Haha, in the mid 90s I played on Realms of Despair MUD, and typed with proper punctuation and capitalization. Somebody once made the comment "You must have played lots of adventure games." Which I thought was odd, since in adventure games, you say "get stone" not "Please, pick up that stone."
Four months ago AT&T announced that you could do it, so yeah, all the VoIP guys knew this was coming to the iPhone. They probably just didn't expect to take this long.
Jailbreaking is quite illegal, unless you forgot about the DMCA? In a book you can read the contents, which you can't for software, especially DRM encrypted software. For a doodad, even if you don't know how it was made, if you know how the parts work together, you can fix it if it breaks. Except for the DMCA, of course, which makes it illegal. Recipes? Really? How exactly do you plan on using the recipe to keep your plate in working order? That's just absurd. Plus...ummm...they do have to tell you the ingredients if you ask, just like if you buy packaged food at the Megamart. Historically, you've been legally entitled to maintain your car. Car companies have tried to lock people out by putting DRM on as much as they could, tying it all to their proprietary computer systems. They've been slapped on the wrist, though. The idea that you should have a right to the source code, in order to maintain it, is pretty well supported by existing law and morality. It doesn't follow that you then somehow have the right to redistribute the software, but hey, the FSF isn't saying that the iPad should only run GPL software. They're complaining about how its DRM doesn't let you run anything that isn't Apple signed code.
There's an illiterate buffoon called "HighGuy" who runs around all of the PS3 forums claiming to have hacked the PS3, but his hacks are always a few weeks from release. He spits out jargon like j-tags, hello-worlds, grub, linux, ubuntu, but he obviously doesn't know what any of those things are. He claims to have hacked a CoD4 save game and installed grub in it using Ubuntu, that way when you load the game it will use DOS to boot into whatever code you want. But, he even admits, he doesn't know any programming so he can't really do much with that, just basic "helloworlds". Then, right when he was about to release, look, it melts his PS3 chips. "But I think some soldier and maybe it works again. But we can't really use this hack it overloads the chips and makes them melt the boards". Anybody who calls him on his bullshit gets flamed by his legions of fans, plus gets him to threaten to never release it as punishment for doubting him and being jealous of his hacker skills. Meanwhile, people who make legitimate strides are shat all over by his legion of fans, for ripping him off, "HighGuy was doing this a year ago, poser!" Just like Mr. AC here;)
Ubisoft has actually been doing this for years, and people started complaining and null routing their spyware servers, so now they're pissy and making it mandatory. Assassin's Creed would connect to montreal.ubisoft.com every 5 seconds. During that time, the game would freeze up SOLID until it got a reply, or the connection attempt timed out. But, it wasn't mandatory. If you pulled out your network cable, it would go into offline mode and not try to report your playing habits, and no more freezing issues! Assassin's Creed is also the game that turned them way off from PC releases. Because of the other thing they did to combat piracy: They leaked a version of it on pirate bay, that was defective, so about 1/3 of the way through, it would crash to the desktop, and you couldn't complete the game. But, Ubisoft's other policy is to not give out copies of the game to mags that don't agree to give them 90% before they get them. So, they found out the hard way that most magazines and websites that haven't completely and utterly sold out, fucking pirate it so they can review it before it's out. So, they were shocked and amazed to discover most independent reviewers were giving it "0, crashes a few hours in and is unplayable, happens on every machine, don't buy, it's awful." OOPS. But at least it got high marks from places like IGN and PC Gamer who were paid off! Only, people don't listen to those pieces of shit websites because they love everything they get paid to love, and they absolutely detest good games. So they go by word of mouth, and the word of mouth is, it's unplayable due to showstopper bugs that almost everybody encounters.
Yeah, right. If Rogers decided to rig every tenth phone to explode and kill the user, if it got any mention on the news at all here, it would be that Rogers saved the lives of 90% of their customer base!
Right, but Edison claimed it would be stronger and yet more flexible than paper. So, while real nickle sheets 10 times thinner than tinfoil would tear and crumple easily, Edison's fictional nickle sheets would be incredibly dangerous;)
Spammed? All depends on specifics they don't give. My (generous) interpretation is that it'll basically just be an RSS feed. You open the file, you get a pane in Windows Media Player with all kinds of announcements, if you want to see the video (if there is one) click it and it'll stream to your player. (There's no way they are stupid enough to try to embed multiple 10-100 mb video files into an MP3 file!) Yeah, if it can trigger popups, instant fail. If it's just a little RSS pane, that's not spamming, and lots of people would find it legitimately useful. I'd also assume (though you know what they say about assuming) that you can turn it off, or at least hide the "updates" pane.
You don't know for sure that's how it works. Take an MP3 file, put a unique ID and a URL into the metadata. Add a special codec to WMP to play the "new" file format. Now when WMP loads the file, it checks with their URL in the usual DRM way. If it finds you're authorized, you can stream the extra videos and play them straight from WMP, and it could also use the info bar at the bottom that normally just says the track# and song name, to show upcoming concerts, album releases, and other updates from the band and/or publisher. And I'm sure, so that info is there with or without your net connection, those RSS-like updates could be stored in the metadata as well. Meanwhile, it's still basically just an MP3, so any MP3 player will still play it, minus the extras in the metadata.
The format I just described matches their description, if you assume their description was a bit loose with the term "embedded", since the videos would be "embedded" as links, not as in the entire video clip crammed into the file. This reading makes sense, in that they say that the file, if pirated, would sit there static, without the extras. My "scheme" would do just that, file still plays, still has whatever announcements were cached, but the DRM servers won't push you any new updates, and the links to the "embedded" video clips wouldn't play. And as for your statement about the option to erase the file, well, I think the DRM window is supposed to be sandboxed, so it can't get at your file system, only tell WMP what changes to make to the metadata. (though, of course, virus writers get around this all the time, and DRM writers don't seem any more scrupulous).
Of course, I'm just assuming that the "illegally downloaded" copy of the file would still play as a normal music file. Since they say the extras don't work, I think that implies the music itself still works, else they would say the file doesn't work at all, rather than limiting their statement to the extras. But you know what they say about assuming. Cynically, this interpretation makes too much sense, and wouldn't be horribly intrusive and obnoxious, so it seems pretty unlikely.
Remember the argument as to why file sharers have to pay a million dollars for sharing one CD? Because you only catch one, but millions of people are doing it, so they have to pay for all the others, too, to be fair to the copyright owner! Lots of companies and firms send out LOTS of completely bogus DMCA notices, and the EFF deals with a large number of them. So, fair's fair, why can't they charge Universal all their legal fees for all of the bogus notices? They should also charge for all the lobbying they do to try to get the DMCA fixed!;)
It means it's not illegal to share them, therefore, there cannot be a court order preventing it. However, if somebody downloads the file, then it is illegal, and the plaintiff does not need to prove anybody downloaded it for a successful suit alleging that somebody downloaded it, as in this case. As in, if you share a song, it's an automatic, $2000 penalty per song, because you're automatically guilty, even if nobody does download it. But until you're sued and the automatic presumption of guilt kicks in, it's not illegal.
My bank limits me to 8 characters, alphanumeric only. But any time you log in from a new IP, it gives you a couple random security questions. What is your favorite childhood cartoon character? What is the middle name of your spouse's youngest sibling? What is your favorite chocolate bar. In general, security questions aren't secure. But you've gotta choose good ones! But out of those examples, I doubt anybody but my wife knows all 3! And I've never explicitly mentioned my favorite chocolate bar to her, she just probably picked up on it because it's quite literally the only one I ever buy;) But since that's once or twice a year, I doubt anybody sifting my trash would pick up on that, (especially now, since our apartment has a communal dumpster for the whole building).
As a person who had an ATI All-In-Wonder, before the TiVo ever got invented, I can tell you, it had the ability to schedule recordings from your TV and save them as an mpeg2 stream, and it had the ability for you to be playing that stream while it was still being written to, allowing you to pause, rewind, and fastforward live TV...So fuck TiVo, they didn't invent shit except the UI on top of it, and it's not that great.
If a blatantly misleading headline tricks you into buying a paper, you've just bought dozens of articles, plus added another reader to increase the asking price for all those ads it's jammed full of. If you click through a link, you've viewed one article, and viewed 1-2 ads per page of that article (that is, 1-2 per paragraph, soon per sentence!) Beyond that, they also want you viewing ads on their list of headlines, and they want you viewing ads on the 80 intervening pages between when you click the headline on their front page, and when you finally reach the page for the first word of the article.
That's a bad analogy, because in the checkout lane you can read most of the article without having to pick up the paper, but on Google you have to click through.
17 USC Section 101: "A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more pre-existing works..."
Further copyright law defines the distribution of a derivative work as copyright infringement. And that's that, I'm afraid. If you use a character from a book, your new book is based on that old book, therefore a derivative work, therefore a copyright violation. You might say "Well, that's pushing the definition too far!" Well, perhaps. But unfortunately, the courts disagree. At a time when Disney did not have trademarks on his characters, somebody put Micky Mouse in a comicbook. He got sued for copyright violation, and lost. Even though his comic was a parody making fun of Disney, the judge ruled it's a non-fair-use derivative work, since the character looked exactly like Micky Mouse, and to be fair use, it must be only as similar as would be enough to suggest Mickey Mouse to the reader. Even a sliver more similar than that, is illegal.
Now, this case is murky, since only a few of the most recent Holmes books are still under copypright. So, you could try to argue that you're derivative work is based on the early ones only, and not the later ones, since in your opinion, the last ones sucked. IANAL, I have no idea how that would go. I bet no lawyers have any idea how that would go, either, because it's never been tested. The definition does say "one or more". The sue-happy sons of bitches at the Doyle estate would argue that the Holmes character is defined by the sum total of the works about him, and therefore, any new use of the character is based on "one or more" still copyrighted books. Will that counter the defense argument that their new Holmes book is only based on the first few books, since after that, the new books don't add much to the character beyond new situations? No clue.
I wonder if they'll sue Fox over House, next? They freely admit he's based on Holmes, and after all, the law says, based on = copyright infringement. For that matter, look out James Cameron! You openly admitted that Avatar is based on Dances with Wolves! Michael Blake, call your lawyer, it's suin' time!
The counseling is for trying to learn outside of school. He's obviously insane, nobody would ever do that. He sounds like some kind of socialist elitist.
Oh, well yeah, my router has a built in dyndns.org update script on it, that must be it. Still, I didn't think my IP address changed that often, could be mistaken though, I don't really keep track;)
The WINE name is designed to look JUST like it's supposed to stand for "WINdows Emulator". Besides, emulate means to imitate in order to match or exceed. Since WINE works by providing the same API calls that work in the same way as in Windows, I'd still call it an emulator, even if that's improper usage of the word;)
Really? I haven't logged into mine for a year, and it's still up and running. And before that, I hadn't logged into it in like 5 years. Good old is-a-geek.net, I've had mine since first year undergrad, so I could ssh to my home boxes without having to memorize a new IP address every time a power outage changed my cable modem's IP. Since that only happened rarely, I didn't log in anywhere near once a month, not even close. It's still active, and yeah, I logged in like last year, and haven't logged in in quite a while since, and it's still working.
I do seem to recall that I originally had signed up as a "dynamic" IP, and they discontinued my domain since it hadn't changed in a month or so, maybe that's what happened to you? Either way, you can change a "static" IP address from them at will, and the change propagates pretty fast still, so while I"m not sure why they have that dumb policy, there's also no reason to really use a dynamic IP, as a free user anyways.
Almost all of those are the same as they were in the comics, though. It's not like Raimi decided to make them all psychologically damaged. Well, the Sandman in the comics was just a criminal because it's what he was good at. It's very common in comics, really. You have two kinds of villains: Criminals, and crazies. Criminals are just criminals, they want cash, and they use their newfound superpowers to get it. Or they don't even have powers, they just have cunning plans and gadgets. Then you have the crazy ones. Their powers made them nuts, if they weren't already. They're the ones you see with the "blow up the city" evil schemes. They're evil for evil's sake. But nobody is just pure evil, without being nuts. Look at Batman, too. Almost every batman villain is crazy, that's why they get sent to an insane asylum, not prison. And even the criminals, most of them are driven to crime by some sob story or other, in the comics. The Vulture, he got screwed by his business partner. The Penguin, he was picked on for being ugly and looking like a bird (Penguin because he wears a tux). A sympathetic villain is hardly something Raimi invented. It's just because, a person who wants to blow up the city is a shitty villain if his only reason is "I'M EVIL LOL". So pretty much, he's got to be nuts. Or, his evil plot is just Diehard subterfuge, distract the hero(es) with a bogus terror plot so you can pull a heist while they're looking the other way;)
I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Private property can, in some situations, be considered a public space, in that, while privately owned, it is open to the public, and as such, the public has in interest in its operation. The most important of such spaces, according to common law, is the inn. Under American law, the innkeeper has obligations towards the public. The innkeepers largest duty is to take in guests. By law, an innkeeper must accept all unobjectionable guests, so long as there is space, and so long as the guest is willing to pay the price the innkeeper asks. "Upon assignment to a room, a guest is entitled to its exclusive occupancy for all lawful purposes, subject to the right of the innkeeper to enter the room for proper purposes, such as to assist the police in their investigation of a crime." Objectionable means, that the innkeeper has a good faith belief they will not pay, that they are intoxicated, or that they are or will be disruptive towards other guests. As for reasons a hotel can evict: Disorderly conduct. Nonpayment. Unlawful activity. Causing a danger to others. If the reservation was obtained under false pretenses. Violating conspicuously posted hotel rules. Failure to vacate by the posted check-out time. So, the only way they could kick these people out would be if there was a law preventing private showcasing of products (doubtful!) or if there was a conspicuously posted notice explicitly forbidding it. And that second one, it might not be so strong, either. Under US federal law, as I said, you're entitled to exclusive use of the room for all lawful purposes, so it's doubtful they could have a posted rule saying that you cannot have guests. In fact, the right to entertain guests in your hotel room is the LAW, so long as your total number of guests does not exceed the capacity of the room. In TFA, they were even told as much, if you aren't breaking the law, the only limit on having people in for private business meetings, is the room capacity. And, the rooms they rented, are large business suites, rooms designed and rented for the EXPRESS purpose of conducting business meetings in! Finally, though IANAL, I believe that while state laws can adjust and clarify these rights and obligations, they cannot disclaim or eliminate rights or duties, so no Las Vegas or Nevada law can allow a hotel to evict people who are not breaking the law. But that's a fine line, and has gone either way in court findings on various particular issues.
On the other hand, "false pretenses" is also there, so if they represented themselves as attendees of CES to get the preferred rate (or because CES reserved ALL business suites for their group rate, so only by pretending to be CES attendees could they get a business suite) then yeah, they can be kicked to the curb, and rightly so. But, TFA said that even CES attendees who also even had a booth at CES were evicted, so I don't think it could be that.
The Costco in my hometown uses pneumatic tubes to deliver money to the back room, from the registers. When there's too much cash in the drawer, you take the excess, stick it in a canister, it shoots off to be counted and put in the safe. I think if somebody breaks a large bill and you're low on change, the back room could also shoot you a canister of small bills to stock up with, but I've never seen that happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha, in the mid 90s I played on Realms of Despair MUD, and typed with proper punctuation and capitalization. Somebody once made the comment "You must have played lots of adventure games." Which I thought was odd, since in adventure games, you say "get stone" not "Please, pick up that stone."
Four months ago AT&T announced that you could do it, so yeah, all the VoIP guys knew this was coming to the iPhone. They probably just didn't expect to take this long.
Jailbreaking is quite illegal, unless you forgot about the DMCA? In a book you can read the contents, which you can't for software, especially DRM encrypted software. For a doodad, even if you don't know how it was made, if you know how the parts work together, you can fix it if it breaks. Except for the DMCA, of course, which makes it illegal. Recipes? Really? How exactly do you plan on using the recipe to keep your plate in working order? That's just absurd. Plus...ummm...they do have to tell you the ingredients if you ask, just like if you buy packaged food at the Megamart. Historically, you've been legally entitled to maintain your car. Car companies have tried to lock people out by putting DRM on as much as they could, tying it all to their proprietary computer systems. They've been slapped on the wrist, though. The idea that you should have a right to the source code, in order to maintain it, is pretty well supported by existing law and morality. It doesn't follow that you then somehow have the right to redistribute the software, but hey, the FSF isn't saying that the iPad should only run GPL software. They're complaining about how its DRM doesn't let you run anything that isn't Apple signed code.
There's an illiterate buffoon called "HighGuy" who runs around all of the PS3 forums claiming to have hacked the PS3, but his hacks are always a few weeks from release. He spits out jargon like j-tags, hello-worlds, grub, linux, ubuntu, but he obviously doesn't know what any of those things are. He claims to have hacked a CoD4 save game and installed grub in it using Ubuntu, that way when you load the game it will use DOS to boot into whatever code you want. But, he even admits, he doesn't know any programming so he can't really do much with that, just basic "helloworlds". Then, right when he was about to release, look, it melts his PS3 chips. "But I think some soldier and maybe it works again. But we can't really use this hack it overloads the chips and makes them melt the boards". Anybody who calls him on his bullshit gets flamed by his legions of fans, plus gets him to threaten to never release it as punishment for doubting him and being jealous of his hacker skills. Meanwhile, people who make legitimate strides are shat all over by his legion of fans, for ripping him off, "HighGuy was doing this a year ago, poser!" Just like Mr. AC here ;)
Ubisoft has actually been doing this for years, and people started complaining and null routing their spyware servers, so now they're pissy and making it mandatory. Assassin's Creed would connect to montreal.ubisoft.com every 5 seconds. During that time, the game would freeze up SOLID until it got a reply, or the connection attempt timed out. But, it wasn't mandatory. If you pulled out your network cable, it would go into offline mode and not try to report your playing habits, and no more freezing issues! Assassin's Creed is also the game that turned them way off from PC releases. Because of the other thing they did to combat piracy: They leaked a version of it on pirate bay, that was defective, so about 1/3 of the way through, it would crash to the desktop, and you couldn't complete the game. But, Ubisoft's other policy is to not give out copies of the game to mags that don't agree to give them 90% before they get them. So, they found out the hard way that most magazines and websites that haven't completely and utterly sold out, fucking pirate it so they can review it before it's out. So, they were shocked and amazed to discover most independent reviewers were giving it "0, crashes a few hours in and is unplayable, happens on every machine, don't buy, it's awful." OOPS. But at least it got high marks from places like IGN and PC Gamer who were paid off! Only, people don't listen to those pieces of shit websites because they love everything they get paid to love, and they absolutely detest good games. So they go by word of mouth, and the word of mouth is, it's unplayable due to showstopper bugs that almost everybody encounters.
Yeah, right. If Rogers decided to rig every tenth phone to explode and kill the user, if it got any mention on the news at all here, it would be that Rogers saved the lives of 90% of their customer base!
Wait until you get the $10,000 bill for that SD card you ordered from them! ;)
Right, but Edison claimed it would be stronger and yet more flexible than paper. So, while real nickle sheets 10 times thinner than tinfoil would tear and crumple easily, Edison's fictional nickle sheets would be incredibly dangerous ;)
Spammed? All depends on specifics they don't give. My (generous) interpretation is that it'll basically just be an RSS feed. You open the file, you get a pane in Windows Media Player with all kinds of announcements, if you want to see the video (if there is one) click it and it'll stream to your player. (There's no way they are stupid enough to try to embed multiple 10-100 mb video files into an MP3 file!) Yeah, if it can trigger popups, instant fail. If it's just a little RSS pane, that's not spamming, and lots of people would find it legitimately useful. I'd also assume (though you know what they say about assuming) that you can turn it off, or at least hide the "updates" pane.
You don't know for sure that's how it works. Take an MP3 file, put a unique ID and a URL into the metadata. Add a special codec to WMP to play the "new" file format. Now when WMP loads the file, it checks with their URL in the usual DRM way. If it finds you're authorized, you can stream the extra videos and play them straight from WMP, and it could also use the info bar at the bottom that normally just says the track# and song name, to show upcoming concerts, album releases, and other updates from the band and/or publisher. And I'm sure, so that info is there with or without your net connection, those RSS-like updates could be stored in the metadata as well. Meanwhile, it's still basically just an MP3, so any MP3 player will still play it, minus the extras in the metadata.
The format I just described matches their description, if you assume their description was a bit loose with the term "embedded", since the videos would be "embedded" as links, not as in the entire video clip crammed into the file. This reading makes sense, in that they say that the file, if pirated, would sit there static, without the extras. My "scheme" would do just that, file still plays, still has whatever announcements were cached, but the DRM servers won't push you any new updates, and the links to the "embedded" video clips wouldn't play. And as for your statement about the option to erase the file, well, I think the DRM window is supposed to be sandboxed, so it can't get at your file system, only tell WMP what changes to make to the metadata. (though, of course, virus writers get around this all the time, and DRM writers don't seem any more scrupulous).
Of course, I'm just assuming that the "illegally downloaded" copy of the file would still play as a normal music file. Since they say the extras don't work, I think that implies the music itself still works, else they would say the file doesn't work at all, rather than limiting their statement to the extras. But you know what they say about assuming. Cynically, this interpretation makes too much sense, and wouldn't be horribly intrusive and obnoxious, so it seems pretty unlikely.
Remember the argument as to why file sharers have to pay a million dollars for sharing one CD? Because you only catch one, but millions of people are doing it, so they have to pay for all the others, too, to be fair to the copyright owner! Lots of companies and firms send out LOTS of completely bogus DMCA notices, and the EFF deals with a large number of them. So, fair's fair, why can't they charge Universal all their legal fees for all of the bogus notices? They should also charge for all the lobbying they do to try to get the DMCA fixed! ;)
It means it's not illegal to share them, therefore, there cannot be a court order preventing it. However, if somebody downloads the file, then it is illegal, and the plaintiff does not need to prove anybody downloaded it for a successful suit alleging that somebody downloaded it, as in this case. As in, if you share a song, it's an automatic, $2000 penalty per song, because you're automatically guilty, even if nobody does download it. But until you're sued and the automatic presumption of guilt kicks in, it's not illegal.
My bank limits me to 8 characters, alphanumeric only. But any time you log in from a new IP, it gives you a couple random security questions. What is your favorite childhood cartoon character? What is the middle name of your spouse's youngest sibling? What is your favorite chocolate bar. In general, security questions aren't secure. But you've gotta choose good ones! But out of those examples, I doubt anybody but my wife knows all 3! And I've never explicitly mentioned my favorite chocolate bar to her, she just probably picked up on it because it's quite literally the only one I ever buy ;) But since that's once or twice a year, I doubt anybody sifting my trash would pick up on that, (especially now, since our apartment has a communal dumpster for the whole building).
As a person who had an ATI All-In-Wonder, before the TiVo ever got invented, I can tell you, it had the ability to schedule recordings from your TV and save them as an mpeg2 stream, and it had the ability for you to be playing that stream while it was still being written to, allowing you to pause, rewind, and fastforward live TV...So fuck TiVo, they didn't invent shit except the UI on top of it, and it's not that great.
If a blatantly misleading headline tricks you into buying a paper, you've just bought dozens of articles, plus added another reader to increase the asking price for all those ads it's jammed full of. If you click through a link, you've viewed one article, and viewed 1-2 ads per page of that article (that is, 1-2 per paragraph, soon per sentence!) Beyond that, they also want you viewing ads on their list of headlines, and they want you viewing ads on the 80 intervening pages between when you click the headline on their front page, and when you finally reach the page for the first word of the article.
That's a bad analogy, because in the checkout lane you can read most of the article without having to pick up the paper, but on Google you have to click through.
17 USC Section 101: "A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more pre-existing works..."
Further copyright law defines the distribution of a derivative work as copyright infringement. And that's that, I'm afraid. If you use a character from a book, your new book is based on that old book, therefore a derivative work, therefore a copyright violation. You might say "Well, that's pushing the definition too far!" Well, perhaps. But unfortunately, the courts disagree. At a time when Disney did not have trademarks on his characters, somebody put Micky Mouse in a comicbook. He got sued for copyright violation, and lost. Even though his comic was a parody making fun of Disney, the judge ruled it's a non-fair-use derivative work, since the character looked exactly like Micky Mouse, and to be fair use, it must be only as similar as would be enough to suggest Mickey Mouse to the reader. Even a sliver more similar than that, is illegal.
Now, this case is murky, since only a few of the most recent Holmes books are still under copypright. So, you could try to argue that you're derivative work is based on the early ones only, and not the later ones, since in your opinion, the last ones sucked. IANAL, I have no idea how that would go. I bet no lawyers have any idea how that would go, either, because it's never been tested. The definition does say "one or more". The sue-happy sons of bitches at the Doyle estate would argue that the Holmes character is defined by the sum total of the works about him, and therefore, any new use of the character is based on "one or more" still copyrighted books. Will that counter the defense argument that their new Holmes book is only based on the first few books, since after that, the new books don't add much to the character beyond new situations? No clue.
I wonder if they'll sue Fox over House, next? They freely admit he's based on Holmes, and after all, the law says, based on = copyright infringement. For that matter, look out James Cameron! You openly admitted that Avatar is based on Dances with Wolves! Michael Blake, call your lawyer, it's suin' time!
The counseling is for trying to learn outside of school. He's obviously insane, nobody would ever do that. He sounds like some kind of socialist elitist.
Oh, well yeah, my router has a built in dyndns.org update script on it, that must be it. Still, I didn't think my IP address changed that often, could be mistaken though, I don't really keep track ;)
The WINE name is designed to look JUST like it's supposed to stand for "WINdows Emulator". Besides, emulate means to imitate in order to match or exceed. Since WINE works by providing the same API calls that work in the same way as in Windows, I'd still call it an emulator, even if that's improper usage of the word ;)
Really? I haven't logged into mine for a year, and it's still up and running. And before that, I hadn't logged into it in like 5 years. Good old is-a-geek.net, I've had mine since first year undergrad, so I could ssh to my home boxes without having to memorize a new IP address every time a power outage changed my cable modem's IP. Since that only happened rarely, I didn't log in anywhere near once a month, not even close. It's still active, and yeah, I logged in like last year, and haven't logged in in quite a while since, and it's still working.
I do seem to recall that I originally had signed up as a "dynamic" IP, and they discontinued my domain since it hadn't changed in a month or so, maybe that's what happened to you? Either way, you can change a "static" IP address from them at will, and the change propagates pretty fast still, so while I"m not sure why they have that dumb policy, there's also no reason to really use a dynamic IP, as a free user anyways.
Almost all of those are the same as they were in the comics, though. It's not like Raimi decided to make them all psychologically damaged. Well, the Sandman in the comics was just a criminal because it's what he was good at. It's very common in comics, really. You have two kinds of villains: Criminals, and crazies. Criminals are just criminals, they want cash, and they use their newfound superpowers to get it. Or they don't even have powers, they just have cunning plans and gadgets. Then you have the crazy ones. Their powers made them nuts, if they weren't already. They're the ones you see with the "blow up the city" evil schemes. They're evil for evil's sake. But nobody is just pure evil, without being nuts. Look at Batman, too. Almost every batman villain is crazy, that's why they get sent to an insane asylum, not prison. And even the criminals, most of them are driven to crime by some sob story or other, in the comics. The Vulture, he got screwed by his business partner. The Penguin, he was picked on for being ugly and looking like a bird (Penguin because he wears a tux). A sympathetic villain is hardly something Raimi invented. It's just because, a person who wants to blow up the city is a shitty villain if his only reason is "I'M EVIL LOL". So pretty much, he's got to be nuts. Or, his evil plot is just Diehard subterfuge, distract the hero(es) with a bogus terror plot so you can pull a heist while they're looking the other way ;)
"Oh no not the bees, not the bees, aaauuuugugh, they're in my eyes, my eyes! aughghghhg auuugh!"
I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Private property can, in some situations, be considered a public space, in that, while privately owned, it is open to the public, and as such, the public has in interest in its operation. The most important of such spaces, according to common law, is the inn. Under American law, the innkeeper has obligations towards the public. The innkeepers largest duty is to take in guests. By law, an innkeeper must accept all unobjectionable guests, so long as there is space, and so long as the guest is willing to pay the price the innkeeper asks. "Upon assignment to a room, a guest is entitled to its exclusive occupancy for all lawful purposes, subject to the right of the innkeeper to enter the room for proper purposes, such as to assist the police in their investigation of a crime." Objectionable means, that the innkeeper has a good faith belief they will not pay, that they are intoxicated, or that they are or will be disruptive towards other guests. As for reasons a hotel can evict: Disorderly conduct. Nonpayment. Unlawful activity. Causing a danger to others. If the reservation was obtained under false pretenses. Violating conspicuously posted hotel rules. Failure to vacate by the posted check-out time. So, the only way they could kick these people out would be if there was a law preventing private showcasing of products (doubtful!) or if there was a conspicuously posted notice explicitly forbidding it. And that second one, it might not be so strong, either. Under US federal law, as I said, you're entitled to exclusive use of the room for all lawful purposes, so it's doubtful they could have a posted rule saying that you cannot have guests. In fact, the right to entertain guests in your hotel room is the LAW, so long as your total number of guests does not exceed the capacity of the room. In TFA, they were even told as much, if you aren't breaking the law, the only limit on having people in for private business meetings, is the room capacity. And, the rooms they rented, are large business suites, rooms designed and rented for the EXPRESS purpose of conducting business meetings in! Finally, though IANAL, I believe that while state laws can adjust and clarify these rights and obligations, they cannot disclaim or eliminate rights or duties, so no Las Vegas or Nevada law can allow a hotel to evict people who are not breaking the law. But that's a fine line, and has gone either way in court findings on various particular issues.
On the other hand, "false pretenses" is also there, so if they represented themselves as attendees of CES to get the preferred rate (or because CES reserved ALL business suites for their group rate, so only by pretending to be CES attendees could they get a business suite) then yeah, they can be kicked to the curb, and rightly so. But, TFA said that even CES attendees who also even had a booth at CES were evicted, so I don't think it could be that.
The Costco in my hometown uses pneumatic tubes to deliver money to the back room, from the registers. When there's too much cash in the drawer, you take the excess, stick it in a canister, it shoots off to be counted and put in the safe. I think if somebody breaks a large bill and you're low on change, the back room could also shoot you a canister of small bills to stock up with, but I've never seen that happen.