That's sad enough, but the saddest thing is: a bunch of passionate guys (the planetary society) are begging a measly quarter million bucks to save that priceless data, and the administration just stands there! That's like the cost of running a humvee for a week in Iraq or something.
Ahh, yes. Welcome to the joys of budgets. There isn't enough money to fund everything that everyone wants and everyone things that their (small) project is certainly important enough to warrant getting funds. Problem is that everyone thinks that, and all those small projects add up. Lines have to be drawn, decisions have to be made. You will likely not agree with all of them, but that's why you vote.
Make the person when caught with the pirated software pay for the exact amount of what the software cost in the store. Not some $200,000 per copy.
If this is the case then there is no disincentive value for the punishment. The whole purpose of these laws are not merely to compensate the 'victim', but to dissuade people commiting the offense in the first place.
That being said, I would agree that the blanket 200,000 for one copy seems extreme, but even this could vary by situation.
Clearly it is time for a bit of an overhaul of the legal code in this area.
The issue is not how many (purported) terrorist exist within a given country -- as I'm certain that every country has at least a few terrorists -- but rather the attitude that the government of that country takes toward terrorists that operate out of its borders.
Capacity. You can store a lot more information on an RFID chip than you can on a bar code, I am pretty sure even more than on a mag strip. Even if not, I would wager that an RFID chip would hold up better to normal wear and tear than a mag strip.
With more information, more processes can be automated, speeding up processing, and decreasing human error.
The effect that outsourcing is having on India is indeed widening the socio-economic gap over there, but do you know who is coming out on top? All the Indian "sweat shop" laborers whom you seem to think are being taken advantage of.
The whole firewall concept is intriguing. Because of the difference in nature between email and phone calls, I think that the challenge-response idea would actually work well here. You could set up a while list of "allowed" numbers, and if someone who is not on the list calls they could have to answer a question about you to get through. Or, if that wouldn't work for you, you could have some sort of message that says "By pressing 1 to connect this call, you are affirming, under penalty of law, that this is not a sales call". May not be worth trying to enforce, but it could scare a good number of telemarketers away. Or even better yet, make them do a math problem. Your average, low paid, unmotivated telemarketer probably wouldn't take the time to do that. Also would help prevent calls from horny adolescents to your teenage daughter...
I don't know if this was intended as being funny or not, but it is really very plausible. Already many companies have faxes directed to employee email inboxes, and having voicemails show up in inbox (and having access to voicemails/emails via phone) is also becoming commonplace. Already Vonage (and others, I'd imagine, but I only have experience with Vonage) let you send voicemails to email, check it via a web-base interface or listen to them the 'old fashioned way', via the phone. It may sound like overkill, but its really pretty handy to have all communications available in one place. This could very well be something they are considering.
Did you read the article? This was addressed explicity. And I quote (emphasis mine):
When software companies first started, it was easy. They had a product that they made. They wanted to license it to someone else to use, so they drew up an agreement, and said "sign on the dotted line." Those were the early EULAs and they were no doubt enforceable. But then software companies wanted to make its product easy to buy, so they threw it in a shiny box and popped it on a shelf. They certainly couldn't ask the clerk behind the counter to execute contracts for them, so they simply tucked it inside the shrink wrap and included "acceptance language" stating "by opening this box, you agree to these terms."
Wow, now wait a minute here?!? There is something messed up with the timing of the whole thing. It doesn't jive with standard contract formation process. So, I pay the fee, get the thing that I paid for home, open the box, and accept the offer before I see it? Hmm. Well that didn't make much sense, and judges weren't really familiar with how this whole thing worked, so cases came down that said these types of agreements, shrink-wrap "EULAs," are not enforceable. They aren't enforceable because they do not meet the elements of a contract.
But wait again! Some smart guy decides "this is great" and he goes and buys a piece of software that contains something like a telephone directory of the entire United States. He rips the contents off the CD and makes his own CD that does the same thing, and competes with the original company. The original company says "we will see about that" and the ProCD case is born. In that case the court determined that EULAs are enforceable because everyone knows what's in them, and everyone reasonably should expect to be bound by certain terms and conditions. Later cases came out, however that said EULAs are a special kind of contract that comes with certain restrictions. Companies that use EULAs must make sure they are "reasonable." There is a lot of case law defining what is reasonable. Some particularly hot topics are "choice of forum clauses," "indemnification provisions" and "liquidated damages provisions." All of these fall into the "it depends category." So, if you call a lawyer right now and say, are EULAs enforceable, he will likely get into the above and his final answer would be "it depends, but in some cases the only way to tell is to go to court."
The gist of this seems to be, that if the EULA contains standard legal mumbo it is enforceable, but if they try to sneak something out of the ordinary in there, they are not necessarily going to get away with it, if challenged in court.
Actually, when you view the map, it displays exactly where its getting its information from. Whether it pays for it or not is still to be determined.
In regards to traffic cameras being a waste of money, perhaps. But even if they do not currently have any ways to reduce traffic, a simple easy way of knowing where traffic is bad and being able to redirect accordingly should be of some help. Additionally, when the technology is developed to dynamically, intellegently alter traffic patterns, then the infrastructure will be in place to make it possible.
They currently have a very similar product on the market called Eclipse. Sounds like basically the same idea, except no battery, you 'light' a heating element at the end which in turn draws hot air over the tobacco, releasing the nicotine, but not much of the tar.
While I would agree that it certainly is not Google's fault, I wouldn't agree that the data is out in the open, or that other users could have access to it.
Take for example AIM conversations, other users on a shared machine even on the same account could never see the contents of those conversations. Likewise, on a multi account machine, users could not see the contents of other users' email, or access their browser caches (assuming proper permissions).
So the desktop tool DOES allow users access to things they wouldn't have had access before, and easy 'accidental' access at that.
However, that being said, Google states very clearly that this is not yet intended to be used on multi-user machines. If you have a public multi user machine, you shouldn't allow it to be used on your computer, simple as that.
I like the black of the current game systems, they blend into the rest of the entertainment center as is.
Except that most home theater equipment seems to be coming out in silver these days. Walk around Circuit City and you wont find hardly any black components anymore.
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has also recently implented a Citrix thin client system through their entire system. As a former employee, I can tell you I was not impressed. Granted, I was not in the IT department, so I cannot testify to the aptitude of the administrators, but the system, even over a gigabit network was always very slow. The only thing it really worked well for was our terminal based catalog and circulation system. Office apps were often very laggy, and web pages, especially "rich" web pages would quite frequently cause Internet Explorer to die in such a way that it could not be closed and would let no other instances be opened. Very irritating.
To their benefit, however, the system seemed much more responsive when I was at the main location, so it is possible that this was a networking issue. However, with fiber running to every branch, I'm not sure where the bottleneck was.
That's quite the debate in the library system right now. As a publicly funded institution, should we provide what they people say they want, or what we think they should want. In either case, my point was not that the library shouldn't carry these items, but that it would not be a very effective means of distribution.
I work in a public library and my experience with the typical demographic of the library would lead me to believe that this would not be a big hit. Many of the patrons visit the library simply to use the internet, most of these people do not have a computer at home. Another large percentage are older folks, who simply want to read their mysteries. We do carry a moderately sized selection of (mostly educational) software, however that circulates very poorly.
Perhaps this could be successful in a smaller library with a more technically aware demographic, however in your average public library, I don't think it would see much success.
I will certainly concede that the situations are not identical. But allow me to respond.
I think some ajustment to your groups is needed. I see it more like so: a) people who don't buy CDs (that is, before the MP3 revolution)
*While they don't buy CDs, I also do not think that they download very much music
b) people who want to get music that they CANT buy
*While very vocal, I belive this group is quite small
c) people who want to 'try before they buy'
*A decent sized group. However I would imagine that it is not uncommon for them to end up NOT buying the CD for whatever reason, where they most likely would have before.
d) people who used to buy CDs but now don't because they download everything they want.
*Also a rather large group, you'll often find them clustered around high speed internet connections. This is the group that is causing the loss of revenue.
The big difference between these two situations lies not in the end result, but in the path taken to get there. While ripping a CD (ie obtaining the information) is perfectly leagal (for now), taking the private documents was not. However the difference ends there. It was illegal to distribute those ill-gotten documents. But it is also illegal to distribute music that you are not authorized to distribute.
Futhermore, the number of people who will 'trade' MP3s is very high, due to the ease of use and the relative anonimity provided in doing so. Not so many people will build or even buy a pirated Satelite tv system.
I certainly don't know the numbers, nor do I think anyone does, but I would wager that more revenue is lost due to MP3 sharing than to theft of Satelite television.
I find it interesting that nearly every is coming out against this guy. While I whole heartedly agree that what he did was wrong, and that he should be punished, there seems to be a bit of a double standard.
Read any article on the RIAA cracking down on P2P services and you will get a much more mixed set of opinions.
Is this really that different from downloading music for which you have not paid? True, he 'stole' trade secrets, while MP3 are a product. However, either way, the issue is with the loss of income from the company.
Just something to consider...
(on a side note, I include myself in the 'double standard' group)
Google doesn't have much of an option. If they do not follow up on this voratiously, they will most likely loose the copyright on their name. They may be making themselves look like asses, but that is the price that have to pay.
Your analogy is over simplified. There are many more factors at play here.
While MS may have external funding, so does Sony, quite a big in fact. Add to that the fact that Sony isn't taking a loss on its console, and you realize that MS doesn't have quite the upper hand that it once seemed.
Additionally, MS is trying to break into a market with extremely high barriers to entry. The cost of development, marketing, etc are monumental. It would be nearly impossible for a company that didn't have another income source to do this.
Just because MS can take a loss for a while, doesn't mean it's bulletproof. No company, not even MS can take 500M dollar losses year after year. If MS's product totally flopped, they wouldn't have unlimited tries to get it right. Don't misunderstand, MS is taking a risk here, if not a company threatening one.
There is a big difference here. Standard oil was using their monopolistic powers to drive competitors out of business by charging below what they could possibly produce at.
Microsoft is merely taking a loss to produce a product at an <i>equal</i> rate. The only way they would be driving competitors out of business is if their product is truly superior.
Microsoft may be evil, but they are not stupid. They know that if they want to Passport to be big and catch on that they cannot be the sole propriators of it. They have a bad enough name in security already.
They also realize that a LOT of webservers are not windows boxes. So they port it to the *nixes. This is the only way that it has a chance of succeding.
How do we know? Do we know what the bombardier beetle existed as before it gained its extra organ? Do we have any examples of a different species of bombardier beetle without this particular organ? No. So truth be told we have not proof that it has defied belief or evolutionary theory.
True, but consider the benefits. Hack a satelite reciever and you can get however many hundreds of premium channels for free. Hack an Xbox and what can you do? Well right now, not much. Run linux? Well as nice as that is, the general populous (the ones who like to get free pr0n over satelite tv) could care less.
Unless/until you can get some tangible, widely desired benefit, you aren't going to have the same audience...
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That being said, I would agree that the blanket 200,000 for one copy seems extreme, but even this could vary by situation.
Clearly it is time for a bit of an overhaul of the legal code in this area.
The issue is not how many (purported) terrorist exist within a given country -- as I'm certain that every country has at least a few terrorists -- but rather the attitude that the government of that country takes toward terrorists that operate out of its borders.
Capacity. You can store a lot more information on an RFID chip than you can on a bar code, I am pretty sure even more than on a mag strip. Even if not, I would wager that an RFID chip would hold up better to normal wear and tear than a mag strip.
With more information, more processes can be automated, speeding up processing, and decreasing human error.
The effect that outsourcing is having on India is indeed widening the socio-economic gap over there, but do you know who is coming out on top? All the Indian "sweat shop" laborers whom you seem to think are being taken advantage of.
The whole firewall concept is intriguing. Because of the difference in nature between email and phone calls, I think that the challenge-response idea would actually work well here. You could set up a while list of "allowed" numbers, and if someone who is not on the list calls they could have to answer a question about you to get through. Or, if that wouldn't work for you, you could have some sort of message that says "By pressing 1 to connect this call, you are affirming, under penalty of law, that this is not a sales call". May not be worth trying to enforce, but it could scare a good number of telemarketers away. Or even better yet, make them do a math problem. Your average, low paid, unmotivated telemarketer probably wouldn't take the time to do that. Also would help prevent calls from horny adolescents to your teenage daughter...
I don't know if this was intended as being funny or not, but it is really very plausible. Already many companies have faxes directed to employee email inboxes, and having voicemails show up in inbox (and having access to voicemails/emails via phone) is also becoming commonplace. Already Vonage (and others, I'd imagine, but I only have experience with Vonage) let you send voicemails to email, check it via a web-base interface or listen to them the 'old fashioned way', via the phone. It may sound like overkill, but its really pretty handy to have all communications available in one place. This could very well be something they are considering.
Actually, when you view the map, it displays exactly where its getting its information from. Whether it pays for it or not is still to be determined.
In regards to traffic cameras being a waste of money, perhaps. But even if they do not currently have any ways to reduce traffic, a simple easy way of knowing where traffic is bad and being able to redirect accordingly should be of some help. Additionally, when the technology is developed to dynamically, intellegently alter traffic patterns, then the infrastructure will be in place to make it possible.
They currently have a very similar product on the market called Eclipse. Sounds like basically the same idea, except no battery, you 'light' a heating element at the end which in turn draws hot air over the tobacco, releasing the nicotine, but not much of the tar.
While I would agree that it certainly is not Google's fault, I wouldn't agree that the data is out in the open, or that other users could have access to it.
Take for example AIM conversations, other users on a shared machine even on the same account could never see the contents of those conversations. Likewise, on a multi account machine, users could not see the contents of other users' email, or access their browser caches (assuming proper permissions).
So the desktop tool DOES allow users access to things they wouldn't have had access before, and easy 'accidental' access at that.
However, that being said, Google states very clearly that this is not yet intended to be used on multi-user machines. If you have a public multi user machine, you shouldn't allow it to be used on your computer, simple as that.
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has also recently implented a Citrix thin client system through their entire system. As a former employee, I can tell you I was not impressed. Granted, I was not in the IT department, so I cannot testify to the aptitude of the administrators, but the system, even over a gigabit network was always very slow. The only thing it really worked well for was our terminal based catalog and circulation system. Office apps were often very laggy, and web pages, especially "rich" web pages would quite frequently cause Internet Explorer to die in such a way that it could not be closed and would let no other instances be opened. Very irritating.
To their benefit, however, the system seemed much more responsive when I was at the main location, so it is possible that this was a networking issue. However, with fiber running to every branch, I'm not sure where the bottleneck was.
These are just my observations, hope they help.
That's quite the debate in the library system right now. As a publicly funded institution, should we provide what they people say they want, or what we think they should want. In either case, my point was not that the library shouldn't carry these items, but that it would not be a very effective means of distribution.
I work in a public library and my experience with the typical demographic of the library would lead me to believe that this would not be a big hit. Many of the patrons visit the library simply to use the internet, most of these people do not have a computer at home. Another large percentage are older folks, who simply want to read their mysteries. We do carry a moderately sized selection of (mostly educational) software, however that circulates very poorly.
Perhaps this could be successful in a smaller library with a more technically aware demographic, however in your average public library, I don't think it would see much success.
I will certainly concede that the situations are not identical. But allow me to respond.
I think some ajustment to your groups is needed. I see it more like so:
a) people who don't buy CDs (that is, before the MP3 revolution)
*While they don't buy CDs, I also do not think that they download very much music
b) people who want to get music that they CANT buy
*While very vocal, I belive this group is quite small
c) people who want to 'try before they buy'
*A decent sized group. However I would imagine that it is not uncommon for them to end up NOT buying the CD for whatever reason, where they most likely would have before.
d) people who used to buy CDs but now don't because they download everything they want.
*Also a rather large group, you'll often find them clustered around high speed internet connections. This is the group that is causing the loss of revenue.
The big difference between these two situations lies not in the end result, but in the path taken to get there. While ripping a CD (ie obtaining the information) is perfectly leagal (for now), taking the private documents was not. However the difference ends there. It was illegal to distribute those ill-gotten documents. But it is also illegal to distribute music that you are not authorized to distribute.
Futhermore, the number of people who will 'trade' MP3s is very high, due to the ease of use and the relative anonimity provided in doing so. Not so many people will build or even buy a pirated Satelite tv system.
I certainly don't know the numbers, nor do I think anyone does, but I would wager that more revenue is lost due to MP3 sharing than to theft of Satelite television.
I find it interesting that nearly every is coming out against this guy. While I whole heartedly agree that what he did was wrong, and that he should be punished, there seems to be a bit of a double standard.
Read any article on the RIAA cracking down on P2P services and you will get a much more mixed set of opinions.
Is this really that different from downloading music for which you have not paid? True, he 'stole' trade secrets, while MP3 are a product. However, either way, the issue is with the loss of income from the company.
Just something to consider...
(on a side note, I include myself in the 'double standard' group)
Google doesn't have much of an option. If they do not follow up on this voratiously, they will most likely loose the copyright on their name. They may be making themselves look like asses, but that is the price that have to pay.
I agree. However they could use this to animate the mouths of CG characters... Might look halfway decent then.
While MS may have external funding, so does Sony, quite a big in fact. Add to that the fact that Sony isn't taking a loss on its console, and you realize that MS doesn't have quite the upper hand that it once seemed.
Additionally, MS is trying to break into a market with extremely high barriers to entry. The cost of development, marketing, etc are monumental. It would be nearly impossible for a company that didn't have another income source to do this.
Just because MS can take a loss for a while, doesn't mean it's bulletproof. No company, not even MS can take 500M dollar losses year after year. If MS's product totally flopped, they wouldn't have unlimited tries to get it right. Don't misunderstand, MS is taking a risk here, if not a company threatening one.
There is a big difference here. Standard oil was using their monopolistic powers to drive competitors out of business by charging below what they could possibly produce at.
Microsoft is merely taking a loss to produce a product at an <i>equal</i> rate. The only way they would be driving competitors out of business is if their product is truly superior.
And thereby defeating the entire purpose of typing it in the first place: so that people can actually read it...
Microsoft may be evil, but they are not stupid. They know that if they want to Passport to be big and catch on that they cannot be the sole propriators of it. They have a bad enough name in security already.
They also realize that a LOT of webservers are not windows boxes. So they port it to the *nixes. This is the only way that it has a chance of succeding.
Plus, many people see *nix and think "Secure"...
How do we know? Do we know what the bombardier beetle existed as before it gained its extra organ? Do we have any examples of a different species of bombardier beetle without this particular organ? No. So truth be told we have not proof that it has defied belief or evolutionary theory.
True, but consider the benefits. Hack a satelite reciever and you can get however many hundreds of premium channels for free. Hack an Xbox and what can you do? Well right now, not much. Run linux? Well as nice as that is, the general populous (the ones who like to get free pr0n over satelite tv) could care less.
Unless/until you can get some tangible, widely desired benefit, you aren't going to have the same audience...