... scamming millions if not billions from the US government who thought that it was getting a good deal off of each company fighting for the deal when really it was getting scammed by a pseudo-monopoly.
Term is "oligopoly". Means a collusion of a number of companies to act like a single monopolist.
Great, now every time I fall off my bike or some other stupid accident that involves my hands, I won't be able to log in at all due to not matching the timing/pressure/etc.
Also if you:
- change keyboards
- change your chair
- drink some coffee
- use an unusual posture
- catch the flu
- lose your palmrest
- ADD a palmrest
- get carpal tunnel syndrome or other RSIs
- lose a limb
- (I could go on for a LONG time)
I can definitely see this ending in smashed keyboards. "It's me!!! Let me in you b@st@rd machine!"
Better be sure you can get a replacement keyboard with the same layout or you'll NEVER get back in. B-)
1) A patch with a post office (in the local town or village) at the center.
2) A set of pie wedges centered on a post office.
3) A set of patches surrounded by a set of pie wedges.
And perhaps an extra zip code for the postal boxes - which include a mix of rural and local customers.
Post offices are build in population centers. The zip codes correspond to presorting for post office and route within it. They tend to be organized as one of the following:
1) A patch with a post office (in the local town or village) at the center.
2) A set of pie wedges centered on a post office.
3) A set of patches surrounded by a set of pie wedges.
So zip codes that include the under-served rural areas will almost invariably have a point, near the post office, in a city, town, village, or otherwise the most dense local population.
Thus the rural houses that are not served by broadband will generally still be counted as "served" unless the town where the associated post-office is located doesn't have broadband either. (Even then they may be counted as "served" if, say, the edge of the zip code is within range of a nearby city's phone system or WiMax tower.)
(I wonder if 89444 (Wellington NV - including Topaz Ranch Estates and parts of Antelope Valley, which are over a mountain pass from it) is counted as served, due to a house or two near the edge of their delivery area being within range of one of the two Clearwire towers in Gardnerville, or able to catch a bounce off the side of a mountain or a shot down a slot between two peaks? I know that my place out that way can only get dialup - and rarely connects at over 28k due to seven miles or so of line to the nearest T1 line bank.)
The concept of WIRED magazine and its associated web site being interested in readability seems ludicrous.
Consider their track record of using tiny type, garish color schemes, and layouts that I find difficult to characterize, making it nearly impossible for anyone with any of a number of (even slight) impairments to their eyesight (including especially presbyopia - the lack of accommodation that accompanies middle age) to read their publications comfortably - or even at all.
I've often thought that this was done deliberately, to repell all but young readers, as part of targeting their circulation on the perceived avant-garde youth of gen-Y and beyond.
Now they're modifying their logo for readability. ORLY? Is their target demographic aging enough that this is now a problem? Are readers deserting them due to headaches just as they graduate into serious spending money? Or are they just playing around with another art/layout fad?
If they were really serious about readability I'd expect them to be modifying other aspects of their magazine and site layout. But TFA shows that is not happening. So I'll go with "fad".
Strongly implies but doesn't absolutely require - at least as I learned the language.
(No appeals to authority please. I'm a native speaker and that's how I use and understand it. The job of the "experts" in language (with the exception of legislated languages such as French) is to identify and document how it is actually used, not prescribe its structure.)
They need better web page design (or perhaps more testing against various browser configurations or web page standards).
I tried viewing their site:
- using firefox 1.5(.0.9) (the latest my Employer's IT people certify),
- with expanded fonts (for my poor aged eyes on a hi-res LCD screen) and found it unusable.
The positions of various items are forced in such a way that the text is all overlapping and the "advanced search" box (along with several other items) is buried under the sample program selections - just for two problems.
Claim 26 is using a domain name server (or some other database server connected to the internet or some other PUBLIC net) to translate a name to a (POTS bridge server address, phone number) tuple.
It doesn't cover the old 800-number translation because that request went to a server that was connected to a phone-system internal net that wasn't accessible to the general public. This claim covers emulating the behavior using a publicly-accessible server.
(In other words they're patenting letting the general public use open standards - such as a domain name server hack - to create a cooperative replacement for a necessary internal component of their for-pay services.)
Claim 27 is ditto when the bridge server's address is an IP address.
But if the "prior art" is not exactly prior art, but is a different way to implement the same functionality, then can't Vonage use this alternative approach to replace the Verizon IP that they are infringing?
Unfortunately, Verizon patented the very fundamental underpinnings of doing VoIP at all. The patent claims are so broad they don't just cover particular ways of:
- Using a server to advertise a route from a VoIP client to another user's POTS phone.
- Using a server to advertise a route from a VoIP client to another user's VoIP client and a backup route to his POTS phone.
- Using a server to advertise a route to a wireless handset with a VoIP client or POTS connection. They patented DOING IT AT ALL.
The prior art is not another way of doing something equivalent. It is a particular way of "doing it". So it infringes on the patent claims.
It also invalidates them. But getting that into "judicial notice" before Vonage dies is another can of worms.
I was a teenager and I got pulled over for having a crappy car.
Used to happen to me a lot.
Then one day in the early '70s a police inspector (whom I'd met once before - when he was a sergant - when the only pistol I owned was stolen) dropped by to ask to use my apartment to set up a stakeout on a neighbor suspected of passing bad checks. I invited him in and (as we had recognized each other) showed him my collection. Included a Savage Riot Pump shotgun I'd gotten at a motorcycle shop a couple years back, and a Walther PPKS. As I handed him the Walther I said "Be careful. It's loaded." (He almost dropped it on his foot.)
(Handing loaded Walthers around with the safety on is probably safer than handing believed-unloaded pistols of most any other sort around, due to the quintuply-redundant safety mechanisms.)
He asked me how long I'd had these things (living, as I did, about a block from the Cop Shop along one of their main drags). I told him a couple years. He asked why. I told him that I took the Second Amendment, not just as a right, but as an obligation. He asked what I did for a living. I told him classified research at the University's remote sensing labs. We continued in that vein for a while.
And he decided our ratty apartment really wasn't suitable for staking out the neighbors.
Funny thing: I never again had a problem with a bogus traffic stop. B-)
How is it that Vonage is violating these patents, and can't find a workaround, while there are other VOIP services out there that do the exact same thing? How are those other services not violating the same patents? Or are they but they just haven't been sued yet?
You guessed it on the second try.
Vonage is the first. The list is long. Dirac Angestun Gesept.
They could move ops out of the US, and create a bunch of front companies within the US that buys lots of PRI lines from the local LECs, and install their VoIP routing gear locally.
The system would still violate the Verizon patent claims. The location of the bridge in the US and the sale of the service to US customers would each give the necessary jurisdiction for the US patents to apply.
Verizon would have one hell of a time untangling that rat's nest.
Trivial: Just follow the routing information for the Vonage customers' telephone numbers to find the bridge.
But then we got a Nortel BCM and I started using the VoIP features in it and put the calls down the fractional. Our Mexico office can now use their VoIP sets not only to call conventionally wired extensions here in the office, but they can also place outbound calls. To the recipient, it looks like the call is coming from our BCM, and therefore a local US number, but actually it's coming from people in Mexico. I've also assigned them US based numbers, so calling a US number will ring them down there, too. In other words, it's completely transparent,
When you enabled these services of your Nortel box you started violating at least the following Vonage patents: 6,282,574, 6,104,711, 6,359,880. (Presuming they stand up to court scrutiny.)
Nortel also violated them by building the box with the feature.... and the phone company couldn't possibly have any idea what's going on.
They will if they succeed in this suit, then go after Nortel and its customers.
The claims in the patents Russel Shaw is pointing out are:
First one: looking up, in a server, the IP address of a bridge to the PSTN and a phone number: Using the lookup result to connect a VoIP call through the bridge to the phone number. (I.e. making a VoIP call to somebody's phone based on a database entry that produced both the gateway IP address and phone number.)
Second one: looking up, in a server, TWO results, the SECOND of which is the IP address of a bridge to the PSTN and a phone number: If the first result doesn't lead to a VoIP connection to the user (i.e. he's not at his computer) using the second result to connect a VoIP call through the bridge to the phone number. (I.e. "call forwarding" from his computer to his phone, based on a database entry based on a database entry that produced both the gateway IP address and phone number.)
Third one: Customer's wireless (such as WiFI) handset registers itself with a database when it gets to a hotspot. Caller's software establishes a VoIP call to it based on the database inforamtion.
Looks like the third one also claims the infrastructure for getting incoming SIP calls on a wireless phone using standard protocols, and the first two would similarly claim the infrastructure for getting incoming SIP calls on a landline/cell phone ditto.
I recall another of the patents/claims that included doing call authorization and/or billing on the bridge, which would demand a Vonage tax for any for-pay service that provides billed VoIP/PSTN bridging. But these three would even let Vonage tax open POTS bridging systems and even external-net access to a company internal system that bridges VoIP to desk phones or walk-around wireless phones - both IP and "cordless POTS".
Life sucks when every day is a mind-numbingly boring routine at school, and all of your friends live life like a sitcom because that's all they know. I saw cruelty and injustice pretty much everywhere, and it pissed me off, but nobody I knew even cared.
That is exactly how these kinds of things happen. I didn't break, because when it came down to it I had one real friend that stuck with me. But when I see another kid going postal on the evening news, I'm never surprised. It's just another guy who wasn't as lucky as me.
DON'T assume that these things are done by ordinary people who "snapped" under pressure. Virtually ALL people have thoughts about doing such things from time to time - and chose not to do so. A VERY FEW people are DEFECTIVE when it comes to making such choices.
Events like this are very occasional national news - in a country with 125 million people, about half of whom are armed and most of the rest of whom could easily arm themselves (despite over 30,000 laws that try to make it difficult). The fact that it IS very occasional and national news on those occasions should tell you HOW rare such pathology is.
Try pulling that psycho bullshit in a Virginia mall, and that shooter's life would have ended a lot quicker, with a whole lot less innocent people injured.
Are there any cases that have really put this to the test? I mean, it sounds good... the idea that some armed citizen/vigilante would engage in a gunfight with a crazed shooter, but I wonder if it really happens.
Yes, it really happens.
Other, similar, things happen, too. For instance: In an Oregon school shooting somewhat after Columbine, one of the students had enough training to recognize when the pistol in the shooter's hand needed reloading, and jumped him at that point, ending the incident. THAT one made the news - but not all that much. The media weren't able to get any soundbites from the locals asking for gun bans. (When they descended on the town on the anniversary of the event to try again they were heckled by citizens as "vultures" and mooned by passing students from the high school in question.)
You'd almost have to be specially trained (military, for example) to engage people like that. Just having some target shooting under your belt just doesn't seem like enough.
Take two short and inexpensive classes from an NRA-certified instructor:
1) Basic Pistol.
2) Personal Protection. They'll teach you all you need to know. (Including when it's legal in your jurisdiction. That part is taught by a cop or judge, not the NRA instructor (unless the instructor is also a cop or judge.)
These are available in most areas on a regular basis. Check with your local gun club or www.nra.com for times and places or contact info for local instructors.
It's really amazing how LITTLE training it takes to get quite good at this. Gun-can-do is MUCH easier to learn than the other martial arts.
Similar events I've heard of (though unlike Snopes I haven't checked them out):
- Crook in a Detroit gun show handling one at a vendor's table puts ammo in it and tries to hold up the vendor. Of course a significant fraction of the crowd had CCWs and were packing. He ends up as guest of honor at a "Polish Firing Squad", i.e. in the center of a cricle of armed people with guns pointed inward.
- Similarly, a crook in Oregon picked the wrong date and hotel to rob the desk clerks. There was an NRA convention in progress, and Oregon is a gun-carry-friendly state so virtually everybody at the convention was packing - if only for the novelty of being able to do so legally. One of the convention-goers noticed the problem on his way to the nearby restaurant, quietly continued into the restaurant and notified all the convention-goers there (along with any packing locals) about what was going on, and when the crook turned around he was facing a semi-circle of armed people. When cops arrived he was on his face on the floor in the center of the circle, begging them to take him away from "these madmen".
I was reading some info about crime stats and one interestign thing: Victims of crimes who possessed guns/weapons during the incident had a good chance... of having their own weapon used against them.
Check your stats - and your sources.
Victims of crimes almost never have their own guns used against them.
The primary people who DO have their own guns used against them are police who carry their guns in a belt holster. Typically this happens when they're focussed on one crook and have to close with him (or on some other distraction) and a different crook grabs their gun from behind. (There is training on avoiding this, but most departments don't pay for it.) This is why uniformed officers (who open-carry) must disarm in courtrooms (to avoid hostage situations when a crook tries to get away) but plainclothesmen (who carry concealed) are encouraged to carry (so they can assist the bailiff if such a situation develops.
Such training is available to civilians, too. (In fact, I have taken it.) It's called "gun retention". It includes training in attempting to disarm your opponent - mainly to show how hard it is to actually do so, partly to teach you to identify the very few situations where it's even remotely possible AND improves your chances over hanging around and hoping you don't get killed, and what to do then. (Main one is when the bad guy has the gun poked into your spine from behind.)
According to FBI statistics, resisting an attempted crime with a gun is the ONLY way to reduce your probability of death or injury below quiet cooperation - and it cuts it by a bunch. Anything else (including trying to reason with the crook) raises the probability of injury to the victim. (Knives are particularly bad.)
What fucked up animals we are. I wish well to all affected by this.
There was an old joke that is apropos to your comment:
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by hostile Indians and are about out of ammunition. Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says "I guess we're done for." Tonto says "Who you call 'we', white man?"
Who are you calling "we"?
And while you're at it, who are you calling a "fucked up animal"?
Nature is red in tooth and claw. Some species of ducks reproduce by rape. Male cats (especially lions) will kill other males' kittens to bring the local females into heat sooner. Male animals of many species will fight to the death over females. Bobcats of either sex will kill other roughly-similar-sized predators in their territories (such as dogs, housecats, foxes, mountain lion cubs,...).
You think this guy is "fucked up" because you think what he did is wrong. What that means is "what he did is wrong for your idea of what's right for people to do".
You think "we" are "fucked up" up because you generalize from HIM to all of US.
In fact, what he did was very rare for people to do. It apparently IS wrong for people. But HE was a particular PERSON who was "fucked up".
And perhaps YOU are also one of those who is "fucked up". (Though I doubt it: You must have some ideal that what he did was "wrong". Otherwise you wouldn't be revolted by his actions.)
But don't assume that the REST of humanity is "fucked up". The statistics indicate otherwise.
Might want to explain to the youngsters that MTV used to show music videos.
Hear hear!
If anybody put up a cable channel that adhered to the old MTV format (music videos 24/7, with "bug" in lower-left-hand-corner on first and last 5 seconds or so giving song name, artist label), and had decent videos, I'd watch it.
But now days even on those rare occasions when any of the so-called music video stations actually play music videos they play garbage. Even the ones (like the "VH1 classic" channel) which have access to the best music of decades seem to be hunting down and playing "B"-sides and stuff that was never popular because it was such utter junk.
It's not like they don't know what was good: THAT's the stuff they use to inspire the "promos" for the channel that they slot into the breaks.
Could it be that the content owners are refusing to let them play the good stuff, as part of this IP fiasco?
... schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has...
You misunderstand the purpose of public schools.
- It is not to teach people how to be functioning, self-reliant adults capable of making informed decisions and resisting attempts to manipulate them.
- It is to indoctrinate them and paralyze their ability to self-inform and resist manipulation, turning them into easy-to-herd, standardized, branded, cattle.
(I'd have said "sheep" but you don't brand them - unlike the output of public schools, who are "branded" with accents to identify their place in the brave new world order.)
Meanwhile the children of the ruling class are educated in private institutions too expensive and exclusive for the general mob to afford or pass entry requriements.
This is why, just for starters, they ban Wikipedia but mandate viewing of "An Inconvenient Truth", and teach "Rain Forest Math" rather than arithmetic.
Slashdot Mirror
... scamming millions if not billions from the US government who thought that it was getting a good deal off of each company fighting for the deal when really it was getting scammed by a pseudo-monopoly.
Term is "oligopoly". Means a collusion of a number of companies to act like a single monopolist.
Great, now every time I fall off my bike or some other stupid accident that involves my hands, I won't be able to log in at all due to not matching the timing/pressure/etc.
Also if you:
- change keyboards
- change your chair
- drink some coffee
- use an unusual posture
- catch the flu
- lose your palmrest
- ADD a palmrest
- get carpal tunnel syndrome or other RSIs
- lose a limb
- (I could go on for a LONG time)
I can definitely see this ending in smashed keyboards. "It's me!!! Let me in you b@st@rd machine!"
Better be sure you can get a replacement keyboard with the same layout or you'll NEVER get back in. B-)
1) A patch with a post office (in the local town or village) at the center.
2) A set of pie wedges centered on a post office.
3) A set of patches surrounded by a set of pie wedges.
And perhaps an extra zip code for the postal boxes - which include a mix of rural and local customers.
Post offices are build in population centers. The zip codes correspond to presorting for post office and route within it. They tend to be organized as one of the following:
1) A patch with a post office (in the local town or village) at the center.
2) A set of pie wedges centered on a post office.
3) A set of patches surrounded by a set of pie wedges.
So zip codes that include the under-served rural areas will almost invariably have a point, near the post office, in a city, town, village, or otherwise the most dense local population.
Thus the rural houses that are not served by broadband will generally still be counted as "served" unless the town where the associated post-office is located doesn't have broadband either. (Even then they may be counted as "served" if, say, the edge of the zip code is within range of a nearby city's phone system or WiMax tower.)
(I wonder if 89444 (Wellington NV - including Topaz Ranch Estates and parts of Antelope Valley, which are over a mountain pass from it) is counted as served, due to a house or two near the edge of their delivery area being within range of one of the two Clearwire towers in Gardnerville, or able to catch a bounce off the side of a mountain or a shot down a slot between two peaks? I know that my place out that way can only get dialup - and rarely connects at over 28k due to seven miles or so of line to the nearest T1 line bank.)
The concept of WIRED magazine and its associated web site being interested in readability seems ludicrous.
Consider their track record of using tiny type, garish color schemes, and layouts that I find difficult to characterize, making it nearly impossible for anyone with any of a number of (even slight) impairments to their eyesight (including especially presbyopia - the lack of accommodation that accompanies middle age) to read their publications comfortably - or even at all.
I've often thought that this was done deliberately, to repell all but young readers, as part of targeting their circulation on the perceived avant-garde youth of gen-Y and beyond.
Now they're modifying their logo for readability. ORLY? Is their target demographic aging enough that this is now a problem? Are readers deserting them due to headaches just as they graduate into serious spending money? Or are they just playing around with another art/layout fad?
If they were really serious about readability I'd expect them to be modifying other aspects of their magazine and site layout. But TFA shows that is not happening. So I'll go with "fad".
You missed "either", which implies mutex.
Strongly implies but doesn't absolutely require - at least as I learned the language.
(No appeals to authority please. I'm a native speaker and that's how I use and understand it. The job of the "experts" in language (with the exception of legislated languages such as French) is to identify and document how it is actually used, not prescribe its structure.)
That "patent tax" isn't being paid by purchasers -- it's being paid by Microsoft's stockholders.
Which means it's being paid mainly by mutual fund holders saving for retirement.
It's mainly a tax on 401(k)s, IRAs, and pension plans.
Oops: Mozilla 2.0(.0.1)
Double oops: That should have been Firefox 2.0(.0.1)
- using firefox 1.5(.0.9) (the latest my Employer's IT people certify),
Oops: Mozilla 2.0(.0.1)
It's broken the same way on both.
They need better web page design (or perhaps more testing against various browser configurations or web page standards).
I tried viewing their site:
- using firefox 1.5(.0.9) (the latest my Employer's IT people certify),
- with expanded fonts (for my poor aged eyes on a hi-res LCD screen)
and found it unusable.
The positions of various items are forced in such a way that the text is all overlapping and the "advanced search" box (along with several other items) is buried under the sample program selections - just for two problems.
Wha?! Numerology?! 6 is twice (2) as much as three (3) ...
23!?!?!
And now you find yet another fnord application of the law of fives.
Not quite.
Claim 26 is using a domain name server (or some other database server connected to the internet or some other PUBLIC net) to translate a name to a (POTS bridge server address, phone number) tuple.
It doesn't cover the old 800-number translation because that request went to a server that was connected to a phone-system internal net that wasn't accessible to the general public. This claim covers emulating the behavior using a publicly-accessible server.
(In other words they're patenting letting the general public use open standards - such as a domain name server hack - to create a cooperative replacement for a necessary internal component of their for-pay services.)
Claim 27 is ditto when the bridge server's address is an IP address.
But if the "prior art" is not exactly prior art, but is a different way to implement the same functionality, then can't Vonage use this alternative approach to replace the Verizon IP that they are infringing?
Unfortunately, Verizon patented the very fundamental underpinnings of doing VoIP at all. The patent claims are so broad they don't just cover particular ways of:
- Using a server to advertise a route from a VoIP client to another user's POTS phone.
- Using a server to advertise a route from a VoIP client to another user's VoIP client and a backup route to his POTS phone.
- Using a server to advertise a route to a wireless handset with a VoIP client or POTS connection.
They patented DOING IT AT ALL.
The prior art is not another way of doing something equivalent. It is a particular way of "doing it". So it infringes on the patent claims.
It also invalidates them. But getting that into "judicial notice" before Vonage dies is another can of worms.
I was a teenager and I got pulled over for having a crappy car.
Used to happen to me a lot.
Then one day in the early '70s a police inspector (whom I'd met once before - when he was a sergant - when the only pistol I owned was stolen) dropped by to ask to use my apartment to set up a stakeout on a neighbor suspected of passing bad checks. I invited him in and (as we had recognized each other) showed him my collection. Included a Savage Riot Pump shotgun I'd gotten at a motorcycle shop a couple years back, and a Walther PPKS. As I handed him the Walther I said "Be careful. It's loaded." (He almost dropped it on his foot.)
(Handing loaded Walthers around with the safety on is probably safer than handing believed-unloaded pistols of most any other sort around, due to the quintuply-redundant safety mechanisms.)
He asked me how long I'd had these things (living, as I did, about a block from the Cop Shop along one of their main drags). I told him a couple years. He asked why. I told him that I took the Second Amendment, not just as a right, but as an obligation. He asked what I did for a living. I told him classified research at the University's remote sensing labs. We continued in that vein for a while.
And he decided our ratty apartment really wasn't suitable for staking out the neighbors.
Funny thing: I never again had a problem with a bogus traffic stop. B-)
You guessed it on the second try.
They could move ops out of the US, and create a bunch of front companies within the US that buys lots of PRI lines from the local LECs, and install their VoIP routing gear locally.
... and the phone company couldn't possibly have any idea what's going on.
The system would still violate the Verizon patent claims. The location of the bridge in the US and the sale of the service to US customers would each give the necessary jurisdiction for the US patents to apply.
Verizon would have one hell of a time untangling that rat's nest.
Trivial: Just follow the routing information for the Vonage customers' telephone numbers to find the bridge.
But then we got a Nortel BCM and I started using the VoIP features in it and put the calls down the fractional. Our Mexico office can now use their VoIP sets not only to call conventionally wired extensions here in the office, but they can also place outbound calls. To the recipient, it looks like the call is coming from our BCM, and therefore a local US number, but actually it's coming from people in Mexico. I've also assigned them US based numbers, so calling a US number will ring them down there, too. In other words, it's completely transparent,
When you enabled these services of your Nortel box you started violating at least the following Vonage patents: 6,282,574, 6,104,711, 6,359,880. (Presuming they stand up to court scrutiny.)
Nortel also violated them by building the box with the feature.
They will if they succeed in this suit, then go after Nortel and its customers.
The claims in the patents Russel Shaw is pointing out are:
First one: looking up, in a server, the IP address of a bridge to the PSTN and a phone number: Using the lookup result to connect a VoIP call through the bridge to the phone number. (I.e. making a VoIP call to somebody's phone based on a database entry that produced both the gateway IP address and phone number.)
Second one: looking up, in a server, TWO results, the SECOND of which is the IP address of a bridge to the PSTN and a phone number: If the first result doesn't lead to a VoIP connection to the user (i.e. he's not at his computer) using the second result to connect a VoIP call through the bridge to the phone number. (I.e. "call forwarding" from his computer to his phone, based on a database entry based on a database entry that produced both the gateway IP address and phone number.)
Third one: Customer's wireless (such as WiFI) handset registers itself with a database when it gets to a hotspot. Caller's software establishes a VoIP call to it based on the database inforamtion.
Looks like the third one also claims the infrastructure for getting incoming SIP calls on a wireless phone using standard protocols, and the first two would similarly claim the infrastructure for getting incoming SIP calls on a landline/cell phone ditto.
I recall another of the patents/claims that included doing call authorization and/or billing on the bridge, which would demand a Vonage tax for any for-pay service that provides billed VoIP/PSTN bridging. But these three would even let Vonage tax open POTS bridging systems and even external-net access to a company internal system that bridges VoIP to desk phones or walk-around wireless phones - both IP and "cordless POTS".
Life sucks when every day is a mind-numbingly boring routine at school, and all of your friends live life like a sitcom because that's all they know. I saw cruelty and injustice pretty much everywhere, and it pissed me off, but nobody I knew even cared.
That is exactly how these kinds of things happen. I didn't break, because when it came down to it I had one real friend that stuck with me. But when I see another kid going postal on the evening news, I'm never surprised. It's just another guy who wasn't as lucky as me.
DON'T assume that these things are done by ordinary people who "snapped" under pressure. Virtually ALL people have thoughts about doing such things from time to time - and chose not to do so. A VERY FEW people are DEFECTIVE when it comes to making such choices.
Events like this are very occasional national news - in a country with 125 million people, about half of whom are armed and most of the rest of whom could easily arm themselves (despite over 30,000 laws that try to make it difficult). The fact that it IS very occasional and national news on those occasions should tell you HOW rare such pathology is.
Try pulling that psycho bullshit in a Virginia mall, and that shooter's life would have ended a lot quicker, with a whole lot less innocent people injured.
Are there any cases that have really put this to the test? I mean, it sounds good... the idea that some armed citizen/vigilante would engage in a gunfight with a crazed shooter, but I wonder if it really happens.
Yes, it really happens.
Other, similar, things happen, too. For instance: In an Oregon school shooting somewhat after Columbine, one of the students had enough training to recognize when the pistol in the shooter's hand needed reloading, and jumped him at that point, ending the incident. THAT one made the news - but not all that much. The media weren't able to get any soundbites from the locals asking for gun bans. (When they descended on the town on the anniversary of the event to try again they were heckled by citizens as "vultures" and mooned by passing students from the high school in question.)
You'd almost have to be specially trained (military, for example) to engage people like that. Just having some target shooting under your belt just doesn't seem like enough.
Take two short and inexpensive classes from an NRA-certified instructor:
1) Basic Pistol.
2) Personal Protection.
They'll teach you all you need to know. (Including when it's legal in your jurisdiction. That part is taught by a cop or judge, not the NRA instructor (unless the instructor is also a cop or judge.)
These are available in most areas on a regular basis. Check with your local gun club or www.nra.com for times and places or contact info for local instructors.
It's really amazing how LITTLE training it takes to get quite good at this. Gun-can-do is MUCH easier to learn than the other martial arts.
Similar events I've heard of (though unlike Snopes I haven't checked them out):
- Crook in a Detroit gun show handling one at a vendor's table puts ammo in it and tries to hold up the vendor. Of course a significant fraction of the crowd had CCWs and were packing. He ends up as guest of honor at a "Polish Firing Squad", i.e. in the center of a cricle of armed people with guns pointed inward.
- Similarly, a crook in Oregon picked the wrong date and hotel to rob the desk clerks. There was an NRA convention in progress, and Oregon is a gun-carry-friendly state so virtually everybody at the convention was packing - if only for the novelty of being able to do so legally. One of the convention-goers noticed the problem on his way to the nearby restaurant, quietly continued into the restaurant and notified all the convention-goers there (along with any packing locals) about what was going on, and when the crook turned around he was facing a semi-circle of armed people. When cops arrived he was on his face on the floor in the center of the circle, begging them to take him away from "these madmen".
I was reading some info about crime stats and one interestign thing: Victims of crimes who possessed guns/weapons during the incident had a good chance ... of having their own weapon used against them.
Check your stats - and your sources.
Victims of crimes almost never have their own guns used against them.
The primary people who DO have their own guns used against them are police who carry their guns in a belt holster. Typically this happens when they're focussed on one crook and have to close with him (or on some other distraction) and a different crook grabs their gun from behind. (There is training on avoiding this, but most departments don't pay for it.) This is why uniformed officers (who open-carry) must disarm in courtrooms (to avoid hostage situations when a crook tries to get away) but plainclothesmen (who carry concealed) are encouraged to carry (so they can assist the bailiff if such a situation develops.
Such training is available to civilians, too. (In fact, I have taken it.) It's called "gun retention". It includes training in attempting to disarm your opponent - mainly to show how hard it is to actually do so, partly to teach you to identify the very few situations where it's even remotely possible AND improves your chances over hanging around and hoping you don't get killed, and what to do then. (Main one is when the bad guy has the gun poked into your spine from behind.)
According to FBI statistics, resisting an attempted crime with a gun is the ONLY way to reduce your probability of death or injury below quiet cooperation - and it cuts it by a bunch. Anything else (including trying to reason with the crook) raises the probability of injury to the victim. (Knives are particularly bad.)
What fucked up animals we are. I wish well to all affected by this.
...).
There was an old joke that is apropos to your comment:
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by hostile Indians and are about out of ammunition. Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says "I guess we're done for." Tonto says "Who you call 'we', white man?"
Who are you calling "we"?
And while you're at it, who are you calling a "fucked up animal"?
Nature is red in tooth and claw. Some species of ducks reproduce by rape. Male cats (especially lions) will kill other males' kittens to bring the local females into heat sooner. Male animals of many species will fight to the death over females. Bobcats of either sex will kill other roughly-similar-sized predators in their territories (such as dogs, housecats, foxes, mountain lion cubs,
You think this guy is "fucked up" because you think what he did is wrong. What that means is "what he did is wrong for your idea of what's right for people to do".
You think "we" are "fucked up" up because you generalize from HIM to all of US.
In fact, what he did was very rare for people to do. It apparently IS wrong for people. But HE was a particular PERSON who was "fucked up".
And perhaps YOU are also one of those who is "fucked up". (Though I doubt it: You must have some ideal that what he did was "wrong". Otherwise you wouldn't be revolted by his actions.)
But don't assume that the REST of humanity is "fucked up". The statistics indicate otherwise.
Might want to explain to the youngsters that MTV used to show music videos.
Hear hear!
If anybody put up a cable channel that adhered to the old MTV format (music videos 24/7, with "bug" in lower-left-hand-corner on first and last 5 seconds or so giving song name, artist label), and had decent videos, I'd watch it.
But now days even on those rare occasions when any of the so-called music video stations actually play music videos they play garbage. Even the ones (like the "VH1 classic" channel) which have access to the best music of decades seem to be hunting down and playing "B"-sides and stuff that was never popular because it was such utter junk.
It's not like they don't know what was good: THAT's the stuff they use to inspire the "promos" for the channel that they slot into the breaks.
Could it be that the content owners are refusing to let them play the good stuff, as part of this IP fiasco?
Betamax.
... schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has ...
You misunderstand the purpose of public schools.
- It is not to teach people how to be functioning, self-reliant adults capable of making informed decisions and resisting attempts to manipulate them.
- It is to indoctrinate them and paralyze their ability to self-inform and resist manipulation, turning them into easy-to-herd, standardized, branded, cattle.
(I'd have said "sheep" but you don't brand them - unlike the output of public schools, who are "branded" with accents to identify their place in the brave new world order.)
Meanwhile the children of the ruling class are educated in private institutions too expensive and exclusive for the general mob to afford or pass entry requriements.
This is why, just for starters, they ban Wikipedia but mandate viewing of "An Inconvenient Truth", and teach "Rain Forest Math" rather than arithmetic.