You are correct, the loans only have to be paid back if the aircraft is profitable. In these cases tho, Airbus does not start development of the aircraft using loans until it has secured interest from airlines in the aircraft with enough options to create 50% of the orders needed to bring the aircraft into profitability. This is generally one of the terms of the loan as supplied by EU governments.
The US does not have a case that the '92 agreement needs to be redone, the EU suggested negotiating a new agreement when the current WTO complaints were initially raised early this year, but the US refused to negotiate a new agreement, saying instead that it will take the issue to the WTO and back out of the 1992 agreement. I personally agree that the '92 agreement is now largely inadequete, as it was never imagined that Airbus would outsell Boeing in the commercial market so soon, and much of the agreement is based on that belief.
You are correct that the Japanese subsidies are a technology grab. Japan has been requesting Boeing outsource aircraft part production into Japanese factories for much of the past 2 decades, and Boeing has always refused. During the initial stages of the 7E7 concept, Boeing was given government approval to outsource major plane parts to Japan, thus giving Japan the technology it wanted. Japan in return agreed to subsidise the plants that the manufacturing was outsourced to, making Boeings costs cheaper. Launch purchases by ANA and JAL airlines (both Japanese airlines) were further more used to convince Boeing to outsource to Japan.
Make no mistake, I know Airbus receives what most people would consider to be unfair financial aid, but in most discussions of this nature, Boeing is usually cast to be the poor little girl thats been beaten by her father. Both sides receive unfair aid, only the US is unwilling to renegotiate the 1992 agreement, it would rather bitch and shout.
My prediction of the outcome of this is that the WTO will declare both sides to be in recievership of unfair aid, leading to the US imposing import tax on Airbus aircraft, the EU imposing import tax on Boeing aircraft, Japanese business going under as they are made to repay government subsidies, and the rest of the world shrugging and buying from whoever they bought from before. This sounds like a bad deal all around, but in essence Airbus will come out best because most Asian and Middle Eastern airlines are buying large amounts of Airbus aircraft at the moment, rather than Boeing (Emerates has just purchased 65 new aircraft, 53 of which were Airbus various types), and most american airlines arent exactly in the best financial position to buy anyones aircraft.
Boeing received $3.2billion USD in tax benefits and cuts to place the 7E7 factories in Washington State. Boeing outsourced the wing and center fuselage construction to Japan, where the three firms making the sections are 75% subsidised by the Japanese government, allowing these sections to be sold to Boeing much cheaper than they otherwise would be. This has already been judged by analysts to be illegal under the 1992 agreement, and is currently the subject of an EU investigation with an eye on ammunition if the current WTO stuff goes ahead.
Airbus receives Launch Aid in the form of interest based LOANS. These loans must be paid back to the respective government within 17 years of its inception, and must account for no more than 33% of the total development cost of the aircraft. This was agreed in the 1992 trans atlantic agreement, as was the clause that states that Airbus doesnt have to repay these loans if the aircraft fails to ship. So far, every loan lent to Airbus has been paid back within the terms laid down. Airbus does lease factories off of local governments at a favourable rate tho, but this isnt covered under hte 1992 agreement, and so is a gray area. This is not the same as getting tax cuts for relocating production tho.
Boeing isnt exactly the pure virgin dressed in white you think they are.
The thing is, Martin Taylor is right, and your post proves that. MS has proven very willing to deal with opensource, and indeed the GPL, several times - case in point the Services for Unix toolkit, which has the added benefit of being able to download various GPL licensed tools from Microsoft servers. Over the past year MS has released several old and new projects under None GPL compatable but OpenSource licenses (GPL isnt the only opensource license - live with it). The thing that people cannot understand is that opensource is not best for Microsofts core business from Microsofts point of view, so when Microsoft wont release the code for windows or office, people assume that its an all or nothing scenario.
Diesel engines are trivially easy to convert to non fossil fuels, for example vegetable oil. the Diesel engine was origionally designed to run on fuels other than diesel oil, which makes it so popular with third world countries.
They place a maximum so that judges cant be bought out and jail you with a life long sentance for crimes like these. They place a maximum to tell judges that 'this is the most you should give in the most extreme of cases, adjust for lesser cases'. Its a guideline. If the judges know the maximum, they know what boundries they can work with. Oh, and I didnt say murder wasnt a worse crime, I did say it was a completely seperate crime. Or should a set sentance term only be allowed for one crime, with no other being allowed to share the length? 'Hey Bob, we need to rethink this max term for this new statute, 25 years is already taken by the statute for limiting usage of personal and private information'.
I dont see datalords making millions from smuggling Mp3s into the US from Columbia. I dont see crackdens making money from people high on music. In the war on drugs, theres a low risk/reward ratio, a fair amount of risk of being caught for a LOT of monetory reward. With Copyright Infringement, theres a high risk/reward ratio. You stand to make very little out of copyright infringement, but you stand to loose a LOT in either money or freedom when you go to jail. That is why this is nothing like the war on drugs.
So, what? Should whoever makes the law sit down and say 'well, really this isnt as bad as murder, so we shouldnt punish them as much. Oh, but is it worse than this crime, or that crime?'. Seriously, where do you draw the line? This law had a maximum sentance placed on it. Get it, a MAXIMUM SENTANCE. Not a MINIMUM SENTANCE. When they created the law, they LIMITED how badly this person could get punished. There is no maximum sentance on murder or in a lot of cases, manslaughter. If it was a mandatory minimum, you might have a point.
Once the damages are demonstratably higher than a certain figure, it becomes a criminal issue rather than a civil issue. I shall not attempt to even discuss the issue of damages here, as the usual slashdot response will kick in. What I will say is this, to all people complaining that 15 years is too long compared to other crimes: He willingly did this and knew he was commiting an illegal act. He was systimatically breaking the law, again and again and again. He demonstrated blatant disregard for the law, time after time. After all, if this guy was spamming, you wouldnt have any issues with him being locked up for 15 years (or receiving multimillion dollar fines, as has happened).
Uhm, its the COURTS that have to assume innocence until its proven otherwise. Its my right to assume either way, THATS WHY ITS CALLED A FREE COUNTRY. Hell, someone has to assume these people are guilty, otherwise no charges get brought. Its not a breach of due process for myself to assume guilt.
Residual effect deals with the alignment of the heads on the disks. For each write, they arent perfectly in alignment with the last one, so older tracks get left as portions. The reason you dont see random r/w errors on a regular basis is that the disk itself masks them from you, they happen, but the disk wrote the data in several seperate places for just this purpose. A 40GB disk can actually hold a LOT more than 40GB, if you discount error correct and just wrote everything once to the disk.
Yes, because the Intelligence Community should always concentrate on one crime at a time. How about we extend that to local police as well, everyone should get in line because all 1500 police in the City are busy dealing with Joes stolen car. These people didnt have the right to do what they were doing, the law says so, so the law enforcers did their job.
note, Ive recently switched to the Mac, and am looking for a replacement for DVDshrink. Nothing I have thus far found has been as easy and as 'independant' (select what you want, leave it to do it), everything seems to want to do it in two steps. All Im looking for is am app that will rip to a single large.Vob, allowing me to select which audio and video streams I want in the ripped Vob (IE, just the main movie stream and the best audio) and allow me to specifiy what compression level I want (usually 50% of DVD mpeg rate). Thus far I havent found an app which will do this satisfactorily - help!
Im surprised that noones pointed this out yet, but NASA never discovered or really developed velcro, or teflon or most of the other stuff usually accredited to NASA and the space program. NASAs true positive purpose was and is the employment of hundreds of thousands of americans through contractors, subcontractors etc. Yes, thats right, the $100million they spend on a rocket launch isnt converted to Gold bricks and sent up, it goes home in peoples pockets. By making people work for this money, instead of handing it out, they encourage skills and personal development.
No, in the UK the Judge has the powers to distribute costs as he sees fit, so its not a 'loser pays all', the two sides could very well be made to pay for their own costs. Indeed there has been cases in the past where the loser has been awarded costs, which means the winner gets to pay both sides costs (very rare cases where either the Government or a large corporation was the side to bring the case and win against individuals or such). In the case where costs are awarded, the side which doesnt get to pay has nothign to worry about, as they are not liable for their lawyers costs (tho they may be liable for a percentage, depending on what the Judge awards, it isnt a straight all or nothing), so the Lawyers must persue the other party for costs.
'Right to Life' websites and newsletters that advocated murder of abortion doctors or violent acts against abortion clinics and then posted names, addresses or pictures of said abortion clinics or doctors have been found to be at fault when aforementioned violent action occurs. Several times a site has been closed down, and/or the site owners prosecuted after attacks against doctors or clinics by someone who has visited the site or read the newsletter.
Any lawyer worth his Bar exam pass could easilly put together a case saying that bittorrent sites are complicit in the act of copyright infringement simply because of the way the sites operate, what the sites are called, ratings, rankings and moderation of.torrents. These guys arent just creating an open forum where anyone can post information, they are running sites that catalogue and index.torrents into specific 'movie', 'application', 'game', 'tv series' etc categories. These guys are providing a specific service.
IF thats true, then why did US companies purchase a farily substantial quantity of the RD-180 engines for US rockets? The Russian rocket engine tech is actually on par, and exceeds in some cases, US and ESA tech. Oh, and the reason noone can build a Saturn5 is that the plans nolonger exist. There have been several rockets designed and flown that equal or outperform the S5, the Energia for example.
No, the DVD Player manufacturer CANNOT COPY the competitors item, THEY HAVE TO REIMPLEMENT IT. Just the same as the movie makers CANNOT COPY a competitors film or story line, they have to REIMPLEMENT THEM. Bitching about the fact that a company owns the script and rights to the item is idiotic. Boohoo, movie studio X cannot copy movie studio Ys blockbuster. Boohoo, they have to come up with their own moneyspinner. Very similiar themed movie, but different actors is 'Wings of the Apache' (called something differnet in the US, cant remember what) and 'Topgun'. Similiar theme, similiar story, different actors and different studio.
So, because only one company has the rights to sell its own creation means that suddenly theres no competition. Lets see how fscking stupid that sounds:
There is no competition here since the DVD Player you want to see is only sold by _one_ company. Other companies are not allowed to sell that same DVD Player for a better price or under better terms.
Other companies are perfectly allowed to get the same actor, the same script writer and go shoot a similiar movie, just as seperate companies are allowed to manufacture similiar DVD players with similiar features. The DVD Player manfacturer isnt allowed to exactly copy his competitors goods, just as two films arent allowed to be too similiar, but the competition exists and its ludicrous to say otherwise.
Youd be surprised what I can afford. And yes, this is a release, every opensource version is a release, by the very nature of opensource. It might not be a stable release, but its a release. Your "unprofessional" splash screens are for internal or limited release viewings, this one isnt.
Basically, if the 20% EA purchases in Ubisoft is the largest single block of voting shares in the company held by one person or entity, then that person or entity can force AGM votes etc to go its own way, have people put on the board of directors and other things which having a controlling share brings. Also EA may be silently purchasing shares from private sellers on the stock market, which will further increase its controlling share.
Its possible to have a majority share in a company which is below 50%, but you run the risk of the rest of the shareholders banding together to vote against you, which is why a 51% share is considered better than a smaller share. You can still control a company with a 20% share, but the risk is there that you will loose that majority without actually doing anything.
For this to be considered a hostile takeover, EA has to be talking to and buying from third party shareholders directly, and not the company itself. If EA can gain a percentage share which is larger than that of the companies own, then the company has basically been taken over, without ever being approached. A standard takeover is where the company or the majority shareholder sells its stake to someone else.
Remember folks, once you put more than 50% of your shares out in the open, you no longer own the company.
He said he broke in to use storage space. Are you going to take him at face value and continue using the system as is, after patching the security hole that let him in? Or are you going to forever view that system as 'dirty', with the costs associated with replacing that system and the data on it? This isnt a simple case of 'change the locks, add more CCTV', as you would with a physical wharehouse, you cant 'distrust' a physical building, there is a lot more he could do with a compromised computer system, including hiding unwanted code.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, the loans only have to be paid back if the aircraft is profitable. In these cases tho, Airbus does not start development of the aircraft using loans until it has secured interest from airlines in the aircraft with enough options to create 50% of the orders needed to bring the aircraft into profitability. This is generally one of the terms of the loan as supplied by EU governments.
The US does not have a case that the '92 agreement needs to be redone, the EU suggested negotiating a new agreement when the current WTO complaints were initially raised early this year, but the US refused to negotiate a new agreement, saying instead that it will take the issue to the WTO and back out of the 1992 agreement. I personally agree that the '92 agreement is now largely inadequete, as it was never imagined that Airbus would outsell Boeing in the commercial market so soon, and much of the agreement is based on that belief.
You are correct that the Japanese subsidies are a technology grab. Japan has been requesting Boeing outsource aircraft part production into Japanese factories for much of the past 2 decades, and Boeing has always refused. During the initial stages of the 7E7 concept, Boeing was given government approval to outsource major plane parts to Japan, thus giving Japan the technology it wanted. Japan in return agreed to subsidise the plants that the manufacturing was outsourced to, making Boeings costs cheaper. Launch purchases by ANA and JAL airlines (both Japanese airlines) were further more used to convince Boeing to outsource to Japan.
Make no mistake, I know Airbus receives what most people would consider to be unfair financial aid, but in most discussions of this nature, Boeing is usually cast to be the poor little girl thats been beaten by her father. Both sides receive unfair aid, only the US is unwilling to renegotiate the 1992 agreement, it would rather bitch and shout.
My prediction of the outcome of this is that the WTO will declare both sides to be in recievership of unfair aid, leading to the US imposing import tax on Airbus aircraft, the EU imposing import tax on Boeing aircraft, Japanese business going under as they are made to repay government subsidies, and the rest of the world shrugging and buying from whoever they bought from before. This sounds like a bad deal all around, but in essence Airbus will come out best because most Asian and Middle Eastern airlines are buying large amounts of Airbus aircraft at the moment, rather than Boeing (Emerates has just purchased 65 new aircraft, 53 of which were Airbus various types), and most american airlines arent exactly in the best financial position to buy anyones aircraft.
Boeing received $3.2billion USD in tax benefits and cuts to place the 7E7 factories in Washington State. Boeing outsourced the wing and center fuselage construction to Japan, where the three firms making the sections are 75% subsidised by the Japanese government, allowing these sections to be sold to Boeing much cheaper than they otherwise would be. This has already been judged by analysts to be illegal under the 1992 agreement, and is currently the subject of an EU investigation with an eye on ammunition if the current WTO stuff goes ahead.
Airbus receives Launch Aid in the form of interest based LOANS. These loans must be paid back to the respective government within 17 years of its inception, and must account for no more than 33% of the total development cost of the aircraft. This was agreed in the 1992 trans atlantic agreement, as was the clause that states that Airbus doesnt have to repay these loans if the aircraft fails to ship. So far, every loan lent to Airbus has been paid back within the terms laid down. Airbus does lease factories off of local governments at a favourable rate tho, but this isnt covered under hte 1992 agreement, and so is a gray area. This is not the same as getting tax cuts for relocating production tho.
Boeing isnt exactly the pure virgin dressed in white you think they are.
The thing is, Martin Taylor is right, and your post proves that. MS has proven very willing to deal with opensource, and indeed the GPL, several times - case in point the Services for Unix toolkit, which has the added benefit of being able to download various GPL licensed tools from Microsoft servers. Over the past year MS has released several old and new projects under None GPL compatable but OpenSource licenses (GPL isnt the only opensource license - live with it). The thing that people cannot understand is that opensource is not best for Microsofts core business from Microsofts point of view, so when Microsoft wont release the code for windows or office, people assume that its an all or nothing scenario.
Diesel engines are trivially easy to convert to non fossil fuels, for example vegetable oil. the Diesel engine was origionally designed to run on fuels other than diesel oil, which makes it so popular with third world countries.
They place a maximum so that judges cant be bought out and jail you with a life long sentance for crimes like these. They place a maximum to tell judges that 'this is the most you should give in the most extreme of cases, adjust for lesser cases'. Its a guideline. If the judges know the maximum, they know what boundries they can work with. Oh, and I didnt say murder wasnt a worse crime, I did say it was a completely seperate crime. Or should a set sentance term only be allowed for one crime, with no other being allowed to share the length? 'Hey Bob, we need to rethink this max term for this new statute, 25 years is already taken by the statute for limiting usage of personal and private information'.
I dont see datalords making millions from smuggling Mp3s into the US from Columbia. I dont see crackdens making money from people high on music. In the war on drugs, theres a low risk/reward ratio, a fair amount of risk of being caught for a LOT of monetory reward. With Copyright Infringement, theres a high risk/reward ratio. You stand to make very little out of copyright infringement, but you stand to loose a LOT in either money or freedom when you go to jail. That is why this is nothing like the war on drugs.
So, what? Should whoever makes the law sit down and say 'well, really this isnt as bad as murder, so we shouldnt punish them as much. Oh, but is it worse than this crime, or that crime?'. Seriously, where do you draw the line? This law had a maximum sentance placed on it. Get it, a MAXIMUM SENTANCE. Not a MINIMUM SENTANCE. When they created the law, they LIMITED how badly this person could get punished. There is no maximum sentance on murder or in a lot of cases, manslaughter. If it was a mandatory minimum, you might have a point.
Once the damages are demonstratably higher than a certain figure, it becomes a criminal issue rather than a civil issue. I shall not attempt to even discuss the issue of damages here, as the usual slashdot response will kick in. What I will say is this, to all people complaining that 15 years is too long compared to other crimes: He willingly did this and knew he was commiting an illegal act. He was systimatically breaking the law, again and again and again. He demonstrated blatant disregard for the law, time after time. After all, if this guy was spamming, you wouldnt have any issues with him being locked up for 15 years (or receiving multimillion dollar fines, as has happened).
Anyone want to come up with a semi convincing conspiracy theory? No? Even a mildly possible one?
Uhm, its the COURTS that have to assume innocence until its proven otherwise. Its my right to assume either way, THATS WHY ITS CALLED A FREE COUNTRY. Hell, someone has to assume these people are guilty, otherwise no charges get brought. Its not a breach of due process for myself to assume guilt.
Morals and Ethics still fail to stop rampant software piracy.
Residual effect deals with the alignment of the heads on the disks. For each write, they arent perfectly in alignment with the last one, so older tracks get left as portions. The reason you dont see random r/w errors on a regular basis is that the disk itself masks them from you, they happen, but the disk wrote the data in several seperate places for just this purpose. A 40GB disk can actually hold a LOT more than 40GB, if you discount error correct and just wrote everything once to the disk.
Yes, because the Intelligence Community should always concentrate on one crime at a time. How about we extend that to local police as well, everyone should get in line because all 1500 police in the City are busy dealing with Joes stolen car. These people didnt have the right to do what they were doing, the law says so, so the law enforcers did their job.
note, Ive recently switched to the Mac, and am looking for a replacement for DVDshrink. Nothing I have thus far found has been as easy and as 'independant' (select what you want, leave it to do it), everything seems to want to do it in two steps. All Im looking for is am app that will rip to a single large .Vob, allowing me to select which audio and video streams I want in the ripped Vob (IE, just the main movie stream and the best audio) and allow me to specifiy what compression level I want (usually 50% of DVD mpeg rate). Thus far I havent found an app which will do this satisfactorily - help!
Im surprised that noones pointed this out yet, but NASA never discovered or really developed velcro, or teflon or most of the other stuff usually accredited to NASA and the space program. NASAs true positive purpose was and is the employment of hundreds of thousands of americans through contractors, subcontractors etc. Yes, thats right, the $100million they spend on a rocket launch isnt converted to Gold bricks and sent up, it goes home in peoples pockets. By making people work for this money, instead of handing it out, they encourage skills and personal development.
No, in the UK the Judge has the powers to distribute costs as he sees fit, so its not a 'loser pays all', the two sides could very well be made to pay for their own costs. Indeed there has been cases in the past where the loser has been awarded costs, which means the winner gets to pay both sides costs (very rare cases where either the Government or a large corporation was the side to bring the case and win against individuals or such). In the case where costs are awarded, the side which doesnt get to pay has nothign to worry about, as they are not liable for their lawyers costs (tho they may be liable for a percentage, depending on what the Judge awards, it isnt a straight all or nothing), so the Lawyers must persue the other party for costs.
'Right to Life' websites and newsletters that advocated murder of abortion doctors or violent acts against abortion clinics and then posted names, addresses or pictures of said abortion clinics or doctors have been found to be at fault when aforementioned violent action occurs. Several times a site has been closed down, and/or the site owners prosecuted after attacks against doctors or clinics by someone who has visited the site or read the newsletter.
.torrents. These guys arent just creating an open forum where anyone can post information, they are running sites that catalogue and index .torrents into specific 'movie', 'application', 'game', 'tv series' etc categories. These guys are providing a specific service.
Any lawyer worth his Bar exam pass could easilly put together a case saying that bittorrent sites are complicit in the act of copyright infringement simply because of the way the sites operate, what the sites are called, ratings, rankings and moderation of
IF thats true, then why did US companies purchase a farily substantial quantity of the RD-180 engines for US rockets? The Russian rocket engine tech is actually on par, and exceeds in some cases, US and ESA tech. Oh, and the reason noone can build a Saturn5 is that the plans nolonger exist. There have been several rockets designed and flown that equal or outperform the S5, the Energia for example.
Source 1
Source 2
No, the DVD Player manufacturer CANNOT COPY the competitors item, THEY HAVE TO REIMPLEMENT IT. Just the same as the movie makers CANNOT COPY a competitors film or story line, they have to REIMPLEMENT THEM. Bitching about the fact that a company owns the script and rights to the item is idiotic. Boohoo, movie studio X cannot copy movie studio Ys blockbuster. Boohoo, they have to come up with their own moneyspinner. Very similiar themed movie, but different actors is 'Wings of the Apache' (called something differnet in the US, cant remember what) and 'Topgun'. Similiar theme, similiar story, different actors and different studio.
There is no competition here since the DVD Player you want to see is only sold by _one_ company. Other companies are not allowed to sell that same DVD Player for a better price or under better terms.
Other companies are perfectly allowed to get the same actor, the same script writer and go shoot a similiar movie, just as seperate companies are allowed to manufacture similiar DVD players with similiar features. The DVD Player manfacturer isnt allowed to exactly copy his competitors goods, just as two films arent allowed to be too similiar, but the competition exists and its ludicrous to say otherwise.The soup kitchen down the road will feed me for free, does that mean MacDonalds should also feed me for free?
Youd be surprised what I can afford. And yes, this is a release, every opensource version is a release, by the very nature of opensource. It might not be a stable release, but its a release. Your "unprofessional" splash screens are for internal or limited release viewings, this one isnt.
It looks worse than cheap, it looks unprofessional.
Basically, if the 20% EA purchases in Ubisoft is the largest single block of voting shares in the company held by one person or entity, then that person or entity can force AGM votes etc to go its own way, have people put on the board of directors and other things which having a controlling share brings. Also EA may be silently purchasing shares from private sellers on the stock market, which will further increase its controlling share.
Its possible to have a majority share in a company which is below 50%, but you run the risk of the rest of the shareholders banding together to vote against you, which is why a 51% share is considered better than a smaller share. You can still control a company with a 20% share, but the risk is there that you will loose that majority without actually doing anything.
For this to be considered a hostile takeover, EA has to be talking to and buying from third party shareholders directly, and not the company itself. If EA can gain a percentage share which is larger than that of the companies own, then the company has basically been taken over, without ever being approached. A standard takeover is where the company or the majority shareholder sells its stake to someone else.
Remember folks, once you put more than 50% of your shares out in the open, you no longer own the company.
He said he broke in to use storage space. Are you going to take him at face value and continue using the system as is, after patching the security hole that let him in? Or are you going to forever view that system as 'dirty', with the costs associated with replacing that system and the data on it? This isnt a simple case of 'change the locks, add more CCTV', as you would with a physical wharehouse, you cant 'distrust' a physical building, there is a lot more he could do with a compromised computer system, including hiding unwanted code.