restriction is easily bypassed using a standard Windows trick that allows one process to insert code into a second process, as long as both processes are being run by the same user. The limitations of the file management component are probably unavoidable (it can only do the things it has been programmed to do, after all), but it turns out it doesn't really matter. The file management component can place files into various locations on the system that an unelevated user cannot; an auto-elevate program can then be tricked into loading those files and executing code from them.
So basically people are complaining that the "do as I say, not as I do" approach that Microsoft is taking to UAC in Windows 7 for their own products sends the wrong message to 3d party developers and re-opens the door to malware bypassing UAC altogether via "special" windows programs that can bypass UAC to reduce "annoying prompts" because obviouslly Microsofts own software would never have flaws or need to ask permission...yeah right.
A lot of computers in Russia run cracked version of Windows. I do not know the exact figure, but I would think 99%.
I will grant that it is high, but probably not that high. I admit that I do not follow the software piracy numbers on a regular basis but I seem to remember that even china was only 97% or so. Yes, two (2) percentage points is a minor quible, but you know how we here on Slashdot are about minor technical points and hair splitting.
A CD with a cracked Windows, PhotoShop, AutoCad, etc. costs about USD 3.- at a street market. The same is for other countries of the FSU.
I can certainly believe that this is true, especially for individual private buyers. These people have almost nothing to lose if they do get caught and much to gain from an self-funded $3 education in computers and software. However, as a software developer I would prefer that they use free software products, such as linux, rather than pirating Windows. As much as Microsoft is burned in efigy here every day on Slashdot, Windows does belong to them and they are within their rights to sell it or give it away as they chose and that choice is theirs NOT ours until the money changes hands and the first sale doctrine takes effect.
Whose fault is this? When I try to use an alternative OS, like Linux, a lot of scanners, USB devices, video-cards, etc. just do not work, as drivers either non-existent or bad, made by rear-engineering. Because the hardware vendors provide drivers only for 1 and only OS.
Perhaps you should try a different distribution. I have not had any problems with hardware on Ubuntu, but I have had problems with both Windows XP and Vista. That might have been a valid gripe with Linux 10 years ago, but the problems have been largely resolved, at least for consumer hardware (if you want drivers for unique or custom hardware then complain to your hardware vendor, but don't blame Linux).
Hundreds of millions of PCs run this s*** and the blame is on the Russian government and "bad" people of the East, of course.
That is true, but the Russian government is not exactly without blame in this instance. The issues of cybercrime, software piracy, and financial crime seem to be fairly LOW priorities for the current Russian government. This gives the impression in the west that at best the Russian government cannot be bothered to lift a pinky finger over the problem OR at worst that Russian politicians are dealt a cut of the profits from these ill gotten gains (not the miniscule street vendor sales, but rather the results of all those keyloggers and other malicious programs infiltrating Russian networks and running scams targetting people abroad) in exchange for looking the other way.
It will be cheaper than the Volt, and most likely higher in reliability.
Does anyone else remember the scene in Who Killed the Electric Car? where the prototype VOLT (yes, it was a prototype, but even so) got about half way up the street at 10mph and then died? They had to push it back into the trailer and the GM reps suggested that the director "speed up the film" to give the illusion of a sporty Volt performance (and he thought that wouldn't make it into the documentary film, sheesh GM really is out of touch). I wouldn't take delivery of a new Volt in 2010 if they gave it to me FREE (I would still have to pay income taxes and registration on vehicle with a suggested retail value of $40,000...no thanks).
Ever since I was introduced to and began using the open source source control system Subversion, I have thought about how a source control server(s) for legislative bills would be one of the best ways to allow the public to stay informed about Congressional activities and, perhaps more importantly, to easily track changes in various pieces of legislation as they work their ways through Congress. So if the administration is serious about using open source AND they want to increase transparency in the legislature then it would be hard for them to go wrong with tool(s) like Subversion.
I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent on the phone to users who imagine that editing PDFs with Acrobat Professional is going to be easy.
The problem is that people do not understand the difference between a text editor or word processor and a print layout or typesetting program. Acrobat is more like the latter and less like the former. If people understood a bit more about the different goals of these different programs then they would not be as surprised that it isn't easy to use a professional print layout tool just like they would use a word processor.
It's all about child porn and terrorism now, guys - get with the program.
Maybe they can combine them to, you know, improve their pitch and make the effects of patent reform sound doubly scary and dire. If we don't all want to go home and lock our doors when they are through then this PR firm hasn't done their job to make patents safe for trolls everywhere.
Because it's really, really hard to compartmentalize your life that way.
It is a skill that can be taught and learned, just like any other. Compartmentalization is possible, you just have to train yourself to do, speak, and act in certain ways and avoid acting, speaking, or doing things in the wrong ways. If you are interested in learning how to do that then you might want to get started with this book.
Seriously, there are things you can post on the web that will HELP you get a job.
Perhaps, but there are downside risks too. I have never had a problem showing employers what I know, even though I am practically invisible on Google because my name is relatively common. So even if I wanted to post some information under my real name it would not rise very far to the top of the search results because of all the other people who share my name. If an employer asks then provide them specifically with whatever information they need and you are willing to divulge concerning your abilities and skills, but somehow I doubt that having a MySpace or Facebook page is going to be the clincher in a job interview.
Employers do not care about the web ethos or whether snooping is fair or not, they only care about risk, profit, and loss. Information, regardless of how it is obtained, has bottom line dollar value to marketers, insurance companies, potential employers etc so any information they find on the web, whether favorable or unfavorable, will be used in the hiring decision. That is just reality and no amount of legislation or penalties will stop that or put the web genie back in the bottle. Really, unless you are a public figure then why do you have to put your real name out there along with whatever it is that you say? Use a pseudonym and say what you want, but be careful to never connect it or allow it to be connected to your real name ever. First rule of the web: never provide your real identity when a fake will do.
if either the judge or the RIAA's expert witness knew any more than that, which I doubt.
Well, if they didn't before then they do now.
Would a "reasonable man" conclude that those interests are in conflict? If the answer is yes (and it probably is) then why was Dr Jacobson not eliminated as an expert witness straight away by a defense attorney raising an objection in court and mentioning this conflict? Perhaps I am missing something here, but I am sure that NYCL can explain.