It seems that the prosecution doesn't contest that the border guard got into Peter's car and punched him in the face. Nobody seems to be arguing that there was any need for the guard to do this in order to perform their job.
Does this mean the border guard will be investigated for assault and sacked?
Pink Floyd had a pretty clear contract. Along came the internet and EMI decided the contract didn't apply. The judge took a commonsense position that if the contract was explicit about not selling singles on vinyl - then there was nothing magic about mp3s which would suddenly make it ok.
or in other words 'EMI promised to not sell singles. Judge rules that selling singles online is not magically different'
The context made it pretty clear that this was hardly a serious threat. A quick chat could have easily verified that it was just a foolish comment.
the prosecution at the case noted:
"He [Chambers] admitted posting the message into the public domain but never intended the message to be received by the airport or for them to take it seriously."
and "the message had no material impact on the airport"
so a chap writes a comment when he finds the airport is closed due to snow and he is due to fly in a week. He is banned from the airport for life, has computer, iphone, etc confiscated and may go to prison.
You'll need to figure out what the progression path is - and what happens when you do get spikes in traffic.
My site recently got a big spike for a week or so. The hosting company's response was to put my site on the 'jail server' where it got even less resources, so became even more bogged down. I was very happy to pay them extra money for some more performance for a few weeks - but the only option they had was to leap to a fully dedicated server on a permanent basis.
I'm sure I'm not the first person who needs a temporary boost - I was unimpressed that they didn't have some program to deal with that (and in fact, their program was to cut my performance down to the level below the level I was currently paying for).
--
On ease of use; I don't want to be an expert linux administrator - so I want a hosting company that will manage my machine/vps and deal with linux patching/configuration issues. There are companies that do this for not too much extra.
Of course, if you already know everything about being a sysadmin, then you'll want a host that just lets you be root and do your own thing.
--
On support - how do you contact them? My current host does a great job here with 24hr live chat support to fairly competent technicians.
the real problem is that the operators want to 'own the customer' - so they all put in their own stupid rules, controls, regulations.
e.g. I have a windows mobile app, but if I want to release it with orange, I have to -Sign up to their system. -Pay for orange signing and testing (and go through the time-consuming process of doing it) -Probably make a bunch of orange-specific changes -Give them ~65% of the revenue -Hope that individual country managers decide they would like to include my app on their country's store (this is in no way guaranteed) -and probably go through the same pain every update (exact details may have evolved, but you get the rough idea)
it is just too painful. There is no way I'll go through this process for a bunch of operators/portals in order to get access to each walled off niche of customers.
If the operators really are willing to back off and let a central catalog manage a single approval process, then they'll have a load more apps to offer users.
Of course to do this, they'll have to let go of the idea that they add value by controlling the application deck. They'll have to move another step closer to being a utility provider of comoditised bandwidth. That terrifies them.
The agents have to have 'good reason to suspect'. That's a long way from 'conclusive proof'.
I doubt it would take a very expensive lawyer to convince a court that they had good reason for suspicion - even if they merrily admit that it was proved wrong in the end.
-And we're not even sure that it would be proved wrong. Consider:
The blogger gets a file from some agent or some artist and is asked to review it. Did the agent/artist actually have full legal ability to grant the blogger distribution rights?
It's quite possible that while everything was done in good faith by the blogger - they actually didn't have permission from the right-holder.
right - but now Google gets to show the market how they think phones should be managed.
this will have firmware updates when they are available, they'll make sure all the good apps work with it, and most important of all; it sells direct to customers unlocked.
it's just a single step in the ongoing battle over who will 'own' the customer.
the carriers think they should own everything, so they make proprietary interfaces, and insist on crazy restrictions and lockdowns (in return for a fat subsidy).
Google think the customer should be free (or at least free to connect to google services) - so they are putting out an option that doesn't have carrier restrictions, and does everything they think the phone should do.
it's kinda like Chrome. The point isn't to get everyone using Chrome. The point is to put a competitive option out there to force all the other players to move towards it. With chrome, google's aim is to get faster javascript in browsers so people can user their services. With the phone, it will be to show an open unrestricted phone that can connect to google's services well at a reasonable cost.
the law doesn't need to be struck down. What happens is that judges 'interpret what the law meant to say'
so, a judge could rule 'clearly the clause stopping breaking of DRM was not intended to stop personal backups where such DRM is routinely circumventable'.
That would then become case law and set a new precedent which effectively 'clarified' the original law.
Similarly, a judge could rule 'clearly the right to a personal backup was not intended to override the clause on circumventing DRM. Indeed the movie industry has demonstrated how you can make backups with a video recorder without breaking DRM at all'
of course the ruling would run to many pages of closely argued legal casuistry and the precedent doesn't have the same power as an actual change in the law. Nonetheless it would be a blow to DRM if the case law ruled against it.
Build a cheaper more dangerous shuttle. Accept the fact that 5% of launches will result in failure. Publicise this. Let the astronauts know. I guarantee there will still be plenty of volunteers to go into space.
So, you end up with say 50 dead astronauts. The training is pretty expensive - but way less than what you saved by building a cheaper shuttle.
Now take those billions that you saved. Spend them on better healthcare for army veterans and poor children. Save tens of thousands of lives.
the $700,000 is required for the crimes to be large enough to make extradition legal.
it's a big problem that the figure doesn't get tested in any way by a british court. If it was possible to prove that the damage low enough - then it would not be legal to extradite him.
Unfortunately, the us prosecutor can simply state the figure and demand extradition without having to justify the figure or present any supporting evidence.
this 'highly sensitive military computer network' was one where they were using default windows passwords.
the 'damage' done of $700,000 seems to be a figure created by the military in order to justify extradition (there is a threshold of damage required and the damage seems to have been conveniently set at the 'correct' figure).
If a newspaper had simply reported that the computers were set up with the default windows passwords - then presumably the military would have had to perform the same work in checking for potential comprimise and securing their networks. Would the paper in this hypothetical case have caused $700,000 worth of damage - or was that just work that needed to be done as a result of bad security practice.
Exactly - I spent a couple of weeks and a reasonable amount of money to develop a small app that I thought was useful. Not million-dollar, but useful.
Many months later, apple rejected it. A nice chap called me up. I'm not breaking any rules, it isn't offensive or bad taste. It's just a utility that they don't want.
He said that he felt bad - but that there it was.
It certainly makes me think twice about investing time or money in any idea that is at all innovative in the way that it uses the platform.
right - but why should Palm have to sync by apple's supported (and less good) route.
by appearing as an ipod, the Pre gets a much smoother sync experience. It appears right in iTunes in the bar on the right. I don't need any extra software.
C'mon/. Not only is this a rehash of an article posted before. It is pretty clear from that article that Palm is doing nothing remotely deserving this title./. can and should do better.
I had to sign one document and fax it through (a w8 ben). I think everything else was online.
When they reviewed my app, they gave me an extremely helpful feedback pdf which included a bunch of required changes and also a bunch of suggested changes.
I have implemented all the required ones (mostly relating to lack of clarity about how they want the about/faq pages to work) and most of the suggested ones.
I too got bitten by the 'has to be less than 1.0 as this is a beta catalog) thing. It took me about 5 seconds to change the version number.
Palm are trying to get the store ready for developers to sell apps. My guess is that the requirement to be verified by Paypal is nothing to do with getting paid. It's to do with providing a verifiable identity so that Palm know who is putting apps on the store.
I think that's a reasonable requirement. I'm a bit happier to download apps when I know that the developer is ready to identify themselves to Palm. That should add some incentive to stop developers doing 'bad things'.
Jamie Zawinski seems to want everything his way. Apart from his paypal paranoia, his response to Palm's feedback is: "The other small code changes you asked for, I don't agree with, and I'm not going to do."
Perhaps he should stick to distributing things his way and not expect Palm to make exceptions on his behalf while they are trying to get a basic store up and running. Personally I'd rather they concentrated on working with the many developers who don't consider the process arduous so that we can sell our apps.
Perhaps they'll have more time to coddle him later. Perhaps if he made an effort to play nice, he wouldn't be in the situation where other apps seem to be getting released ahead of him...
Slashdot Mirror
it isn't really that different.
we all buy compulsory medical insurance from the NHS in the UK (through taxes).
the US folks just get to choose who they buy it from, and it is clearer what portion of their tax is going to pay for the health insurance.
Certainly a different system, but not much different from a civil liberties point of view.
You have to pay, it is subsidised/free if you are poor. You get healthcare which meets some minimum standard.
It seems that the prosecution doesn't contest that the border guard got into Peter's car and punched him in the face.
Nobody seems to be arguing that there was any need for the guard to do this in order to perform their job.
Does this mean the border guard will be investigated for assault and sacked?
this isn't really about the music.
Pink Floyd had a pretty clear contract. Along came the internet and EMI decided the contract didn't apply. The judge took a commonsense position that if the contract was explicit about not selling singles on vinyl - then there was nothing magic about mp3s which would suddenly make it ok.
or in other words 'EMI promised to not sell singles. Judge rules that selling singles online is not magically different'
rather than always writing to complain / object. How about some letters of support.
I'm guessing MEPs don't get many - and they may notice and remember them.
http://www.writetothem.com/
doesn't HTC make most of the android phones anyway?
if Apple shut them down, they effectively shut down a large part of Google's ability to deploy phones.
A judge has just warned someone that they may see a custodial sentence for twittering the following
'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/22/twitter_bomb_threat_joke_guilty/
The context made it pretty clear that this was hardly a serious threat. A quick chat could have easily verified that it was just a foolish comment.
the prosecution at the case noted:
"He [Chambers] admitted posting the message into the public domain but never intended the message to be received by the airport or for them to take it seriously."
and "the message had no material impact on the airport"
so a chap writes a comment when he finds the airport is closed due to snow and he is due to fly in a week. He is banned from the airport for life, has computer, iphone, etc confiscated and may go to prison.
hurray for the system that keeps us safe.
that was standard practice during the inquisition - so there is precedent.
More recently - I believe it is standard practice at Guantanamo and the related international prisons.
You'll need to figure out what the progression path is - and what happens when you do get spikes in traffic.
My site recently got a big spike for a week or so. The hosting company's response was to put my site on the 'jail server' where it got even less resources, so became even more bogged down. I was very happy to pay them extra money for some more performance for a few weeks - but the only option they had was to leap to a fully dedicated server on a permanent basis.
I'm sure I'm not the first person who needs a temporary boost - I was unimpressed that they didn't have some program to deal with that (and in fact, their program was to cut my performance down to the level below the level I was currently paying for).
--
On ease of use; I don't want to be an expert linux administrator - so I want a hosting company that will manage my machine/vps and deal with linux patching/configuration issues. There are companies that do this for not too much extra.
Of course, if you already know everything about being a sysadmin, then you'll want a host that just lets you be root and do your own thing.
--
On support - how do you contact them? My current host does a great job here with 24hr live chat support to fairly competent technicians.
developers will work around screen issues.
the real problem is that the operators want to 'own the customer' - so they all put in their own stupid rules, controls, regulations.
e.g. I have a windows mobile app, but if I want to release it with orange, I have to
-Sign up to their system.
-Pay for orange signing and testing (and go through the time-consuming process of doing it)
-Probably make a bunch of orange-specific changes
-Give them ~65% of the revenue
-Hope that individual country managers decide they would like to include my app on their country's store (this is in no way guaranteed)
-and probably go through the same pain every update
(exact details may have evolved, but you get the rough idea)
it is just too painful. There is no way I'll go through this process for a bunch of operators/portals in order to get access to each walled off niche of customers.
If the operators really are willing to back off and let a central catalog manage a single approval process, then they'll have a load more apps to offer users.
Of course to do this, they'll have to let go of the idea that they add value by controlling the application deck. They'll have to move another step closer to being a utility provider of comoditised bandwidth. That terrifies them.
not so sure about serious consequences.
The agents have to have 'good reason to suspect'. That's a long way from 'conclusive proof'.
I doubt it would take a very expensive lawyer to convince a court that they had good reason for suspicion - even if they merrily admit that it was proved wrong in the end.
-And we're not even sure that it would be proved wrong. Consider:
The blogger gets a file from some agent or some artist and is asked to review it.
Did the agent/artist actually have full legal ability to grant the blogger distribution rights?
It's quite possible that while everything was done in good faith by the blogger - they actually didn't have permission from the right-holder.
they're on sale already - although they do have German QWERTZ keyboards...
no. it's in the rules
They're offering $1million in prizes to be split between a bunch of top apps.
There are two prizes of $100k for the top paid and the top free app, and a bunch of smaller prizes.
Very cool, but not what the summary says.
right - but now Google gets to show the market how they think phones should be managed.
this will have firmware updates when they are available, they'll make sure all the good apps work with it, and most important of all; it sells direct to customers unlocked.
it's just a single step in the ongoing battle over who will 'own' the customer.
the carriers think they should own everything, so they make proprietary interfaces, and insist on crazy restrictions and lockdowns (in return for a fat subsidy).
Google think the customer should be free (or at least free to connect to google services) - so they are putting out an option that doesn't have carrier restrictions, and does everything they think the phone should do.
it's kinda like Chrome. The point isn't to get everyone using Chrome. The point is to put a competitive option out there to force all the other players to move towards it. With chrome, google's aim is to get faster javascript in browsers so people can user their services. With the phone, it will be to show an open unrestricted phone that can connect to google's services well at a reasonable cost.
the law doesn't need to be struck down. What happens is that judges 'interpret what the law meant to say'
so, a judge could rule 'clearly the clause stopping breaking of DRM was not intended to stop personal backups where such DRM is routinely circumventable'.
That would then become case law and set a new precedent which effectively 'clarified' the original law.
Similarly, a judge could rule 'clearly the right to a personal backup was not intended to override the clause on circumventing DRM. Indeed the movie industry has demonstrated how you can make backups with a video recorder without breaking DRM at all'
of course the ruling would run to many pages of closely argued legal casuistry and the precedent doesn't have the same power as an actual change in the law. Nonetheless it would be a blow to DRM if the case law ruled against it.
Here is an idea.
Build a cheaper more dangerous shuttle. Accept the fact that 5% of launches will result in failure. Publicise this. Let the astronauts know. I guarantee there will still be plenty of volunteers to go into space.
So, you end up with say 50 dead astronauts. The training is pretty expensive - but way less than what you saved by building a cheaper shuttle.
Now take those billions that you saved. Spend them on better healthcare for army veterans and poor children. Save tens of thousands of lives.
Wouldn't that be a better way to spend your cash?
it has huge meaning.
the $700,000 is required for the crimes to be large enough to make extradition legal.
it's a big problem that the figure doesn't get tested in any way by a british court. If it was possible to prove that the damage low enough - then it would not be legal to extradite him.
Unfortunately, the us prosecutor can simply state the figure and demand extradition without having to justify the figure or present any supporting evidence.
the 'guessing' was that he just tried for administrator accounts which didn't have passwords.
this 'highly sensitive military computer network' was one where they were using default windows passwords.
the 'damage' done of $700,000 seems to be a figure created by the military in order to justify extradition (there is a threshold of damage required and the damage seems to have been conveniently set at the 'correct' figure).
If a newspaper had simply reported that the computers were set up with the default windows passwords - then presumably the military would have had to perform the same work in checking for potential comprimise and securing their networks. Would the paper in this hypothetical case have caused $700,000 worth of damage - or was that just work that needed to be done as a result of bad security practice.
what's a lawful order?
is there a clear definition?
Exactly - I spent a couple of weeks and a reasonable amount of money to develop a small app that I thought was useful. Not million-dollar, but useful.
Many months later, apple rejected it. A nice chap called me up. I'm not breaking any rules, it isn't offensive or bad taste. It's just a utility that they don't want.
He said that he felt bad - but that there it was.
It certainly makes me think twice about investing time or money in any idea that is at all innovative in the way that it uses the platform.
they also get developers to identify themselves through a verified paypal account.
That reduces the risk somewhat of a rogue developer unleashing malware and expecting to disappear into the ether...
right - but why should Palm have to sync by apple's supported (and less good) route.
by appearing as an ipod, the Pre gets a much smoother sync experience. It appears right in iTunes in the bar on the right. I don't need any extra software.
C'mon /. /. can and should do better.
Not only is this a rehash of an article posted before.
It is pretty clear from that article that Palm is doing nothing remotely deserving this title.
I had to sign one document and fax it through (a w8 ben). I think everything else was online.
When they reviewed my app, they gave me an extremely helpful feedback pdf which included a bunch of required changes and also a bunch of suggested changes.
I have implemented all the required ones (mostly relating to lack of clarity about how they want the about/faq pages to work) and most of the suggested ones.
I too got bitten by the 'has to be less than 1.0 as this is a beta catalog) thing. It took me about 5 seconds to change the version number.
Palm are trying to get the store ready for developers to sell apps. My guess is that the requirement to be verified by Paypal is nothing to do with getting paid. It's to do with providing a verifiable identity so that Palm know who is putting apps on the store.
I think that's a reasonable requirement. I'm a bit happier to download apps when I know that the developer is ready to identify themselves to Palm. That should add some incentive to stop developers doing 'bad things'.
Jamie Zawinski seems to want everything his way. Apart from his paypal paranoia, his response to Palm's feedback is:
"The other small code changes you asked for, I don't agree with, and I'm not going to do."
Perhaps he should stick to distributing things his way and not expect Palm to make exceptions on his behalf while they are trying to get a basic store up and running. Personally I'd rather they concentrated on working with the many developers who don't consider the process arduous so that we can sell our apps.
Perhaps they'll have more time to coddle him later. Perhaps if he made an effort to play nice, he wouldn't be in the situation where other apps seem to be getting released ahead of him...