Sharing can be a criminal act.
Under the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, sharing copyrighted works with the expectation of getting works in return counts as "financial gain". The act makes it a felony to trade works with a retail value over $2,500 in a 6 month period. It sounds like they were well over that amount.
The NET Act was passed in 1997 to criminalize warez trading. I do not think that the act distinguishes between software and other copyrighted materials like movies and music.
Sixty people have be convicted under the NET Act, with 20 sentenced to jail.
The MS proposal does not seem too different from what IETF already accepts. To take a global perspective, consider the
the
statement from France Telecom:
If part(s) of a contribution by France Telecom SA employees is(are) included
in an IETF standard and France Telecom SA has patents and/or pending applications that
are essential to implementation of such included part(s), France Telecom is prepared to
grant, on the basis of reciprocity (grant-back) whenever applicable, a license on such
included part(s) on reasonable, non-discriminatory terms and conditions.
Such license shall be subject to a written license agreement before using such patents
and/or patent applications.
I do not think this is GPL-compatible.
Note that "reasonable" does not mean free and also note that they require a written license.
If you are looking for people to go to "meetups" and otherwise volunteer a year and a half before the election, then the internet is the way to reach them. On the other hand, if you want to reach the majority of voters, the internet is not enough.
The early volunteer is part of the small percentage of the population who are very interested in politics. They will seek out political blogs and get involved.
The average voter is not going to seek out and read political blogs. This is especially true for the (about) 20% of voters who are undecided. A few undecides may be researching the candidates, but most undecides put off thinking about the election as long as possible.
A winning candidate needs both the small core of dedicated volunteers and an appeal to the general voter. The internet seems to help reach the first group a lot more than the second.
According to their last quarterly report
(10Q)
they have 1.50B in cash, 0.87B in short-term debt securities and 3.11B in long-term debt securities.
Strictly speaking, Sun has at most 1.50B "cash in the bank".
Yahoo's "cash" is cash plus short-term bonds (2.37B). If longer term holdings are included the total is 5.48B, still short of the original poster's claim of 7B.
The problem is not the size of the US versus other countries, but the number of items on the ballot. This varies by state. In larger cities in Texas there will be dozens of items on the ballot. For example,
the 2000 election results from Houston.
In addition to the federal offices (president, house, and usually senate) there are many state and local offices, judges and propositions. For example, there is both an elected state board of education and a local board of education. There is both an elected state supreme court for criminal cases and one for civil case and elected county-level judges for serious cases ("district judge") and minor cases ("court at law"). There is both an elected sheriff and constable (both a type of police.)
According to the linked article, the repairs are to be done at a central location (in Louisville, Ky) run by the UPS "logistics outsourcing division". This is really more of an outsourcing story than a shipping story.
Nevada, and a number of other states, has what is called a stop and identify statute.
According the the ruling the Nevada's law is Nev. Rev. Stat. (NRS) 199.280 (2003).
In the past, vagrancy laws were used, but they were held to be too vague. Hence the need for a specific law.
The relevant parts of Nevada's statue are:
1. Any peace officer may detain any person whom the officer encounters under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime.
3. The officer may detain the person pursuant to this section only to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad. Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer.
The is a new standard called
CableCard. It is a PC card that fits into new "digital cable ready" TVs and replaces the converter box. As I understand it, this card will contain the security handling that is now done by the digital cable set-top box.
The launch date is supposed to be in two weeks (July 1).
I see no reason these could not fit into a PCI-based tuner card.
Look in the Add/Remove Programs applet in the control panel. If this patch is installed you should see "Windows 2000 Hotfix - KB835732" listed as an installed program.
ISPs do not get their protection from common carrier status. They get it from the
Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. This protects ISP from copyright violations committed by their customers, as long as the ISP follows the required procedures. The first is to register with the government as an ISP. Favoring their own services would not affect their Safe Harbor rights.
The current EU is the descendent of the
European Coal and Steel Community created in 1952. Its creation was a reaction to WW2, hardly an example of "governments in Europe getting along just fine". It was the principal of ever closer union that lead from the ECSC to the EU.
Some people think that to get these figures on unemployment the Government uses the number of persons filing claims for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits under State or Federal Government programs. But some people are still jobless when their benefits run out, and many more are not eligible at all or delay or never apply for benefits. So, quite clearly, UI information cannot be used as a source for complete information on the number of unemployed.
The number of unemployed persons in the United States and the national unemployment rate are produced from data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of over 60,000 households. A person's unemployment status is established by responses to a series of questions on whether they have a job or are on layoff, whether they want a job and are available to work, and what they have done to look for work in the preceding 4 weeks.
The sample survey system of counting the unemployed has been used since 1940.
It is also the system
used by Canada.
While the story was not very clear on this, I do not think that the Feds were involved in this at all. First, it says that the "police" raided his house. This usually refers to local or state law enforcement, not federal. Also, there was a link to the Minnesota Predatory Offender
Registration and Tracking Program.
So this was probably a local or state of Minnesota, not a federal, action.
One reason for the "do not sell separately" is because of labeling laws. For example, food products normally require an ingredients list. If an item is marked "do not sell separately" then the list only has to be on the outer package. Otherwise, each individual item would have to be labeled.
Recent report of
Torture in German Prisons.
It was reported that masked prison guards, in groups of three or four,
struck prisoners with their fists and with nightsticks. Some of the victims suffered serious injuries and broken bones.
At least some TSA locks
(SearchAlert)
have an indicator that shows if it was open with the special TSA key instead of using the combination. The indicator is reset using the lock's combination.
The only downside is that the indicator is not quite as obvious as a missing or broken lock.
It list some of their customers:
Cendant, Orbitz, priceline.com,
Travelocity.com, Buy.com, FTD.com, Netflix, Shopping.com, AmericanSingles.com,
Date.com, eHarmony.com,
Matchmaker (Lycos, Inc.),
Amerix Mortgage Corporation,
ING Direct Securities,
LowerMyBills.com,
RateMyMortgage,goZing.com
inPhonic,
Motorola,
Sprint.
It also refers to their strategic relationships with DivXNetworks, iMesh and Sharman Networks (KaZaA).
For the year ended December 31, 2003, they generated revenue of approximately $90.5
million, substantially all of which came from online advertising.
For comparision, Ret Hat's revenue is $126 million for the last year.
The lead underwriter for the IPO is Deutsche Bank Securities.
Dell has started opening
Dell Direct Stores in malls.
These are more of a kiosk than a full-sized store.
Like Gateway's stores these are order-to-build stores,
not take it home stores like Best Buy.
According to the Yahoo link in the parent there were no insider buys and 1% net insider sales of SCOX. Is this bad? Well, look at the equivalent pages for RHAT (Red Hat): no buys, 23% net sales. How about
LNUX (owner of Slashdot): no buys, 31% net insider sales. If the news is bad for SCOX, it must be awful for RHAT and LNUX.
In fact, it is not unusual for management to exercise options and sell the stock. Most want to diversify their portfolios. Also, they sell to buy a new house, pay kid's tuition, etc.
There are a number of advantages to registering, according to the
US Copyright Office FAQ these include
If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
I think that all of the RIAA suits for file sharing are based on asking statutory, not actual, damages.
According to a story in
The Register the extortion case against DirectTV was not only thrown out,
but those who filed it were ordered to pay DirectTV $100K for legal fees:
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles McCoy disagreed, and in April dismissed the suit, ruling that DirecTV's demand letters were sent in connection with litigation, and were therefore legally privileged. The judge also awarded attorney's fees to DirecTV, putting Wilens' seven plaintiffs on the hook for a total of nearly $100,000 in law firm billables.
Slashdot Mirror
The NET Act was passed in 1997 to criminalize warez trading. I do not think that the act distinguishes between software and other copyrighted materials like movies and music. Sixty people have be convicted under the NET Act, with 20 sentenced to jail.
See Warez Trading and Criminal Copyright Infringement for the details.
Many cable systems carry BBC America. It carries only BBC programming, but it is not the same as any actual BBC channel in Britain. It is missing some popular BBC programs. For instance, it does not carry EastEnders because "70 per cent of BBC America's viewers switched off when EastEnders came on".
The early volunteer is part of the small percentage of the population who are very interested in politics. They will seek out political blogs and get involved.
The average voter is not going to seek out and read political blogs. This is especially true for the (about) 20% of voters who are undecided. A few undecides may be researching the candidates, but most undecides put off thinking about the election as long as possible.
A winning candidate needs both the small core of dedicated volunteers and an appeal to the general voter. The internet seems to help reach the first group a lot more than the second.
Strictly speaking, Sun has at most 1.50B "cash in the bank".
Yahoo's "cash" is cash plus short-term bonds (2.37B). If longer term holdings are included the total is 5.48B, still short of the original poster's claim of 7B.
According to the complaint, the lead plantiff is someone called Fred Den.
In addition to the federal offices (president, house, and usually senate) there are many state and local offices, judges and propositions. For example, there is both an elected state board of education and a local board of education. There is both an elected state supreme court for criminal cases and one for civil case and elected county-level judges for serious cases ("district judge") and minor cases ("court at law"). There is both an elected sheriff and constable (both a type of police.)
According to the linked article, the repairs are to be done at a central location (in Louisville, Ky) run by the UPS "logistics outsourcing division". This is really more of an outsourcing story than a shipping story.
In the past, vagrancy laws were used, but they were held to be too vague. Hence the need for a specific law.
The relevant parts of Nevada's statue are:
See this USA Today story for more details.
Look in the Add/Remove Programs applet in the control panel. If this patch is installed you should see "Windows 2000 Hotfix - KB835732" listed as an installed program.
ISPs do not get their protection from common carrier status. They get it from the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. This protects ISP from copyright violations committed by their customers, as long as the ISP follows the required procedures. The first is to register with the government as an ISP. Favoring their own services would not affect their Safe Harbor rights.
The current EU is the descendent of the European Coal and Steel Community created in 1952. Its creation was a reaction to WW2, hardly an example of "governments in Europe getting along just fine". It was the principal of ever closer union that lead from the ECSC to the EU.
According to the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The sample survey system of counting the unemployed has been used since 1940. It is also the system used by Canada.While the story was not very clear on this, I do not think that the Feds were involved in this at all. First, it says that the "police" raided his house. This usually refers to local or state law enforcement, not federal. Also, there was a link to the Minnesota Predatory Offender Registration and Tracking Program. So this was probably a local or state of Minnesota, not a federal, action.
One reason for the "do not sell separately" is because of labeling laws. For example, food products normally require an ingredients list. If an item is marked "do not sell separately" then the list only has to be on the outer package. Otherwise, each individual item would have to be labeled.
Recent report of Torture in German Prisons. It was reported that masked prison guards, in groups of three or four, struck prisoners with their fists and with nightsticks. Some of the victims suffered serious injuries and broken bones.
Its a moo point
Martha Stewart has in fact been charged by the SEC with committing securities fraud by engaging in illegal insider trading. This is a civil case file last June in the Southern District of New York. Peter Bacanovic, Martha'a broker at Merrill Lynch, was also charged.
The only downside is that the indicator is not quite as obvious as a missing or broken lock.
It list some of their customers: Cendant, Orbitz, priceline.com, Travelocity.com, Buy.com, FTD.com, Netflix, Shopping.com, AmericanSingles.com, Date.com, eHarmony.com, Matchmaker (Lycos, Inc.), Amerix Mortgage Corporation, ING Direct Securities, LowerMyBills.com, RateMyMortgage,goZing.com inPhonic, Motorola, Sprint.
It also refers to their strategic relationships with DivXNetworks, iMesh and Sharman Networks (KaZaA).
For the year ended December 31, 2003, they generated revenue of approximately $90.5 million, substantially all of which came from online advertising. For comparision, Ret Hat's revenue is $126 million for the last year.
The lead underwriter for the IPO is Deutsche Bank Securities.
Dell has started opening Dell Direct Stores in malls. These are more of a kiosk than a full-sized store. Like Gateway's stores these are order-to-build stores, not take it home stores like Best Buy.
In fact, it is not unusual for management to exercise options and sell the stock. Most want to diversify their portfolios. Also, they sell to buy a new house, pay kid's tuition, etc.