This has been discussed here before, and as far as I know this has never been clearly established in USA nor in other jurisdictions (please correct me if I'm wrong here!)
Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 dictates what constitutes a common carrier. Short answer - AT&T the phone company is a common carrier. AT&T the ISP (different company altogether) is not. There's not much practical reason for an ISP to try to claim CC status nowadays - the protections of more recent legislation (the DMCA, for instance) give most of the protections of CC status to ISPs anyway, without placing upon them the duties that real CCs bear.
I personally think that we'd benefit from ISPs having true common carrier status, but at present they don't.
I don't believe any of this FUD about Novell owning Unix and SCO going down, and I won't until I hear about it directly from Laura DiDio. She's always right, isn't she?
This is a large part of the reason I enjoy reading the finance message boards on Yahoo. It's so much fun reading all the clueless blather from private shareholders that don't have the first idea how the company they own actually works, nor any inkling of the industry their company does business in. "The press release said so, so it must be true!"
If SCO had gone for the smaller companies first, it's possible that they might also have been able to get precedent laid down that would have helped them against IBM. Patent trolls work the same way - sue the small fry, get favorable judgements (or settlements), and use those as ammo against the big game.
Re:Check out their press room
on
SCO Loses
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· Score: 1
The thing I found most interesting about their site was the qualifications they wanted for the two "senior UI engineer" positions they had open (in India, incidentally):
"BS degree in computer science with at least 2 years of relevant experience, no more than 4 years experience." (emphasis mine)
The simple fact is, that SCO had no case (they probably knew that from the start, and hoped for an out-of-court settlement). And that has nothing to do with lawyers or the size of the companies involved.
I disagree. Had it been a small company instead of IBM, Novell, etc., SCO would almost certainly have driven them to a settlement in short order even with the steaming pile of crap they passed off as their case. Novell won this case because they had the money to fight it. IBM will win their case because they had the money to fight it. You or I would have had to capitulate almost from the start because we wouldn't have been able to afford to have someone sort through the thousands of pieces of paper involved in just supporting the initial motion to dismiss, much less a trial. It's taken two very large companies *three years* to win this case, after all.
This sounds good on the surface, but what happens when an individual sues a rich individual or big company that has tons of lawyers that can draw the case out long enough to force the plaintiff to settle or to abandon his case entirely? Every insurance case would be a crapshoot - if you win, great, but if you don't, hello bankruptcy court.
There may not be a bug per se in the code, but examination of the source will very clearly reveal the exact set of assumptions the machine uses in order to produce a reading, and those assumptions may very well invalidate the state's case.
"Welcome to obscurity, gentlemen. We hope you enjoy your stay. To ease your transition, we've assigned a personal guide for the both of you. Heidi, please call Mr. Fanning and let him know his group is here."
I do, because I'm one of the apparently really rare people that finds the economic aspect of the game the most interesting part. I'm only at lvl 35 right now, but I got the auction house bug at about lvl 27 or so and am now sitting on a *lot* of gold (for my level - about 300g) by means of the auction house and judicious use of the trade channel. When everyone else has the same gear, I can't make mad money on reselling the rarer items, and that makes my undead warlock sad. The more I make, the more outrageous the stuff becomes that I can buy and turn around for a tidy profit - it's kind of a rush dropping 50 gold on something and hoping I can actually flip it, and it scares the hell out of me when I do that and then see 10 of what I'm selling a few hours later for 20g less - it's like being Gordon Gekko but without the risk of losing real money, or spending time in real jail. It's also quite fun to corner the market on commodities like wool and control the prices with an iron fist for a day or so until people start advertising it on the trade channel to get out from under paying the ridiculous amount I'm asking. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
Like everyone else, I have to do the grind just to level up, but leveling is more of a means to an end for me now, rather than something to be pursued for its own sake.
It's all well and good for the airlines to try to be compassionate with people who are sensitive about their weight, but if their weight is oozing into seat-space I've paid for, then the airlines are being compassionate at my expense and not their own.
"You may not...disclose results of any program benchmark tests without our prior consent; or, - use any Oracle name, trademark or logo."
Now, let's look down a bit farther in the EULA...
"You may terminate this agreement by destroying all copies of the programs."
I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that once you ditch your (free) copy of Oracle you're not bound by the license terms anymore. You don't have the right to use the software anymore, but you still have the results of the tests you ran before getting rid of it, no?
I think it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of people that would be bringing a weapon on a flight would be in possession of a concealed carry permit, which effectively proves the holder is a law-abiding citizen with no substantial criminal past. The proportion of permit holders that lose them because of criminal behavior is vanishingly small as well.
What's your basis for assuming the worst of a group of people that are provably more responsible than even the police as regards following the law?
Do you really think that the one or two passengers who would have been packing would have stopped the hijackers? Especially if they'd started their takeover by spraying the brains of one stew accross first class and holding a gun to the head of another.
So you're arguing that ten dead passengers is worse than two hundred?
The fact is, armed passengers wouldn't have changed the dynamic.
Of course armed passengers can't make a difference, that's why we now put armed air marshals on flights. [rolls eyes] Having shot side by side with a couple of marshals at the range, I'll tell you right now you shouldn't put as much faith in the abilities of "the professionals" to save your ass as you seem to have.
I guess with a 20" barrel it'll be the Tactical? T3s are some decent guns, and I've heard that the Tacticals can get sub-half-MOA at 100 yards with the right ammo. I'm sure you'll have a great time with it.:-)
I'm really not sure how one can argue with a straight face that the situation on 9/11 could possibly have turned out worse had the passengers been armed.
I'm not sure I could give you one that's less than a meter, but Armalite's AR-50 is a nice bolt-action and the examples I've seen at the range average about 1/2 MOA at 300 yards (that's the longest rifle range we have), and I've read that they maintain that accuracy fairly well once you start getting into 1-2K yards. The LAR Grizzly is also quite accurate (they advertise a 4" group at 1K yards, or well under half-MOA accuracy) and are fairly short for a.50 at a little under four feet. The *most* accurate guns are going to be those hand-fitted from parts, but that's a fairly pricey proposition as there's a fair bit of trial and error involved.
Barrett's M82/M107 is definitely a nice rifle, but because it's a semi-auto there will be a limit on how accurate it will be just for the fact that the action has to have a tiny bit of slop for it to reliably feed. Additionally, you could almost buy two Armalites and a LAR (or three LARs and 250 or so rounds of ammo) for what one of the M82s cost.
What's the difference between burning someone's house down, versus causing an economy that causes a house to be foreclosed?
Don't forget that the foreclosure is also enforced at the point of a gun (or Taser, as the case may be), so it's ultimately the threat of violence that enforces law and order in general.
1829 meters (2K yards) is a long distance, but there are other.50 BMG rifles that can easily exceed that. Barrett makes *very* good guns, but there are plenty other.50 single-shot rifles that are more accurate (and less expensive).
Using GIMP does not deprive Adobe of the ability to sell you Photoshop. Using Photoshop without paying for it does.
The *only* thing that deprives Adobe of the ability to sell me Photoshop is my unwillingness to purchase it. *Why* I'm unwilling to buy it makes no difference as the outcome is the same from Adobe's perspective.
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This has been discussed here before, and as far as I know this has never been clearly established in USA nor in other jurisdictions (please correct me if I'm wrong here!)
Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 dictates what constitutes a common carrier. Short answer - AT&T the phone company is a common carrier. AT&T the ISP (different company altogether) is not. There's not much practical reason for an ISP to try to claim CC status nowadays - the protections of more recent legislation (the DMCA, for instance) give most of the protections of CC status to ISPs anyway, without placing upon them the duties that real CCs bear.
I personally think that we'd benefit from ISPs having true common carrier status, but at present they don't.
I don't believe any of this FUD about Novell owning Unix and SCO going down, and I won't until I hear about it directly from Laura DiDio. She's always right, isn't she?
This is a large part of the reason I enjoy reading the finance message boards on Yahoo. It's so much fun reading all the clueless blather from private shareholders that don't have the first idea how the company they own actually works, nor any inkling of the industry their company does business in. "The press release said so, so it must be true!"
You forgot conversion, i.e. theft.
Okay, since no one else has done it yet...
"I saw it!! It's a lion!! It's huge!!"
If SCO had gone for the smaller companies first, it's possible that they might also have been able to get precedent laid down that would have helped them against IBM. Patent trolls work the same way - sue the small fry, get favorable judgements (or settlements), and use those as ammo against the big game.
The thing I found most interesting about their site was the qualifications they wanted for the two "senior UI engineer" positions they had open (in India, incidentally):
"BS degree in computer science with at least 2 years of relevant experience, no more than 4 years experience." (emphasis mine)
The simple fact is, that SCO had no case (they probably knew that from the start, and hoped for an out-of-court settlement). And that has nothing to do with lawyers or the size of the companies involved.
I disagree. Had it been a small company instead of IBM, Novell, etc., SCO would almost certainly have driven them to a settlement in short order even with the steaming pile of crap they passed off as their case. Novell won this case because they had the money to fight it. IBM will win their case because they had the money to fight it. You or I would have had to capitulate almost from the start because we wouldn't have been able to afford to have someone sort through the thousands of pieces of paper involved in just supporting the initial motion to dismiss, much less a trial. It's taken two very large companies *three years* to win this case, after all.
This sounds good on the surface, but what happens when an individual sues a rich individual or big company that has tons of lawyers that can draw the case out long enough to force the plaintiff to settle or to abandon his case entirely? Every insurance case would be a crapshoot - if you win, great, but if you don't, hello bankruptcy court.
As a rule, if you don't enforce your copyrights, you lose them.
That's trademarks, not copyrights.
There may not be a bug per se in the code, but examination of the source will very clearly reveal the exact set of assumptions the machine uses in order to produce a reading, and those assumptions may very well invalidate the state's case.
"Welcome to obscurity, gentlemen. We hope you enjoy your stay. To ease your transition, we've assigned a personal guide for the both of you. Heidi, please call Mr. Fanning and let him know his group is here."
Who cares about what everyone else has?
I do, because I'm one of the apparently really rare people that finds the economic aspect of the game the most interesting part. I'm only at lvl 35 right now, but I got the auction house bug at about lvl 27 or so and am now sitting on a *lot* of gold (for my level - about 300g) by means of the auction house and judicious use of the trade channel. When everyone else has the same gear, I can't make mad money on reselling the rarer items, and that makes my undead warlock sad. The more I make, the more outrageous the stuff becomes that I can buy and turn around for a tidy profit - it's kind of a rush dropping 50 gold on something and hoping I can actually flip it, and it scares the hell out of me when I do that and then see 10 of what I'm selling a few hours later for 20g less - it's like being Gordon Gekko but without the risk of losing real money, or spending time in real jail. It's also quite fun to corner the market on commodities like wool and control the prices with an iron fist for a day or so until people start advertising it on the trade channel to get out from under paying the ridiculous amount I'm asking. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
Like everyone else, I have to do the grind just to level up, but leveling is more of a means to an end for me now, rather than something to be pursued for its own sake.
It's all well and good for the airlines to try to be compassionate with people who are sensitive about their weight, but if their weight is oozing into seat-space I've paid for, then the airlines are being compassionate at my expense and not their own.
Astute observation.
From Oracle's OTN Developer EULA:
"You may not...disclose results of any program benchmark tests without our prior consent; or, - use any Oracle name, trademark or logo."
Now, let's look down a bit farther in the EULA...
"You may terminate this agreement by destroying all copies of the programs."
I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that once you ditch your (free) copy of Oracle you're not bound by the license terms anymore. You don't have the right to use the software anymore, but you still have the results of the tests you ran before getting rid of it, no?
Can I quote you on that?
I think it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of people that would be bringing a weapon on a flight would be in possession of a concealed carry permit, which effectively proves the holder is a law-abiding citizen with no substantial criminal past. The proportion of permit holders that lose them because of criminal behavior is vanishingly small as well.
What's your basis for assuming the worst of a group of people that are provably more responsible than even the police as regards following the law?
Do you really think that the one or two passengers who would have been packing would have stopped the hijackers? Especially if they'd started their takeover by spraying the brains of one stew accross first class and holding a gun to the head of another.
So you're arguing that ten dead passengers is worse than two hundred?
The fact is, armed passengers wouldn't have changed the dynamic.
Of course armed passengers can't make a difference, that's why we now put armed air marshals on flights. [rolls eyes] Having shot side by side with a couple of marshals at the range, I'll tell you right now you shouldn't put as much faith in the abilities of "the professionals" to save your ass as you seem to have.
I guess with a 20" barrel it'll be the Tactical? T3s are some decent guns, and I've heard that the Tacticals can get sub-half-MOA at 100 yards with the right ammo. I'm sure you'll have a great time with it. :-)
I'm really not sure how one can argue with a straight face that the situation on 9/11 could possibly have turned out worse had the passengers been armed.
I'm not sure I could give you one that's less than a meter, but Armalite's AR-50 is a nice bolt-action and the examples I've seen at the range average about 1/2 MOA at 300 yards (that's the longest rifle range we have), and I've read that they maintain that accuracy fairly well once you start getting into 1-2K yards. The LAR Grizzly is also quite accurate (they advertise a 4" group at 1K yards, or well under half-MOA accuracy) and are fairly short for a .50 at a little under four feet. The *most* accurate guns are going to be those hand-fitted from parts, but that's a fairly pricey proposition as there's a fair bit of trial and error involved.
Barrett's M82/M107 is definitely a nice rifle, but because it's a semi-auto there will be a limit on how accurate it will be just for the fact that the action has to have a tiny bit of slop for it to reliably feed. Additionally, you could almost buy two Armalites and a LAR (or three LARs and 250 or so rounds of ammo) for what one of the M82s cost.
They are entering the country posing as normal people and then hijacking planes to blow up buildings.
Which they'd have a much harder time doing if the government hadn't demanded that the "normal people" be unarmed sheep during commercial flights.
What's the difference between burning someone's house down, versus causing an economy that causes a house to be foreclosed?
Don't forget that the foreclosure is also enforced at the point of a gun (or Taser, as the case may be), so it's ultimately the threat of violence that enforces law and order in general.
1829 meters (2K yards) is a long distance, but there are other .50 BMG rifles that can easily exceed that. Barrett makes *very* good guns, but there are plenty other .50 single-shot rifles that are more accurate (and less expensive).
Using GIMP does not deprive Adobe of the ability to sell you Photoshop. Using Photoshop without paying for it does.
The *only* thing that deprives Adobe of the ability to sell me Photoshop is my unwillingness to purchase it. *Why* I'm unwilling to buy it makes no difference as the outcome is the same from Adobe's perspective.