The NSA doesn't really care that you tried pot 6 years ago as long as you're not trying to hide that fact. Someone that wants that fact hidden is a prime candidate for getting started down that slippery slope. It would probably start with something harmless, "Tell me what time so-and-so gets to work or I'll tell your entire church you smoked dope." If you're a neurotic person that needs to hide your past actions and pretend you were always the law-abiding, church goer that you are now then that may be perceived as a real threat that you'd go for.
My wife has been interviewed multiple times by the feds as some of her friends applied for jobs in the Justice Department. The above comment is exactly right. "Experimentation" with recreational drugs, and lots of other "bad acts" are not automatic disqualifications. Deceit is a definite disqualification.
We have one friend who was convicted of a felony count of child abuse and still got a job working in the field for the FBI. She had been either shot or stabbed (I can't recall) by a minor during a robbery. The (brilliant) judge sentenced the minor to counseling and she was required to go to one of these counseling sessions and describe to the perp how she felt being attacked. The kid laughed in her face, at which point she took off her shoe, lept accross the table, and started beating him with the shoe. This resulted in here being convicted of child abuse. The FBI agent doing the interview actually laughed at the circumstances.
Many best things that we enjoy are... something well known,... perfected to absolute excellence, to its limit. I dare say, the [mobile] phone shall follow this path.
That is the most insightful statement I've seen on slashdot in quite a while.
Tools that are too complex, that ry to do too many jobs, are rarely as important as simple tools that do one job extremely well. Take the traditional land-line phone. In the US, at least, it had been implemented amazingly well. It works. No one needs to read a manual to use it. It works during blackouts. It works clearly and consistently. It is ubiquitous. Historically, it is pretty much a model of how a utility should operate.
The fact that every time I get a new mobile phone, I have to fumble to configure it is not a good thing. The fact that I have patchy service in many areas is not a good thing. The fact that my mobile phone bill is not predictable is not a good thing.
I want a phone that will be inexpensive, durable, nearly 100% reliable, nearly 100% available, allow me to make and receive clear phone calls nearly 100% of the time, be small enough that I never have to be without it, but large enough that it is comfortable to use.
If I wanted a camera I'd buy a camera. If I wanted a game machine I'd buy a gameboy. If I wanted a to look at porn, I'd use a real PC with a decent screen, or maybe even buy a magazine.
Build a phone, not a 10 in 1 tool that doesn't do anything well.
The problem with implementing train travel in the US is that gasoline is relatively cheap and highways plentiful. It makes it virtually impossible for railroads to price-compete in except in "rush hour commuting" situations, where the railroads offer the convenience of avoiding traffic jams.
An average price for gasoline in the US is about $1.60 per gallon. That is roughly 40 cents per liter. Again making a rough conversion that translates to about 0.25Eur per liter. I believe that, in the UK, about 1 Eur per liter is typical.
Given that driving is so relatively cheap, people spread out more. They would rather have more than an acre of land in a semirural envirnment than live in a semi-urban row house. They don't care that the semi-urban home provides walking access to mass transit because they don't need mass transit. They'll drive everywhere.
Also, they'll drive rather than take a train for those regional trips. It is cheaper and easier to drive from NY to Boston. And no one will take a train fron NY to San Francisco when they can fly. Cheap gasoline means there is no niche for trains in the US.
The corporate desktop is not a place to be giving the user thousands of applications from which to choose. Nor even alternate desktops. It's about giving them the tools they need to do the job. Locked down, so the user can't tinker with it and screw things up. Including KDE would have been a terrible choice, no matter which side of the KDE/GNOME divide you fall. Sun need to provice accessiblity. GNOME gives that, and KDE doesn't (yet). So they have to ship GNOME. So their choices are to either ship GNOME or to ship both. For the corporate market, they definitely made the right decision on that score.
You are absolutely right. A corporate desktop is a support nightmare if it isn't locked down and standardized. It would have been nice if Sun provided recent copies of the KDE toolkit, however. It is likely that some corporation is going to deicde that they need a particular KDE app, and the sysadmin will then need to figure out how to deploy the toolkit and the app to thousands of machines without breaking any dependancies.
Please note that I am not arguing that the corporate user be able to run a KDE desktop/window manager. The corporate masters get the right to set the internal standards.
this prohibition does not seem to be of any use whatsoever, unless South is paranoid about spies...
Indeed they are extremely concerned about spies and sabateurs (sp?). North Korea continues to be responsible for many provocative acts, including the murder of military personnel inside the the DMZ, the digging of invasion tunnels under the border, terrorist attacks in South Korea, etc.
It is probably time to let this thread die.:) One last comment:
If the US were to use a different tactic - merchant blockade using her own submarine fleet - then yes, inter-continental trade is curtailed. But two can play at this game, and unlike Eurasia, the US is a net energy importer.
The US has the ability to produce sufficient energy domestically, but we choose not to for a variety of reasons, primarily cost. There are plenty of well proven fields in Texas and Oklahoma for instance that are currently capped because foreign oil is so cheap. It would not be especially difficult to ramp up domestic production should we be cut off from foreign oil.
Those much-vaunted USN carrier groups represent an attempt by the American navy to remain relevant in a new era. Yet in most NATO naval exercises, 'leakers' get through. A 'leaker' is an OPFOR submarine which has evaded detection to move within strike range - just one heavyweight torp on target and the carrier group no longer has a mission. Consequently, the true role of the US navy today is gunboat diplomacy - beating up on weak nations. They will never again prosecute a war 'for real' since is it is much cheaper for a defending nation to build SSNs (let alone the much more numerous SSKs used in littoral combat) than it is for the attacker to build carrier-based surface fleets. It is often overlooked that the RN task force that recaptured the Falklands (a carrier group which included 15 modern sub-hunting frigates and several modern sub-hunting SSNs) was unable to engage and destroy the *single* Argentine SSK (a German-built Type 209) that was operating in the area for the duration of hostilities: it was only luck that the ARA sub did not sink one or more of the RN's capital ships. Around 100 Type 209 submarines have been built, most for export, and this is just one type of modern non-US non-nuclear submarine being built at a low-level peacetime rate.
If America's navy cannot move within strike range of the enemy because littoral waters are denied (and they would indeed be denied by any reasonably capable enemy) then she cannot land forces by sea. Any attempt to construct an air bridge will be defeated by the lack of local air superiority (owing to carrier denial). The US cannot then establish a permanent land presence and the 'invasion' will fail. A situation not altogether unlike that faced by the Wehrmacht - the most powerful aggressor army of the day - in 1940, except that the Atlantic and the Pacific are much wider than the Channel and the North Sea.
I think you oversimplify the situation somewhat. A combination of anti-ship missiles and diesel subs may indeed deny navigation of coastal waters to the US Navy, but I don't think any reasonable person can deny that the US Navy will be in absolute control of the open ocean. That is key, because that means that a carrier strike force can show up at any location along any coastline in Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceana. It is doubtful that the "world" forces will have the equipment or manpower to defend all that coast simultaneously. The US can replay Inchon (did I spell that right?), while the "world" has no similar ability.
In addition, the US Military would have the ability to strike using a variety of weapons. Cruise missiles and penetrating bombers would be able to strike at the major industries, complicating the arming of the "world". The ability of the "world" to respond with intercontinental bombers is limited.
Finally, other than Eurasia, the US could eliminate contact and cooperation amongst the allied land masses.
As you say, this is making the big assumption of a non-nuclear conflict. You may be right about a standoff, but it is one where the US can punch at will, but might be unable to deliver a knockout. The "world" would not be able to counterpunch. Over a long term, the economies of many parts of the world would suffer sufficiently from problems like lack of resources (since ocean going commerce would essentially stop) that they would need to pursue a peaceful settlement. Eurasia might hold out indefinitely, but might suffer from resource starvation since the US could requently bomb their oil fields, mines, and railroads.
Wasn't he overthrown after about 20 years by Chairman Mao?
What most people don't realize is that Mao was Hitler's stooge. In the 1930s Hitler and Stalin made a pact to partition eastern Europe between them. As part of that pact, Stalin instructed Mao to open a new front against Chiang Kai Sheck in order to help Hitler's ally, Imperial Japan.
Don't mix raw fire-power with control or influence. The US army can not even stop a donky with missiles in Baghdad. Do you think US can even dream of controlling the oceans?
12 fleet carriers, AWACS aircraft, long range bombers, long range anti-ship missiles, sonar arrays, nd 50 fast attack nuclear submarines. No substantial merchant ship or naval vessel stands a chance. The best that the enemy could hope for is to slip a few Soviet era nuclear submarines past our picket line and harass our merchant shipping. Of course, they have travel so slow in order to remain silent that we'd localise them after one attack.
Your analogy to a donkey in Baghdad is not a valid one. The scenario offered was one where the entire world decides to gang up on the US. If it floats and it isn't ours, the Navy will sink it. In Baghdad the US military is trying to use carefully measured amounts of force to kill insurgents and terrorists, but not kill innocent civilians.
As I said on another post, I'm pretty sure the rest of the world combined has equal military strength as the US.
Realisticly, that statement is laughably untrue. Sure, rest of the world combined may have numerical superiority in many areas, but no nation in history has the ability to project power like the United States.
For instance, the US fields 12 super carriers, complete with their escort battlegroups. In addition the US has about 50 Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarines. Care to guess how many fleet carriers are fielded by nations other than the US? I believe the answer is one - France's Foch. Britain has a significant force of smaller carriers. Britain, Russia, and a few other countries have significant submarine forces, but none are considered a threat to the Los Angeles class submarines. Nothing travels the oceans without the permission of the United States.
Now that the US has clear naval superiority, the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, and Oceana are isolated. The US can now defeat in detail the forces of Canada and Latin America. Canada is fighting with American hardware and fine troops, but it is simply a numbers game. Latin America doesn't stand a chance.
At this point, the "world" powers have lost the ability to take the initiative. The US gets to choose when battles occur, where they occur, and when they end.
Oceana also has a fine military, but again loses on account of numbers. Africa is easy enough. Most of Europe has a decent military system. American hardware would eventually prevail, but with significant cost. China is the tough nut to crack just on their traditional willingness to suffer immense casualties.
Of course, the US doesn't even need to invade. The US can just place its fleet carriers off shore of each of these places - one at a time - bomb the infrastructure to hell, and leave. They can never project power accross our oceans if we don't let them have a shipyard or a working runway.
It boggles the mind, but consider the fact that the US military can apply ANY measure of power to ANY point on the planet. By that measure, no one else comes close.
As much fun as the urban myth about the kangaroos shooting the helicopter down cos they forgot to remove the stinger missiles from the infantry models that were converted to kangaroo figures???
Acording to snopes, the core of this story actually happened, but the story has been elaborated extensively. The programmers did re-use the "infantry" models in the simulation for kangaroos. As a bit of fun early in the project they intentionally left the ability of the kangaroos the kangaroos to fiure back intact, but the kangaroos did not fire stinger missiles. They fired beach balls at the helicopters.
I would, but it will cost you most-positive-fixnum dollars. But at least if you fail, you can still get a good job as a garbage collector.
I'm thinking of pursuing a career as a garbage collector. I'm not sure if I want to follow a reference count system or a mark and sweep system. Can you offer any advice? What skill set will get me a better carrer?
As far as a contract goes, I'm still convinced that it's null and void because there's no consideration involved.
And you'd be wrong. Time to go back to law school. See Contracts - Cases and Comment sizth edition, by Dawson et al. page 370.
"Consideration confers a benefit on the promisor or causes a detriment to the promisee...." In this case, the promisee is the redistributor of the GPL'd work, who is required to perfrom an act that he has no legal duty to perform - provide access to the source code along with the binary. There is consideration, therefore the GPL stands as a valid contract on that point.
Even if you pay money for SCO fire insurance you would still have to follow GPL as SCO doesn't own the rights to the major part of Linux, if they own any of it at all that is.
And if the SCO licence and GPL is incompatible (very likely) you can't legally use Linux at all.
An important detail... The GPL provides terms under which you are authorized to distribute the software. You CAN mix together proprietary and GPL code and use it internally. You CAN NOT distribute software that contains both proprietary and GPL code.
While there was a bit of a routing problem on Tuesday, we were doing fine without stateside connectivity.
Contrary to popular belief, a section of "internet" severed from the states does not cease to function.
Besides, there is plenty of redundancy in the net. However if Europe were truly and completely cut off from civilization I'd imagine a "Lord of the Flies" scenario.
I read this and I couldn't help but think of a CDW commercial:
Did you notice that there was a young blond woman in that ad campaign that was also one of the "Dell Interns"? They've since replaced her on the Dell commercials.
I'm disappointed you posted this AC. It was a thoughtful response, and I would have "friended" you for it.
I disagree that this will have no effect. It's just another move to set up the cooporations for the final slide to put the public into check-and-mate.
I don't fear this eventuality as much as you do. Corporations are frequently considered "persons" by the law, but this is a legal fiction created for various economic and legal conveniences. Corporations do not vote. They can not serve as jurors. In the end, a legislature accountable to voters will overturn laws if that make corporations excessively powerful. In the end juries will nullify these laws if they are abused.
The first job of every legislator is to be reelected. Corporations are influential through the money that they donate to election campaigns. But there is a natural limit to that influence. A politician that infuriates his constituency enough will be thrown out no matter how much money he has. It happens time and time again.
The sky is not falling. We deal with poorly written laws like this all the time without civilization coming to an end.
In reality, this is what needs to happen in order for this law to be enforced against someone trying out a camcorder at Best-Buy.
A local retailer will have to risk not only losing the sale of an item the customer was demoing, but pissing off a potential customer, commiting an employee to detain that customer for some period of time when they could be doing something productive, and risk that customer suing for anything of a number of things that happened while they were detained.
The police would have to be interested in actually arresting someone for trying out a camcorder. Few police officers are going to do all that paperwork for something like that.
A district attorney will need to be interested in spending weeks preparing for and trying a case.
After all that, the court will probably look at the legislative record and decide that the intent of the law was to prevent the piracy of copyrighted works, and dismiss the case.
Anyone who thinks that this law will be used to prosecute the dad trying to buy a camcorder to record his daughter's soccer game is completely paranoid. It will probably be used against the people who bring a camcorder to the theatre in order to sell bootlegs, but that is it.
Or maybe they need to realize that it's okay to have a Fedora Linux project and a Fedora (something else) project. Trademarks are only valid for a limited set of things - you can't TM a word and claim domain over all uses of it.
It depends one the jurisdiction. Trademark law differs from state to state and differs internationally. As a general rule of thumb in the US, trademark infringement only occurs if the use of the mark is likely to cause confusion among customers. However, I beleive that the UK has much stronger protections. That is why the "World WildLife Fund" prevailed over the "World Wrestling Federation" in the UK, and for that matter "Apple Records" vs. "Apple Computer".
However, the cost of a 64 bit machine will be about the same as a 32 bit machine, so why buy an old technology when you can buy a newer one that will last longer.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife has been interviewed multiple times by the feds as some of her friends applied for jobs in the Justice Department. The above comment is exactly right. "Experimentation" with recreational drugs, and lots of other "bad acts" are not automatic disqualifications. Deceit is a definite disqualification.
We have one friend who was convicted of a felony count of child abuse and still got a job working in the field for the FBI. She had been either shot or stabbed (I can't recall) by a minor during a robbery. The (brilliant) judge sentenced the minor to counseling and she was required to go to one of these counseling sessions and describe to the perp how she felt being attacked. The kid laughed in her face, at which point she took off her shoe, lept accross the table, and started beating him with the shoe. This resulted in here being convicted of child abuse. The FBI agent doing the interview actually laughed at the circumstances.
And didn't Caldera buy out DR? So really, the IP for FAT would be SCO's?
That is the most insightful statement I've seen on slashdot in quite a while.
Tools that are too complex, that ry to do too many jobs, are rarely as important as simple tools that do one job extremely well. Take the traditional land-line phone. In the US, at least, it had been implemented amazingly well. It works. No one needs to read a manual to use it. It works during blackouts. It works clearly and consistently. It is ubiquitous. Historically, it is pretty much a model of how a utility should operate.
The fact that every time I get a new mobile phone, I have to fumble to configure it is not a good thing. The fact that I have patchy service in many areas is not a good thing. The fact that my mobile phone bill is not predictable is not a good thing.
I want a phone that will be inexpensive, durable, nearly 100% reliable, nearly 100% available, allow me to make and receive clear phone calls nearly 100% of the time, be small enough that I never have to be without it, but large enough that it is comfortable to use.
If I wanted a camera I'd buy a camera. If I wanted a game machine I'd buy a gameboy. If I wanted a to look at porn, I'd use a real PC with a decent screen, or maybe even buy a magazine.
Build a phone, not a 10 in 1 tool that doesn't do anything well.
Rant over. Cheers,
Mike
The problem with implementing train travel in the US is that gasoline is relatively cheap and highways plentiful. It makes it virtually impossible for railroads to price-compete in except in "rush hour commuting" situations, where the railroads offer the convenience of avoiding traffic jams.
An average price for gasoline in the US is about $1.60 per gallon. That is roughly 40 cents per liter. Again making a rough conversion that translates to about 0.25Eur per liter. I believe that, in the UK, about 1 Eur per liter is typical.
Given that driving is so relatively cheap, people spread out more. They would rather have more than an acre of land in a semirural envirnment than live in a semi-urban row house. They don't care that the semi-urban home provides walking access to mass transit because they don't need mass transit. They'll drive everywhere.
Also, they'll drive rather than take a train for those regional trips. It is cheaper and easier to drive from NY to Boston. And no one will take a train fron NY to San Francisco when they can fly. Cheap gasoline means there is no niche for trains in the US.
You are absolutely right. A corporate desktop is a support nightmare if it isn't locked down and standardized. It would have been nice if Sun provided recent copies of the KDE toolkit, however. It is likely that some corporation is going to deicde that they need a particular KDE app, and the sysadmin will then need to figure out how to deploy the toolkit and the app to thousands of machines without breaking any dependancies.
Please note that I am not arguing that the corporate user be able to run a KDE desktop/window manager. The corporate masters get the right to set the internal standards.
Indeed they are extremely concerned about spies and sabateurs (sp?). North Korea continues to be responsible for many provocative acts, including the murder of military personnel inside the the DMZ, the digging of invasion tunnels under the border, terrorist attacks in South Korea, etc.
The South has good reason to be paranoid.
It is probably time to let this thread die. :) One last comment:
The US has the ability to produce sufficient energy domestically, but we choose not to for a variety of reasons, primarily cost. There are plenty of well proven fields in Texas and Oklahoma for instance that are currently capped because foreign oil is so cheap. It would not be especially difficult to ramp up domestic production should we be cut off from foreign oil.
I think you oversimplify the situation somewhat. A combination of anti-ship missiles and diesel subs may indeed deny navigation of coastal waters to the US Navy, but I don't think any reasonable person can deny that the US Navy will be in absolute control of the open ocean. That is key, because that means that a carrier strike force can show up at any location along any coastline in Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceana. It is doubtful that the "world" forces will have the equipment or manpower to defend all that coast simultaneously. The US can replay Inchon (did I spell that right?), while the "world" has no similar ability.
In addition, the US Military would have the ability to strike using a variety of weapons. Cruise missiles and penetrating bombers would be able to strike at the major industries, complicating the arming of the "world". The ability of the "world" to respond with intercontinental bombers is limited.
Finally, other than Eurasia, the US could eliminate contact and cooperation amongst the allied land masses.
As you say, this is making the big assumption of a non-nuclear conflict. You may be right about a standoff, but it is one where the US can punch at will, but might be unable to deliver a knockout. The "world" would not be able to counterpunch. Over a long term, the economies of many parts of the world would suffer sufficiently from problems like lack of resources (since ocean going commerce would essentially stop) that they would need to pursue a peaceful settlement. Eurasia might hold out indefinitely, but might suffer from resource starvation since the US could requently bomb their oil fields, mines, and railroads.
You grow up.
Regards,
Mike
Question: Which will happen first - Moore's "law" will be broken or we'll have a compelling reason to switch everything to IPv6?
I'm proud to initiate the Xmodem vs Kermit flamewar.
Let's get ready to RUMBLE!
Extra points for anyone who can segue smoothly into an Anti-Bush/Anti-US rant.
Wasn't he overthrown after about 20 years by Chairman Mao?
What most people don't realize is that Mao was Hitler's stooge. In the 1930s Hitler and Stalin made a pact to partition eastern Europe between them. As part of that pact, Stalin instructed Mao to open a new front against Chiang Kai Sheck in order to help Hitler's ally, Imperial Japan.
Don't mix raw fire-power with control or influence. The US army can not even stop a donky with missiles in Baghdad. Do you think US can even dream of controlling the oceans?
12 fleet carriers, AWACS aircraft, long range bombers, long range anti-ship missiles, sonar arrays, nd 50 fast attack nuclear submarines. No substantial merchant ship or naval vessel stands a chance. The best that the enemy could hope for is to slip a few Soviet era nuclear submarines past our picket line and harass our merchant shipping. Of course, they have travel so slow in order to remain silent that we'd localise them after one attack.
Your analogy to a donkey in Baghdad is not a valid one. The scenario offered was one where the entire world decides to gang up on the US. If it floats and it isn't ours, the Navy will sink it. In Baghdad the US military is trying to use carefully measured amounts of force to kill insurgents and terrorists, but not kill innocent civilians.
As I said on another post, I'm pretty sure the rest of the world combined has equal military strength as the US.
Realisticly, that statement is laughably untrue. Sure, rest of the world combined may have numerical superiority in many areas, but no nation in history has the ability to project power like the United States.
For instance, the US fields 12 super carriers, complete with their escort battlegroups. In addition the US has about 50 Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarines. Care to guess how many fleet carriers are fielded by nations other than the US? I believe the answer is one - France's Foch. Britain has a significant force of smaller carriers. Britain, Russia, and a few other countries have significant submarine forces, but none are considered a threat to the Los Angeles class submarines. Nothing travels the oceans without the permission of the United States.
Now that the US has clear naval superiority, the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, and Oceana are isolated. The US can now defeat in detail the forces of Canada and Latin America. Canada is fighting with American hardware and fine troops, but it is simply a numbers game. Latin America doesn't stand a chance.
At this point, the "world" powers have lost the ability to take the initiative. The US gets to choose when battles occur, where they occur, and when they end.
Oceana also has a fine military, but again loses on account of numbers. Africa is easy enough. Most of Europe has a decent military system. American hardware would eventually prevail, but with significant cost. China is the tough nut to crack just on their traditional willingness to suffer immense casualties.
Of course, the US doesn't even need to invade. The US can just place its fleet carriers off shore of each of these places - one at a time - bomb the infrastructure to hell, and leave. They can never project power accross our oceans if we don't let them have a shipyard or a working runway.
It boggles the mind, but consider the fact that the US military can apply ANY measure of power to ANY point on the planet. By that measure, no one else comes close.
And the Geneva Convention is still binding law in the US, something forgotten about by nutcase right-wing neocons like yourself.
And the Geneva Convention does not apply to "unlawful combatants", something forgotten about by nutcase left-wing bleeding hearts like yourself.
Acording to snopes, the core of this story actually happened, but the story has been elaborated extensively. The programmers did re-use the "infantry" models in the simulation for kangaroos. As a bit of fun early in the project they intentionally left the ability of the kangaroos the kangaroos to fiure back intact, but the kangaroos did not fire stinger missiles. They fired beach balls at the helicopters.
I would, but it will cost you most-positive-fixnum dollars. But at least if you fail, you can still get a good job as a garbage collector.
I'm thinking of pursuing a career as a garbage collector. I'm not sure if I want to follow a reference count system or a mark and sweep system. Can you offer any advice? What skill set will get me a better carrer?
Thanks in advance.
As far as a contract goes, I'm still convinced that it's null and void because there's no consideration involved.
And you'd be wrong. Time to go back to law school. See Contracts - Cases and Comment sizth edition, by Dawson et al. page 370.
"Consideration confers a benefit on the promisor or causes a detriment to the promisee...." In this case, the promisee is the redistributor of the GPL'd work, who is required to perfrom an act that he has no legal duty to perform - provide access to the source code along with the binary. There is consideration, therefore the GPL stands as a valid contract on that point.
An important detail... The GPL provides terms under which you are authorized to distribute the software. You CAN mix together proprietary and GPL code and use it internally. You CAN NOT distribute software that contains both proprietary and GPL code.
Neither. I am trolling for slashbots who are certain that the US is uncivilized and that Europe holds the keys to some future Utopia.
You examined the bait closely and decided nibble but not bite hard enough that I could set the hook. Good for you. :)
Besides, there is plenty of redundancy in the net. However if Europe were truly and completely cut off from civilization I'd imagine a "Lord of the Flies" scenario.
I read this and I couldn't help but think of a CDW commercial:
Did you notice that there was a young blond woman in that ad campaign that was also one of the "Dell Interns"? They've since replaced her on the Dell commercials.
I'm disappointed you posted this AC. It was a thoughtful response, and I would have "friended" you for it.
I don't fear this eventuality as much as you do. Corporations are frequently considered "persons" by the law, but this is a legal fiction created for various economic and legal conveniences. Corporations do not vote. They can not serve as jurors. In the end, a legislature accountable to voters will overturn laws if that make corporations excessively powerful. In the end juries will nullify these laws if they are abused.
The first job of every legislator is to be reelected. Corporations are influential through the money that they donate to election campaigns. But there is a natural limit to that influence. A politician that infuriates his constituency enough will be thrown out no matter how much money he has. It happens time and time again.
The sky is not falling. We deal with poorly written laws like this all the time without civilization coming to an end.
In reality, this is what needs to happen in order for this law to be enforced against someone trying out a camcorder at Best-Buy.
- A local retailer will have to risk not only losing the sale of an item the customer was demoing, but pissing off a potential customer, commiting an employee to detain that customer for some period of time when they could be doing something productive, and risk that customer suing for anything of a number of things that happened while they were detained.
- The police would have to be interested in actually arresting someone for trying out a camcorder. Few police officers are going to do all that paperwork for something like that.
- A district attorney will need to be interested in spending weeks preparing for and trying a case.
- After all that, the court will probably look at the legislative record and decide that the intent of the law was to prevent the piracy of copyrighted works, and dismiss the case.
Anyone who thinks that this law will be used to prosecute the dad trying to buy a camcorder to record his daughter's soccer game is completely paranoid. It will probably be used against the people who bring a camcorder to the theatre in order to sell bootlegs, but that is it.It depends one the jurisdiction. Trademark law differs from state to state and differs internationally. As a general rule of thumb in the US, trademark infringement only occurs if the use of the mark is likely to cause confusion among customers. However, I beleive that the UK has much stronger protections. That is why the "World WildLife Fund" prevailed over the "World Wrestling Federation" in the UK, and for that matter "Apple Records" vs. "Apple Computer".
Why do I need 64 bit computing?
You probably don't.
However, the cost of a 64 bit machine will be about the same as a 32 bit machine, so why buy an old technology when you can buy a newer one that will last longer.