I'm just waiting for Verizon FiOS to make it to my neighborhood. I don't even care whether or not it's better or cheaper, I just want the satisfaction of telling Comcrap to go to Hell.
Have we as a society gotten so accepting of the corporate culture of greed and scams that outright fraud should be punishable by simply not making as much profit?
So-called "Hollywood accounting" is the practice of defining to the legal maximum your expenses, while minimizing your revenue, so that your profit is close to zero. So, all the suckers who agreed to get a share of profits get next to nothing. Of course, lots of people know this, so anyone familiar with the entertainment business won't sign a deal for a percentage of net profits.
True, but according to the summary (and the article), the Trust was supposed to get 7.5% of gross receipts, which isn't subject to "Hollywood accounting". The trustees were apparently savvy enough to avoid the "net profits" trap, but still got screwed. It does amaze me that the studios have been able to get away with "Hollywood accounting" for so long, though; seems to me that it's simply another name for fraud.
The patent-troll lawyer has nothing. He would not only have to (incorrectly) prove the claim false, but also demonstrate that the phrase "patent troll" itself has some specific legal or technical meaning that would distinguish it from clearly expressing a matter of opinion.
While that's true, what the lawyer is probably counting on is that the blogger doesn't have the resources to raise a defense against any lawsuits. Unfortunately, money often matters much more than the law in the US legal system.
Part of the problem is that child molesters have a psychological compulsion to prey upon children. This makes it difficult to act as if they're done paying their debt to society once they're out of prison, because odds are, they're going to do it again.
My daughter was accosted by a man who masturbated in front of her; he was caught, had offended before and was given probation. He offended again, and was given probation again, plus put on some kind of drug therapy. A year or 2 ago, we got a call from the district attorney's office, asking us to read our victim impact statements from that trial in court, because he'd offended yet again and they wanted the judge to hear about his history. Well, his attorney trotted out all kinds of character witnesses to tell the judge what a great guy he really was, and a doctor that said the previous course of treatment failed; but golly, this time for sure treatment will keep him from offending again! And the judge gave him probation yet again, stating something to the effect that her job was not to do what will make his victims feel better, but to find a way to keep him as a productive member of society.
Damned if I know what the right answer is, but these people are a threat. Would prison have deterred him from re-offending? I don't know, but it would have deprived him of the opportunity to commit several of his offenses.
I'm a 1and1 customer, myself, and they've been pretty reliable. Is it possible that the confirmation email ended up caught in your spam filter? Try sending an email to support at 1and1.com and see if they can shed any light on the situation. It's also possible they may be understaffed this time of year.
Whoever came up with that damned myminicity concept should be tarred and feathered, boiled in oil and drawn and quartered. Then maybe some torture would be in order.
I wish there was a way to feed them negative clicks and wipe out their populations.
Outrageous? For what amounts to attempted murder (maybe that wasn't their intent, but it could have been the result)? I don't think so. You said it yourself, "what if the chopper crashed or something?" Well, that would probably kill the pilot, any passengers and possibly people on the ground. This isn't a "no harm, no foul" situation.
Grow the hell up, nobody should make their livelihood doing unproductive play. (No, standup comedians do not fall under this category, neither to artists. The arts as a whole contribute positively to society, while watching sports is empty entertainment)
Ok, you've made an assertion. Now prove it.
The arts, comedy, and sports are all entertainment, and people need entertainment. What kind of entertainment people demand is a matter of individual taste. Some people couldn't care less about comedy, music, paintings, or whatever; others love it. The same is true of sports. Your personal disdain for sports doesn't have any bearing on their value; like anything else, their value is what people say it is with their dollars (or euros, rubles, etc.). As long as there are millions who will pay to watch athletes compete, or there are advertisers who will pay the freight in exchange for the eyeballs of the fans, killing professional sports is simply not on the table.
Way to not read TFS, let alone TFA! The issue is not someone having access to your computer; the issue is logging onto your iDisk remotely from a public computer, and not being able to log out. This allows someone to track back through the browser history, and access your iDisk with your login credentials.
Ok, IHBT and all that, but this has nothing to do with Linux. Linux just happens to be the OS the vendor chose for their product. I agree that this should be off by default, etc. (and several of the comments I've seen so far have said just that), but it's not the fault of Linux that Trixbox/Fonality designed their product that way. Nor would it be Microsoft's fault, had they chosen to use MS instead of Linux to build their system.
My company owns my email like they own the oxygen I breath while I am working. In other words- they don't.
You do not become a street whore simply by agreeing to work for someone. Companies don't understand this. If allowed, they would claim every last cell of your body as their property.
While I agree with the second paragraph, I take issue with the first. If you are using company email servers and equipment, they do own the email. You don't get a free ride just because you work for the company. Everything you do on their systems has to follow their acceptable use policy, if they have one.
It's true that this is the way it's happened in the past, and probably continues to happen now. However, it's a lot harder to produce massive fraud this way than it is using a technological approach. What you describe is a retail version of vote fraud; the technological approach is a wholesale version. One person can affect many more votes by hacking the machines than by usurping the votes of legitimate voters who didn't show, and the more people you have involved in a conspiracy, the greater likelihood that someone will spill the beans.
Man this kind of bullshit is the reason I'm going to ditch my Scientific American subscription. The fact that they even have to waste editorial space for this kind of nonsense is pathetic: it's the 21st century for f***s sake!! The last straw for Scientific American by the way was an article about choosing sexual abstention over birth control. bwwwggh:-(
The problem is that Sci-Am (and science generally) is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they don't respond to the pseudo-science, the pseudo-scientists take that as evidence that Sci-Am supports them, or at least can't find anything wrong with their "theories". If they do respond, everyone else thinks they're taking the pseudo-scientists too seriously, and the pseudo-scientists don't buy what they say anyway.
Perhaps he did. But the history of humanity is replete with the powerful angling to get ever more power. There is a reason that nations rise and fall; in many cases, the good-intentioned people who started them eventually are replaced by (or become) people who are attracted to positions of power and responsibility just because they get off on controlling others and expanding their control, and this continues until the ones in power alienate everyone else and the house of cards collapses in one way or another. We (the US) may not be quite at the point where our government is bound to slide into dictatorship, but the signs are worrisome; our government is becoming increasingly disconnected from the will of the people, and adopting a "daddy knows best" attitude.
Conspiracy theories are often the result of the theorists' ascribing malice to actions which are better explained by incompetence, or even a simple difference of opinion as to the best course of action. However, this does not mean that conspiracies don't exist.
Slashdot Mirror
In what way is this article bashing MS? Or did you mean to post this elsewhere?
-Mike
I'm just waiting for Verizon FiOS to make it to my neighborhood. I don't even care whether or not it's better or cheaper, I just want the satisfaction of telling Comcrap to go to Hell.
-Mike
At least "digital diary" had alliteration going for it.
Yeah, but then people would have started calling it a didi. Ew!
-Mike
Have we as a society gotten so accepting of the corporate culture of greed and scams that outright fraud should be punishable by simply not making as much profit?
Yes.
-Mike
It was an "unnamed Internet provider" hosting a small email domain (also unnamed).
-Mike
True, but according to the summary (and the article), the Trust was supposed to get 7.5% of gross receipts, which isn't subject to "Hollywood accounting". The trustees were apparently savvy enough to avoid the "net profits" trap, but still got screwed. It does amaze me that the studios have been able to get away with "Hollywood accounting" for so long, though; seems to me that it's simply another name for fraud.
-Mike
While that's true, what the lawyer is probably counting on is that the blogger doesn't have the resources to raise a defense against any lawsuits. Unfortunately, money often matters much more than the law in the US legal system.
-Mike
Just so you know, it's Florida, not Floriday. :)
-Mike
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Hmm.... Let me try.... "All Americans suck because they fall for
How'd I do???
-Mike
Part of the problem is that child molesters have a psychological compulsion to prey upon children. This makes it difficult to act as if they're done paying their debt to society once they're out of prison, because odds are, they're going to do it again.
My daughter was accosted by a man who masturbated in front of her; he was caught, had offended before and was given probation. He offended again, and was given probation again, plus put on some kind of drug therapy. A year or 2 ago, we got a call from the district attorney's office, asking us to read our victim impact statements from that trial in court, because he'd offended yet again and they wanted the judge to hear about his history. Well, his attorney trotted out all kinds of character witnesses to tell the judge what a great guy he really was, and a doctor that said the previous course of treatment failed; but golly, this time for sure treatment will keep him from offending again! And the judge gave him probation yet again, stating something to the effect that her job was not to do what will make his victims feel better, but to find a way to keep him as a productive member of society.
Damned if I know what the right answer is, but these people are a threat. Would prison have deterred him from re-offending? I don't know, but it would have deprived him of the opportunity to commit several of his offenses.
-Mike
I'm a 1and1 customer, myself, and they've been pretty reliable. Is it possible that the confirmation email ended up caught in your spam filter? Try sending an email to support at 1and1.com and see if they can shed any light on the situation. It's also possible they may be understaffed this time of year.
-Mike
Whoever came up with that damned myminicity concept should be tarred and feathered, boiled in oil and drawn and quartered. Then maybe some torture would be in order.
I wish there was a way to feed them negative clicks and wipe out their populations.
-Mike
Outrageous? For what amounts to attempted murder (maybe that wasn't their intent, but it could have been the result)? I don't think so. You said it yourself, "what if the chopper crashed or something?" Well, that would probably kill the pilot, any passengers and possibly people on the ground. This isn't a "no harm, no foul" situation.
-Mike
Ok, you've made an assertion. Now prove it.
The arts, comedy, and sports are all entertainment, and people need entertainment. What kind of entertainment people demand is a matter of individual taste. Some people couldn't care less about comedy, music, paintings, or whatever; others love it. The same is true of sports. Your personal disdain for sports doesn't have any bearing on their value; like anything else, their value is what people say it is with their dollars (or euros, rubles, etc.). As long as there are millions who will pay to watch athletes compete, or there are advertisers who will pay the freight in exchange for the eyeballs of the fans, killing professional sports is simply not on the table.
-Mike
Way to not read TFS, let alone TFA! The issue is not someone having access to your computer; the issue is logging onto your iDisk remotely from a public computer, and not being able to log out. This allows someone to track back through the browser history, and access your iDisk with your login credentials.
-Mike
Ok, IHBT and all that, but this has nothing to do with Linux. Linux just happens to be the OS the vendor chose for their product. I agree that this should be off by default, etc. (and several of the comments I've seen so far have said just that), but it's not the fault of Linux that Trixbox/Fonality designed their product that way. Nor would it be Microsoft's fault, had they chosen to use MS instead of Linux to build their system.
-Mike
Well, you can. But in big city parks, such as Central Park in NYC, it's not a good idea.
-Mike
Well, I can tell you weren't paying attention to the topic you were replying to.... :)
-Mike
While I agree with the second paragraph, I take issue with the first. If you are using company email servers and equipment, they do own the email. You don't get a free ride just because you work for the company. Everything you do on their systems has to follow their acceptable use policy, if they have one.
-Mike
Yeah, but if enough people use Adblock+ (which I admittedly do), the ad model will eventually go away.
-Mike
It's true that this is the way it's happened in the past, and probably continues to happen now. However, it's a lot harder to produce massive fraud this way than it is using a technological approach. What you describe is a retail version of vote fraud; the technological approach is a wholesale version. One person can affect many more votes by hacking the machines than by usurping the votes of legitimate voters who didn't show, and the more people you have involved in a conspiracy, the greater likelihood that someone will spill the beans.
-Mike
The problem is that Sci-Am (and science generally) is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they don't respond to the pseudo-science, the pseudo-scientists take that as evidence that Sci-Am supports them, or at least can't find anything wrong with their "theories". If they do respond, everyone else thinks they're taking the pseudo-scientists too seriously, and the pseudo-scientists don't buy what they say anyway.
-Mike
But the cockroaches are the alleged zombies, not the (wasp) larvae. The cockroaches aren't eating brains, so the parent is right.
-Mike
"I observe, therefore I destroy!"
-Mike
Perhaps he did. But the history of humanity is replete with the powerful angling to get ever more power. There is a reason that nations rise and fall; in many cases, the good-intentioned people who started them eventually are replaced by (or become) people who are attracted to positions of power and responsibility just because they get off on controlling others and expanding their control, and this continues until the ones in power alienate everyone else and the house of cards collapses in one way or another. We (the US) may not be quite at the point where our government is bound to slide into dictatorship, but the signs are worrisome; our government is becoming increasingly disconnected from the will of the people, and adopting a "daddy knows best" attitude.
Conspiracy theories are often the result of the theorists' ascribing malice to actions which are better explained by incompetence, or even a simple difference of opinion as to the best course of action. However, this does not mean that conspiracies don't exist.
-Mike