Well criminals never get to keep the proceeds of crime, at least the proceeds they confess too or are caught with. Now if you have access to their Swiss or Bahamas bank accounts (bankers facilitating crime on a global basis), you likely end up with a quite different risk benefit analysis, really, millions of dollars of fraud and not even a 10% commission, now that would be truly hard to believe.
I don't enjoy coding all that much but, there is a great deal of problem solving, expressive creativity in the solutions, intense neural stimulation and satisfaction from a well crafted application. Whilst I would not make it my happy, I certainly wouldn't make a blanket statement that it is undesirable. Things are would rate coding far above in terms of qualitative life experience and contributing to society.
Sticking my penis non-reproductively inside as many people as possible. Aimless global travel, pretending I'm someone special and, deserve to be waited on hand and foot. Excessive drug abuse, both legal and illegal. Politics as a satisfaction of ego. Strutting around with a charitable foundation that only gives away the absolute legal minimum to sustain it's legal status each year.
I admit I really enjoy learning and using new software applications from games, to office suites, CAD, graphics, databases etc. thanks to all those open source coders who enjoy coding and the value it brings to society and sincerely thank you very much indeed.
Road tyre noise. While reversing vehicles can be pretty quite, cars driving down the road at normal speed are not. When all vehicles are electric the amount of background noise in dramatically diminish, as such road tyre noise will become far more audible. The noise is nothing more than pollution, marketing pollution to be exact. About having cars going down roads each with a manufacturer distinct sound, marketing down every street they travel, advertising that manufacturer. They might as well be screaming, buy ford, buy ford, buy food or as in this case buy Nissan, buy Nissan, buy Nissan.
Any politician who doesn't think this is straight up marketing noise pollution is either stupid or corrupt or possibly even both. Now if you are serious about blind people, cars could emit an ultrasonic pulse, detectors for white could be built into the white canes and could detect proximity, speed and direction of travel, all completely absent of marketing distinctiveness.
Could you like compact it a bit because I didn't bother to read it. It is really anal to go through each and every bit piece by piece quoting it back, by any chance are you involved in county mounty style law 'enforcement', you know where you can force people to listen to your preaching.
To explain it to you, it is all about ego, the ego of being elected, the ego of having power, the ego of controlling others and so it follows, puncture that ego and you destroy the value of gaining 'whatever', by the means chosen.
Being president of a country is certainly a lot different from being the "WORST" president that country has ever had in recorded history. One version goes around on the public stage given speeches, is invited to other countries to give talks, basically is universally respected and the other, well, they hide in the bottle, their own political party no longer wants to be seen with them, no genuinely democratic country wants them to visit and they are pretty much universally disrespected.
See, the effect is real and the future affect will be to force others to have second thoughts about behaving quite so badly. This affect even extends into policing, where tazer happy thugs in uniform are publicly shamed and driven from 'policing' (law 'enforcement' is really only for third world dictatorships), now tell me does this strike a bit close to home, are you suffering from some form of guilt, perhaps not for what you have personally done but for what you have seen and maybe participated in.
Well, if you going to be so picky about fair use, how about we look at for example "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I would have though that would have been far more important than later legislation that covered fair use. So if a creative work or discovery fails "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than legally speaking it should not have the protection of copyright and at the very least prior to obtaining the protection of copyright, that creative work or discovery should have publicly substantiated that it meets those requirements.
So let's seem some conservative politicians get up and defend the copyright protection of porn whether written, sung, photographed or video recorded, not that I am against porn but I would hardly say that under law that it is entitled to copyright protection (governments can't implement legislation that goes their constitution). So fair copy right in creative works should be much like patents, substantiating their value to society prior to their achieving copyright protection for a limited time.
Now consider this, if I could push a button and produce a perfect of copy say a blank rewritable DVD, complete with case, who would complain. So when I copy that DVD have I stolen it, I legally supplied the copying device, I legally supplied the raw components, I legally supplied the energy to power the device and I legally supplied the original to be copied, so I provided a substantial amount of the work in creating a copy and only the civil infringement of a private post purchase (always questionable) contractual agreement comes it to question, no theft is occurring and calling it stealing would be lying.
How about 90 day warranties on media for copyrighted content for which people have paid a licence fee that should last the life of that contents copyright protection 75 years, now isn't that stealing when the media fails (and, yes books will last 75 years with reasonable use).
Gees, get over it already, absolutely everyone recognises M$ where as MS can be mistaken for many other institutions and, seriously the only people that complains are M$'s micro trolls, the softies if their various marketing department. Childish is the M$ marketing department reaction to it, oh no, it hurt's us, my precious logo, it burns our public public image. Insults, offtopic attacks, slurs and it cycles on and off, tytpical of a professional marketing tactic, try it on for a while see how it works, not working back off for a while and try again and, again and, again and ad nauseam. M$, M$, M$, if you hadn't been so naughty quite so many times it wouldn't be taken in such a bad light;).
Now back to this article my main thought on this, why is M$ tackling it, where are the various government funded consumer protection agencies, are they all asleep and not paying much attention. In light of M$'s public pursuit of this case, perhaps they should consider contacting M$, obtaining the evidence and pursuing it themselves.
Then again M$ might not wont the various consumer protection agencies to pay to much attention to M$'s own questionable behaviour (there 12 M$s, ooww, does it burn).
From the smell of what is going it, I would wonder whether EBay themselves are behind the investor buy out. You know, a bit of behind the scenes shenanigans and a big fat off the books sales commission and a troublesome business venture is dumped for a profit (it would be just so typically an EBay sale).
You would think some open source video call peer to peer software and the many ISP's who already provide VOIP call technology (a very simple extension of those services) would inevitably bring about Skype's demise.
It all democratic countries, there is something called the seperation of powers. Only those branches of government responsible for enacting laws can enact laws. The administrative or executive branch can issue all the commands, orders, instructions and memos it likes, if they are against the law as legislated, then it is a criminal act to obey those commands, orders, instructions and memos but law you are required to disobey them and inform the appropriate branch of the judiciary of the illegal instruction.
So the retroactive immunity is nothing more than saving face, of the US government being to embarrassed to publicly prosecute the law breakers, including the NSA, various telecommunications companies and of course the previous US administration. So do you bother to maintain the heat, of verbally bashing those broke the law, of course, you never give up, you shame them worse than the shame that prosecution would bring. You write their history, you keep the memory alive and, you never let them live it down.
Their intent was to abuse the criminal justice system so they could spy on all citizens all of the time (keep in mind that none of the information gathered could ever be used legally in court) to obtain information for what, hmm, blackmail, political corruption, public exposure of secrets prior to polls and even corporate advantage. Can't beat a politician in the polls, the get some dirt on them or just as effectively a family member or even political supporters. They were basically implementing a system to keep themselves in power for ever. This from a political party publicly in bed with the Fox Media empire (you can't in differentiate between the two in their politics and it is pretty clear who is running the show and it ain't the republicans), so how much dirt was passed onto Fox News to disclose at the most politically convenient times (so much for national security).
So yes, some times you must have the circus, where those guilty are publicly shammed and destroyed, to remind other political criminals of the consequences of their actions and to assure the public that democracy and justice will be served, at least on some occasions (those occasions when the public agitates the most strongly for it).
No, it is really a balance thing. Game not so impressive and the censors concern about children's access to that content is, borderline, a difficult thing to judge. So potential risk versus gain, so possible harm to minors versus profits for one amongst thousands of other games, and look to be honest compare these two pages http://store.steampowered.com/app/500/ and http://www.amazon.com/Left-4-Dead-Pc/dp/B000PS4X7S, what is the major difference, that's right ratings advice, so valve is looking pretty guilty of marketing unsuitable products to children.
Now the tests are will this post also get flame modded down, will steam , naughty naughty, make a correction to product sales page and, will you realise the only answer to the question you actually asked is yes (I think you might have unreasonably and ban the wrong way around) but, if not, just to be clear, yes they should ban 'unreasonable games' but I wont get that worked up over it either way.
If they are going to base it on warrants, then there is that little pesky difference between being served a warrant, being able to view it and read, being able to give a copy to your lawyers for review, being able to monitor the search and, of course it being secret. It really gives way to much power to law enforcement, once it is secret there is no public review and, with the seeming drop in professionalism in the shift from policing to 'enforcement', the blank check for making up evidence in order to gain arrests and subsequent promotions, or just petty revenge, is becoming more dangerous.
The idea for a company security presentation is the opposite of that 4) Loss!. On a company presentation keep it very straightforward and simply. Advise them of the security problem, highlight the problems it causes and detail to consequences for the employee for failing to adhere to security protocols. Put it in writing, get each employ to pick it up and sign to confirm they acknowledge it's contents and are aware of the consequences, 4) Loss! - it will cost the company money and likely cost the employee their job.
That is the very first thing you establish prior to giving a security briefing, what are the consequences for any employee that fails to adhere to the requirements of each of the different elements of that security briefing, loss of access, demotion, written warning or, instant dismissal. The employees will only listen if htey have a vested interest in listening.
The nanny state is a lie, it is typically used by con artists when they complain about the government preventing other people from 'choosing' to believe the lies of the fraudsters and buying into whatever product or service is being marketed. As for banning 'L4D 2' it really seems rather pointless L4D 1 got pretty boring pretty fast, whilst it's cooperative play was interesting at first, overall the game pretty shallow and re playability is pretty low. Nowadays you are more likely to be killed by a bored player than a zombie, so L4D 2, mhh, banned, who cares, plenty of other games to choose from.
As for only adults playing those games, everyone knows that is just a marketing lie, those games are sold in games stores, right along side games specifically targeted at children and, in multilayer it is pretty obvious that people younger than the legal age are frequently playing the game. As for statistics about the average age of game players, another typically marketing lie in the way it is used, let's try the average age of game players playing first person shooters to the average age of game players playing strategy games.
When Telstra was privatised it was quite clearly stated in the prospectus that the government could implement changes in the way telstra was managed if those changes were in the public interest, this obviously has always had an impact on Telstra's share value and as an investor you should have kept informed.
On the subject of privatisation, prior to privatisation Telstra as a government institution had originally intended to have fibre optic to the majority of Australian homes by 2005, so the profits for a few yet once again destroyed the benefits for the many. Privatisation the scourge of efficient well served public 'services', how to turn something good into something reviled requiring constant government supervision, auditing, legislation and prosecution.
When you want to fix a system that is irretrievably broken, you break up the private parts, nationalise it and turn it into a public service, when you want to do the opposite, privatise, a few get rich and the rest get screwed plus a whole load of PR=B$ advertising.
The single biggest advantage of Lotus Symphony, it provides choice, now you can choose from four different versions of Open Office and still have full document compatibility and operating system choice.
It might be viewed as a new corporate status symbol, if you are really significant in the technology sector you produce your own document compatible fork of open office under you own branding and demonstrate your capabilities that to the general public. A way of reminding your employees of the value of the products they produce and putting an end to them staring at the competitors logo.
This sort of corporate identity creation and branding has a significant impact on the way the public views a company, even major hardware players might start making the shift and supply their computers with their branded office suit, browser et al. With open source the investment needed to achieve that is minimal, especially compared to the marketing advantage that can be gained in highlighting the value of their hardware product and the full range of software tools they provide with it all included in the price.
This has nothing to do with correlations, is has everything to do with reducing insurance company risk by eliminating payouts, either by pushing the bill onto someone else or by refusing to pay where the driver committed some infraction of insurance conditions. You can expect the complexity of insurance contracts to blow out with the device so that can embed more opportunities for not having to payout.
They have picked up on the profitability of the health insurance claim denials and via the camera with wireless that only they record and can access, they have a tool to start rejecting vehicle insurance claims.
Originally, I felt that email for government should be retained, however there really does need to be a different consideration between formal and informal email ie. email that is a part of formal administrative functions and email that just represents informal communications.
The question is where exactly do you fit in email between old world snail mail and a conversation whether in person on via say voip. Very interesting when you compare voip to email, as they both represent digital electronic transmission via the vary same infrastructure the only difference is the formatting of those messages.
So really the question is whether all communications between politicians and private parties or government departments should be recorded or whether there is a substantive difference between formal and informal communications and only formal communications should be recorded and retained and informal communications non instructional, non informative and non directional should just be allowed to fade away.
You obviously have not been paying any attention at all. A certain politicians rise in popularity by the name of Ron Paul springs to mind as an indication of the reach of the internet. Numerous web sites get attention from many eyes which detail the failings of society, from abusive police officers, one quick you tube link pretty well buggers them up to media celebrities tell alls, tom cruise and the delusion of a rabid scientologist springs to mind. All of these used to be hidden and rarely achieved public viewing and when they finally did the were more often swamped by a disingenuous publics relations campaign, basically professional liars obscuring the the truth with fraudulent for profit lies. Those professional lies are time and time again now being undone by the internet and as it often turns out by people who read and post on slashdot.
Back to the original point of the article, 'that the copyright black hole is swallowing out culture', one really has to stop and think, should we let it, is the mass media, mass consumption, greed ahead of need, excellence in ignorance, worth preserving. Sure it has an interesting historical context but should it simply be starved of income and allowed to rot. Whilst the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/, is itself based upon current copyright laws, shouldn't we simply allow it and the internet to rewrite our new collective expression of a shared culture, where parts of it are not held in a death grip of greed and held to ransom.
So a real drive to abandon 20th century manufactured for sale culture, the empty shallow facade of a marketing culture. We could always resurrect any worthwhile parts in 70 odd years time although it would hardly seem worthwhile considering the volume of content already created under creative commons and published on the internet, the mind simply boggles at the amount of additional content that would be created over the next 70 years. Now if you seriously think that creative commons content could never have the same professional polish as proprietary strictly controlled content, just stop to think how say an animated movie could be refined and worked on continuously for that period, animation, story line, 2d to 3d to virtual reality, it never dies, it is never locked up, it continues to grow and develop over the decades.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, so genuinely uniquely of real value, in the current culture that it could not be recreated or replaced. The truth is we as a society simply have become convinced by modern manipulative marketing techniques that somehow we will all die if we don't value and pay for all that mass media blather.
The reality is that all that does happen, test cases, when legislation is put to the test in a court of law, which generally happens when there is a dispute between the intent and the letter of the legislation. The typical axiom for business contracts, they are only as good as they have been tested in court, applies to legislation.
Unlike software, one press of a button and digital disaster can unfold, legislation is far slower in it ramifications. The most fiscally dangerous ones are where major investments are required to establish the infrastructure to support legislated business methods and practices and changes in legislation require major changes in the supporting infrastructure or it's abandonment.
In the case of the basic application of universal healthcare, it represents the controls that monitor claims made be health practitioners for the valid services that they have provided for patients and the subsequent auditing of the provided services. In the simple form the infrastructure is not to bad, heh heh, as it turns out, rewriting some software code, to process and supply data in the appropriate method.
Most of the rest of the legislation can be fairly safely reviewed over the years, even decades and adjusted as required in following sessions of the legislature, problems can take years to develop but can be fixed in a week, faster than the issue can be brought into court and resolved via that method, although back dating legislation is naughty and really shouldn't be done.
So while it is interesting to look at legislation from a coding perspective complete with error detection, it has to be kept in mind that program execution in the case of legislation is much, much slower, clock cycles are legislative sessions, years or even election cycles.
Regardless still teaching qwerty for qwerty keyboards is long since well past being stupid. The real reason it hasn't changed, the honest to god true reason it hasn't changed, male dominated societies and bosses fucking their secretarys, really lame isn't it. Here we decades after the reason for qwerty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty jamming type bars on 19th century typewriters, because secretaries are to lazy to change and they can manipulate the boss with a good BJ.
At the very least all primary and secondary grade smartbooks (netbooks have become so declasse) should be alphabetic by default and the nonsense can be put to bed and not a bed involving a boss and his errant penis or (to cheer up crazy republicans) meandering cigars.
Now the question is should you say form the Church of Anonymous, whose religious principles are directly opposed to those of say CO$ (the Corporation Of Scientology). Would not the CO$ opposition to that religion and attempts to silence it be religious vilification. So the great god Xenu captured and imprisoned a whole bunch LRonned evil zombies and imprisoned them on a planet at it's core in a 13th dimensional state. One day one of the evil LRonned zombie spirits (Hubbardus) escaped the planetary core and infected the spirit of a human living on the surface of that planet and as allowed more evil LRonned zombies spirits, to escape their planetary core 13th dimensional prison. They infest the upper levels of CO$, zombie level OT V and above and these beings seek to enslave the rest of humanity.
Only by opposing the evil LRonned zombie CO$ and by worshipping the great god Xenu can the evil LRonned zombie spirits be driven back into their 13th dimensional planetary core prison, especially the current leader, the asthmatic dwarf zombie. PS. it is blasphemy to call the great god Xenu and evil galactic war lord.
How old does a religion have to be to have protection of laws like these, the time it takes to read this post perhaps? LRonned: definition - to be screwed over by a corporation, masquerading as a cult pretending to be a religion (double plus if you started the whole charade).
Actually groups like those rely totally on direct personal contact and support based on the helper theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helper_theory. This crappy half life solution is just a cheap fob off ie. come see us when you have committed a serious criminal offence or actually attempted suicide, until then here is this cheap web site. Direct personal support and contact is required and, yes it will cost significant amounts of money because any skilled professionals are required to support it.
By far most of the PSTD failures have been due to people not getting any form of support or of getting cut off from support, all based upon budget constraints. You know the real true budget constraint, where it is far cheaper spend money on running marketing campaign about supporting the troops, then spending any money on actually supporting the troops. Of course you follow up with the inevitable public relations equals total and utter bullshit PR=B$ campaign and blame the failures on just a few criminal types who want to sponge off the system,they were criminals before they joined the military, they were bad soldiers and should not get any support or the ultimate it is all a lie, there are no problems it is all an exaggeration by the progressives, socialists and the intellectuals.
However in this case it really does represent a significant change in communications style and structure. So likely carrying on multiple simultaneous abridged conversation, where emotions are concealed and basically every message is basically a throw away line of no lasting significance. Each communication style creates a varying need to focus upon who you are communicating with and how much and attention you need to focus on that person and how well you need to formulate and express your message, so text message, instant message, forum, email, phone call, skype (video call), direct personal contact.
So is it likely to damage their communications styles and attention spans as well as their ability to focuse on the person in front of them, absolutely. Are they likely to end up as employees whom you don't want to have direct contact with important high value customers, probably. Are they likely to have problems with long term relationships in the future, are you kidding, what long term relationships. So texting as a social construct is all about creating a sense of belonging without any actual personal commitment, empty impersonal prattle.
When in doubt, couch your language and, that does mean typing all your comments while sitting on a sofa using a laptop, that means simply express everything as a opinion not as a statement of factor. The all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world can not touch you unless they can prove that at the exact time you expressed your opinion it was not in fact your true opinion but that you lied about it and falsely expressed your opinion in order to slander someone.
Whilst this can definitely happen, think of all those astroturfers eg. M$ trolls for example, it is of course impossible to prove.
Well, it would be a bit hard to complain about the camera if it takes one photo every few years or so and dumps them in with, what, billions of other images, meh, it wouldn't bother me at all. Of course to be fair, my street is not on google view although it is in the middle of numerous other streets that are. just one of those odd google street view quirks.
In quite little old Adelaide, SA, I have found people are more irritated by their address not being properly defined on street view and not being above to say email the google link as driving directions, rather than their property of themselves showing up on street view. Perhaps it is a personal space thing, in countries like Australia where there is a lot of personal space available are more comfortable to rather impersonal distant incursions and, people in Japan who are basically stacked one atop another with very little personal space are more reactive of incursions whilst seemingly are more willing to specifically intrude upon another person's space.
Of course one has to wonder how much google's competitors secretly motivate opposition to google's street because they lack a comparable service. When it comes to finding a place on a map, MSN search, Yahoo et all suck in comparison to being able to take a squiz ( http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/news/australian_style/v16_no1/word_column.htm ) at a place and it's approaches before you get there, it certainly makes life easy and, I have to admit to being a bit of a google street view tourist.
Grove is far from being correct, he is lost, confused and disingenuous. The big difference between the computer industry and the auto industry is the computer industry sacked their employees and off shored without batting an eye lid and, the automotive industry was consistently placed under pressure to retain local employment. How much is left of computer manufacturing in countries where the people can afford to buy them.
The reality is the current warped system of global trade where employees in countries who manufacturer the product cannot afford to buy it because their wages are cents on the dollar compared to countries where employees can afford to buy the product.
Left to it's own devices upon a global basis, free market capitalism would self destruct into a medieval state of, war for profit, purposeful economic sabotage, complete destruction of the environment and slavery for the masses.
Government is a function of the people, the only time government goes out of control is when it is controlled by a minority for the benefit of that minority, pretty much when it is being run exactly like a for profit corporation that quite contentedly bankrupts it's competitors (even internal ones, corporate interdepartmental intrigue). All industry in western countries where wages are 100 times the wage of third world countries are doomed but, shut them down and the employees lose the ability to buy that third world product who then end up starving.
So what is gained, what is the reason, nothing more than short term profit and don't give a rat's attitude. As long as the current rank of corporate executives can turn themselves into millionaires the country and the people can, well, they don't care what happens to the country and the people, typical corporate executives are completely and utterly indifferent to it.
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Well criminals never get to keep the proceeds of crime, at least the proceeds they confess too or are caught with. Now if you have access to their Swiss or Bahamas bank accounts (bankers facilitating crime on a global basis), you likely end up with a quite different risk benefit analysis, really, millions of dollars of fraud and not even a 10% commission, now that would be truly hard to believe.
I don't enjoy coding all that much but, there is a great deal of problem solving, expressive creativity in the solutions, intense neural stimulation and satisfaction from a well crafted application. Whilst I would not make it my happy, I certainly wouldn't make a blanket statement that it is undesirable. Things are would rate coding far above in terms of qualitative life experience and contributing to society.
Sticking my penis non-reproductively inside as many people as possible.
Aimless global travel, pretending I'm someone special and, deserve to be waited on hand and foot.
Excessive drug abuse, both legal and illegal.
Politics as a satisfaction of ego.
Strutting around with a charitable foundation that only gives away the absolute legal minimum to sustain it's legal status each year.
I admit I really enjoy learning and using new software applications from games, to office suites, CAD, graphics, databases etc. thanks to all those open source coders who enjoy coding and the value it brings to society and sincerely thank you very much indeed.
Road tyre noise. While reversing vehicles can be pretty quite, cars driving down the road at normal speed are not. When all vehicles are electric the amount of background noise in dramatically diminish, as such road tyre noise will become far more audible. The noise is nothing more than pollution, marketing pollution to be exact. About having cars going down roads each with a manufacturer distinct sound, marketing down every street they travel, advertising that manufacturer. They might as well be screaming, buy ford, buy ford, buy food or as in this case buy Nissan, buy Nissan, buy Nissan.
Any politician who doesn't think this is straight up marketing noise pollution is either stupid or corrupt or possibly even both. Now if you are serious about blind people, cars could emit an ultrasonic pulse, detectors for white could be built into the white canes and could detect proximity, speed and direction of travel, all completely absent of marketing distinctiveness.
Could you like compact it a bit because I didn't bother to read it. It is really anal to go through each and every bit piece by piece quoting it back, by any chance are you involved in county mounty style law 'enforcement', you know where you can force people to listen to your preaching.
To explain it to you, it is all about ego, the ego of being elected, the ego of having power, the ego of controlling others and so it follows, puncture that ego and you destroy the value of gaining 'whatever', by the means chosen.
Being president of a country is certainly a lot different from being the "WORST" president that country has ever had in recorded history. One version goes around on the public stage given speeches, is invited to other countries to give talks, basically is universally respected and the other, well, they hide in the bottle, their own political party no longer wants to be seen with them, no genuinely democratic country wants them to visit and they are pretty much universally disrespected.
See, the effect is real and the future affect will be to force others to have second thoughts about behaving quite so badly. This affect even extends into policing, where tazer happy thugs in uniform are publicly shamed and driven from 'policing' (law 'enforcement' is really only for third world dictatorships), now tell me does this strike a bit close to home, are you suffering from some form of guilt, perhaps not for what you have personally done but for what you have seen and maybe participated in.
Well, if you going to be so picky about fair use, how about we look at for example "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I would have though that would have been far more important than later legislation that covered fair use. So if a creative work or discovery fails "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than legally speaking it should not have the protection of copyright and at the very least prior to obtaining the protection of copyright, that creative work or discovery should have publicly substantiated that it meets those requirements.
So let's seem some conservative politicians get up and defend the copyright protection of porn whether written, sung, photographed or video recorded, not that I am against porn but I would hardly say that under law that it is entitled to copyright protection (governments can't implement legislation that goes their constitution). So fair copy right in creative works should be much like patents, substantiating their value to society prior to their achieving copyright protection for a limited time.
Now consider this, if I could push a button and produce a perfect of copy say a blank rewritable DVD, complete with case, who would complain. So when I copy that DVD have I stolen it, I legally supplied the copying device, I legally supplied the raw components, I legally supplied the energy to power the device and I legally supplied the original to be copied, so I provided a substantial amount of the work in creating a copy and only the civil infringement of a private post purchase (always questionable) contractual agreement comes it to question, no theft is occurring and calling it stealing would be lying.
How about 90 day warranties on media for copyrighted content for which people have paid a licence fee that should last the life of that contents copyright protection 75 years, now isn't that stealing when the media fails (and, yes books will last 75 years with reasonable use).
Gees, get over it already, absolutely everyone recognises M$ where as MS can be mistaken for many other institutions and, seriously the only people that complains are M$'s micro trolls, the softies if their various marketing department. Childish is the M$ marketing department reaction to it, oh no, it hurt's us, my precious logo, it burns our public public image. Insults, offtopic attacks, slurs and it cycles on and off, tytpical of a professional marketing tactic, try it on for a while see how it works, not working back off for a while and try again and, again and, again and ad nauseam. M$, M$, M$, if you hadn't been so naughty quite so many times it wouldn't be taken in such a bad light ;).
Now back to this article my main thought on this, why is M$ tackling it, where are the various government funded consumer protection agencies, are they all asleep and not paying much attention. In light of M$'s public pursuit of this case, perhaps they should consider contacting M$, obtaining the evidence and pursuing it themselves.
Then again M$ might not wont the various consumer protection agencies to pay to much attention to M$'s own questionable behaviour (there 12 M$s, ooww, does it burn).
From the smell of what is going it, I would wonder whether EBay themselves are behind the investor buy out. You know, a bit of behind the scenes shenanigans and a big fat off the books sales commission and a troublesome business venture is dumped for a profit (it would be just so typically an EBay sale).
You would think some open source video call peer to peer software and the many ISP's who already provide VOIP call technology (a very simple extension of those services) would inevitably bring about Skype's demise.
It all democratic countries, there is something called the seperation of powers. Only those branches of government responsible for enacting laws can enact laws. The administrative or executive branch can issue all the commands, orders, instructions and memos it likes, if they are against the law as legislated, then it is a criminal act to obey those commands, orders, instructions and memos but law you are required to disobey them and inform the appropriate branch of the judiciary of the illegal instruction.
So the retroactive immunity is nothing more than saving face, of the US government being to embarrassed to publicly prosecute the law breakers, including the NSA, various telecommunications companies and of course the previous US administration. So do you bother to maintain the heat, of verbally bashing those broke the law, of course, you never give up, you shame them worse than the shame that prosecution would bring. You write their history, you keep the memory alive and, you never let them live it down.
Their intent was to abuse the criminal justice system so they could spy on all citizens all of the time (keep in mind that none of the information gathered could ever be used legally in court) to obtain information for what, hmm, blackmail, political corruption, public exposure of secrets prior to polls and even corporate advantage. Can't beat a politician in the polls, the get some dirt on them or just as effectively a family member or even political supporters. They were basically implementing a system to keep themselves in power for ever. This from a political party publicly in bed with the Fox Media empire (you can't in differentiate between the two in their politics and it is pretty clear who is running the show and it ain't the republicans), so how much dirt was passed onto Fox News to disclose at the most politically convenient times (so much for national security).
So yes, some times you must have the circus, where those guilty are publicly shammed and destroyed, to remind other political criminals of the consequences of their actions and to assure the public that democracy and justice will be served, at least on some occasions (those occasions when the public agitates the most strongly for it).
No, it is really a balance thing. Game not so impressive and the censors concern about children's access to that content is, borderline, a difficult thing to judge. So potential risk versus gain, so possible harm to minors versus profits for one amongst thousands of other games, and look to be honest compare these two pages http://store.steampowered.com/app/500/ and http://www.amazon.com/Left-4-Dead-Pc/dp/B000PS4X7S, what is the major difference, that's right ratings advice, so valve is looking pretty guilty of marketing unsuitable products to children.
Now the tests are will this post also get flame modded down, will steam , naughty naughty, make a correction to product sales page and, will you realise the only answer to the question you actually asked is yes (I think you might have unreasonably and ban the wrong way around) but, if not, just to be clear, yes they should ban 'unreasonable games' but I wont get that worked up over it either way.
If they are going to base it on warrants, then there is that little pesky difference between being served a warrant, being able to view it and read, being able to give a copy to your lawyers for review, being able to monitor the search and, of course it being secret. It really gives way to much power to law enforcement, once it is secret there is no public review and, with the seeming drop in professionalism in the shift from policing to 'enforcement', the blank check for making up evidence in order to gain arrests and subsequent promotions, or just petty revenge, is becoming more dangerous.
The idea for a company security presentation is the opposite of that
4) Loss!.
On a company presentation keep it very straightforward and simply. Advise them of the security problem, highlight the problems it causes and detail to consequences for the employee for failing to adhere to security protocols. Put it in writing, get each employ to pick it up and sign to confirm they acknowledge it's contents and are aware of the consequences, 4) Loss! - it will cost the company money and likely cost the employee their job.
That is the very first thing you establish prior to giving a security briefing, what are the consequences for any employee that fails to adhere to the requirements of each of the different elements of that security briefing, loss of access, demotion, written warning or, instant dismissal. The employees will only listen if htey have a vested interest in listening.
The nanny state is a lie, it is typically used by con artists when they complain about the government preventing other people from 'choosing' to believe the lies of the fraudsters and buying into whatever product or service is being marketed. As for banning 'L4D 2' it really seems rather pointless L4D 1 got pretty boring pretty fast, whilst it's cooperative play was interesting at first, overall the game pretty shallow and re playability is pretty low. Nowadays you are more likely to be killed by a bored player than a zombie, so L4D 2, mhh, banned, who cares, plenty of other games to choose from.
As for only adults playing those games, everyone knows that is just a marketing lie, those games are sold in games stores, right along side games specifically targeted at children and, in multilayer it is pretty obvious that people younger than the legal age are frequently playing the game. As for statistics about the average age of game players, another typically marketing lie in the way it is used, let's try the average age of game players playing first person shooters to the average age of game players playing strategy games.
When Telstra was privatised it was quite clearly stated in the prospectus that the government could implement changes in the way telstra was managed if those changes were in the public interest, this obviously has always had an impact on Telstra's share value and as an investor you should have kept informed.
On the subject of privatisation, prior to privatisation Telstra as a government institution had originally intended to have fibre optic to the majority of Australian homes by 2005, so the profits for a few yet once again destroyed the benefits for the many. Privatisation the scourge of efficient well served public 'services', how to turn something good into something reviled requiring constant government supervision, auditing, legislation and prosecution.
When you want to fix a system that is irretrievably broken, you break up the private parts, nationalise it and turn it into a public service, when you want to do the opposite, privatise, a few get rich and the rest get screwed plus a whole load of PR=B$ advertising.
The single biggest advantage of Lotus Symphony, it provides choice, now you can choose from four different versions of Open Office and still have full document compatibility and operating system choice.
It might be viewed as a new corporate status symbol, if you are really significant in the technology sector you produce your own document compatible fork of open office under you own branding and demonstrate your capabilities that to the general public. A way of reminding your employees of the value of the products they produce and putting an end to them staring at the competitors logo.
This sort of corporate identity creation and branding has a significant impact on the way the public views a company, even major hardware players might start making the shift and supply their computers with their branded office suit, browser et al. With open source the investment needed to achieve that is minimal, especially compared to the marketing advantage that can be gained in highlighting the value of their hardware product and the full range of software tools they provide with it all included in the price.
This has nothing to do with correlations, is has everything to do with reducing insurance company risk by eliminating payouts, either by pushing the bill onto someone else or by refusing to pay where the driver committed some infraction of insurance conditions. You can expect the complexity of insurance contracts to blow out with the device so that can embed more opportunities for not having to payout.
They have picked up on the profitability of the health insurance claim denials and via the camera with wireless that only they record and can access, they have a tool to start rejecting vehicle insurance claims.
Originally, I felt that email for government should be retained, however there really does need to be a different consideration between formal and informal email ie. email that is a part of formal administrative functions and email that just represents informal communications.
The question is where exactly do you fit in email between old world snail mail and a conversation whether in person on via say voip. Very interesting when you compare voip to email, as they both represent digital electronic transmission via the vary same infrastructure the only difference is the formatting of those messages.
So really the question is whether all communications between politicians and private parties or government departments should be recorded or whether there is a substantive difference between formal and informal communications and only formal communications should be recorded and retained and informal communications non instructional, non informative and non directional should just be allowed to fade away.
You obviously have not been paying any attention at all. A certain politicians rise in popularity by the name of Ron Paul springs to mind as an indication of the reach of the internet. Numerous web sites get attention from many eyes which detail the failings of society, from abusive police officers, one quick you tube link pretty well buggers them up to media celebrities tell alls, tom cruise and the delusion of a rabid scientologist springs to mind. All of these used to be hidden and rarely achieved public viewing and when they finally did the were more often swamped by a disingenuous publics relations campaign, basically professional liars obscuring the the truth with fraudulent for profit lies. Those professional lies are time and time again now being undone by the internet and as it often turns out by people who read and post on slashdot.
Back to the original point of the article, 'that the copyright black hole is swallowing out culture', one really has to stop and think, should we let it, is the mass media, mass consumption, greed ahead of need, excellence in ignorance, worth preserving. Sure it has an interesting historical context but should it simply be starved of income and allowed to rot. Whilst the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/, is itself based upon current copyright laws, shouldn't we simply allow it and the internet to rewrite our new collective expression of a shared culture, where parts of it are not held in a death grip of greed and held to ransom.
So a real drive to abandon 20th century manufactured for sale culture, the empty shallow facade of a marketing culture. We could always resurrect any worthwhile parts in 70 odd years time although it would hardly seem worthwhile considering the volume of content already created under creative commons and published on the internet, the mind simply boggles at the amount of additional content that would be created over the next 70 years. Now if you seriously think that creative commons content could never have the same professional polish as proprietary strictly controlled content, just stop to think how say an animated movie could be refined and worked on continuously for that period, animation, story line, 2d to 3d to virtual reality, it never dies, it is never locked up, it continues to grow and develop over the decades.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, so genuinely uniquely of real value, in the current culture that it could not be recreated or replaced. The truth is we as a society simply have become convinced by modern manipulative marketing techniques that somehow we will all die if we don't value and pay for all that mass media blather.
The reality is that all that does happen, test cases, when legislation is put to the test in a court of law, which generally happens when there is a dispute between the intent and the letter of the legislation. The typical axiom for business contracts, they are only as good as they have been tested in court, applies to legislation.
Unlike software, one press of a button and digital disaster can unfold, legislation is far slower in it ramifications. The most fiscally dangerous ones are where major investments are required to establish the infrastructure to support legislated business methods and practices and changes in legislation require major changes in the supporting infrastructure or it's abandonment.
In the case of the basic application of universal healthcare, it represents the controls that monitor claims made be health practitioners for the valid services that they have provided for patients and the subsequent auditing of the provided services. In the simple form the infrastructure is not to bad, heh heh, as it turns out, rewriting some software code, to process and supply data in the appropriate method.
Most of the rest of the legislation can be fairly safely reviewed over the years, even decades and adjusted as required in following sessions of the legislature, problems can take years to develop but can be fixed in a week, faster than the issue can be brought into court and resolved via that method, although back dating legislation is naughty and really shouldn't be done.
So while it is interesting to look at legislation from a coding perspective complete with error detection, it has to be kept in mind that program execution in the case of legislation is much, much slower, clock cycles are legislative sessions, years or even election cycles.
Regardless still teaching qwerty for qwerty keyboards is long since well past being stupid. The real reason it hasn't changed, the honest to god true reason it hasn't changed, male dominated societies and bosses fucking their secretarys, really lame isn't it. Here we decades after the reason for qwerty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty jamming type bars on 19th century typewriters, because secretaries are to lazy to change and they can manipulate the boss with a good BJ.
At the very least all primary and secondary grade smartbooks (netbooks have become so declasse) should be alphabetic by default and the nonsense can be put to bed and not a bed involving a boss and his errant penis or (to cheer up crazy republicans) meandering cigars.
Now the question is should you say form the Church of Anonymous, whose religious principles are directly opposed to those of say CO$ (the Corporation Of Scientology). Would not the CO$ opposition to that religion and attempts to silence it be religious vilification. So the great god Xenu captured and imprisoned a whole bunch LRonned evil zombies and imprisoned them on a planet at it's core in a 13th dimensional state. One day one of the evil LRonned zombie spirits (Hubbardus) escaped the planetary core and infected the spirit of a human living on the surface of that planet and as allowed more evil LRonned zombies spirits, to escape their planetary core 13th dimensional prison. They infest the upper levels of CO$, zombie level OT V and above and these beings seek to enslave the rest of humanity.
Only by opposing the evil LRonned zombie CO$ and by worshipping the great god Xenu can the evil LRonned zombie spirits be driven back into their 13th dimensional planetary core prison, especially the current leader, the asthmatic dwarf zombie. PS. it is blasphemy to call the great god Xenu and evil galactic war lord.
How old does a religion have to be to have protection of laws like these, the time it takes to read this post perhaps? LRonned: definition - to be screwed over by a corporation, masquerading as a cult pretending to be a religion (double plus if you started the whole charade).
Actually groups like those rely totally on direct personal contact and support based on the helper theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helper_theory. This crappy half life solution is just a cheap fob off ie. come see us when you have committed a serious criminal offence or actually attempted suicide, until then here is this cheap web site. Direct personal support and contact is required and, yes it will cost significant amounts of money because any skilled professionals are required to support it.
By far most of the PSTD failures have been due to people not getting any form of support or of getting cut off from support, all based upon budget constraints. You know the real true budget constraint, where it is far cheaper spend money on running marketing campaign about supporting the troops, then spending any money on actually supporting the troops. Of course you follow up with the inevitable public relations equals total and utter bullshit PR=B$ campaign and blame the failures on just a few criminal types who want to sponge off the system ,they were criminals before they joined the military, they were bad soldiers and should not get any support or the ultimate it is all a lie, there are no problems it is all an exaggeration by the progressives, socialists and the intellectuals.
However in this case it really does represent a significant change in communications style and structure. So likely carrying on multiple simultaneous abridged conversation, where emotions are concealed and basically every message is basically a throw away line of no lasting significance. Each communication style creates a varying need to focus upon who you are communicating with and how much and attention you need to focus on that person and how well you need to formulate and express your message, so text message, instant message, forum, email, phone call, skype (video call), direct personal contact.
So is it likely to damage their communications styles and attention spans as well as their ability to focuse on the person in front of them, absolutely. Are they likely to end up as employees whom you don't want to have direct contact with important high value customers, probably. Are they likely to have problems with long term relationships in the future, are you kidding, what long term relationships. So texting as a social construct is all about creating a sense of belonging without any actual personal commitment, empty impersonal prattle.
When in doubt, couch your language and, that does mean typing all your comments while sitting on a sofa using a laptop, that means simply express everything as a opinion not as a statement of factor. The all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world can not touch you unless they can prove that at the exact time you expressed your opinion it was not in fact your true opinion but that you lied about it and falsely expressed your opinion in order to slander someone.
Whilst this can definitely happen, think of all those astroturfers eg. M$ trolls for example, it is of course impossible to prove.
Well, it would be a bit hard to complain about the camera if it takes one photo every few years or so and dumps them in with, what, billions of other images, meh, it wouldn't bother me at all. Of course to be fair, my street is not on google view although it is in the middle of numerous other streets that are. just one of those odd google street view quirks.
In quite little old Adelaide, SA, I have found people are more irritated by their address not being properly defined on street view and not being above to say email the google link as driving directions, rather than their property of themselves showing up on street view. Perhaps it is a personal space thing, in countries like Australia where there is a lot of personal space available are more comfortable to rather impersonal distant incursions and, people in Japan who are basically stacked one atop another with very little personal space are more reactive of incursions whilst seemingly are more willing to specifically intrude upon another person's space.
Of course one has to wonder how much google's competitors secretly motivate opposition to google's street because they lack a comparable service. When it comes to finding a place on a map, MSN search, Yahoo et all suck in comparison to being able to take a squiz ( http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/news/australian_style/v16_no1/word_column.htm ) at a place and it's approaches before you get there, it certainly makes life easy and, I have to admit to being a bit of a google street view tourist.
Grove is far from being correct, he is lost, confused and disingenuous. The big difference between the computer industry and the auto industry is the computer industry sacked their employees and off shored without batting an eye lid and, the automotive industry was consistently placed under pressure to retain local employment. How much is left of computer manufacturing in countries where the people can afford to buy them.
The reality is the current warped system of global trade where employees in countries who manufacturer the product cannot afford to buy it because their wages are cents on the dollar compared to countries where employees can afford to buy the product.
Left to it's own devices upon a global basis, free market capitalism would self destruct into a medieval state of, war for profit, purposeful economic sabotage, complete destruction of the environment and slavery for the masses.
Government is a function of the people, the only time government goes out of control is when it is controlled by a minority for the benefit of that minority, pretty much when it is being run exactly like a for profit corporation that quite contentedly bankrupts it's competitors (even internal ones, corporate interdepartmental intrigue). All industry in western countries where wages are 100 times the wage of third world countries are doomed but, shut them down and the employees lose the ability to buy that third world product who then end up starving.
So what is gained, what is the reason, nothing more than short term profit and don't give a rat's attitude. As long as the current rank of corporate executives can turn themselves into millionaires the country and the people can, well, they don't care what happens to the country and the people, typical corporate executives are completely and utterly indifferent to it.