Your analogy is wrong.
When you purchase paint, you purchase paint. When you purchase software, you are purchasing a license to use the software and a handy CD that contains it.
For your analogy to be accurate, it must be viewed this way: You do own the physical CD - you can use the CD as a coaster, or a frisbee, or as siding on your house, and Apple couldn't do a thing about it. As for the software ON the CD, you don't own that. You simply have a license to use it and even then just under the terms of the agreement. If you don't agree, you are under no obligation to purchase the license or install the software. You may, however, use the CD to level your table.
Whether or not you "couldn't give two fucks" about anything is irrelevant.
No, they purchased a physical disc, and a license to use the software on that disc according to the license agreement.
By spending the money for the license, they are bound by the agreement that comes with the software, period. Signed contract not required. For example, when you buy a ticket for a sporting event, you are merely purchasing a license to view the game. It is revokable for any reason (read the fine print). When was the last time you signed a contract for a game ticket?
The law - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Why didn't he just follow the orders, leave, then file a complaint?
I'm not defending Amtrak here, since it sounds like they were in the wrong, but it's like getting pulled over by the police. The side of the road is not the place to argue your case. The officer is not a judge, and you aren't the jury.
The bottom line is that arguing with the officer almost never results in you "winning", and can often hurt your chances of winning a lawsuit later on if the jury thinks you were provoking a response.
And there will still be some geek from Slashdot yelling from atop of the mountain that if you had any skills you'd have a backup set of stones located in a climate-controlled underground bunker, and that, by the way, backing up data is important!
I think that toshe of us who are tech-savvy have a hard time understanding the actions of those who aren't. People are quick to throw out "Well if they didn't click every damn thing" anytime a report like this comes out.
I'm telling you, though, that it's not that simple. The scammers are savvy...sometimes even more savvy than us!
The best defense is education. Here at the office I've been offering some lunchtime classes on basic computer stuff - how they work, how scammers work, how computers get infected, etc. I find that those who participate are much less likely to have problems in the future.
The key is to empathize with those who don't understand, and make it easy for them to learn. That's when the real change will happen.
Coincidentally, I read a post today made by a friend of mine that mentioned that he hasn't updated recently, and if you wanted to see what he was up to I should check (insert the name of five other "social" sites here).
I told him it'd be much easier for us (his intended audience) if he'd pick one, and stick with it.
The company that wins will be the one who can aggregate feeds from all of these sites and come up with one consolidated "friend" page. That way the blogger gets the best features of all the sites, and th reader has one place to look for content.
"They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow."
For private businesses maybe, but I'm sure hosting backups on other organizations hardware is not acceptable under SOX.
What, if you use it do a bunch of pale-skinned 100 pound guys with electronics-laden belts show up at your house, and after they fail at kicking in your door stand outside your house and yell things about RPM's and VI and stuff? Cause that would be cool...
Yes, that was FM. Now that I re-read this and got my brain thinking about masking, another potential roadblock exsists.
In commercial radio, audio is heavily processed. In most stations the audio goes through at least 10-15db of gain reduction, then separated into discrete audio bands, then peak limited, then combined, then clipped again. The end result is a loud, flat, dense, audio signal. It would be very hard to encode anything in there, masked or not. Not to mention that most modern FM audio chains go through several levels of data compression and A/D-D/A conversions. The only way I see this working is to inject the data at the very last part of the chain. I would imagine that the FCC would not like this too much, since the audio modulation must be tightly controlled.
Interesting thought, anyway!
I am a broadcast engineer, and I can tell you that there is a sharp audio roll-off at 15kHz. The pilot tone that acts as a reference for the stereo information is at 19kHz. The stereo information is located at 38kHz. There are then data/audio subcarriers in the 50-60kHz range. I don't know where they plan to stuff this data, but the current scheme (RBDS) only allows about a 9600 baud data rate.
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy is wrong. When you purchase paint, you purchase paint. When you purchase software, you are purchasing a license to use the software and a handy CD that contains it. For your analogy to be accurate, it must be viewed this way: You do own the physical CD - you can use the CD as a coaster, or a frisbee, or as siding on your house, and Apple couldn't do a thing about it. As for the software ON the CD, you don't own that. You simply have a license to use it and even then just under the terms of the agreement. If you don't agree, you are under no obligation to purchase the license or install the software. You may, however, use the CD to level your table. Whether or not you "couldn't give two fucks" about anything is irrelevant.
No, they purchased a physical disc, and a license to use the software on that disc according to the license agreement. By spending the money for the license, they are bound by the agreement that comes with the software, period. Signed contract not required. For example, when you buy a ticket for a sporting event, you are merely purchasing a license to view the game. It is revokable for any reason (read the fine print). When was the last time you signed a contract for a game ticket? The law - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Photog. Written by a lazy d-bag.
Why didn't he just follow the orders, leave, then file a complaint? I'm not defending Amtrak here, since it sounds like they were in the wrong, but it's like getting pulled over by the police. The side of the road is not the place to argue your case. The officer is not a judge, and you aren't the jury. The bottom line is that arguing with the officer almost never results in you "winning", and can often hurt your chances of winning a lawsuit later on if the jury thinks you were provoking a response.
And there will still be some geek from Slashdot yelling from atop of the mountain that if you had any skills you'd have a backup set of stones located in a climate-controlled underground bunker, and that, by the way, backing up data is important!
I think that toshe of us who are tech-savvy have a hard time understanding the actions of those who aren't. People are quick to throw out "Well if they didn't click every damn thing" anytime a report like this comes out.
I'm telling you, though, that it's not that simple. The scammers are savvy...sometimes even more savvy than us!
The best defense is education. Here at the office I've been offering some lunchtime classes on basic computer stuff - how they work, how scammers work, how computers get infected, etc. I find that those who participate are much less likely to have problems in the future.
The key is to empathize with those who don't understand, and make it easy for them to learn. That's when the real change will happen.
Coincidentally, I read a post today made by a friend of mine that mentioned that he hasn't updated recently, and if you wanted to see what he was up to I should check (insert the name of five other "social" sites here). I told him it'd be much easier for us (his intended audience) if he'd pick one, and stick with it. The company that wins will be the one who can aggregate feeds from all of these sites and come up with one consolidated "friend" page. That way the blogger gets the best features of all the sites, and th reader has one place to look for content.
"They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow."
For private businesses maybe, but I'm sure hosting backups on other organizations hardware is not acceptable under SOX.
What, if you use it do a bunch of pale-skinned 100 pound guys with electronics-laden belts show up at your house, and after they fail at kicking in your door stand outside your house and yell things about RPM's and VI and stuff? Cause that would be cool...
Yes, that was FM. Now that I re-read this and got my brain thinking about masking, another potential roadblock exsists. In commercial radio, audio is heavily processed. In most stations the audio goes through at least 10-15db of gain reduction, then separated into discrete audio bands, then peak limited, then combined, then clipped again. The end result is a loud, flat, dense, audio signal. It would be very hard to encode anything in there, masked or not. Not to mention that most modern FM audio chains go through several levels of data compression and A/D-D/A conversions. The only way I see this working is to inject the data at the very last part of the chain. I would imagine that the FCC would not like this too much, since the audio modulation must be tightly controlled. Interesting thought, anyway!
I am a broadcast engineer, and I can tell you that there is a sharp audio roll-off at 15kHz. The pilot tone that acts as a reference for the stereo information is at 19kHz. The stereo information is located at 38kHz. There are then data/audio subcarriers in the 50-60kHz range. I don't know where they plan to stuff this data, but the current scheme (RBDS) only allows about a 9600 baud data rate.