I think we can expect numerous current PayPal users to stop using them, and others who have never used them to start, as this is a very polarizing issue
The online shopper has other things on her mind.
The tenuous connection between Wikileaks and PayPal does not rank high among them.
I think it's pretty commonly known that paypal sucks.
It is also pretty well known that PayPal is wildly successful:
PayPal accounted for 37 percent of eBay's overall revenue in the third quarter compared with 23 percent just five years ago. EBay's payments unit, which consists mostly of PayPal, had $838 million in revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30, up 22 percent from the period a year earlier. The auction and retail operations, which eBay calls marketplace, took in $1.41 billion in revenue during the same period, an increase of just 3 percent. If the current growth patterns continue, PayPal will surpass its parent in revenue around 2014 -- and even sooner if the unit is able to insinuate itself into mobile payments as successfully as it has with Web transactions.For PayPal, the Future Is Mobile
As far as I know, they're the only console maker that has a branch of the American armed forces using their hardware for a literal supercomputer cluster, which is a stunning, resounding endorsement for the real world horsepower behind their hardware, and they've disabled the very "other OS" feature that allowed the air force to build the cluster in the first place. What the hell, Sony, you idiots
What sells 5 million Kinect controllers before Christmas is the "I want it now!" tech that can be sold to your kids in a thirty second commercial.
Not the geek's hardware hack.
As for the Other OS and the PS3, Sony had no interest in cannibalizing future sales of its own cell-based HPC product.
You know how Sony lost money on every PS3 sold... but then made the costs back with like 10 dollars from every game? And you notice how the government bought 1,760 thousand of these things (or more) for a non-gaming purpose? Did you hear the firmware updates and new PS3s remove the "Other OS" option? Or did you think that those incidents were entirely unrelated?
Not only that, but the PS3 cluster was undermining whatever chance Sony had of successfully marketing a high-margin commercial HPC product based on the cell.
This is what happens when Google tries to be Apple. Gotta cut deals, gotta play nice. We have the Google TV to thank for this.
21% of peak hour download traffic is a Netflix stream.
Currently, only 2% of Netflix subscribers stream video - about 300,000 - but they can do it directly through their HDTV set, video game console, Blu-Ray player or set-top box.
They don't need a PC. They don't need a BitTorrent client.
They don't need to waste hours nursing a download of an amateur's DVD rip. They don't need tetrabytes of local storage.
They don't fuel AdSense and they don't need Google.
I love it when people get upset at the "information wants to be free" adage
The bankers financing the production and marketing of "The Dark Knight Rises" expect a solid return from their $250-$500 million dollar investment.
When that doesn't happen, money moves towards serving the more reliable - i.e., paying - customers of studios like Disney and distributors like HBO and and Netflix.
When they claim that the robot was a hoax bomb attempt, instead of admitting that the cops were too stupid to tell the difference between a toy and a bomb.
OK, wise guy, tell me the difference between the toy and the bomb.
The toy, remember, is cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a much-used public footbridge.
The geek will press the big red button.
Because he is too smart to be afraid of such an obvious trap.
What wikileaks has really done is shown that you can leak something to the internet without necessarily destroying your life.
That assumes there will be no leaks from within Wikileaks itself.
It also assumes that internal investigations are not on-going and that high-profile civil and criminal cases are launched without weeks, months or even years of preparation.
The rights of the dead should not infringe upon the rights of the living.
The rights of the dead are defined by the living.
Most folks decided a long time back that the work of their own hands should go to those of their own choosing --- and have never truly signed on to the notion that the artist should be compelled to surrender his work to the public domain.
Copyright gives the author - and his heirs - an exclusive and constitutionally protected right to control the distribution and use of his work. No where does it say that those rights are forfeit because his work isn't making any money.
I am just glad I am not the one getting caught, and I would be in trouble for much more than 37 songs
Of course, you would.
That is why in almost file sharing case you are ever likely to see, the number of infringing of files at issue is bargained down to a manageable sampling that is acceptable to both sides.
If she was so naive to think that there was nothing illegal about downloading the music and not paying for it, then how in the hell did she figure out how to do it in the first place
The LimeWire client had progress bars that showed upload and download traffic in your shared files folder. You could view the shared files folders of other uses. You could chat with other users. You could read the comments attached to files.
You could "hear" the brag of the original uploader.
So... an American jury finds in favor of an American company in an American court, and orders a foreign company to pay a huge sum after almost no deliberation at all.
That implies as well that SAP had accepted the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- On the losing end of a $1.3 billion jury verdict for stealing a rival's intellectual property, SAP AG is facing the difficult decision about whether to double down -- by appealing -- or folding. Either route is going to cost the German company dearly, and will have implications for how other technology companies approach copyrights. A jury in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday found that SAP's behavior in plundering software and documents from archenemy Oracle Corp.'s secured websites was so egregious that it awarded Oracle nearly all of the damages it was seeking. If SAP appeals, it will have to endure several more years of disastrous publicity, a jackpot for Oracle. "I'm not sure what the grounds for an appeal are -- I'm not sure what the argument would be," said Patrick Walravens, an analyst with JMP Securities. "It's not like this was a trial that was done in a quick and dirty manner. It was three years and hundreds of millions in legal fees -- things were pretty well vetted." The judge in the case still has to formally affirm the jury's verdict, and could reduce the award. An order could come sometime in the next week. Many analysts suspect that SAP will stand down and try and figure out a way to pay one of the biggest software piracy penalties on record. Doing so would put the $10 million acquisition of the tiny, now-shuttered company called TomorrowNow that landed SAP in this mess that much farther in the rearview mirror.SAP at a crossroads after losing $1.3B verdict
Give the kid something physical to do. Something he can share with others. Stomp Rocket Junior Thinking building blocks. Tricycles. Pedal cars. Toys that have been around for a century or more.
The photographs and videos you take of him playing will become more priceless with each passing year.
Sigh, do we have to point out every single time that Wikileaks is _not_ an investigative organization, but merely posts what is sent to them while protecting the source, and that maybe they just get more data from US than from $COUNTRY?
The key words here are "merely" and "maybe."
Which have damn little in common with the PR blasts from Assange.
Seriously, kids downloading music poses what threat, exactly, to national security?
In the American federal system, economic crimes with an interstate and international dimension are a federal responsibility. The Secret Service, for example, was originally organized to fight counterfeiting.
IP based industry generates billions of dollars in domestic sales and exports. The work is clean, labor-intensive and - broadly speaking - very well-paying. That is why Republican and Democrat unite to protect it.
The median household income in the U.S. is $45,000. The median salary for an SDE at Microsoft is $89,000.
"The CCS investigative responsibilities include fraud, theft of intellectual property rights, money laundering, identity and benefit fraud, the sale and distribution of narcotics and other controlled substances, illegal arms trafficking and the illegal export of strategic/controlled commodities and the smuggling and sale of other prohibited items, such as art and cultural property."
Digital Forensics.
"Digital evidence is quickly replacing documentary evidence as the "smoking gun" in investigations. Vital evidence is often identified, seized and recovered from a variety of electronic devices for ICE investigations. ICE special agents need access to information stored on personal computers, complex business networks, personal digital assistants, cellular telephones and multifunction communications devices."
I'm sure everyone in the US can sleep easy at night, knowing that Homeland Security is keeping a vigilant eye over torrents and other similar threats to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
ICE is U.S.Immigration and Customs Emforcement, the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the second largest investigative agency in the federal government.
ICE now has more than 20,000 employees in more than 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries.
Crimes with an interstate and international dimension are a federal responsibility --- and that is something the geek is going to have to learn to live with.
This was entirely predictable. It's not easy to convince people to let other people--strangers of the same gender--touch them intimately as a form of protest.
From the WSJ:
George Donnelly, one of the organizers of the Opt Out day boycott, said Wednesday that his group hadn't received any reports of significant opt-outs. He said the group will continue its efforts after the Thanksgiving holiday.Few Travel Problems, as 'Opt Out' Day Fizzles
It's Thanksgiving.
Flights are booked solid weeks - often months - in advance.
The protestor does not get to the screening area without having purchased a ticket - for which he has probably paid full price. He stands a fair chance of cooling his kilts in the county lock-up until his wife can be persuaded to post bail.
Slashdot Mirror
This has suddenly become an excellent business opportunity to any company that wants free publicity and wishes to get a chunk of Paypal's business.
PayPal's billion-dollar business is facilitating transfer payments for the online shopper.
Donations to Wikileaks amount to no more than a handful of coins dropped on the men's room floor.
I think we can expect numerous current PayPal users to stop using them, and others who have never used them to start, as this is a very polarizing issue
The online shopper has other things on her mind.
The tenuous connection between Wikileaks and PayPal does not rank high among them.
What in high heavens has the ego of Assange to do with anything?
Ego over-reaches. Ego makes mistakes. Ego is not to be trusted.
The simplest and safest way of dealing with a man like Assange is to wait until he self-destructs and takes Wikileaks down with him.
I think it's pretty commonly known that paypal sucks.
It is also pretty well known that PayPal is wildly successful:
PayPal accounted for 37 percent of eBay's overall revenue in the third quarter compared with 23 percent just five years ago. EBay's payments unit, which consists mostly of PayPal, had $838 million in revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30, up 22 percent from the period a year earlier. The auction and retail operations, which eBay calls marketplace, took in $1.41 billion in revenue during the same period, an increase of just 3 percent.
If the current growth patterns continue, PayPal will surpass its parent in revenue around 2014 -- and even sooner if the unit is able to insinuate itself into mobile payments as successfully as it has with Web transactions. For PayPal, the Future Is Mobile
PayPal Black Friday Payments Up 27%
As far as I know, they're the only console maker that has a branch of the American armed forces using their hardware for a literal supercomputer cluster, which is a stunning, resounding endorsement for the real world horsepower behind their hardware, and they've disabled the very "other OS" feature that allowed the air force to build the cluster in the first place. What the hell, Sony, you idiots
What sells 5 million Kinect controllers before Christmas is the "I want it now!" tech that can be sold to your kids in a thirty second commercial.
Not the geek's hardware hack.
As for the Other OS and the PS3, Sony had no interest in cannibalizing future sales of its own cell-based HPC product.
You know how Sony lost money on every PS3 sold... but then made the costs back with like 10 dollars from every game?
And you notice how the government bought 1,760 thousand of these things (or more) for a non-gaming purpose?
Did you hear the firmware updates and new PS3s remove the "Other OS" option?
Or did you think that those incidents were entirely unrelated?
Not only that, but the PS3 cluster was undermining whatever chance Sony had of successfully marketing a high-margin commercial HPC product based on the cell.
This is what happens when Google tries to be Apple. Gotta cut deals, gotta play nice. We have the Google TV to thank for this.
21% of peak hour download traffic is a Netflix stream.
Currently, only 2% of Netflix subscribers stream video - about 300,000 - but they can do it directly through their HDTV set, video game console, Blu-Ray player or set-top box.
They don't need a PC. They don't need a BitTorrent client.
They don't need to waste hours nursing a download of an amateur's DVD rip. They don't need tetrabytes of local storage.
They don't fuel AdSense and they don't need Google.
Google is an advertising company. Why should they care about attracting people who aren't interesting in paying for anything?
Not only that.
Google is interested in becoming a major player in commercial video distribution.
Which is why it supports integrated content protection - Flash - in Chrome.
I love it when people get upset at the "information wants to be free" adage
The bankers financing the production and marketing of "The Dark Knight Rises" expect a solid return from their $250-$500 million dollar investment.
When that doesn't happen, money moves towards serving the more reliable - i.e., paying - customers of studios like Disney and distributors like HBO and and Netflix.
They get "Tangled."
The P2P geek gets nothing.
When they claim that the robot was a hoax bomb attempt, instead of admitting that the cops were too stupid to tell the difference between a toy and a bomb.
OK, wise guy, tell me the difference between the toy and the bomb.
The toy, remember, is cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a much-used public footbridge.
The geek will press the big red button.
Because he is too smart to be afraid of such an obvious trap.
What wikileaks has really done is shown that you can leak something to the internet without necessarily destroying your life.
That assumes there will be no leaks from within Wikileaks itself.
It also assumes that internal investigations are not on-going and that high-profile civil and criminal cases are launched without weeks, months or even years of preparation.
Nice that amazon have shown their colours... I shall no longer trade with them. Vote with your wallet, it's the only way they'll learn.
What they will learn is that there is nothing to be feared from a geek screaming "Boycott!"
These works have been forgotten about a long time ago. They should have been in public domain since nobody is profiting from them anymore.
Each of these authors has an Amazon.com home page with at least 50 books in print.
Good luck explaining to a judge and jury how you managed to ignore warning signs as blatant as these:
Poul Anderson 99 titles.
Ray Bradbury 105 titles.
Frederik Pohl 60 titles.
Jack Vance 54 titles.
And a small reminder:
Copyright is a constitutionally protected property right.
Nowhere does it say that a publication has to be profitable to be protected.
You make that argument and Creative Commons, the GPL, etc., goes up in smoke.
The rights of the dead should not infringe upon the rights of the living.
The rights of the dead are defined by the living.
Most folks decided a long time back that the work of their own hands should go to those of their own choosing --- and have never truly signed on to the notion that the artist should be compelled to surrender his work to the public domain.
Protecting his choices protects their choices.
These works have been forgotten about a long time ago. They should have been in public domain since nobody is profiting from them anymore.
From Amazon.com:
Poul Anderson
Author Page. 99 books.
Ray Bradbury
Author Page. 105 books.
Frederick Pohl
Author Page. 60 books.
Jack Vance
Author Page. 54 books.
Copyright gives the author - and his heirs - an exclusive and constitutionally protected right to control the distribution and use of his work. No where does it say that those rights are forfeit because his work isn't making any money.
I am just glad I am not the one getting caught, and I would be in trouble for much more than 37 songs
Of course, you would.
That is why in almost file sharing case you are ever likely to see, the number of infringing of files at issue is bargained down to a manageable sampling that is acceptable to both sides.
If she was so naive to think that there was nothing illegal about downloading the music and not paying for it, then how in the hell did she figure out how to do it in the first place
The LimeWire client had progress bars that showed upload and download traffic in your shared files folder. You could view the shared files folders of other uses. You could chat with other users. You could read the comments attached to files.
You could "hear" the brag of the original uploader.
So... an American jury finds in favor of an American company in an American court, and orders a foreign company to pay a huge sum after almost no deliberation at all.
SAP abandoned - in August - any pretense of contesting Oracle's claims of copyright infringement. SAP Proposes Not to Contest Oracle's Copyright Claims
That implies as well that SAP had accepted the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- On the losing end of a $1.3 billion jury verdict for stealing a rival's intellectual property, SAP AG is facing the difficult decision about whether to double down -- by appealing -- or folding.
Either route is going to cost the German company dearly, and will have implications for how other technology companies approach copyrights.
A jury in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday found that SAP's behavior in plundering software and documents from archenemy Oracle Corp.'s secured websites was so egregious that it awarded Oracle nearly all of the damages it was seeking.
If SAP appeals, it will have to endure several more years of disastrous publicity, a jackpot for Oracle.
"I'm not sure what the grounds for an appeal are -- I'm not sure what the argument would be," said Patrick Walravens, an analyst with JMP Securities. "It's not like this was a trial that was done in a quick and dirty manner. It was three years and hundreds of millions in legal fees -- things were pretty well vetted."
The judge in the case still has to formally affirm the jury's verdict, and could reduce the award. An order could come sometime in the next week.
Many analysts suspect that SAP will stand down and try and figure out a way to pay one of the biggest software piracy penalties on record. Doing so would put the $10 million acquisition of the tiny, now-shuttered company called TomorrowNow that landed SAP in this mess that much farther in the rearview mirror. SAP at a crossroads after losing $1.3B verdict
Give the kid something physical to do. Something he can share with others. Stomp Rocket Junior Thinking building blocks. Tricycles. Pedal cars. Toys that have been around for a century or more.
The photographs and videos you take of him playing will become more priceless with each passing year.
Sigh, do we have to point out every single time that Wikileaks is _not_ an investigative organization, but merely posts what is sent to them while protecting the source, and that maybe they just get more data from US than from $COUNTRY?
The key words here are "merely" and "maybe."
Which have damn little in common with the PR blasts from Assange.
Electric cars were common decades ago, and the electric service did not collapse.
There were 34,000 electric cars registered in the US in 1900.
Most were ornate horseless cabs and carriages or utilitarian service vehicles, like a milk truck, and of no use whatever beyond the city limits.
There were about a half million Model Ts on the road in 1916.
By 1929 there were 23 million cars on American roads and the electric was just a memory.
Seriously, kids downloading music poses what threat, exactly, to national security?
In the American federal system, economic crimes with an interstate and international dimension are a federal responsibility. The Secret Service, for example, was originally organized to fight counterfeiting.
IP based industry generates billions of dollars in domestic sales and exports. The work is clean, labor-intensive and - broadly speaking - very well-paying. That is why Republican and Democrat unite to protect it.
The median household income in the U.S. is $45,000. The median salary for an SDE at Microsoft is $89,000.
The government can multi-task:
ICE is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE is - among much else - the Cyber Crimes Center.
There are three sections:
Child Exploitation.
Child pornography. The sex trade in children.
Cyber Crimes.
"The CCS investigative responsibilities include fraud, theft of intellectual property rights, money laundering, identity and benefit fraud, the sale and distribution of narcotics and other controlled substances, illegal arms trafficking and the illegal export of strategic/controlled commodities and the smuggling and sale of other prohibited items, such as art and cultural property."
Digital Forensics.
"Digital evidence is quickly replacing documentary evidence as the "smoking gun" in investigations. Vital evidence is often identified, seized and recovered from a variety of electronic devices for ICE investigations. ICE special agents need access to information stored on personal computers, complex business networks, personal digital assistants, cellular telephones and multifunction communications devices."
Welcome to "guilty before proven innocent"
Guilt or innocence is utimately for a jury to decide.
The job of law enforcement is to bring a suspect to judgement. To find him. To arrest him. Wherever he may be found.
This how the system works. This is how it has always worked.
I'm sure everyone in the US can sleep easy at night, knowing that Homeland Security is keeping a vigilant eye over torrents and other similar threats to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
ICE is U.S.Immigration and Customs Emforcement, the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the second largest investigative agency in the federal government.
ICE now has more than 20,000 employees in more than 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries.
Crimes with an interstate and international dimension are a federal responsibility --- and that is something the geek is going to have to learn to live with.
Cyber Crimes Center
This was entirely predictable. It's not easy to convince people to let other people--strangers of the same gender--touch them intimately as a form of protest.
From the WSJ:
George Donnelly, one of the organizers of the Opt Out day boycott, said Wednesday that his group hadn't received any reports of significant opt-outs. He said the group will continue its efforts after the Thanksgiving holiday. Few Travel Problems, as 'Opt Out' Day Fizzles
It's Thanksgiving.
Flights are booked solid weeks - often months - in advance.
The protestor does not get to the screening area without having purchased a ticket - for which he has probably paid full price. He stands a fair chance of cooling his kilts in the county lock-up until his wife can be persuaded to post bail.
It isn't enough to invent a bulb that will burn for 13 hours on a lab bench.
You need a long-lived bulb.
You need to design a safe and commercially viable electrical power production and distribution system suitable for residential and commercial use.
The switch a child can use without risk of electrocution.
Projects on that scale are ideal for the corporate research and development lab that Edison pioneered.