I suspect the "six figures" mentioned are something like "$", "1", ".", "0", "0", and ".". What a great publicity stunt for Batt and Cage's legacy, no matter what the amount. Well done!
"Take this offer, because the next will be worse..."
Blackmail is a threat to expose embarassing information unless paid off.
Extortion is a threat against property or persons unless paid off.
Threatening to worsen the terms of a license to GUI software patents if it isn't accepted is neither. It is, however, criminally stupid in the present Euorpean patent law environment.
The application was filed November 26, 2001. By that time, there were several client-side applications for adding arbitrary links. Only some of the dependent claims in that application are probably valid, such as the use of an automatic update for link patterns and targets. (By "valid" I don't mean "nonobvious" though.)
I thought the submitter already tired escallation at Blizzard.
My experience is that going for the corporate top-management level is much faster than escalation processes. You cut out a lot of the institutional slowdown which is perhaps not designed to make people give up from exaustion, but is kept in place because it very effectivly serves that purpose. I'm amazed that so few people take this tact. What is the point in being submissing to the procedural whims of a corporation? If they know they can bully you, your service level will decrease. If your call history log indicates that you won't flinch to phone or FAX the CEO, then you get your problem solved, and often a month of free service credits or cupons for free product to make you happy.
The 89% figure is "gulf war ERA veterans," which as someone pointed out, includes troops who in 1990 got their elbow run over in Kansas by a humvee. It was my mistake. The 56% is confirmed by two sources. Check my recent postng history for more info.
It's not a payment dispute, it's a contract dispute. When the buyer purchased the used software licence, he obtained the contract rights, as the contract says. Going over the heads of Blizzard's lazy tech support staff to Vivendi's legal staff is the right move. They will easily pass the buck back to Blizzard with a big heaping spoonful of corporate authoritay.
You and slackerboy are correct, and I have changed the figure in my sig from 89% to 56%.
I have not looked closely at the cancer data, but it wouldn't suprise me if their incident rate is naturally much lower than ours; their birth defect rate was half that of the U.S. in 1990.
Also, based on some slides I saw from a presentation, I think maybe data should more accurately be labeled "cancerous tumors," as it probably doesn't include leukemia, pancreatic, colon, prostate, and other cancers that don't present with an externally detectable lump.
Naw, call Vivendi (Blizzard parent company) at (310) 431-4000 and ask to speak with the legal department. Then ask to talk to a lawyer "regarding a contract dispute with a Blizzard product." Then politely explain the same story you submitted to Slashdot, and ask them to call WoW tech support and create a character for you.
If they refuse, take them to small claims court. 75% probability that they will fix the problem as soon as they get served. If not, then they won't show up and you will win the retail price by default.
The only correlations that I can find between birth defects and malnutrition in Medline have to do with folic acid, a deficiency in which causes predominently neural tube malformations. The kinds of birth defects which the Basrah residents and US/UK veterans have been experiencing have not been reported as including neural tube defects; instead consisting mostly of other malformations such as tricuspid valve insufficiency, aortic valve stenosis, and renal agenesis or hypoplasia. Ref.: Prevalence of birth defects among infants of Gulf War veterans in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, and Iowa, 1989-1993. Birth Defects Res Part A Clin Mol Teratol. 2003 Apr;67(4):246-60.
Uranyl nitrate, UO2(NO3)2, aerosolizes as a vapor, not as particles like the oxides do, and with a melting point of 60 deg. C (compared to thousands of degrees for the oxides), remains dissolved for a long time. The heat of the munitions' fire waft the UO3 oxide particles and uranyl nitrate vapors fairly high, and they precipitate over a wide area. It is for that reason that they weren't showing up on dust collected in the proportion that they were known to be produced, until this recent study found them in an enclosed fire. You will note by the date on that article -- and the abstract -- that as little as a year ago the scientific community didn't have any clue that there were any +5 and +6 oxidation state U compounds in uranium munitions combustion, even though a quick look into any actinide chemistry reference would have pointed out that they represent about 1/5th of U combustion products.
I'm actually corresponding over email with Dr. Jofu Mishima, one of the scientists who failed to detect UO3 and uranyl nitrate in safety studies he did for the Army in the 70s, 80s, and as recently as this one:
Parkhurst, M.A., J.R. Johnson, J. Mishima, and J.L. Pierce, "Evaluation of DU Aerosol Data: Its Adequacy for Inhalation Modeling," PNL-10903, Richland, WA: Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory, December 1995.
I'm apparently the first person to have pointed out to him the fact that uranium is reactive with nitrogen gas at 700 deg. C., far below the temperature at which it burns in air.
I'm totally untrained in this field, but as a taxpayer, I feel like demanding a refund.
Re: [OT U poisoning]
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Writing in Preventive Psychiatry... Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, "... Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead. By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of 'Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems." The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam....
"Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that 'Gulf Era Veterans' now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans," said Berklau.
I asked vet-advocate Dan Fahey about this and here's what he wrote back:
> Are those figures right? From what I can find in Medline, I was > expecting something like 35,000 on permanent disability, based > on mortality rates, which are reported to be quite low. If these > people are getting sick nine times more than Viet Nam vets, but > are only dying 1.2 times as often, that's just hard for me to > believe.
Yes, the figures are right, but their connection to DU is incorrect. This covers all injuries--broken leg, hurt back, as well as Gulf War illnesses.
I thought 'Gulf Era Veterans' could perhaps be including everyone who served anywhere 1990-1994, but it's still too big to believe.
29% is a big number, but 29% != 89% last time I checked.
Also, there are many other explanations other than uranium dust, like chemical weapons in theatre.
The incidence rate differences observed in cohort studies between combat and non-combat veterans who got the same immunizations and drugs, used the same pesticides, and breathed the same amount if not more smoke from Kuwaiti oil field fires, have ruled out everything but uranium poisoning. The increase in brith defects observed in Basrah mirrors that of the male U.S. and U.K. troops' children's birth defects over time. The only hypothesis capable of explaining that is uranium inhalation, leading to spermatid genotoxicity from accumulation in the testes.
Having said that, it is very hard to explain how the contamination of Basrah occured, because almost all the time during and after the 1991 battles when uranium was being released, the prevailing winds would have been blowing them away from the city. Some people have suggested some kind of food-chain contamination, relating to either goats or birds.
But I don't think facts probably matter very much to you.
There is a collection of peer-reviewed medical research on the subject here.
Re:And they scoffed at my continued reliance on MD
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Wild yes, but the source is here and it's apparently not a lie.
Re:And they scoffed at my continued reliance on MD
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Finding a single collision after a huge search isn't the same as being able to generate a collision on demand, which is what the SHA-1 breakage apparently purports to be.
And they scoffed at my continued reliance on MD5!
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It's only an insult against those who have looked at its parent and decided not to mod it up. I wonder whether anyone will bother to troll-mod it.
I can't believe you only got a 4 for that. The moderators are idiots. Idiots! Do you HEAR ME, MODERATORS!!!??? YOU SUCK!!
ChoicePoint data theft widens to 145,000 people
And a flying car, please. Air-powered, too, of course.
I suspect the "six figures" mentioned are something like "$", "1", ".", "0", "0", and ".". What a great publicity stunt for Batt and Cage's legacy, no matter what the amount. Well done!
You wouldn't happen to be trolling, now, would you? :)
In Soviet Germany, illegal content strips YOU!
Extortion is a threat against property or persons unless paid off.
Threatening to worsen the terms of a license to GUI software patents if it isn't accepted is neither. It is, however, criminally stupid in the present Euorpean patent law environment.
The D.H.S.'s own "chief privacy officer" used to work for DoubleClick.
The parent comment is the only one in this entire article which boththered to RT pertinent part of TFA.
The application was filed November 26, 2001. By that time, there were several client-side applications for adding arbitrary links. Only some of the dependent claims in that application are probably valid, such as the use of an automatic update for link patterns and targets. (By "valid" I don't mean "nonobvious" though.)
My experience is that going for the corporate top-management level is much faster than escalation processes. You cut out a lot of the institutional slowdown which is perhaps not designed to make people give up from exaustion, but is kept in place because it very effectivly serves that purpose. I'm amazed that so few people take this tact. What is the point in being submissing to the procedural whims of a corporation? If they know they can bully you, your service level will decrease. If your call history log indicates that you won't flinch to phone or FAX the CEO, then you get your problem solved, and often a month of free service credits or cupons for free product to make you happy.
The 89% figure is "gulf war ERA veterans," which as someone pointed out, includes troops who in 1990 got their elbow run over in Kansas by a humvee. It was my mistake. The 56% is confirmed by two sources. Check my recent postng history for more info.
It's not a payment dispute, it's a contract dispute. When the buyer purchased the used software licence, he obtained the contract rights, as the contract says. Going over the heads of Blizzard's lazy tech support staff to Vivendi's legal staff is the right move. They will easily pass the buck back to Blizzard with a big heaping spoonful of corporate authoritay.
I have not looked closely at the cancer data, but it wouldn't suprise me if their incident rate is naturally much lower than ours; their birth defect rate was half that of the U.S. in 1990.
Also, based on some slides I saw from a presentation, I think maybe data should more accurately be labeled "cancerous tumors," as it probably doesn't include leukemia, pancreatic, colon, prostate, and other cancers that don't present with an externally detectable lump.
What files are you talking about? The email server software I know of mostly don't keep logs by default, and those that do have short expiries.
You and mlyle are correct and I am changing the figure in my sig to 56%.
If they refuse, take them to small claims court. 75% probability that they will fix the problem as soon as they get served. If not, then they won't show up and you will win the retail price by default.
The only correlations that I can find between birth defects and malnutrition in Medline have to do with folic acid, a deficiency in which causes predominently neural tube malformations. The kinds of birth defects which the Basrah residents and US/UK veterans have been experiencing have not been reported as including neural tube defects; instead consisting mostly of other malformations such as tricuspid valve insufficiency, aortic valve stenosis, and renal agenesis or hypoplasia. Ref.: Prevalence of birth defects among infants of Gulf War veterans in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, and Iowa, 1989-1993. Birth Defects Res Part A Clin Mol Teratol. 2003 Apr;67(4):246-60.
518,739, the figure from late 2004, is 89%.
Compare that slope to Basrah's birth defect incidence graph from the table in this report.
I'm actually corresponding over email with Dr. Jofu Mishima, one of the scientists who failed to detect UO3 and uranyl nitrate in safety studies he did for the Army in the 70s, 80s, and as recently as this one:
Parkhurst, M.A., J.R. Johnson, J. Mishima, and J.L. Pierce, "Evaluation of DU Aerosol Data: Its Adequacy for Inhalation Modeling," PNL-10903, Richland, WA: Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory, December 1995.
I'm apparently the first person to have pointed out to him the fact that uranium is reactive with nitrogen gas at 700 deg. C., far below the temperature at which it burns in air.
I'm totally untrained in this field, but as a taxpayer, I feel like demanding a refund.
Having said that, it is very hard to explain how the contamination of Basrah occured, because almost all the time during and after the 1991 battles when uranium was being released, the prevailing winds would have been blowing them away from the city. Some people have suggested some kind of food-chain contamination, relating to either goats or birds.
There is a collection of peer-reviewed medical research on the subject here.Wild yes, but the source is here and it's apparently not a lie.
Finding a single collision after a huge search isn't the same as being able to generate a collision on demand, which is what the SHA-1 breakage apparently purports to be.
Another reason to avoid IPsec and WEP.