I won't I'm on jury duty and can't use the internet.
You needed to raise this issue with the judge. I'm sure* an exception should have been carved out for you to continue to do your job in the evening.
* IANAL, or ever was in the same situation, but judges tend to be fairly reasonable to important issues when it's totally discresionary on their part.
Well in my situation, the response from the Judge was that is an economic situation and economic situations are specifically covered by the law. Here in Texas Judges are not allowed to make any exceptions for economic situations. Get called for jury duty, which will impact your attendance leading to you being fired. Tough. It is against the law to fire or punish someone for being called for jury duty. However, your only recourse is to sue your company and it is d*mn hard to prove that they fired you for being on a jury.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to agree to being sentenced to weeks of solitary confinement without having myself been accused of a crime. Even prisoners get to receive visitors and make phone calls.
Watch out, refusing to serve jury duty is punishable by jail time...
No jury would convict on that!
In Texas, it is defined as contempt of court and only requires the judge to sentence you.. no trial involved.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to agree to being sentenced to weeks of solitary confinement without having myself been accused of a crime. Even prisoners get to receive visitors and make phone calls.
Watch out, refusing to serve jury duty is punishable by jail time, which is suspect isn't as much fun as serving on a jury:-)
Best way to avoid being selected for a jury is to serve on one that convicts someone and selects a harsh sentence. If you achieve this you will forever be on the defense attorney's free strike list.
The issue is people using the internet to look up information that they have been told they can't use when deliberating.
Things like the defendants personal wealth, criminal record, information on "evidence" that has been ruled inadmissible or just plain trying to stir up public opinion in an effort to sway the court.
On the flip side some defendants have tried harassing jurors via their personal electronics or having some one physically show up at a jurors residence or place of work.
However, given that most juries are not sequestered, this like all the other instructions depend on honesty of the juror and the people they associate with.
Having been on a non-sequestered jury for a murder trail, it is a pain in the butt to go home after a day in the jury box and not be able to watch the evening news, read the days newspaper,just surf the internet or discuss with your significant other (all things banned by the judge in his instructions).
How was your day?
Jury duty all day.
What type of case?
Can't tell you.
How long will it last?
Can't tell you?
I'm going to bed, will you watch the news and tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow?
Sorry, I can't watch the news.
Well, then look it up on the internet.
Sorry, I'm not allowed to use the internet.
Then how are you going to stay caught up at work?
I won't I'm on jury duty and can't use the internet.
Except that, if this relies on customers making a decision, it's dead.
Modern computers support IPv6. Modern consumer-level routers don't necessarily (mine doesn't), so the connectivity provider needs to provide and/or recommend equipment that does. Provide connection instructions that start up both IPv4 and IPv6. Leave the customer out of it, since 99% of customers don't know what IP is in the first place.
If the customer really, really wants to know what is the advantage for him.. the simple answer is continued access to the internet.
The difference is that a Kindle can't, yet, be read by a scanner. Most of the blind folks I've met in the last 5 years have a personal, hand held scanner for reading books that are not yet available in braille or for documents handed out in class.
I think most people would blame Carly Fiorina. She effectively took HP out of the hands of the engineers who made the company great, and put it squarely into the hands the shareholders who were concerned only with short-term stock price during the dotcom bubble. She spurred a massive shift in culture that killed off the innovation that they were famous for, obliterated morale throughout the company, and generally made it an undesirable place to work. The Compaq acquisition was just one aspect of her failure.
sarcasm on
Isn't that the function of Great CEOs... first drive the company into the ground will getting multi-million dollar bonus for cost reductions and stock value, then sell it to some hedge fund at a profit of 2 or 3x the share price for all share holders, which always includes the hedge fund paying the execs to exercise their options on 10s of millions of shares, thus increasing, yet again, shareholder value. Ah..the bright side of capitalism
sarcasm off
Seriously, so many at the Executive level haven't got a clue about what their company does and to make up for it simply rely on what the bean counters are telling them.
Does this mean I can get out of my 2 year contract then? This is blatant false advertising and breach of contract. I did not get an iPhone to have stone-age metered internet access.
Highly unlikely as there is probably some astrisk or footnote stating that unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited and that it is not their fault if you failed to have your attorney approve the agreement before you signed it.
And by the way the ToS, specifically states that AT&T can change the cost of the unlimited-pda-smartphone-iphone data plans at will.
They won't want any less money than the get now so people with data plans who use 100MB or something small like that will still pay the bend-over-and-take-it price they do now. Then people who use the 5GB that is allowed on the data plans will have to pay even more. Somehow I doubt AT&T is losing money charging the average iPhone user $100 USD per month.
Interconnect fees for all the data being brought into the AT&T network, all the extra support calls and emails do to the sucky level of service and law suites against competitors with truthful ads that paint an accurately bad picture of the AT&T 3G service areas, as well as blatantly lying in their own counter commercials. Oh, and don't forget the fee they have to pay to Apple every month.
The rate AT&T is spending money, they probably need the average charge to be more like $200 per month.
If taxes have to be raised, then raise the income taxes or property taxes. Sales taxes are a pain to collect, and they have a dampening effect on retail businesses. Also, they are skewed against the poor, since poorer people typically must spend a higher percentage of their income on retail goods.
Which is why that lots of jurisdictions exempt food and drug purchases from sales taxes. Which is why lots of states don't allow anyone but the state to charge a sales tax on vehical purchases or no sales taxes at all on property sales.
I imagine it would be, trivial, for Amazon to say "It's nice you want this $25 book for $25, but your CC's billing address is in and in order to complete this purchase we must collect $X to comply with your states tax laws."
Speaking as someone who manages a rather small E-Commerce site (I'm a website programmer, developer and designer for my manufacturing company who has limited direct sales), it's not that Amazon can't "collect" the tax, it's that there's no reasonable way for them to KNOW what to collect.
Quite right the myriad of rules for who gets taxed what amount on the type of item is the question.
You see, States have a sales tax. Counties within a state may-or-may-not have a sales tax. Individual CITIES may have additional sales tax. On top of that, each state, county and city have different and additional rates. You can't assume Wisconsin(5%) has the same state sales tax as Washington (6.5%). And even then, the areas around Milwaukee, WI have a "Stadium Tax" of an additional.5% or something.
Now, how do you determine if someone's buying from a region with an additional sales tax? Zip code? Think again. Zip codes and span multiple cities and counties. It's not cut and dry. And who has all this information of tax codes for each state, county and region? No one.
Well, in the last five states I've lived in there is a state office, in Texas the comptroller's office, which provides a comprehensive list of the taxing jurisdictions and the current rates being charged. Additionally, you can get the complete rules for taxation (what gets sales tax and what doesn't) as well.
They're also changing all the time. In the the handful of states we're required to take sales tax, I've changed some of them multiple times this past year, particularly as some states raise their taxes to cover much of their deficit spending. Because, "god forbid", some governments learn who to spend within their means.
But besides the point of how to you know what to charge someone accurately based on some inaccurate information that doesn't have a standardized database. How about the fact that some product groups are taxed more than others. Cigarettes and Alcohol are a common taxed more, known as the "sin" tax. So, not only are you telling e-tailors they have to come up with a way to identifying every product's tax rate in every state, county and city in the United States, but they have to determine if the shipping address given belongs in a given area.
And beyond that, you have legal questions in play dealing with inter-state commerce. Remember, the US is really a collection of governments whose Federal government is suppose to have the limited intervention with the states. "State's Rights" and all that. It makes the legality of tax collection a more than sticky subject, to say the least.
Sorry but you are talking about interstate commerce which is explicitly the domain of the Federal Government and as such has been argued multiple times as a defense on paying local sales taxes on the out of state purchases. It is also why the high tax states have enacted "use taxes" so as not run afoul of the Feds by levying a sales tax on interstate commerce
Suffice it to say, it's not as simple as "must collect $X".
But, of course, everyone's a 'know-it-all' and think any government, company or organization can just wave some magic wand and make things happen. The US tax code is a mess. Tax laws are a mess. It's gotten to the point that the average US citizen cannot do their own taxes by their own accord and need special software or specialists to do it for them.
Yes, it's DOES put an unfair burden on companies to require them to collect taxes across states. More so the small mom-and-pop shops that have a template e-commerce site, allowing them to sell and profit and compete against
If I go to California to buy something, I have to pay California's taxes and not my own. If I pay someone to go to California to buy something for me, I'd have to pay California's taxes and no my own. But for some bizarre reason, when I pay FedEx to ship it to me, suddenly I do not have to pay California's tax but I have to pay my state's use tax.
We have this little thing about being taxed without representation....which is why you pay your home states's sales tax rate.
Given all the governments in this country that have sales tax jurisdiction and the myriad of rules... for example, an orange is typically not taxed in jurisdictions that don't tax food, but 50/50 if a bottle of orange juice is taxed or not taxed. In Texas, candy bars are taxed, but chocolate chips are not... the permutations are almost infinite. The two solutions are getting everyone to agree to the same rules (fat chance) or instituting a flat internet only tax (which the low tax rate states will love as the rate would be higher than theres, and the high tax rate states would hate because it would be lower).
By claiming sales-tax immunity, says Mazerov, Amazon has enjoyed an unfair 5%-10% price advantage over local retailers, while also depriving states and localities of hundreds of millions of dollars of legally due revenue each year."
Every time I check Amazon the total price is more expensive than if I drove to the local vendor, purchased and paid the sales tax. Typically, the reason is the ridiculously high shipping charges. Typically, in excess of 10% of the purchase price. Example, $22 oven part.. can be had for between $8 and $15 in shipping and handling costs, making it cost from $30 to $37 versus my local cost of $23.82.
As long as there is a shipping and handling charge, and companies can in force a floor price on their goods, Amazon will never be cheaper.
Meanwhile, cable companies want to charge $150/month for basically the *exact* *same* *service*. They don't create the content, they just provide the tube. AFAIK, 0% of the money we pay to the cable company goes to the creators of the shows we watch. It all just goes to the cable company to pay for the tube. Their only real cost is maintenance on existing coax. They charge me to rent the cable box equipment. And the content all has advertising to pay the actual creators.
Well, you need to do some more research. Cable companies have to pay a fee per user to each of the stations the carry, plus additional restrictions and requirements. Cable company wants to carry ESPN, then they pay the fee and have to carry ESPN2 and ESPN Classic as well. Want Tune Disney, you have to carry the Disney Channel on a non-subscription tier. Want the local stations, pray the station wants must carry status as opposed to being paid a fee per subscriber.
So now you have a Cable company charging $150 a month paying $60 - $90 for broadcast rights, $15 for power, and the rest for overhead and profit.
And no I don't work for and have never worked for a Cable company, this information was gleam from a combination proxy materials, SEC filings and conversations with mgmt at Suddenlink .
I see lots of people deciding they don't need a landline any more. Well, for a single person or in the case where everyone in the house has a cell phone, that can work. It works better when your wireless carrier has a WiFi component to their plan - although since they lose money by the fistful on these I would expect either the carrier or the plan to disappear.
Loose money ?!? You've got to be kidding! They make money by the fist full with almost no over head on their end. The customer either pays extra for a wifi enabled phone and/or a home base station (the base stations run $100-$150) plus the customer pays another $15-$30 a month to use the bloody thing. If the customer is using the base station, then all the traffic goes over the network providers network.. not the phone company network. In the long run, the wifi system actually reduce the amount of traffic of the phone network.
With violating a treaty.. depending on the provision you broke.. your internet might just stop working, no one would tell you why, and no other ISP would accept you as a client. If there was a monetary penalty, you would get a bill from a lawyer for the penalty + legal fees, if you refused to pay they would simply take you to court to confiscate your property or attach your wages until the penalty, fees and interest were paid off.
Because you would be violating a ratified treaty, you would have no legal recourse and thus could not defend yourself. If the treaty is later deemed to be a "Bad" treaty, it would probably take 10-20 years of new negotiations to "fix" or replace it.
Are people (the decision makers) taking this seriously? It reads like something from The Onion...
Even if agreed upon as a treaty, will it hold up in any courts?
Above all, will it even work? So instead of a handful of very popular torrent sites (and video, picture, file, etc sharing) we get millions of small secret for-friends-only sites.... or we go back to CD/DVD trading
Yes, once it is ratified it holds authority above the local courts and constitutions. The US Supreme Court would NOT have standing to review any of the provisions of the treaty. Same for any country that approves the treaty. As such, the content holders will go after anyone that violates any of the provisions and the accused will have ZERO recourse, because there is NOT a single court in the world that has standing to challenge an approved treaty
at least here. I don't know in the US, but here in Brazil (and I guess in most countries) it is simply impossible to have a "law" or treaty be secret and have any legal value. Of course, given enough money, these laws might be approved anyway, public scrutiny and all, and that is the sad part.
Well, the really scary part is that treaties via treaty supersede all national laws... so once approved they are almost impossible to change or nullify
I think it's kind of interesting how the economics of this work. The supply of scientists and engineers is steady, but it seems like there are fewer who are good in the market. What this means is that if you are good and in the field, you are in extremely high demand and thus salaries can be lucrative for you. So, the field may only attract those who have a genuine interest and more likely to innovate.
Then again, money is a strong factor and may siphon away people. I work in the embedded software field, and I get paid fairly well for someone only a couple of years out of college. However, I often think how nice it would be nice to be making well into 7 figures and have a nice home and possibly a Lamborghini (I love cars) after going into lawschool instead of "just" 6 figures and trying to cobble together a 20% down payment for a decent home in Northern California.
What it actually means is, if you are a good scientist or engineer.. then count on being outsourced in 10 years or so, when you pay lets you live comfortably. Because at that point the HIGHLY paid executives will decide that they are not paid well enough and to improve the bottom line your job will be sent to a BRIC country.. same work at one-tenth the cost...
Which is the main reason that more students are opting out of science and engineering as life long employment no longer exists, and 10 years at a single company is almost unheard of these days.
Agreed. The more security paranoid the institution is the longer it takes to get in and out. Thus, the longer one's day becomes.
When I started working in secured areas, it was 30 seconds to get in and out.. now some places I go it is 30-45 minutes each way. Utterly, ridiculous and a complete waste of my time, but unfortunately, is the way the security standards are going.
The back of my myTouch is replacable. If someone would just sell a back plate without the camera window, the problem should be solved.
Probably not, as you pointed out the back is removable. Thus, there is nothing stopping you from walking in and removing the back, taking a picture or series of pictures and then putting the cover back on.
And yes, I've been through sites where the guard actually had internet access and would look up your specific model of phone before allowing passage.
Sounds like security theater to me. Cameras are small. Unless they're doing strip searches, it would be relatively easy for an attacker to smuggle a camera in.
Not when you are having to go through metal detectors and electronics detectors to get into the space.
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Well in my situation, the response from the Judge was that is an economic situation and economic situations are specifically covered by the law. Here in Texas Judges are not allowed to make any exceptions for economic situations. Get called for jury duty, which will impact your attendance leading to you being fired. Tough. It is against the law to fire or punish someone for being called for jury duty. However, your only recourse is to sue your company and it is d*mn hard to prove that they fired you for being on a jury.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to agree to being sentenced to weeks of solitary confinement without having myself been accused of a crime. Even prisoners get to receive visitors and make phone calls.
Watch out, refusing to serve jury duty is punishable by jail time ...
No jury would convict on that!
In Texas, it is defined as contempt of court and only requires the judge to sentence you.. no trial involved.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to agree to being sentenced to weeks of solitary confinement without having myself been accused of a crime. Even prisoners get to receive visitors and make phone calls.
Watch out, refusing to serve jury duty is punishable by jail time, which is suspect isn't as much fun as serving on a jury :-)
Best way to avoid being selected for a jury is to serve on one that convicts someone and selects a harsh sentence. If you achieve this you will forever be on the defense attorney's free strike list.
The issue is people using the internet to look up information that they have been told they can't use when deliberating.
Things like the defendants personal wealth, criminal record, information on "evidence" that has been ruled inadmissible or just plain trying to stir up public opinion in an effort to sway the court.
On the flip side some defendants have tried harassing jurors via their personal electronics or having some one physically show up at a jurors residence or place of work.
However, given that most juries are not sequestered, this like all the other instructions depend on honesty of the juror and the people they associate with.
Having been on a non-sequestered jury for a murder trail, it is a pain in the butt to go home after a day in the jury box and not be able to watch the evening news, read the days newspaper,just surf the internet or discuss with your significant other (all things banned by the judge in his instructions).
How was your day?
Jury duty all day.
What type of case?
Can't tell you.
How long will it last?
Can't tell you?
I'm going to bed, will you watch the news and tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow?
Sorry, I can't watch the news.
Well, then look it up on the internet.
Sorry, I'm not allowed to use the internet.
Then how are you going to stay caught up at work?
I won't I'm on jury duty and can't use the internet.
and on and on and on
Except that, if this relies on customers making a decision, it's dead.
Modern computers support IPv6. Modern consumer-level routers don't necessarily (mine doesn't), so the connectivity provider needs to provide and/or recommend equipment that does. Provide connection instructions that start up both IPv4 and IPv6. Leave the customer out of it, since 99% of customers don't know what IP is in the first place.
If the customer really, really wants to know what is the advantage for him.. the simple answer is continued access to the internet.
So, what happens if there is a set of law suits with a circular dependency and ALL plaintiffs win? Does that mean we lose?
The only winners in this case will be the lawyers....
most professors can't write on the board, overhead or on the power point without talking to the class or themselves.
The difference is that a Kindle can't, yet, be read by a scanner. Most of the blind folks I've met in the last 5 years have a personal, hand held scanner for reading books that are not yet available in braille or for documents handed out in class.
I think most people would blame Carly Fiorina. She effectively took HP out of the hands of the engineers who made the company great, and put it squarely into the hands the shareholders who were concerned only with short-term stock price during the dotcom bubble. She spurred a massive shift in culture that killed off the innovation that they were famous for, obliterated morale throughout the company, and generally made it an undesirable place to work. The Compaq acquisition was just one aspect of her failure.
sarcasm on
Isn't that the function of Great CEOs... first drive the company into the ground will getting multi-million dollar bonus for cost reductions and stock value, then sell it to some hedge fund at a profit of 2 or 3x the share price for all share holders, which always includes the hedge fund paying the execs to exercise their options on 10s of millions of shares, thus increasing, yet again, shareholder value. Ah..the bright side of capitalism
sarcasm off
Seriously, so many at the Executive level haven't got a clue about what their company does and to make up for it simply rely on what the bean counters are telling them.
Does this mean I can get out of my 2 year contract then? This is blatant false advertising and breach of contract. I did not get an iPhone to have stone-age metered internet access.
Highly unlikely as there is probably some astrisk or footnote stating that unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited and that it is not their fault if you failed to have your attorney approve the agreement before you signed it.
And by the way the ToS, specifically states that AT&T can change the cost of the unlimited-pda-smartphone-iphone data plans at will.
They won't want any less money than the get now so people with data plans who use 100MB or something small like that will still pay the bend-over-and-take-it price they do now. Then people who use the 5GB that is allowed on the data plans will have to pay even more. Somehow I doubt AT&T is losing money charging the average iPhone user $100 USD per month.
Interconnect fees for all the data being brought into the AT&T network, all the extra support calls and emails do to the sucky level of service and law suites against competitors with truthful ads that paint an accurately bad picture of the AT&T 3G service areas, as well as blatantly lying in their own counter commercials. Oh, and don't forget the fee they have to pay to Apple every month.
The rate AT&T is spending money, they probably need the average charge to be more like $200 per month.
If taxes have to be raised, then raise the income taxes or property taxes. Sales taxes are a pain to collect, and they have a dampening effect on retail businesses. Also, they are skewed against the poor, since poorer people typically must spend a higher percentage of their income on retail goods.
Which is why that lots of jurisdictions exempt food and drug purchases from sales taxes. Which is why lots of states don't allow anyone but the state to charge a sales tax on vehical purchases or no sales taxes at all on property sales.
I imagine it would be, trivial, for Amazon to say "It's nice you want this $25 book for $25, but your CC's billing address is in and in order to complete this purchase we must collect $X to comply with your states tax laws."
Speaking as someone who manages a rather small E-Commerce site (I'm a website programmer, developer and designer for my manufacturing company who has limited direct sales), it's not that Amazon can't "collect" the tax, it's that there's no reasonable way for them to KNOW what to collect.
Quite right the myriad of rules for who gets taxed what amount on the type of item is the question.
You see, States have a sales tax. Counties within a state may-or-may-not have a sales tax. Individual CITIES may have additional sales tax. On top of that, each state, county and city have different and additional rates. You can't assume Wisconsin(5%) has the same state sales tax as Washington (6.5%). And even then, the areas around Milwaukee, WI have a "Stadium Tax" of an additional .5% or something.
Now, how do you determine if someone's buying from a region with an additional sales tax? Zip code? Think again. Zip codes and span multiple cities and counties. It's not cut and dry. And who has all this information of tax codes for each state, county and region? No one.
Well, in the last five states I've lived in there is a state office, in Texas the comptroller's office, which provides a comprehensive list of the taxing jurisdictions and the current rates being charged. Additionally, you can get the complete rules for taxation (what gets sales tax and what doesn't) as well.
They're also changing all the time. In the the handful of states we're required to take sales tax, I've changed some of them multiple times this past year, particularly as some states raise their taxes to cover much of their deficit spending. Because, "god forbid", some governments learn who to spend within their means.
But besides the point of how to you know what to charge someone accurately based on some inaccurate information that doesn't have a standardized database. How about the fact that some product groups are taxed more than others. Cigarettes and Alcohol are a common taxed more, known as the "sin" tax. So, not only are you telling e-tailors they have to come up with a way to identifying every product's tax rate in every state, county and city in the United States, but they have to determine if the shipping address given belongs in a given area.
And beyond that, you have legal questions in play dealing with inter-state commerce. Remember, the US is really a collection of governments whose Federal government is suppose to have the limited intervention with the states. "State's Rights" and all that. It makes the legality of tax collection a more than sticky subject, to say the least.
Sorry but you are talking about interstate commerce which is explicitly the domain of the Federal Government and as such has been argued multiple times as a defense on paying local sales taxes on the out of state purchases. It is also why the high tax states have enacted "use taxes" so as not run afoul of the Feds by levying a sales tax on interstate commerce
Suffice it to say, it's not as simple as " must collect $X".
But, of course, everyone's a 'know-it-all' and think any government, company or organization can just wave some magic wand and make things happen. The US tax code is a mess. Tax laws are a mess. It's gotten to the point that the average US citizen cannot do their own taxes by their own accord and need special software or specialists to do it for them.
Yes, it's DOES put an unfair burden on companies to require them to collect taxes across states. More so the small mom-and-pop shops that have a template e-commerce site, allowing them to sell and profit and compete against
We have this little thing about being taxed without representation....which is why you pay your home states's sales tax rate.
Given all the governments in this country that have sales tax jurisdiction and the myriad of rules ... for example, an orange is typically not taxed in jurisdictions that don't tax food, but 50/50 if a bottle of orange juice is taxed or not taxed. In Texas, candy bars are taxed, but chocolate chips are not... the permutations are almost infinite. The two solutions are getting everyone to agree to the same rules (fat chance) or instituting a flat internet only tax (which the low tax rate states will love as the rate would be higher than theres, and the high tax rate states would hate because it would be lower).
Every time I check Amazon the total price is more expensive than if I drove to the local vendor, purchased and paid the sales tax. Typically, the reason is the ridiculously high shipping charges. Typically, in excess of 10% of the purchase price. Example, $22 oven part.. can be had for between $8 and $15 in shipping and handling costs, making it cost from $30 to $37 versus my local cost of $23.82.
As long as there is a shipping and handling charge, and companies can in force a floor price on their goods, Amazon will never be cheaper.
I see lots of people deciding they don't need a landline any more. Well, for a single person or in the case where everyone in the house has a cell phone, that can work. It works better when your wireless carrier has a WiFi component to their plan - although since they lose money by the fistful on these I would expect either the carrier or the plan to disappear.
Loose money ?!? You've got to be kidding! They make money by the fist full with almost no over head on their end. The customer either pays extra for a wifi enabled phone and/or a home base station (the base stations run $100-$150) plus the customer pays another $15-$30 a month to use the bloody thing. If the customer is using the base station, then all the traffic goes over the network providers network.. not the phone company network. In the long run, the wifi system actually reduce the amount of traffic of the phone network.
With violating a treaty.. depending on the provision you broke.. your internet might just stop working, no one would tell you why, and no other ISP would accept you as a client. If there was a monetary penalty, you would get a bill from a lawyer for the penalty + legal fees, if you refused to pay they would simply take you to court to confiscate your property or attach your wages until the penalty, fees and interest were paid off.
Because you would be violating a ratified treaty, you would have no legal recourse and thus could not defend yourself. If the treaty is later deemed to be a "Bad" treaty, it would probably take 10-20 years of new negotiations to "fix" or replace it.
Are people (the decision makers) taking this seriously? It reads like something from The Onion...
Even if agreed upon as a treaty, will it hold up in any courts?
Above all, will it even work? So instead of a handful of very popular torrent sites (and video, picture, file, etc sharing) we get millions of small secret for-friends-only sites.... or we go back to CD/DVD trading
Yes, once it is ratified it holds authority above the local courts and constitutions. The US Supreme Court would NOT have standing to review any of the provisions of the treaty. Same for any country that approves the treaty. As such, the content holders will go after anyone that violates any of the provisions and the accused will have ZERO recourse, because there is NOT a single court in the world that has standing to challenge an approved treaty
at least here. I don't know in the US, but here in Brazil (and I guess in most countries) it is simply impossible to have a "law" or treaty be secret and have any legal value. Of course, given enough money, these laws might be approved anyway, public scrutiny and all, and that is the sad part.
Well, the really scary part is that treaties via treaty supersede all national laws... so once approved they are almost impossible to change or nullify
I think it's kind of interesting how the economics of this work. The supply of scientists and engineers is steady, but it seems like there are fewer who are good in the market. What this means is that if you are good and in the field, you are in extremely high demand and thus salaries can be lucrative for you. So, the field may only attract those who have a genuine interest and more likely to innovate.
Then again, money is a strong factor and may siphon away people. I work in the embedded software field, and I get paid fairly well for someone only a couple of years out of college. However, I often think how nice it would be nice to be making well into 7 figures and have a nice home and possibly a Lamborghini (I love cars) after going into lawschool instead of "just" 6 figures and trying to cobble together a 20% down payment for a decent home in Northern California.
What it actually means is, if you are a good scientist or engineer.. then count on being outsourced in 10 years or so, when you pay lets you live comfortably. Because at that point the HIGHLY paid executives will decide that they are not paid well enough and to improve the bottom line your job will be sent to a BRIC country .. same work at one-tenth the cost...
Which is the main reason that more students are opting out of science and engineering as life long employment no longer exists, and 10 years at a single company is almost unheard of these days.
Agreed. The more security paranoid the institution is the longer it takes to get in and out. Thus, the longer one's day becomes.
When I started working in secured areas, it was 30 seconds to get in and out.. now some places I go it is 30-45 minutes each way. Utterly, ridiculous and a complete waste of my time, but unfortunately, is the way the security standards are going.
The back of my myTouch is replacable. If someone would just sell a back plate without the camera window, the problem should be solved.
Probably not, as you pointed out the back is removable. Thus, there is nothing stopping you from walking in and removing the back, taking a picture or series of pictures and then putting the cover back on.
And yes, I've been through sites where the guard actually had internet access and would look up your specific model of phone before allowing passage.
Typically not, as the persons doing the security check aren't sufficiently technical to determine that the camera is non-functional.
Sounds like security theater to me. Cameras are small. Unless they're doing strip searches, it would be relatively easy for an attacker to smuggle a camera in.
Not when you are having to go through metal detectors and electronics detectors to get into the space.