What distinguishes "making an objectionable plan" from thoughtcrime? So now it's unacceptable to even consider doing something some people might consider unacceptable?
Your argument begins with the presumption that a crime has taken place: a murder.
As analogy this is broken, because there is no presumption here that any crime has been committed by anyone, so there is no need for any one individual to be "guilty" with or without a finding.
However were we to engage the example fully, we have to draw a demarcation between the word innocent in casual use, which is understood to mean "did not commit a crime" and its use in the legal and political realms. The presumption of innocence means that under the law and before one's fellow citizens, one is "presumed innocent" until proven guilty. This is true whether you have actually committed a crime or not.
Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.
IANAL, but AFAIK 'innocent' is never used in the US Justice System. So, if the government fails to prove he's guilty, then he is not guilty.
What terminology the government uses is only relevant when reporting what the government says.
No one here should report that the government has determined him to be innocent.
This is not because the only thing that may be reported about an alleged criminal is that either we know for sure he did it (guilty) or that we can't prove that he did it (not guilty) which underhandedly implies that maybe he did do it, but we can't prove it.
The reason why we don't report that courts find defendants innocent is because no one should need, in the United States, to be found innocent, because it is presumed.
Whether the justice system ever uses the word in its determinations is only relevant when reporting the determination. Once you report that the justice system has dropped the charges, or come to a determination of "not guilty" then any citizen may, combining that fact with the presumption of innocence, safely arrive at the factual statement that the person is innocent-- just not that this is the determination of the legal system. This is merely the individual's natural state in the absence of any finding to the contrary.
No one is reporting he is innocent. They reached a plea deal. The government dropped the 10 charges because a judge decided the prosecution would have to show classified material to the jury.
Dropping the charges because you don't have enough evidence to make a case (i.e. without using classified material) is not the same as deciding he is innocent.
One may report that he IS innocent because one is "presumed innocent" until "found guilty".
What one may not report (at least not conscientiously) is that he has been "found innocent" because that is not a determination that is made. It is not made because it does not need to be made, because of the same presumption. No one needs a judge or jury to return a finding of innocence, because it is presumed. The findings are "guilty" or "not guilty".
A person may be innocent. They are innocent because they are "found not guilty", but that is not the same as saying they were "found innocent". If charges or dropped, or a plea bargain is reached, they are also "innocent" for the same reason-- because absent a finding of "guilty" he is presumed innocent.
The headline does not say he was found innocent. It says he is innocent. Since he has not been found guilty of the original ten charges, because they were dropped as part of a plea bargain, the headline is accurate, because he is presumed innocent until found guilty.
Emerson was the first one to popularize the myth that if one were to "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door", and yes for the pedants out there I realize this is a misquotation of what Emerson really said, but the juice of it is a maxim that many individuals use to understand the process of innovation. Unfortunately, when observed through the lens of history, the maxim does not hold water.
Well, a better mousetrap (or, for that matter, a better myth) need not hold water as long as it can reliably hold mice.
If there's a distinction to be made, it is the part where mice do not suffer (or should I say benefit?) from network effects. If a better mousetrap does a better job of catching my mice, that's all I care about, and so the only friction for the transition to the new mousetrap is how much it costs me in money, time, and effort.
The Skype problem is not like that at all. It's a significantly more difficult problem than, say, making a better OSS browser, email client, or even an entire operating system, because all of those experience network effects to a lesser degree than audiovisual communication. In some cases this is just because of the nature of the product and its intended uses, and in other cases it is because of widely used standards like TCP/IP, POP, SMTP, IMAP.
What of SIP? The problem with SIP, of course, is that SIP, as a protocol around which operators have built a business model, does not do what Skype does. Interoperability between subscribers of rival SIP operators is not free; presence is not usually supported, and there is no method for peer discovery between separate SIP switches. Calling between such subscribers is usually conducted, not directly, but through the PSTN (or is treated, and billed, as if it is, even if the two operators terminate calls between themselves directly, so to the end user, it's all the same.)
Skype is like one big SIP operator that connects to the PSTN. It's walled off from any other IM providers, or from any populations not using the official Skype client, servers, and protocols, but that's the value in it-- nobody has been able yet to drive a wedge between the Skype app and the Skype service (as was long ago done with ICQ) or to allow for separate groups or individuals to establish their own, separate workalike system (as is done with Jabber/Jingle or SIP).
Skype has value because of how open it isn't, because being as open as these other systems ultimately reduced network effects and reduced the influence the owner of the application has over the operation of the network.
An unofficial, Skype-compatible client that can't be influenced by Microsoft or kept off the network will start the ICQ process in motion, and prevent Microsoft from monetizing Skype the way ICQ first did, by inserting advertising content in the way of free functionality by direct control over the client software.
An unofficial, Skype-compatible server that isn't administrated by Microsoft will start the Jabber/SIP process in motion, dividing the Skype population and making the whole worth less than the sum of its parts, rather like the situation now with SIP operators-- all of which act a lot more like traditional telcos than Skype does, for what that's worth.
The degree to which one or both of those things reduces the value that Microsoft can get from Skype is not directly proportional to the degree to whcih they can help build value for anyone else, either the makers of those alternatives, or the users of them. I'd say there's a nonzero chance of those things eliminating all value in Skype for all players unless standards-based interoperability, at least as good as what exists today on the PSTN (and hopefully a good deal better) becomes widespread. It's difficult to see how that evolves from the current situation without regulatory oversight; nearly all market forces are actively working against it.
I would get both, assuming OpenSkype is lightweight and sits quietly in the background except when my one friend on OpenSkype calls me.
Most people wouldn't bother. As for you... what about when OpenSkype forks and becomes LibreSkype and OpenSkype and SINS (which of course would stand for SINS Is Not Skype)? What if those drifted apart and lost interoperability?
For lots of people, myself included, Skype may already be one of two apps used for similar purposes; Skype and a softphone, Skype and an IM client, or perhaps all three. There's a point at which adding new elements to support new networks becomes insupportable; and the smallest networks will be the ones that are eliminated in the drive to consolidate clients. I've already made choices about what IM and softphone clients to use based on how many different networks they support, and if one client supports most networks, but not all, I don't keep another client around for those last couple, I just live without them.
The niche that Skype fills, for many users, is almost entirely defined at this point by what Skype does.
How would a new theoretical app/service be "better" than Skype, and how would this improvement be quantified? Let's leave out for a minute the exaggeration of any existing shortfalls that MS might cause. Yes, the new Mac interface is terrible, and MS might discontinue support for 2.8. Yes, Linux support is lacking, and MS might ignore that platform. Yes, MS might tie the service into Live, or absorb it into Lync and/or MSN, or put ads in it, or charge for PC to PC calls, but let's forget all of that.
What could one put in a theoretical Skype-killer?
Better audio or video quality? There are already choices that offer that; and like a Skype killer, they lack Skype's network effect. Quality is rarely a differentiator when there' a popular-enough, good enough choice available.
Some new feature? What people need a Skype-like program to do is almost entirely defined right now by what Skype does, so it's hard to imagine a hypothetical feature one might add that wouldn't be dismissed out of hand by lots of users who'd say "I don't need that" and stick with Skype. They might be fine with it if Skype added it-- some would use it, some would ignore it, but only a few people on any platform or service are going to abandon it for a new feature people have done without for years and didn't know they needed.
About the only thing I can think of is a race to the bottom-- offer what Skype charges for, for free-- PSTN connectivity or multi user video conferences. The latter is more possible than the former, but still very sensitive to network effects, and there have been no suggestions of how to overcome those; everything is predicated on waiting until MS screws things up for Skype somehow.
I take it places like that assume their laws apply globally?
Not only is the US a "place[s] like that" but it has laws that are specifically directed at the conduct of US citizens when out of the country. It's called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). I can't think of any extradition attempts based on it off hand, but certainly there have been US citizens arrested and tried based on breaking this US law while living and working abroad.
The law says (among other things) that you can't bribe foreign officials. Whether such behavior is legal in those countries, or, if illegal, prosecuted, isn't relevant.
Not exactly lese majeste, I'll admit, but it does point out that it's neither easy, nor necessarily desirable, for a country's laws to stop at a country's borders. To make this more relevant to Thailand, there are also laws against traveling to countries specifically for the purpose of circumventing certain US laws, namely those against sexual exploitation of minors.
Actually, while the deal is pending, Microsoft is legally prohibited from exerting influence over Skype. Until the deal goes through, Microsoft has less influence over Skype than they had before the deal.
The Microsoft/Skype deal is nowhere near completion, and Microsoft currently has no say in how Skype runs their business.
This strikes me as a bit naive. Yes, no executive at Microsoft currently has managerial authority over any employee at Skype. This won't happen until the deal is completed. However, I can tell you that as a rule, there is nothing whatsoever unusual about two companies, when negotiating a merger or acquisition, to set certain conditions on the deal that require one party to take actions of its own accord that are preconditions for the deal being acceptable to the other side. There is nothing whatsoever unusual about MS telling an acquisition target that if they kill a product or project that overlaps something MS makes, that they kill it prior to acquisition and give MS plausible deniability.
Also the negotiations on this software were most likely ongoing long before the Microsoft/Skype merger was announced, and most likely a business decisions based on profit margins and longevity.
There's no particular reason to believe that, although I suppose it's possible. Skype For Asterisk went into beta in late 2008 and will still be available for sale and activation until later this summer. Yes, the agreement was up for renewal, and it could be a coincidence that the announcement that it will not be renewed follows the announcement that Skype is being acquired is coincidental. That Skype is a closed and proprietary product having its parent company purchased by an enterprise that makes its living making, selling and supporting closed and proprietary products, and that a short period after the acquisition is announced, has the one point of interoperability between the closed source and proprietary Skype with a free and open source system (Asterisk) discontinued I think may appear to many as more than a coincidence. It may appear to some like correlation, and to others, like causation.
I can't help but wonder why people are so quick to blame Microsoft for issues that they could not possible be responsible for.
As I think I have suggested above, it is only possible, it is plausible that they have affected this management decision by Skype. It is easier to see how continuing this program negatively affects Microsoft than it is to see how discontinuing it helps Skype. It's likely that the only cost to Skype was providing technical documentation and part of Skype's source code to Digium, while in return possibly receiving one-time license fees on activations from Digium, plus usage from Asterisk users who choose to terminate PSTN calls through Skype instead of another SIP operator. It's possible this was minimal, but it can't be negative. Unless Skype was bearing a disproportionate amount of the development costs for Skype for Asterisk, this seems unlikely. It seems unlikely they would shoulder such costs, as arguably the existence of this project benefited Asterisk (and Digium) more than Skype.
People are quick to blame Microsoft for an acquisition target killing a third party product that provides glue between closed source (Skype) and open source (Asterisk) because it seems to many like the kind of thing Microsoft does. While there's a lot of FUD out there, it does not seem to me that this perception is not entirely in error.
Asterisk competes with Microsoft's Lync. Most likely they're planning on making Skype only compatible with Lync to add another piece to their web of vendor lock-in.
Asterisk doesn't compete with Lync, Skype does.
Asterisk is an IP PBX that connects SIP subscribers to the PSTN, either through a SIP trunking provider or through cards that connect directly to POTS jacks provisioned by a PSTN operator.
Lync is the enterprise server that provides instant messaging, VOIP and video conferencing.
About the only element in common between Lync and Asterisk is SIP itself.
Or Skype knows that Microsoft wants these skype clients dropped and one explanation for paying so much over market price for skype could be that part of the "deal" is that Skype drops support for what Microsoft doesn't want before the purchase. That way, Microsoft can honestly say they didn't drop support for Asterisk or Linux or whatever. Happens all the time in mergers and acquisitions: "We really would like to purchase our company, but the operations in xyz create a real problem for us." Next thing you know, there aren't any operations in xyz.
Yes im sure MS were so concerned about protecting that great image they have in the eyes of Asterisk users that they paid way over market price just to protect it.
I think you've misconstrued the quote you've replied to. Dropping Asterisk support post-acquisition might very well have an effect outside the intended market for Asterisk integration. Much of the Mac userbase for Skype is already up in arms over the Skype 5.0 interface, and fear that MS might drop Skype's support for platforms that MS does not control is broadly based.
However, protecting Skype's reputation with Asterisk users (or Mac users, for that matter) might be the reason for insisting this be done before the acquisition is completed, but it's not the motivation for doing it altogether. Given that Skype's own protocols are closed, that there are no other fully-functional third-party clients for the Skype network, which is not the case for SIP providers or for instant messaging betworks based on jabber that provide various services, killing a module that provides glue between SIP softswitches (like Asterisk) and Skype's back end may be the most effective way of preventing some people from attempting something that the acquisition might tempt them to do: perform a clean-room reverse engineering of what Skype does.
I honestly don't think the ability to hook up one or more Skype accounts to an IP PBX in order to get some improved low cost routing is that big a threat to whatever MS intends to do with Skype. However, if the acquisition provides motivation for a group to try and build a true alternative to Skype, and the Digium module and its documentation provide information that would assist in that effort, I can see them wanting to keep a lid on it.
How they intend to put that genie back into the bottle, I have no idea. Perhaps they can't. Perhaps such an effort is impossible or improbable anyway, but I have difficulty seeing any other reason for this module to be discontinued. Certainly it's hard to see how allowing Skype's own network to become a SIP trunking operator for IP PBX users is a negative for Skype. If those calls are terminated to Skype users for free, the situation is hardly any different than all the rest of the P2P traffic that Skype enables. If the call is terminated on the PSTN, then Skype gets paid according to its own rates. The module just provides for Skype services to be integrated into an office's central switch, instead of being isolated on the desktops of individual users. Either this ability threatens something else MS wishes to do with Skype, or it's something that MS wishes to do itself, perhaps with a different approach. MS doesn't make softswitches as far as I know, so I don't believe the issue is competition from Asterisk.
It is not unheard-of for a consultant to receive options or restricted stock in a startup, in return for less cash compensation. I've been offered that kind of deal. It's less cash out the door for them to pay you this way. So you can certainly ask for that. But they can say no.
It's not unheard-of to get it in return for less compensation. It probably is unheard-of to get it as part of higher compensation. The OP says he wants a raise and wants the raise in the form of equity-- in other words, he thinks he should be getting better compensation, and wants to continue to receive that, but wants an increase, and the form of this increase should be equity.
I agree with the multiple replies that pointed out that the risk he's taken doesn't seem to support that. Perhaps if he's saved all his contractor's fees they'd be willing to let him buy into the company with that? The only other option I see is options, but he'd probably end up getting less take home pay (but options as a bonus) as a full-time employee, rather than higher take-home and no equity as a contractor.
The services described on the webpage you referenced do not come close to resembling the alleged activities quoted above. That undermines the argument that Cisco sells this sort of thing to just anybody without knowledge of what is done with it.
And of course Cisco is denying all allegations. Would anyone expect anyone less? I'm not saying Cisco is obviously guilty, I'm saying the case and the allegation is more than just "families of gun violence victims are suing gun manufacturers", because the allegation is that Cisco is complicit with full knowledge of the purpose of their collaboration. Clearly you don't think they are, and that's fine - Cisco could be completely innocent - but that will be for the courts to decide.
Why would Cisco need to know that?
A surveillance system exists to allow one group of people to watch another group of people. The Chinese government need not tell Cisco that the Falung Gong are among the people it intends to watch. Exactly how would that impact the design specification anyway?
What statute are they pursuing this under? FCPA? If it is legal under Chinese law for the Chinese law enforcement agencies to use the system they asked Cisco to design for them, in what jurisdiction does Falung Gong seek redress from Cisco for the Chinese government's use of the system?
Missing all of the dialogue in that scene in Halo Reach would not create an unwinnable situation. Regardless of what the player does at that point, when the scene ends you get a new waypoint, and the only way to proceed in the level is the correct path to take. There is no wrong path.
You can test this just by walking right past that area and never paying attention to those characters. You can freely advance to the next area without ever hearing any of that dialogue. Those characters also are not invulnerable. Melee them in the back and you'll find they die (and the player character is instakilled; this happens in Reach when you kill a civilian, there or in other levels as well).
There's actually no justification for this in that scene except that once Bungie bothered to try and put the scene in Hungarian, they wanted to make sure you witnessed it.
The shared costs are a much higher proportion of the total cost than the per unit costs on something like a video game, so it's very difficult to make such assertions with any meaning.
A $30 sale assuredly covers all of its per-unit costs, and a portion of total costs.
That's a far cry from saying that a game that sells a million copies at $30 would be profitable if it was profitable selling a million copies at $60. You're suggesting there that gross margins on games are higher than 100% if you can cut gross revenues to 50% of what they are and still have margin. That doesn't even include the risk that developers and publishers take when they invest in games that don't turn out to be hits, whose cost have to be absorbed by margins on the hits.
The people who pay full price at launch are subsidizing those who buy at discount later, and retail outlets are subsidizing those who buy even later, by getting them off the shelves even at a loss in order to clear old inventory and give shelf space over to newer titles selling for full price.
If there weren't a significant difference in the margin, games wouldn't be priced $60. If there weren't a significant portion of the market willing to pay $60, they wouldn't be priced $60.
Given that there's no inherent value to an arbitrary creation like a video game, the market prices them at $60 at launch and less later and people pay it, I don't think there's any basis for your assertion that games have "inflated prices".
Why are you assuming that CS1 is only for majors? Don't IS and IT majors also take CS1, as TFA mentions?
Why would one assume that an interest or aptitude in CS that justifies a major (or indeed a minor) must be discovered before high school graduation or else doesn't exist?
Have you never discovered, or had someone close to you discover, something they didn't previously know they had a like for or interest in, even beyond the age of 30, and even in cases where the individual in question was aware of the existence of that thing, but had simply never tried it?
now, apple made intel change it to a brand new kind of connector
Neither of those statements is accurate, though.
The USB forum made Intel change it, because they said they intended the connector to be used for USB and not as a general purpose connector and they didn't want Thunderbolt/Light Peak using USB connectors.
Second, the Thunderbolt connector is not a new kind of connector. It's a DisplayPort connector. It's electronically compatible, and can drive displays.
It's amusing to me that the initial rash of "Microsoft overpaid for Skype" stories, supported by laundry lists of potential competitors both inside and outside of Microsoft, as well as overlapping technologies and services, has quickly been followed by a rash of "Alternatives to Skype" stories, nearly all of which actually fail to come up with any service, app, or combination of the two that offers a serviceable alternative to Skype even for a reasonable subset of its functionalities, to say nothing of the entire package.
The fact that every potential alternative to Skype comes with a raft of exceptions and caveats tells me that right now, on the market, there's no alternative to Skype. That may not justify the pricetag, but it's a first step.
Skype has a client on all major desktop operating systems and several major mobile operating systems. It is both a product and a service. It offers presence and free voice calling and audio conferences, and free two-party videoconferencing, backed by P2P traffic routing for improved performance in situations where users distant from a dedicated softswitch might encounter bottlenecks and call-killing latency. It offers competitive rates for PSTN connectivity. It's not perfect, but it does a lot and does it fairly well.
Not only do none of the suggested alternatives, in this article or any other I've seen, do all of that, but none are on a road to even attempt to do it. It's always a mishmash of SIP clients, some linked to one particular provider, others not, most of which don't offer presence or P2P functionality, along with a few apps that aren't full-fledged SIP clients, that may or may not offer presence or P2P functionality, but limited or absent PSTN connectivity. The ones that have comparable or larger user bases than Skype don't have a fraction of that service's functionality.
Like many, I'm on the lookout for a credible alternative to Skype since the buyout-- or, to be more precise, since the release of Skype 5.x on OSX. I don't see any now, nor do I see any on the horizon. Perhaps Apple should rectify some of the shortcomings in FaceTime and release clients for Windows and Linux, along with a Mac client that is integrated with ichat, instead of a separate, standalone app.
The phrase "I was walking downtown" provides context to the phrase "and the protesters threw garbage at me" by making it understood that "the protesters who threw garbage at me" were a subset of all protesters where the protesters in question are the ones who are, like you, downtown at the same time.
In addition, "protesters" are a group defined by their acts, which must take place at a specific place and time, and have a specific motivation; that is, their act of protest is in response to something. No meaningful generalizations can possibly be made about "the protesters" meaning "all protesters everywhere" because nothing unites all members of that set.
This is apparent if you give your example without the context of "I was walking downtown" and just say "The protestors threw garbage at me." The likely response to this by any thoughtful reader or listener, if there were no other context, would be to ask you "which protesters" since this is not obvious.
The same is simply not true of the set "atheists". The set "atheists" is linked by "those who believe in atheism" (or rather those who don't believe in theism) and so the use of the definite article in the phrase "The atheists" quite unambiguously means "all atheists" without needing qualification or clarification or prompting any questions from an average reader.
IIRC, Child's was fired before they asked him to relinquish the keys. I don't understand how he was in any way obligated, or how he could legally be compelled, to give any response after his position was terminated. I think Child's has a rather small labor case against the city for forcing him to work without compensation after he was no longer employed.
Because his ordinary obligation to turn over to the owners any property (real, intellectual, or ordinary) he had on his person probalby survives the termination of his employment contract (written or verbal, implied or explicit).
Let's say you have a babysitter. Against your instructions, she takes the kids to an amusement park. You find out, call her, and tell her that for disobeying your instructions, she is fired.
Does she get to keep your children?
Let's say you have a chauffeur. While driving you and your family to the airport in a car you own, he drives recklessly and nearly gets in an accident. You fire him on the spot. He's still in the driver's seat, with the keys in his possession-- keys which you freely gave to him. Does he have to get out and walk-- or do you?
There are lots of contract provisions that can survive the termination of an agreement like an employment agreement, as illustrated above. The passwords didn't belong to Childs any more than the routers did. He was not free to do with them as he pleased, either before his termination or afterwards. It would be no more legitimate to refuse to hand them over to his former employers justified only by his termination than it would be to post them publicly for anyone to see and use, as maintaining network security was no longer his obligation. It's not, but his obligation not to misuse his employer's intellectual property-- the passwords-- survives the termination of the employment agreement. Getting fired isn't an "all bets are off" button.
That said, my understanding of his defense was that there were policies in place that restricted to whom, and how, he could turn over passwords. My recollection is unsure as to the degree to which that turned out to be accurate or relevant. However, it's likely that those policies, if they did exist, would also have survived the termination of his employment contract.
Any mechanic knows those are in no way mutually exclusive. "Honda" ring any bells?
"Pay for a fucking clue." would be more appropriate
The original article is titled "Seven Tech Trade-offs Worth Making". It means, if you have to choose between these two things, it indicates which one you should choose. If no tradeoff is necessary, none need be made. The article is silent on purchasing decisions where no tradeoff is available.
In fact, the second paragraph of the article says:
'The easy answer is “both.” But the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs.'
So the author understands and readily acknowledges there are situations where you can have the best of both worlds, but intends to offer guidance in situations where, for one reason or another, this is impractical.
As it happens I'm not really on the lookout for an aftermarket clue, but perhaps you'd be interested in some reading comprehension? It might come in handy. There's also this RTFA stuff the kids are always talking about, I hear it's pretty trippy.
For example - "Pay for RAM, not speed. The speed of the computer chip does not matter; the attention-span or RAM memory does matter."
Totally wrong. You can always throw in more ram at a later date, and it will probably cost less to replace all of it than the cost of the "upgrade" today. Upgrading ram on a laptop is even easier than on a desktop, while a cpu upgrade... forget it. And you'll always find takers for your old ram.
Each of the above dichotomies is designed around the assumption that there is a zero sum game in which all other factors are equal. It's impossible to invalidate the proposition by changing the conditions. Your above example tries to separate the purchase decision into discrete steps-- initial purchase and upgrades-- in order to make agreement appear like disagreement.
The example says that if you have to choose between CPU cycles and RAM capacity, you should choose RAM capacity. It does not say you should choose RAM first and CPU later, and it does not distinguish between initial RAM purchases and RAM upgrades; nor does it address the question of what to do with leftover RAM (or leftover CPUs, for that matter).
By addressing the RAM side of the equation and not mentioning CPU cycles, you're in essence agreeing with the rule-- by admitting that RAM is more important than CPU cycles, which the rule mentions and you don't.
By suggesting that users can and should upgrade RAM during a computer's life, you give further support to the notion that RAM is more important than CPU cycles, since you don't suggest CPU upgrades.
The rule offers the idea that within a given price range, most available CPUs are adequate, while base RAM configurations are not. Subjectively, within my own experience, I would agree; whether additional RAM is purchased now, later, or perhaps even both, is probably not relevant. The suggestion is that within a given price range, if you can trade off CPU cycles to get RAM, you should.
Or "Pay for speed, not channels. For cable internet, with enough speed you can watch TV channels on the internet for free." Pay for bandwidth. Speed means nothing if you have a low bandwidth cap. And buying a pair of bunny-ears for your HDTV can give a better picture over the air than either the net OR cable.
Again, you can't invalidate a zero sum proposition that suggests choosing the option for speed over the option for channels by introducing a third option, which is bandwidth.
The choice relates to how you choose a vendor and a plan for a specific kind of hybrid service-- cable internet, and assumes the person will use that hybrid service for dual purposes; in this case, watching television and consuming internet traffic.
What it is saying is that all other things being equal, and with increasing amounts of content being made available directly on the Internet and OTA HDTV broadcasts instead of restricted to certain cable networks, cable packages, or cable channels, you should err on the side of higher sustained data rates rather than more channel availability.
You can add that a high bandwidth cap, or no bandwidth cap, is preferable either to a high sustained data rate or available channels, but this is a separate assertion that doesn't invalidate the author's, nor does it address the topic of the author's assertion. An unlimited Internet channel with a data rate too low for high quality streaming breaks the dichotomy because it doesn't allow for the choice between two equivalents. He's saying don't trade away data rate to get more channels, because a higher data rate gives you more channels, one way or another. An unlimited bandwidth cap doesn't provide any equivalent service (extra channels) by itself unaccompanied by a sufficient data rate.
Sure, ideally you'd want both, but the assertion here is that in the choice between speed and channels, choose speed. If you choose speed over both bandwidth and channels, you can watch content, but not a lot
I agree Brian. I'm a network engineer as well, and uh, even if they find the router, unless it's logging itself to flash, they won't find any evidence. Maybe if it's configured for voip that's some pretty pressing evidence.
I think if they want to find out where the call came from, the "stolen router" isn't the key to the technical piece of the investigation. The routing of the phone call is. It would be routed through the telco system a certain way, and if he did fake it, the origin of the call would be the server where the voip client (router or otherwise) was registered, and not his wife's cell phone.
A subpoena to the telco in question would yield better evidence and the router config, or the router itself would become a moot point.
It's a network. The tracks through the network are the evidence, not any single piece of equipment.
The call was allegedly from the home phone, initiated by the wife, to his cellphone.
If his home phone is a SIP account, and he triggered a call remotely in some fashion, then to the cell operator, that call routing is going to look the same as usual.
The question will be whether the SIP operator logs in enough detail to discriminate between a session originated by whatever adapter they had in their home, as a response to DTMF input from an FXS port, and some web-based functionality used to trigger a call from the Internet.
If their home phone wasn't an account at a SIP operator, the whole question of the router is a red herring. If his home line was an ordinary PSTN line, then he didn't-- in fact, probably couldn't have, no matter how smart he is-- have made the call using the Cisco router they describe. The only thing he could have done in that case would be to spoof the Caller ID, but the cell operator can easily say if that was the case or not.
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What distinguishes "making an objectionable plan" from thoughtcrime? So now it's unacceptable to even consider doing something some people might consider unacceptable?
Your argument begins with the presumption that a crime has taken place: a murder.
As analogy this is broken, because there is no presumption here that any crime has been committed by anyone, so there is no need for any one individual to be "guilty" with or without a finding.
However were we to engage the example fully, we have to draw a demarcation between the word innocent in casual use, which is understood to mean "did not commit a crime" and its use in the legal and political realms. The presumption of innocence means that under the law and before one's fellow citizens, one is "presumed innocent" until proven guilty. This is true whether you have actually committed a crime or not.
Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.
IANAL, but AFAIK 'innocent' is never used in the US Justice System. So, if the government fails to prove he's guilty, then he is not guilty.
What terminology the government uses is only relevant when reporting what the government says.
No one here should report that the government has determined him to be innocent.
This is not because the only thing that may be reported about an alleged criminal is that either we know for sure he did it (guilty) or that we can't prove that he did it (not guilty) which underhandedly implies that maybe he did do it, but we can't prove it.
The reason why we don't report that courts find defendants innocent is because no one should need, in the United States, to be found innocent, because it is presumed.
Whether the justice system ever uses the word in its determinations is only relevant when reporting the determination. Once you report that the justice system has dropped the charges, or come to a determination of "not guilty" then any citizen may, combining that fact with the presumption of innocence, safely arrive at the factual statement that the person is innocent-- just not that this is the determination of the legal system. This is merely the individual's natural state in the absence of any finding to the contrary.
No one is reporting he is innocent. They reached a plea deal. The government dropped the 10 charges because a judge decided the prosecution would have to show classified material to the jury.
Dropping the charges because you don't have enough evidence to make a case (i.e. without using classified material) is not the same as deciding he is innocent.
One may report that he IS innocent because one is "presumed innocent" until "found guilty".
What one may not report (at least not conscientiously) is that he has been "found innocent" because that is not a determination that is made. It is not made because it does not need to be made, because of the same presumption. No one needs a judge or jury to return a finding of innocence, because it is presumed. The findings are "guilty" or "not guilty".
A person may be innocent. They are innocent because they are "found not guilty", but that is not the same as saying they were "found innocent". If charges or dropped, or a plea bargain is reached, they are also "innocent" for the same reason-- because absent a finding of "guilty" he is presumed innocent.
The headline does not say he was found innocent. It says he is innocent. Since he has not been found guilty of the original ten charges, because they were dropped as part of a plea bargain, the headline is accurate, because he is presumed innocent until found guilty.
Well, when a daddy magnet and a mommy magnet love each other very much...
Emerson was the first one to popularize the myth that if one were to "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door", and yes for the pedants out there I realize this is a misquotation of what Emerson really said, but the juice of it is a maxim that many individuals use to understand the process of innovation. Unfortunately, when observed through the lens of history, the maxim does not hold water.
Well, a better mousetrap (or, for that matter, a better myth) need not hold water as long as it can reliably hold mice.
If there's a distinction to be made, it is the part where mice do not suffer (or should I say benefit?) from network effects. If a better mousetrap does a better job of catching my mice, that's all I care about, and so the only friction for the transition to the new mousetrap is how much it costs me in money, time, and effort.
The Skype problem is not like that at all. It's a significantly more difficult problem than, say, making a better OSS browser, email client, or even an entire operating system, because all of those experience network effects to a lesser degree than audiovisual communication. In some cases this is just because of the nature of the product and its intended uses, and in other cases it is because of widely used standards like TCP/IP, POP, SMTP, IMAP.
What of SIP? The problem with SIP, of course, is that SIP, as a protocol around which operators have built a business model, does not do what Skype does. Interoperability between subscribers of rival SIP operators is not free; presence is not usually supported, and there is no method for peer discovery between separate SIP switches. Calling between such subscribers is usually conducted, not directly, but through the PSTN (or is treated, and billed, as if it is, even if the two operators terminate calls between themselves directly, so to the end user, it's all the same.)
Skype is like one big SIP operator that connects to the PSTN. It's walled off from any other IM providers, or from any populations not using the official Skype client, servers, and protocols, but that's the value in it-- nobody has been able yet to drive a wedge between the Skype app and the Skype service (as was long ago done with ICQ) or to allow for separate groups or individuals to establish their own, separate workalike system (as is done with Jabber/Jingle or SIP).
Skype has value because of how open it isn't, because being as open as these other systems ultimately reduced network effects and reduced the influence the owner of the application has over the operation of the network.
An unofficial, Skype-compatible client that can't be influenced by Microsoft or kept off the network will start the ICQ process in motion, and prevent Microsoft from monetizing Skype the way ICQ first did, by inserting advertising content in the way of free functionality by direct control over the client software.
An unofficial, Skype-compatible server that isn't administrated by Microsoft will start the Jabber/SIP process in motion, dividing the Skype population and making the whole worth less than the sum of its parts, rather like the situation now with SIP operators-- all of which act a lot more like traditional telcos than Skype does, for what that's worth.
The degree to which one or both of those things reduces the value that Microsoft can get from Skype is not directly proportional to the degree to whcih they can help build value for anyone else, either the makers of those alternatives, or the users of them. I'd say there's a nonzero chance of those things eliminating all value in Skype for all players unless standards-based interoperability, at least as good as what exists today on the PSTN (and hopefully a good deal better) becomes widespread. It's difficult to see how that evolves from the current situation without regulatory oversight; nearly all market forces are actively working against it.
I would get both, assuming OpenSkype is lightweight and sits quietly in the background except when my one friend on OpenSkype calls me.
Most people wouldn't bother. As for you... what about when OpenSkype forks and becomes LibreSkype and OpenSkype and SINS (which of course would stand for SINS Is Not Skype)? What if those drifted apart and lost interoperability?
For lots of people, myself included, Skype may already be one of two apps used for similar purposes; Skype and a softphone, Skype and an IM client, or perhaps all three. There's a point at which adding new elements to support new networks becomes insupportable; and the smallest networks will be the ones that are eliminated in the drive to consolidate clients. I've already made choices about what IM and softphone clients to use based on how many different networks they support, and if one client supports most networks, but not all, I don't keep another client around for those last couple, I just live without them.
The exception? Oh, yeah... Skype.
This may be harder than one might imagine.
The niche that Skype fills, for many users, is almost entirely defined at this point by what Skype does.
How would a new theoretical app/service be "better" than Skype, and how would this improvement be quantified? Let's leave out for a minute the exaggeration of any existing shortfalls that MS might cause. Yes, the new Mac interface is terrible, and MS might discontinue support for 2.8. Yes, Linux support is lacking, and MS might ignore that platform. Yes, MS might tie the service into Live, or absorb it into Lync and/or MSN, or put ads in it, or charge for PC to PC calls, but let's forget all of that.
What could one put in a theoretical Skype-killer?
Better audio or video quality? There are already choices that offer that; and like a Skype killer, they lack Skype's network effect. Quality is rarely a differentiator when there' a popular-enough, good enough choice available.
Some new feature? What people need a Skype-like program to do is almost entirely defined right now by what Skype does, so it's hard to imagine a hypothetical feature one might add that wouldn't be dismissed out of hand by lots of users who'd say "I don't need that" and stick with Skype. They might be fine with it if Skype added it-- some would use it, some would ignore it, but only a few people on any platform or service are going to abandon it for a new feature people have done without for years and didn't know they needed.
About the only thing I can think of is a race to the bottom-- offer what Skype charges for, for free-- PSTN connectivity or multi user video conferences. The latter is more possible than the former, but still very sensitive to network effects, and there have been no suggestions of how to overcome those; everything is predicated on waiting until MS screws things up for Skype somehow.
I take it places like that assume their laws apply globally?
Not only is the US a "place[s] like that" but it has laws that are specifically directed at the conduct of US citizens when out of the country. It's called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). I can't think of any extradition attempts based on it off hand, but certainly there have been US citizens arrested and tried based on breaking this US law while living and working abroad.
The law says (among other things) that you can't bribe foreign officials. Whether such behavior is legal in those countries, or, if illegal, prosecuted, isn't relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
Thailand and the US also have an extradition treaty. That's how the US got hold of Viktor Bout.
http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/tag/thailand
Not exactly lese majeste, I'll admit, but it does point out that it's neither easy, nor necessarily desirable, for a country's laws to stop at a country's borders. To make this more relevant to Thailand, there are also laws against traveling to countries specifically for the purpose of circumventing certain US laws, namely those against sexual exploitation of minors.
Actually, while the deal is pending, Microsoft is legally prohibited from exerting influence over Skype. Until the deal goes through, Microsoft has less influence over Skype than they had before the deal.
You don't mess with the SEC.
Which rule number is that?
The Microsoft/Skype deal is nowhere near completion, and Microsoft currently has no say in how Skype runs their business.
This strikes me as a bit naive. Yes, no executive at Microsoft currently has managerial authority over any employee at Skype. This won't happen until the deal is completed. However, I can tell you that as a rule, there is nothing whatsoever unusual about two companies, when negotiating a merger or acquisition, to set certain conditions on the deal that require one party to take actions of its own accord that are preconditions for the deal being acceptable to the other side. There is nothing whatsoever unusual about MS telling an acquisition target that if they kill a product or project that overlaps something MS makes, that they kill it prior to acquisition and give MS plausible deniability.
Also the negotiations on this software were most likely ongoing long before the Microsoft/Skype merger was announced, and most likely a business decisions based on profit margins and longevity.
There's no particular reason to believe that, although I suppose it's possible. Skype For Asterisk went into beta in late 2008 and will still be available for sale and activation until later this summer. Yes, the agreement was up for renewal, and it could be a coincidence that the announcement that it will not be renewed follows the announcement that Skype is being acquired is coincidental. That Skype is a closed and proprietary product having its parent company purchased by an enterprise that makes its living making, selling and supporting closed and proprietary products, and that a short period after the acquisition is announced, has the one point of interoperability between the closed source and proprietary Skype with a free and open source system (Asterisk) discontinued I think may appear to many as more than a coincidence. It may appear to some like correlation, and to others, like causation.
I can't help but wonder why people are so quick to blame Microsoft for issues that they could not possible be responsible for.
As I think I have suggested above, it is only possible, it is plausible that they have affected this management decision by Skype. It is easier to see how continuing this program negatively affects Microsoft than it is to see how discontinuing it helps Skype. It's likely that the only cost to Skype was providing technical documentation and part of Skype's source code to Digium, while in return possibly receiving one-time license fees on activations from Digium, plus usage from Asterisk users who choose to terminate PSTN calls through Skype instead of another SIP operator. It's possible this was minimal, but it can't be negative. Unless Skype was bearing a disproportionate amount of the development costs for Skype for Asterisk, this seems unlikely. It seems unlikely they would shoulder such costs, as arguably the existence of this project benefited Asterisk (and Digium) more than Skype.
People are quick to blame Microsoft for an acquisition target killing a third party product that provides glue between closed source (Skype) and open source (Asterisk) because it seems to many like the kind of thing Microsoft does. While there's a lot of FUD out there, it does not seem to me that this perception is not entirely in error.
Asterisk competes with Microsoft's Lync. Most likely they're planning on making Skype only compatible with Lync to add another piece to their web of vendor lock-in.
Asterisk doesn't compete with Lync, Skype does.
Asterisk is an IP PBX that connects SIP subscribers to the PSTN, either through a SIP trunking provider or through cards that connect directly to POTS jacks provisioned by a PSTN operator.
Lync is the enterprise server that provides instant messaging, VOIP and video conferencing.
About the only element in common between Lync and Asterisk is SIP itself.
Or Skype knows that Microsoft wants these skype clients dropped and one explanation for paying so much over market price for skype could be that part of the "deal" is that Skype drops support for what Microsoft doesn't want before the purchase. That way, Microsoft can honestly say they didn't drop support for Asterisk or Linux or whatever. Happens all the time in mergers and acquisitions: "We really would like to purchase our company, but the operations in xyz create a real problem for us." Next thing you know, there aren't any operations in xyz.
Yes im sure MS were so concerned about protecting that great image they have in the eyes of Asterisk users that they paid way over market price just to protect it.
I think you've misconstrued the quote you've replied to. Dropping Asterisk support post-acquisition might very well have an effect outside the intended market for Asterisk integration. Much of the Mac userbase for Skype is already up in arms over the Skype 5.0 interface, and fear that MS might drop Skype's support for platforms that MS does not control is broadly based.
However, protecting Skype's reputation with Asterisk users (or Mac users, for that matter) might be the reason for insisting this be done before the acquisition is completed, but it's not the motivation for doing it altogether. Given that Skype's own protocols are closed, that there are no other fully-functional third-party clients for the Skype network, which is not the case for SIP providers or for instant messaging betworks based on jabber that provide various services, killing a module that provides glue between SIP softswitches (like Asterisk) and Skype's back end may be the most effective way of preventing some people from attempting something that the acquisition might tempt them to do: perform a clean-room reverse engineering of what Skype does.
I honestly don't think the ability to hook up one or more Skype accounts to an IP PBX in order to get some improved low cost routing is that big a threat to whatever MS intends to do with Skype. However, if the acquisition provides motivation for a group to try and build a true alternative to Skype, and the Digium module and its documentation provide information that would assist in that effort, I can see them wanting to keep a lid on it.
How they intend to put that genie back into the bottle, I have no idea. Perhaps they can't. Perhaps such an effort is impossible or improbable anyway, but I have difficulty seeing any other reason for this module to be discontinued. Certainly it's hard to see how allowing Skype's own network to become a SIP trunking operator for IP PBX users is a negative for Skype. If those calls are terminated to Skype users for free, the situation is hardly any different than all the rest of the P2P traffic that Skype enables. If the call is terminated on the PSTN, then Skype gets paid according to its own rates. The module just provides for Skype services to be integrated into an office's central switch, instead of being isolated on the desktops of individual users. Either this ability threatens something else MS wishes to do with Skype, or it's something that MS wishes to do itself, perhaps with a different approach. MS doesn't make softswitches as far as I know, so I don't believe the issue is competition from Asterisk.
It is not unheard-of for a consultant to receive options or restricted stock in a startup, in return for less cash compensation. I've been offered that kind of deal. It's less cash out the door for them to pay you this way. So you can certainly ask for that. But they can say no.
It's not unheard-of to get it in return for less compensation. It probably is unheard-of to get it as part of higher compensation. The OP says he wants a raise and wants the raise in the form of equity-- in other words, he thinks he should be getting better compensation, and wants to continue to receive that, but wants an increase, and the form of this increase should be equity.
I agree with the multiple replies that pointed out that the risk he's taken doesn't seem to support that. Perhaps if he's saved all his contractor's fees they'd be willing to let him buy into the company with that? The only other option I see is options, but he'd probably end up getting less take home pay (but options as a bonus) as a full-time employee, rather than higher take-home and no equity as a contractor.
The services described on the webpage you referenced do not come close to resembling the alleged activities quoted above. That undermines the argument that Cisco sells this sort of thing to just anybody without knowledge of what is done with it.
And of course Cisco is denying all allegations. Would anyone expect anyone less? I'm not saying Cisco is obviously guilty, I'm saying the case and the allegation is more than just "families of gun violence victims are suing gun manufacturers", because the allegation is that Cisco is complicit with full knowledge of the purpose of their collaboration. Clearly you don't think they are, and that's fine - Cisco could be completely innocent - but that will be for the courts to decide.
Why would Cisco need to know that?
A surveillance system exists to allow one group of people to watch another group of people. The Chinese government need not tell Cisco that the Falung Gong are among the people it intends to watch. Exactly how would that impact the design specification anyway?
What statute are they pursuing this under? FCPA? If it is legal under Chinese law for the Chinese law enforcement agencies to use the system they asked Cisco to design for them, in what jurisdiction does Falung Gong seek redress from Cisco for the Chinese government's use of the system?
Missing all of the dialogue in that scene in Halo Reach would not create an unwinnable situation. Regardless of what the player does at that point, when the scene ends you get a new waypoint, and the only way to proceed in the level is the correct path to take. There is no wrong path.
You can test this just by walking right past that area and never paying attention to those characters. You can freely advance to the next area without ever hearing any of that dialogue. Those characters also are not invulnerable. Melee them in the back and you'll find they die (and the player character is instakilled; this happens in Reach when you kill a civilian, there or in other levels as well).
There's actually no justification for this in that scene except that once Bungie bothered to try and put the scene in Hungarian, they wanted to make sure you witnessed it.
The shared costs are a much higher proportion of the total cost than the per unit costs on something like a video game, so it's very difficult to make such assertions with any meaning.
A $30 sale assuredly covers all of its per-unit costs, and a portion of total costs.
That's a far cry from saying that a game that sells a million copies at $30 would be profitable if it was profitable selling a million copies at $60. You're suggesting there that gross margins on games are higher than 100% if you can cut gross revenues to 50% of what they are and still have margin. That doesn't even include the risk that developers and publishers take when they invest in games that don't turn out to be hits, whose cost have to be absorbed by margins on the hits.
The people who pay full price at launch are subsidizing those who buy at discount later, and retail outlets are subsidizing those who buy even later, by getting them off the shelves even at a loss in order to clear old inventory and give shelf space over to newer titles selling for full price.
If there weren't a significant difference in the margin, games wouldn't be priced $60. If there weren't a significant portion of the market willing to pay $60, they wouldn't be priced $60.
Given that there's no inherent value to an arbitrary creation like a video game, the market prices them at $60 at launch and less later and people pay it, I don't think there's any basis for your assertion that games have "inflated prices".
Why are you assuming that CS1 is only for majors? Don't IS and IT majors also take CS1, as TFA mentions?
Why would one assume that an interest or aptitude in CS that justifies a major (or indeed a minor) must be discovered before high school graduation or else doesn't exist?
Have you never discovered, or had someone close to you discover, something they didn't previously know they had a like for or interest in, even beyond the age of 30, and even in cases where the individual in question was aware of the existence of that thing, but had simply never tried it?
now, apple made intel change it to a brand new kind of connector
Neither of those statements is accurate, though.
The USB forum made Intel change it, because they said they intended the connector to be used for USB and not as a general purpose connector and they didn't want Thunderbolt/Light Peak using USB connectors.
Second, the Thunderbolt connector is not a new kind of connector. It's a DisplayPort connector. It's electronically compatible, and can drive displays.
It's amusing to me that the initial rash of "Microsoft overpaid for Skype" stories, supported by laundry lists of potential competitors both inside and outside of Microsoft, as well as overlapping technologies and services, has quickly been followed by a rash of "Alternatives to Skype" stories, nearly all of which actually fail to come up with any service, app, or combination of the two that offers a serviceable alternative to Skype even for a reasonable subset of its functionalities, to say nothing of the entire package.
The fact that every potential alternative to Skype comes with a raft of exceptions and caveats tells me that right now, on the market, there's no alternative to Skype. That may not justify the pricetag, but it's a first step.
Skype has a client on all major desktop operating systems and several major mobile operating systems. It is both a product and a service. It offers presence and free voice calling and audio conferences, and free two-party videoconferencing, backed by P2P traffic routing for improved performance in situations where users distant from a dedicated softswitch might encounter bottlenecks and call-killing latency. It offers competitive rates for PSTN connectivity. It's not perfect, but it does a lot and does it fairly well.
Not only do none of the suggested alternatives, in this article or any other I've seen, do all of that, but none are on a road to even attempt to do it. It's always a mishmash of SIP clients, some linked to one particular provider, others not, most of which don't offer presence or P2P functionality, along with a few apps that aren't full-fledged SIP clients, that may or may not offer presence or P2P functionality, but limited or absent PSTN connectivity. The ones that have comparable or larger user bases than Skype don't have a fraction of that service's functionality.
Like many, I'm on the lookout for a credible alternative to Skype since the buyout-- or, to be more precise, since the release of Skype 5.x on OSX. I don't see any now, nor do I see any on the horizon. Perhaps Apple should rectify some of the shortcomings in FaceTime and release clients for Windows and Linux, along with a Mac client that is integrated with ichat, instead of a separate, standalone app.
The phrase "I was walking downtown" provides context to the phrase "and the protesters threw garbage at me" by making it understood that "the protesters who threw garbage at me" were a subset of all protesters where the protesters in question are the ones who are, like you, downtown at the same time.
In addition, "protesters" are a group defined by their acts, which must take place at a specific place and time, and have a specific motivation; that is, their act of protest is in response to something. No meaningful generalizations can possibly be made about "the protesters" meaning "all protesters everywhere" because nothing unites all members of that set.
This is apparent if you give your example without the context of "I was walking downtown" and just say "The protestors threw garbage at me." The likely response to this by any thoughtful reader or listener, if there were no other context, would be to ask you "which protesters" since this is not obvious.
The same is simply not true of the set "atheists". The set "atheists" is linked by "those who believe in atheism" (or rather those who don't believe in theism) and so the use of the definite article in the phrase "The atheists" quite unambiguously means "all atheists" without needing qualification or clarification or prompting any questions from an average reader.
IIRC, Child's was fired before they asked him to relinquish the keys. I don't understand how he was in any way obligated, or how he could legally be compelled, to give any response after his position was terminated. I think Child's has a rather small labor case against the city for forcing him to work without compensation after he was no longer employed.
Because his ordinary obligation to turn over to the owners any property (real, intellectual, or ordinary) he had on his person probalby survives the termination of his employment contract (written or verbal, implied or explicit).
Let's say you have a babysitter. Against your instructions, she takes the kids to an amusement park. You find out, call her, and tell her that for disobeying your instructions, she is fired.
Does she get to keep your children?
Let's say you have a chauffeur. While driving you and your family to the airport in a car you own, he drives recklessly and nearly gets in an accident. You fire him on the spot. He's still in the driver's seat, with the keys in his possession-- keys which you freely gave to him. Does he have to get out and walk-- or do you?
There are lots of contract provisions that can survive the termination of an agreement like an employment agreement, as illustrated above. The passwords didn't belong to Childs any more than the routers did. He was not free to do with them as he pleased, either before his termination or afterwards. It would be no more legitimate to refuse to hand them over to his former employers justified only by his termination than it would be to post them publicly for anyone to see and use, as maintaining network security was no longer his obligation. It's not, but his obligation not to misuse his employer's intellectual property-- the passwords-- survives the termination of the employment agreement. Getting fired isn't an "all bets are off" button.
That said, my understanding of his defense was that there were policies in place that restricted to whom, and how, he could turn over passwords. My recollection is unsure as to the degree to which that turned out to be accurate or relevant. However, it's likely that those policies, if they did exist, would also have survived the termination of his employment contract.
IANAL.
"Pay for reliability, not mileage."
Any mechanic knows those are in no way mutually exclusive. "Honda" ring any bells?
"Pay for a fucking clue." would be more appropriate
The original article is titled "Seven Tech Trade-offs Worth Making". It means, if you have to choose between these two things, it indicates which one you should choose. If no tradeoff is necessary, none need be made. The article is silent on purchasing decisions where no tradeoff is available.
In fact, the second paragraph of the article says:
'The easy answer is “both.” But the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs.'
So the author understands and readily acknowledges there are situations where you can have the best of both worlds, but intends to offer guidance in situations where, for one reason or another, this is impractical.
As it happens I'm not really on the lookout for an aftermarket clue, but perhaps you'd be interested in some reading comprehension? It might come in handy. There's also this RTFA stuff the kids are always talking about, I hear it's pretty trippy.
For example - "Pay for RAM, not speed. The speed of the computer chip does not matter; the attention-span or RAM memory does matter."
Totally wrong. You can always throw in more ram at a later date, and it will probably cost less to replace all of it than the cost of the "upgrade" today. Upgrading ram on a laptop is even easier than on a desktop, while a cpu upgrade ... forget it. And you'll always find takers for your old ram.
Each of the above dichotomies is designed around the assumption that there is a zero sum game in which all other factors are equal. It's impossible to invalidate the proposition by changing the conditions. Your above example tries to separate the purchase decision into discrete steps-- initial purchase and upgrades-- in order to make agreement appear like disagreement.
The example says that if you have to choose between CPU cycles and RAM capacity, you should choose RAM capacity. It does not say you should choose RAM first and CPU later, and it does not distinguish between initial RAM purchases and RAM upgrades; nor does it address the question of what to do with leftover RAM (or leftover CPUs, for that matter).
By addressing the RAM side of the equation and not mentioning CPU cycles, you're in essence agreeing with the rule-- by admitting that RAM is more important than CPU cycles, which the rule mentions and you don't.
By suggesting that users can and should upgrade RAM during a computer's life, you give further support to the notion that RAM is more important than CPU cycles, since you don't suggest CPU upgrades.
The rule offers the idea that within a given price range, most available CPUs are adequate, while base RAM configurations are not. Subjectively, within my own experience, I would agree; whether additional RAM is purchased now, later, or perhaps even both, is probably not relevant. The suggestion is that within a given price range, if you can trade off CPU cycles to get RAM, you should.
Or "Pay for speed, not channels. For cable internet, with enough speed you can watch TV channels on the internet for free." Pay for bandwidth. Speed means nothing if you have a low bandwidth cap. And buying a pair of bunny-ears for your HDTV can give a better picture over the air than either the net OR cable.
Again, you can't invalidate a zero sum proposition that suggests choosing the option for speed over the option for channels by introducing a third option, which is bandwidth.
The choice relates to how you choose a vendor and a plan for a specific kind of hybrid service-- cable internet, and assumes the person will use that hybrid service for dual purposes; in this case, watching television and consuming internet traffic.
What it is saying is that all other things being equal, and with increasing amounts of content being made available directly on the Internet and OTA HDTV broadcasts instead of restricted to certain cable networks, cable packages, or cable channels, you should err on the side of higher sustained data rates rather than more channel availability.
You can add that a high bandwidth cap, or no bandwidth cap, is preferable either to a high sustained data rate or available channels, but this is a separate assertion that doesn't invalidate the author's, nor does it address the topic of the author's assertion. An unlimited Internet channel with a data rate too low for high quality streaming breaks the dichotomy because it doesn't allow for the choice between two equivalents. He's saying don't trade away data rate to get more channels, because a higher data rate gives you more channels, one way or another. An unlimited bandwidth cap doesn't provide any equivalent service (extra channels) by itself unaccompanied by a sufficient data rate.
Sure, ideally you'd want both, but the assertion here is that in the choice between speed and channels, choose speed. If you choose speed over both bandwidth and channels, you can watch content, but not a lot
I agree Brian. I'm a network engineer as well, and uh, even if they find the router, unless it's logging itself to flash, they won't find any evidence. Maybe if it's configured for voip that's some pretty pressing evidence.
I think if they want to find out where the call came from, the "stolen router" isn't the key to the technical piece of the investigation. The routing of the phone call is. It would be routed through the telco system a certain way, and if he did fake it, the origin of the call would be the server where the voip client (router or otherwise) was registered, and not his wife's cell phone.
A subpoena to the telco in question would yield better evidence and the router config, or the router itself would become a moot point.
It's a network. The tracks through the network are the evidence, not any single piece of equipment.
The call was allegedly from the home phone, initiated by the wife, to his cellphone.
If his home phone is a SIP account, and he triggered a call remotely in some fashion, then to the cell operator, that call routing is going to look the same as usual.
The question will be whether the SIP operator logs in enough detail to discriminate between a session originated by whatever adapter they had in their home, as a response to DTMF input from an FXS port, and some web-based functionality used to trigger a call from the Internet.
If their home phone wasn't an account at a SIP operator, the whole question of the router is a red herring. If his home line was an ordinary PSTN line, then he didn't-- in fact, probably couldn't have, no matter how smart he is-- have made the call using the Cisco router they describe. The only thing he could have done in that case would be to spoof the Caller ID, but the cell operator can easily say if that was the case or not.