The measure increases sales tax by 1% and adds computer support services, data center support, custom programming, consulting, and disaster recovery services to the list.
Custom programming is one thing and that kind of a move would certainly make me leave the state. Computer Support Services, Data Center Support, and Disaster Recovery Services however are the big ones IMO. It looks like Best Buy is going to have to pay sales tax for the Geek Squad - which they probably were charging anyways. But what about call centers and data center services? Those companies compete nationally or at the very least with like businesses in surrounding states. Certainly, no new call centers will pop up in the state, and a new data center provider would have to think long and hard about starting up in a nearby state instead.
Use tax aside, businesses also have to worry about costs to out-of-state customers. The use tax makes it more difficult for in-state businesses to avoid the tax, but the tax itself puts in-state companies at a disadvantage when competing for customers that don't have a presence within Maryland.
Further, for businesses that utilize IT services a great deal, the tax provides incentive to leave the state. 6% on custom programming? That could increase costs for medium businesses by more than $100K/year. That's not a huge number, but it is a number that will get people researching other locations. This isn't just something that provides a disincentive for IT companies from starting up in Maryland, it is a tax that provides an incentive for all companies that use IT services to leave the state.
While this was an impressive video, it leaves me wondering how to try it out at home. I assume there are more than a few web pages talking about grabbing wiimote data via bluetooth, but what software could you use to display multi-touch inputs on a PC screen?
I was in this situation several years back. I was told - sign the contract, or you'll be fired. My contract was to pay for training expenses if I left the company within 2 years of being hired. I didn't want to sign the contract. I was a year and a half into working for this particular company. The requests to sign the contract started out friendly. The requests got angrier and more aggressive quickly. Eventually, I caved because I needed the job - then came the demand that I back date the contract to a year and a half earlier. I really didn't like the idea, but I needed the job.
I should have evaluated how much I really needed the job.
Suddenly, work became less friendly. I was constantly getting harrassed. The timing was transparent. I decided to leave and to put up a fight. I never did get my day in court. I ended up not only losing the 5K retail cost for training classes (the company received a substantial discount), but I also lost all the travel expenses. The travel expenses they claimed were not those from when I was in training, but instead from more expensive travel that I had done while on billable client time. None of it mattered to the judge, who finalized the case without ever so much as seeing me. The ironic part is that the company I left was sold to the company that I went to - so I ended up paying those people to work for them. I could have made more money working at McDonald's that year and it would have been a nice stress free break.
If I were you, I would not sign that contract under any circumstances whatsoever. I wouldn't sign a redacted version. I wouldn't sign a revised version. I wouldn't sign it if they threatened to fire me.
I would, however, keep track of every communication regarding this contract and every adverse communication with management moving forward in the event that you eventually do lose your job as a result. There might not be any recourse available to you, but it pays to be prepared.
So even mentioning the race factor makes me a troll...
I guess I live in a different world than those who happened to have mod points. For the record, I was born in Minnesota - and actually not terribly far from where this occurred, so I do have a little bit of insight into the community. I certainly wasn't implying that anybody assumed Jammie was guilty based on race - merely that race was a potential factor in weighing her defense or in deciding how much it was worth arguing for her in the jury room. It doesn't matter if she was black, indian, samoan, or anything else - the potential for race playing into things is there.
The very first thing I noticed when I saw the article was that this was a black woman in Minnesota. We're not talking Mississipi, but I have to imagine the possibility that race played a role, given what I know about Minnesota.
The second thing is that she was poor enough not to be able to afford her expert witness. I don't know about the jury, but the lack of defensive expert testimony is pretty glaring to me. The lack of contrary opinion to the RIAA's guy is very bad.
The third thing is that she seemed to see the case very simply. "It might have been my IP address, and my commonly used username, but how do you make the leap of logic that it was me on my computer?" From a criminal prosecution standpoint, that may be a valid defense - albeit a very thin one - but from a civil perspective, this isn't going to hold much water.
I personally had a very low opinion of the attorney and his preparation going into trial, but not having your expert witness and finding out about that at the last minute probably had a lot to do with it. How many of us would have volunteered had we known about that problem? How many of us would have sent money?
Regardless of guilt, this woman defended herself poorly and that is bad news for other victims. A beneficial ruling on appeal or on her post-trial motion would be great for everybody, but given the performance thus far I would expect the RIAA to win everything from this point forward.
And here I thought they were supposed to be the conduit of interagency information - making sure the right agencies were aware of what information the other agencies had on the bad guys.
Sounds like a lot of people are addressing this from the anti-MS, pro-Mozilla Foundation standpoint.
The next version of ECMA Script will break just about every piece of legacy javascript. That's a decade of history and development in the crapper. People have just begun to release real and functional javascript libraries that open up a whole world of opportunities and going with a new standard not only destroys those libraries but it puts a serious hamper on the evolution of the web in general.
Even if we throw in a tag to make legacy javascript viable, every legacy page out there would have to be updated - meaning all of those abandoned or hardly maintained web sites with tons of useful information are going to be broken - so instead we'll have to wade through 200 word ad filled pages looking for the information we need.
Re-implementing javascript breaks the web as we know it. As such, it is a bad idea. If you want to extend the experience, implement the new language as a new alternative language - like VBScript.
How would you all be reacting if there was talk about re-implementing C or heaven forbid Ruby.
It doesn't seem to me that the law makes a distinction between "making a download available" and "making a download available for a fee". In fact, profiting from the theft of a copyrighted work seems much more sinister than giving one away.
If EMI is offering to give the entire revenue from online downloads available as restitution for their theft, should not consumers caught up in the Kazaa lawsuits be able to make the same restitution offer?
From what I've seen of the RIAA lawsuits, the targetted tracks seem to be largely inconsequential music - perhaps because the RIAA doesn't want to drag big names into these lawsuits, perhaps because their bigger name clients have the legal power to push for a portion of the lawsuit proceeds, or perhaps because they choose to prosecute music downloads where the transfer of rights to the RIAA is more clearly documented.
I really don't see how anybody gets caught up in those suits, and frankly I don't see why the attorneys involved don't just blow these cases out of the water.
1) MAYBE the IP Address belonged to the user. Say a 90% chance. 2) MAYBE an unauthorized individual downloaded the music. Say a 90% chance. 3) MAYBE the RIAA owns the rights to the music. Again, say a 90% chance. 4) MAYBE the RIAA was right and there was no router involved. Say a 90% chance.
The list of maybes could go on, but even if you just put up for MAYBE's along the way - even 90% maybe's you can interpret that to mean there was a 65% chance of their allegation being true - without bringing out any contrary evidence at all.
Why focus so much on proving negatives when you can just focus on the fact that their stack of assumptions adds up to a bunch of nothing? Instead focus on the fact that their allegations of damages are incorrect - how much of the music allegedly stolen was legitimately sold the year before, the year during, and the year after the alleged theft? Make them legitimately prove they have the rights to the work and therefore the right to sue. Find out about contractual problems between the original author and the music producer. Find out about the contractual problems between the producer and the label. Find out about the contractual problems between the label and the rights management firm.
Focus on the fact that the RIAA has received revenue to this allegation previously (KAZAA settlement). Focus on the fact that the RIAA's stance on theft echoes their concerns about recordable cassettes which turned out to be a bunch of baloney. Focus on the fact that the RIAA is not a legitimate for-profit corporation, but an organization which has been operating with nearly constantl breaches of the law and ethics.
It's very difficult to disprove something that didn't happen. Instead the lawyers should be focusing on everything they can prove that did happen - all of the unethical behavior associated with the RIAA and the labels themselves, and on the absurdity of their allegations and the giant leap of faith that it takes to consider a defendant guilty considering the probabilities and potential for human mistake involved along the way. The fact that they've sued dead people, children, people who don't even own internet connections, and people with zero interest in music should be a good example that when you string so many if's and maybe's together the odds that your end result is a legitimate one are extremely poor.
I know I'm late, but I figured I would share my own personal story. I went to Fry's in Sacramento a number of years ago and purchased Visual C++. I was traveling for work. I got back to my hotel room to find that the promo CD that came with it - the training video - was in the box, but there was no install disc. This wasn't a box labeled as a store return which Fry's is normally pretty good at. I went back to Fry's. I was told by a manager that this sort of thing happens and that I would have to contact Microsoft - he even had a phone number for me to call. I was adamant that this was a store issue and I wanted my install discs, but to appease him, I called Microsoft on my cell phone.
Microsoft literally laughed at me on the phone and told me I would have to get the discs from Fry's.
They wouldn't give me my discs and demanded I leave the store. I refused. I wasn't leaving without my discs. They threatened to call the police. I dialed the number on my cell phone, explained my story to the dispatcher and they sent a unit. The Managers then were very upset with me and demanded I leave again. I refused and said the police were coming and if they wanted me to leave I would.
Enter the next set of managers. They had me walk them through where I got the box from, inspected my package and again tried to pass off the Microsoft number. I told them I had already called and they told me Fry's was on the hook for giving me the CDs. At that point, all the managers just walked away from me, but stood a good 40 feet away staring at me.
The police finally showed up and before we got into it with them they gave me a replacement box.
I've worked retail plenty and I understand that customers will try to pull a fast one on you - but as a paying customer I am not responsible for shrinkage. You don't go to stores and gamble on whether or not you should receive what's in the box. If they don't deliver, they have to refund your money or deliver the product you were promised. There isn't any grey area.
The moral of the story is that when you are right, you are right. Don't back down, and don't let some retail manager push you around. Leaving the store without either your money or the product you paid for is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.
Wouldn't it be nice if they came up with a law that ordered the credit reporting agency's to correct an identity theft victim's credit report data in a timely manner? Or maybe mandated a level of service beyond "send us a certified letter and we'll get back to you within 4 weeks and whatever we say then is final - but don't make the letter any longer than 65 words or we won't read it"
I don't necessarily disagree that lying to congress should be a story. I was just pointing out the sad fact that in the face of contrary facts, our political leaders have shown us repeatedly over the last what - 20 years - that "I don't recall" saves the liar from any repercussions whatsoever.
Are there any old timers here who might want to out the linux distro from comdex? That part has me very curious. I'm thinking some sort of Lindows-ish distro.
The Patent Owner is also advised that claims 1 and 11 would be considered to be patentable if they were amended to recite providing a shopping cart model that in response to performance aof an ad-to-shopping-cart action, sends a request to the server system to add the item to a shopping cart within the main body of each claim and change the subsequent recitation of "a shopping cart model" to the shopping cart model.
I'm not sure what claims 1 and 11 are though. Maybe someone else can ferret that out.
I follow plenty of other people here when I say just release it. I personally have quite a bit of half-written software that had potential at one point but has gone by the wayside because I never released it. It's easy to get caught up in self doubt or waiting until you can clean up the code and add a few comments.
Just F'ing do it, and announce it to a related community. If it's a phpBB alternative, announce it to their community. Don't spam, but just posting something like - I like phpBB, but I saw a few drawbacks so I decided to get my own thing going, if you are interested check it out. Don't get into arguments, and make it a point that you aren't spamming, just passing on the link and the code to those that might be interested.
From there, just keep doing your own thing. If it gets to a point where you think it really has potential consider spending some money doing a little bit of advertising - nothing huge, but a few adsense ads or similar in webmaster forum admin communities.
If you really want to get people to try your software and use it, be sure that it has an easy install and basic system requirements. WordPress' 3 minute, 1-click install was a marketing dream - especially considering how much of a hassle their competitors were to get installed when they first got started.
Also - if you can, offer binaries or a preconfigured download for common installations. Or maybe just a few sample configuration files that take you beyond a no-frills install. The easier it is to try a piece of software, the more likely people will be to try it out.
Not harden the machine, but at least hand the system over in a state where it is not wide open to a series of known attacks.
If I were less of a nerd, the system would have remained in it's original state and no doubt would have been taken over. Frankly, I was nervous about the short time frame that it took to close up the most obvious holes.
One of the problems are dedicated server hosts. I picked up a dedicated box a while back and I was startled to find that I was put in a position to scramble to secure the box immediately upon receiving my ssh password.
Of course, I could have paid extra to get a more secure box, but budget was an issue, and my plans were pretty simple for the machine.
Another problem is that a lot of webmasters with dedicated boxes and virtual servers end up running older and insecure versions of software - from mail servers to web servers, etc. because the software is all wrapped as part of Plesk or something similar. When security patches come out, the turnaround time for updates from the software providers is far from instantaneous.
A third problem is efficiency. If your system has been rooted, it's easy to not notice as long as the person who rooted you isn't abusing your system resources.
Recovering a rooted system is a problem as well - sys admins in general could stand to take a lesson from rootkits to protect their own system. I've seen two instances myself where overwritten binaries like ps and ls could not be reverted without a great deal of effort.
Further - people who get "Managed" servers expect that they have a secure system and that their system is being monitored for security issues regularly. From what I've seen, "Managed" means that vendor provided packages get updated automatically and uptime may be monitored, but that's a far cry from someone actually managing a system.
Linux can be secure, but I think the vast majority of web servers out there are wide open targets, much like all those windows ME boxes attached directly to cable modems.
There are a lot of people saying she is guilty. I don't necessarily buy that from an objective point of view according to what I have read of the trial summaries.
Starting from the beginning, the RIAA would have to prove: 1) They own the copyright to the songs in question. 2) Somebody besides MediaSentry downloaded the songs in question.
Pretty basic. The RIAA case is as follows: 1) The defendant had Kazaa installed 2) She used the same username elsewhere so it had to be her 3) Some sort of magical evidence stating only one MAC address used that cable modem. 4) MediaSentry downloaded the songs in question 5) Piracy is a big financial problem for the music industry
The defense has pointed out 1) The expert witness testimony is boring and questionable at its most basic foundations. 2) Primary prosecution assumptions are blatently wrong. 3) RIAA copyright paperwork is not in order. 4) The defendant spends a lot of money on music.
I know we aren't going for "reasonable doubt", rather a "preponderence of evidence". From the basic summaries, I have a hard time even seeing a preponderence of evidence. From what I remember from other RIAA readings, their song selection is music that I would question has ever been downloaded by an anonymous music searcher.
I also haven't read anything that says the RIAA went into how long the music was shared for. Was it shared for an hour or for 6 months? If it was an hour, I have to say that given the song lists, it is unlikely that anybody got the song. If it was 6 months then it is more likely, but then again, I have to go back to the basics and question whether or not they've provided a preponderence of evidence that someone downloaded those songs.
The fact that MediaSentry downloads don't count weighs very heavily, as does the fact there is a lot of technical information. When there's a lot of hard to understand technical information, you have to take the summarized results at face value and you have to consider the source. Given that the technical experts that the RIAA provided were weak under cross examination I don't think I would give them much weight.
In a jury room, I'm sure the question would come up - did she have Kazaa installed? I don't know. The boyfriend says she didn't. There is no evidence that she had it installed - just an expert witness who proved to be wrong about a few things. Can you really even objectively believe that the defendant had Kazaa installed? I suppose you can if you believe all the expert testimony, but I would be reluctant to believe all of it myself.
In every contract that I have seen, the artists signed over the copyright to the lyrics. Artists that write their own lyrics are more rare than you would think, though.
Even in the case where the artist wrote their own lyrics and retained ownership of the copyrights, the producers constantly push for changes during recording sessions - partially because they know what sells and partially to gain an ownership interest in the music should the song get popular and the relationship with the artist go poorly.
There are no scenarios where the young and talented recording artist pulled one over on the recording company and got a deal that an impartial observer would consider fair.
The bands always make more money off of the tours because there are less middle men between the consumers and the artists. That and their contracts for tours are significantly better than recording contracts.
Microsoft Index... oh nevermind. I can't get it out with a straight face.
Lucene is the way to go. There are APIs for Perl for dealing with Lucene data sets and for many other languages as well. Nutch is a good place to start getting to know the power of Lucene - you can get a nutch crawler interface up and running quickly and you can browse through some of the source files to get an understanding of how to bring in various file formats - Office documents, PDFs, etc.
The Google Search boxes are decent, but with any commercial solution you end up paying fees for the amount of documents in your index. They open source the code, presumably because of OSS components (maybe even Lucene) but the documentation they publish is laughable.
This is reminiscent of DirecTV's Black Sunday - if I remember right, they put out an update on Superbowl Sunday that killed hacked receivers, and a good portion of unhacked receivers in the process.
I have a fresh Office 2K7 installation and also a Visio 2K7. Visio is not activated yet. I was still able to validate and install the PDF plugin two days ago without a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Custom programming is one thing and that kind of a move would certainly make me leave the state. Computer Support Services, Data Center Support, and Disaster Recovery Services however are the big ones IMO. It looks like Best Buy is going to have to pay sales tax for the Geek Squad - which they probably were charging anyways. But what about call centers and data center services? Those companies compete nationally or at the very least with like businesses in surrounding states. Certainly, no new call centers will pop up in the state, and a new data center provider would have to think long and hard about starting up in a nearby state instead.
Use tax aside, businesses also have to worry about costs to out-of-state customers. The use tax makes it more difficult for in-state businesses to avoid the tax, but the tax itself puts in-state companies at a disadvantage when competing for customers that don't have a presence within Maryland.
Further, for businesses that utilize IT services a great deal, the tax provides incentive to leave the state. 6% on custom programming? That could increase costs for medium businesses by more than $100K
While this was an impressive video, it leaves me wondering how to try it out at home. I assume there are more than a few web pages talking about grabbing wiimote data via bluetooth, but what software could you use to display multi-touch inputs on a PC screen?
I was in this situation several years back. I was told - sign the contract, or you'll be fired. My contract was to pay for training expenses if I left the company within 2 years of being hired. I didn't want to sign the contract. I was a year and a half into working for this particular company. The requests to sign the contract started out friendly. The requests got angrier and more aggressive quickly. Eventually, I caved because I needed the job - then came the demand that I back date the contract to a year and a half earlier. I really didn't like the idea, but I needed the job.
I should have evaluated how much I really needed the job.
Suddenly, work became less friendly. I was constantly getting harrassed. The timing was transparent. I decided to leave and to put up a fight. I never did get my day in court. I ended up not only losing the 5K retail cost for training classes (the company received a substantial discount), but I also lost all the travel expenses. The travel expenses they claimed were not those from when I was in training, but instead from more expensive travel that I had done while on billable client time. None of it mattered to the judge, who finalized the case without ever so much as seeing me. The ironic part is that the company I left was sold to the company that I went to - so I ended up paying those people to work for them. I could have made more money working at McDonald's that year and it would have been a nice stress free break.
If I were you, I would not sign that contract under any circumstances whatsoever. I wouldn't sign a redacted version. I wouldn't sign a revised version. I wouldn't sign it if they threatened to fire me.
I would, however, keep track of every communication regarding this contract and every adverse communication with management moving forward in the event that you eventually do lose your job as a result. There might not be any recourse available to you, but it pays to be prepared.
So even mentioning the race factor makes me a troll...
I guess I live in a different world than those who happened to have mod points. For the record, I was born in Minnesota - and actually not terribly far from where this occurred, so I do have a little bit of insight into the community. I certainly wasn't implying that anybody assumed Jammie was guilty based on race - merely that race was a potential factor in weighing her defense or in deciding how much it was worth arguing for her in the jury room. It doesn't matter if she was black, indian, samoan, or anything else - the potential for race playing into things is there.
It was hardly the only point that I raised.
The very first thing I noticed when I saw the article was that this was a black woman in Minnesota. We're not talking Mississipi, but I have to imagine the possibility that race played a role, given what I know about Minnesota.
The second thing is that she was poor enough not to be able to afford her expert witness. I don't know about the jury, but the lack of defensive expert testimony is pretty glaring to me. The lack of contrary opinion to the RIAA's guy is very bad.
The third thing is that she seemed to see the case very simply. "It might have been my IP address, and my commonly used username, but how do you make the leap of logic that it was me on my computer?" From a criminal prosecution standpoint, that may be a valid defense - albeit a very thin one - but from a civil perspective, this isn't going to hold much water.
I personally had a very low opinion of the attorney and his preparation going into trial, but not having your expert witness and finding out about that at the last minute probably had a lot to do with it. How many of us would have volunteered had we known about that problem? How many of us would have sent money?
Regardless of guilt, this woman defended herself poorly and that is bad news for other victims. A beneficial ruling on appeal or on her post-trial motion would be great for everybody, but given the performance thus far I would expect the RIAA to win everything from this point forward.
And here I thought they were supposed to be the conduit of interagency information - making sure the right agencies were aware of what information the other agencies had on the bad guys.
It's a vague agency with vague authority.
Sounds like a lot of people are addressing this from the anti-MS, pro-Mozilla Foundation standpoint.
The next version of ECMA Script will break just about every piece of legacy javascript. That's a decade of history and development in the crapper. People have just begun to release real and functional javascript libraries that open up a whole world of opportunities and going with a new standard not only destroys those libraries but it puts a serious hamper on the evolution of the web in general.
Even if we throw in a tag to make legacy javascript viable, every legacy page out there would have to be updated - meaning all of those abandoned or hardly maintained web sites with tons of useful information are going to be broken - so instead we'll have to wade through 200 word ad filled pages looking for the information we need.
Re-implementing javascript breaks the web as we know it. As such, it is a bad idea. If you want to extend the experience, implement the new language as a new alternative language - like VBScript.
How would you all be reacting if there was talk about re-implementing C or heaven forbid Ruby.
It doesn't seem to me that the law makes a distinction between "making a download available" and "making a download available for a fee". In fact, profiting from the theft of a copyrighted work seems much more sinister than giving one away.
If EMI is offering to give the entire revenue from online downloads available as restitution for their theft, should not consumers caught up in the Kazaa lawsuits be able to make the same restitution offer?
From what I've seen of the RIAA lawsuits, the targetted tracks seem to be largely inconsequential music - perhaps because the RIAA doesn't want to drag big names into these lawsuits, perhaps because their bigger name clients have the legal power to push for a portion of the lawsuit proceeds, or perhaps because they choose to prosecute music downloads where the transfer of rights to the RIAA is more clearly documented.
I really don't see how anybody gets caught up in those suits, and frankly I don't see why the attorneys involved don't just blow these cases out of the water.
1) MAYBE the IP Address belonged to the user. Say a 90% chance.
2) MAYBE an unauthorized individual downloaded the music. Say a 90% chance.
3) MAYBE the RIAA owns the rights to the music. Again, say a 90% chance.
4) MAYBE the RIAA was right and there was no router involved. Say a 90% chance.
The list of maybes could go on, but even if you just put up for MAYBE's along the way - even 90% maybe's you can interpret that to mean there was a 65% chance of their allegation being true - without bringing out any contrary evidence at all.
Why focus so much on proving negatives when you can just focus on the fact that their stack of assumptions adds up to a bunch of nothing? Instead focus on the fact that their allegations of damages are incorrect - how much of the music allegedly stolen was legitimately sold the year before, the year during, and the year after the alleged theft? Make them legitimately prove they have the rights to the work and therefore the right to sue. Find out about contractual problems between the original author and the music producer. Find out about the contractual problems between the producer and the label. Find out about the contractual problems between the label and the rights management firm.
Focus on the fact that the RIAA has received revenue to this allegation previously (KAZAA settlement). Focus on the fact that the RIAA's stance on theft echoes their concerns about recordable cassettes which turned out to be a bunch of baloney. Focus on the fact that the RIAA is not a legitimate for-profit corporation, but an organization which has been operating with nearly constantl breaches of the law and ethics.
It's very difficult to disprove something that didn't happen. Instead the lawyers should be focusing on everything they can prove that did happen - all of the unethical behavior associated with the RIAA and the labels themselves, and on the absurdity of their allegations and the giant leap of faith that it takes to consider a defendant guilty considering the probabilities and potential for human mistake involved along the way. The fact that they've sued dead people, children, people who don't even own internet connections, and people with zero interest in music should be a good example that when you string so many if's and maybe's together the odds that your end result is a legitimate one are extremely poor.
I used to live in an apartment complex with similar satellite rules. Little did I know they were saving me from having to deal with DirecTV :).
I know I'm late, but I figured I would share my own personal story. I went to Fry's in Sacramento a number of years ago and purchased Visual C++. I was traveling for work. I got back to my hotel room to find that the promo CD that came with it - the training video - was in the box, but there was no install disc. This wasn't a box labeled as a store return which Fry's is normally pretty good at. I went back to Fry's. I was told by a manager that this sort of thing happens and that I would have to contact Microsoft - he even had a phone number for me to call. I was adamant that this was a store issue and I wanted my install discs, but to appease him, I called Microsoft on my cell phone.
Microsoft literally laughed at me on the phone and told me I would have to get the discs from Fry's.
They wouldn't give me my discs and demanded I leave the store. I refused. I wasn't leaving without my discs. They threatened to call the police. I dialed the number on my cell phone, explained my story to the dispatcher and they sent a unit. The Managers then were very upset with me and demanded I leave again. I refused and said the police were coming and if they wanted me to leave I would.
Enter the next set of managers. They had me walk them through where I got the box from, inspected my package and again tried to pass off the Microsoft number. I told them I had already called and they told me Fry's was on the hook for giving me the CDs. At that point, all the managers just walked away from me, but stood a good 40 feet away staring at me.
The police finally showed up and before we got into it with them they gave me a replacement box.
I've worked retail plenty and I understand that customers will try to pull a fast one on you - but as a paying customer I am not responsible for shrinkage. You don't go to stores and gamble on whether or not you should receive what's in the box. If they don't deliver, they have to refund your money or deliver the product you were promised. There isn't any grey area.
The moral of the story is that when you are right, you are right. Don't back down, and don't let some retail manager push you around. Leaving the store without either your money or the product you paid for is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.
Wouldn't it be nice if they came up with a law that ordered the credit reporting agency's to correct an identity theft victim's credit report data in a timely manner? Or maybe mandated a level of service beyond "send us a certified letter and we'll get back to you within 4 weeks and whatever we say then is final - but don't make the letter any longer than 65 words or we won't read it"
I don't necessarily disagree that lying to congress should be a story. I was just pointing out the sad fact that in the face of contrary facts, our political leaders have shown us repeatedly over the last what - 20 years - that "I don't recall" saves the liar from any repercussions whatsoever.
Are there any old timers here who might want to out the linux distro from comdex? That part has me very curious. I'm thinking some sort of Lindows-ish distro.
I'm not sure what claims 1 and 11 are though. Maybe someone else can ferret that out.
All Yang has to do is say "I was misinformed" and "I was not directly involved". This is a non-story.
I follow plenty of other people here when I say just release it. I personally have quite a bit of half-written software that had potential at one point but has gone by the wayside because I never released it. It's easy to get caught up in self doubt or waiting until you can clean up the code and add a few comments.
Just F'ing do it, and announce it to a related community. If it's a phpBB alternative, announce it to their community. Don't spam, but just posting something like - I like phpBB, but I saw a few drawbacks so I decided to get my own thing going, if you are interested check it out. Don't get into arguments, and make it a point that you aren't spamming, just passing on the link and the code to those that might be interested.
From there, just keep doing your own thing. If it gets to a point where you think it really has potential consider spending some money doing a little bit of advertising - nothing huge, but a few adsense ads or similar in webmaster forum admin communities.
If you really want to get people to try your software and use it, be sure that it has an easy install and basic system requirements. WordPress' 3 minute, 1-click install was a marketing dream - especially considering how much of a hassle their competitors were to get installed when they first got started.
Also - if you can, offer binaries or a preconfigured download for common installations. Or maybe just a few sample configuration files that take you beyond a no-frills install. The easier it is to try a piece of software, the more likely people will be to try it out.
Not harden the machine, but at least hand the system over in a state where it is not wide open to a series of known attacks.
If I were less of a nerd, the system would have remained in it's original state and no doubt would have been taken over. Frankly, I was nervous about the short time frame that it took to close up the most obvious holes.
One of the problems are dedicated server hosts. I picked up a dedicated box a while back and I was startled to find that I was put in a position to scramble to secure the box immediately upon receiving my ssh password.
Of course, I could have paid extra to get a more secure box, but budget was an issue, and my plans were pretty simple for the machine.
Another problem is that a lot of webmasters with dedicated boxes and virtual servers end up running older and insecure versions of software - from mail servers to web servers, etc. because the software is all wrapped as part of Plesk or something similar. When security patches come out, the turnaround time for updates from the software providers is far from instantaneous.
A third problem is efficiency. If your system has been rooted, it's easy to not notice as long as the person who rooted you isn't abusing your system resources.
Recovering a rooted system is a problem as well - sys admins in general could stand to take a lesson from rootkits to protect their own system. I've seen two instances myself where overwritten binaries like ps and ls could not be reverted without a great deal of effort.
Further - people who get "Managed" servers expect that they have a secure system and that their system is being monitored for security issues regularly. From what I've seen, "Managed" means that vendor provided packages get updated automatically and uptime may be monitored, but that's a far cry from someone actually managing a system.
Linux can be secure, but I think the vast majority of web servers out there are wide open targets, much like all those windows ME boxes attached directly to cable modems.
There are a lot of people saying she is guilty. I don't necessarily buy that from an objective point of view according to what I have read of the trial summaries.
Starting from the beginning, the RIAA would have to prove:
1) They own the copyright to the songs in question.
2) Somebody besides MediaSentry downloaded the songs in question.
Pretty basic. The RIAA case is as follows:
1) The defendant had Kazaa installed
2) She used the same username elsewhere so it had to be her
3) Some sort of magical evidence stating only one MAC address used that cable modem.
4) MediaSentry downloaded the songs in question
5) Piracy is a big financial problem for the music industry
The defense has pointed out
1) The expert witness testimony is boring and questionable at its most basic foundations.
2) Primary prosecution assumptions are blatently wrong.
3) RIAA copyright paperwork is not in order.
4) The defendant spends a lot of money on music.
I know we aren't going for "reasonable doubt", rather a "preponderence of evidence". From the basic summaries, I have a hard time even seeing a preponderence of evidence. From what I remember from other RIAA readings, their song selection is music that I would question has ever been downloaded by an anonymous music searcher.
I also haven't read anything that says the RIAA went into how long the music was shared for. Was it shared for an hour or for 6 months? If it was an hour, I have to say that given the song lists, it is unlikely that anybody got the song. If it was 6 months then it is more likely, but then again, I have to go back to the basics and question whether or not they've provided a preponderence of evidence that someone downloaded those songs.
The fact that MediaSentry downloads don't count weighs very heavily, as does the fact there is a lot of technical information. When there's a lot of hard to understand technical information, you have to take the summarized results at face value and you have to consider the source. Given that the technical experts that the RIAA provided were weak under cross examination I don't think I would give them much weight.
In a jury room, I'm sure the question would come up - did she have Kazaa installed? I don't know. The boyfriend says she didn't. There is no evidence that she had it installed - just an expert witness who proved to be wrong about a few things. Can you really even objectively believe that the defendant had Kazaa installed? I suppose you can if you believe all the expert testimony, but I would be reluctant to believe all of it myself.
In every contract that I have seen, the artists signed over the copyright to the lyrics. Artists that write their own lyrics are more rare than you would think, though.
Even in the case where the artist wrote their own lyrics and retained ownership of the copyrights, the producers constantly push for changes during recording sessions - partially because they know what sells and partially to gain an ownership interest in the music should the song get popular and the relationship with the artist go poorly.
There are no scenarios where the young and talented recording artist pulled one over on the recording company and got a deal that an impartial observer would consider fair.
The bands always make more money off of the tours because there are less middle men between the consumers and the artists. That and their contracts for tours are significantly better than recording contracts.
Microsoft Index... oh nevermind. I can't get it out with a straight face.
Lucene is the way to go. There are APIs for Perl for dealing with Lucene data sets and for many other languages as well. Nutch is a good place to start getting to know the power of Lucene - you can get a nutch crawler interface up and running quickly and you can browse through some of the source files to get an understanding of how to bring in various file formats - Office documents, PDFs, etc.
The Google Search boxes are decent, but with any commercial solution you end up paying fees for the amount of documents in your index. They open source the code, presumably because of OSS components (maybe even Lucene) but the documentation they publish is laughable.
This is reminiscent of DirecTV's Black Sunday - if I remember right, they put out an update on Superbowl Sunday that killed hacked receivers, and a good portion of unhacked receivers in the process.
Nope. All legitimate copies, thank you.
I have a fresh Office 2K7 installation and also a Visio 2K7. Visio is not activated yet. I was still able to validate and install the PDF plugin two days ago without a problem.