The basic concept is the judge says you lost the case and that it is for that particular court, that judge does not give you any second chances. You then take it to an appeals court and try and come up with some BS yarn, or some legal technicality as to why the case should go to a higher court, for review, basically restarting the case in a higher court if that appeals court agrees etc.
The interesting side note on this is, higher courts cost more and your need more skilled more expensive lawyers to win your case. So in Australia; attorney, solicitor, barrister, queens counsel (starting from left to right quick and cheap in small claims court up to seriously expensive in a high court)
This issue is far more important than OpenDocument, it is really about maintaining the integrity of the ISO standard process, of creating usable and accessible standards, and not pandering to one corporations greed and willingness to corrupt what is a very important process in interoperability, and product safety, all in sort perverse B$ marketing campaign, M$ has demonstrated it total contempt for every other business that relies on ISO standards to be able to function upon a global basis.
The real problem with computers is uniform input is required for uniform output. The problem with people is, I said that, but I meant this, that's OK, I'm human too, so I already knew, that you meant this when you said that, so here's your answer.
Of course that all breaks down when there is a misunderstanding, how ever goodwill and good manners will generally resolve this. Now trying to create programs to mimic this, is a sure recipe for GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, a whole lot of frustrated people and a bunch of broken keyboards.
Actually it is normal in a lot of countries to have the loser in a civil case pay all court costs, however the lawyers fees are at a set rate and are not open slather. The point is to stop frivolous law suits, where often a company is attempt to punish and silence an individual by penalising them with legal defence costs.
Automatic court costs general favour the small guy, unless the company goes the endless civil suit route of appeals to higher and higher courts, with adjournments all to spend more than an individual can spend. This however fails when companies attempt to take on thousands of individuals because lose one case, precedent is set and they will likely lose every other case and basically big bucks go down the drain.
On top of that those laws are often in conjunction with barratry laws, where the winner of the case can effectively sue for damages and legal harassment (lost income while in court, stress, etc.), in the RIAAs case, lose a few too many cases as they have already done and it would also become automatic (really big bucks down the drain). So there is real reason why RIAA et al have been largely inactive against individuals in a lots of other countries.
You seem not to understand at all. People are complaining about the privacy invasive excesses of government agencies precisely because their activities are subject to public disclosure so that they can be reviewed. If their activities had not been disclosed people would not be discussing their perceived excesses and seek to review the laws to ensure the public is protected from privacy abuses. Ultimately all government activities should always be subject to public review.
With corporations like google we have to wait for an executive with a conscience to step forward and disclose exactly what google have been up to especially when it is very likely that the general public will not approve of those activities, obviously highly unlikely as greed typically takes precedence over conscience for most corporate executives.
The more likely route, the general public seek privacy audit laws which allows random inspections of corporate data archives that contain private about the public, ensure full disclosure of those activities and allow the public to have their, I repeat, their data removed, combined with significant fines for when privacy invasiveness exceeds the bounds of tighter privacy laws.
Now that would be a mistake. Take it to court not only to recover the money invested in the hardware but also the time and money lost in deploying the hardware and now required to seek and deploy alternate hardware ie. send them to the wall.
I this case it just seems to be the more bluff and bluster variety a last ditch pitch to the share holders. If they had a case they would really launch it immediately, yes, news flash, spinning platters are dying and solid state is taking over and only needs to price adjustment to become the default standard. Hard disk drive manufacturers are now seeking a way out of what is becoming a horse and buggy industry segment (and people wondered why IBM sold it hard disk drive business whilst it was still a lucrative proposition).
More specifically why can't they differentiate between education universities versus research universities or more accurately schools that actually teach actually employable skills rather than schools the fill employment positions for people who struggled in the work force, don't really want to teach and just need a place to hide amongst like minded peers.
I think you miss the point. Google a for profit corporation, is basically doing what those government agencies are doing and that everybody is complaining about. Really, which is worse a corporation with profit as it only goal (aside from the typical modern feel good marketing campaign), which will ultimately seek every competitive advantage in the pursuit of endless profit growth (censoring freedom and democracy in autocratic countries, no problem), or a government agency with public oversight, subject to independent audits and review.
Now the only public battle I saw between google and US agencies was, the very public battle that google fought so they did not have to give it away the valuable data they now own for free.
When it comes to securing a companies data, they of course mention the dominant provider of services, rather than rattling off a whole list. So why would any company allow external companies that also provide services to their competitors access to their companies data or their business communications. Whilst the certainly does put the carriers in the spot light and obviously require a complete review of their operations, it still makes google look far worse as they are the most infamous collectors and collators of other peoples information known on the net.
So really this is just the beginning, as privacy is catching up the the internet, and companies seek default secure communications and data enforced by law, so individuals will gain protection by those same laws, a major shift in privacy landscape, that google amongst many others will be forced to adjust to as the laws are updated.
Now this reminds me about the big deal when they executed that Chinese official for corruption charges, now the really interesting thing about that story, was that it seemed a rather one sided story as there seemed to be no mention of those who paid the bribes.
So in this case much the same thing, while it is pretty well clear that the current US administration has been corrupt in every way imaginable way, there still remains all those people outside of the administration who shared in the proceeds of that corruption.
The rich and the greedy that participated in the betraying their country and sought to corrupt government and profit it by it regardless of the consequences, evidence was destroyed that would enable the pursuit of those criminals, and the consequential return of the public wealth stolen by them.
Hmm, I had no idea there were that many child porn links, I gather you speak from experience. A little something about computers when it comes to the programmed clicking of links, computers can actually manage a few million per hour quite readily, have you not heard of spam in the hundred of millions. I mean to say, that is what computers are all about the automation of tasks.
So presenting a clearly illogical idea that it is some how difficult to track down all the child porn links, eliminate the non US ones (clearly all those sites in the US which advertise child porn should already have be shut down), ain't really gonna leave all that many to behind. Perhaps you are saying that the FBI allows child pornography web sites to exist in the US so they can camouflage themselves amongst them.
I wouldn't know I don't know of any but, obviously you do, hmm.
You still do not get it, corporate executives know full well that their decisions will kill people, that as a result of their actions people will suffer and die, that is what they are indifferent to, they don't care how many people they kill to get what they personally desire. Where as of course the other side, the homicidal maniac side, the emotionally defective they actually want to kill people, that is what they desire. So which is worse, those that kill amorally or those that kill immorally, as they are both clearly mentally defective and belong in protective facilities away from the rest of society where they can do no harm to others, easy answer, which group is doing the most killing.
So you are saying there is a difference between intentionally causing your customers harm as the motivation of your behaviour and being utterly indifferent to the harm your cause your customers as long as greed is your motivation.
I don't really see it, both are just as evil as each other and should really be treated that way under law.
Personally I find those corporate executives who are utterly indifferent to the harm the cause to hundreds of millions of people to be far more offensive and contemptible, than terrorists. Especially taking into account the real harm they cause to society, things like poisoning people with junk additives, purposely using addictive ingredients, corrupting the political process, fraud upon a massive scale affecting millions of people, polluting the environment for generations to come, consistently lying and being deceitful about their products and, attempting to alter the nature of society to align with their twisted sociopathic concept that greed is everything.
Terrorists might have killed thousands but sociopath corporate executives have killed millions and, that is no exaggeration. Yet no governments have really start pursuing for those corporate executives for their crimes.
Of course when it comes to the ultimate link fetcher, google, I wonder whether the FBI raided them.
Personally because of the looseness of the whole internet, including ISPs recorded fro activities at specific times, the number of infected machines, IP spoofing etc. the recording of a data request from at IP address to another IP address is not really sufficiently valid for a destructive and life threatening raid.
Careful consideration needs to be made for the risks, ramifications and the damages caused by a raid and whether that record is really sufficient seeing that it can be so readily faked and an innocent party can suffer the repercussions.
The raid is an life threatening event (many innocent people have in fact died during raids), actual property damage can and does occur, confiscation of electronic equipment often for an indeterminate time also represents a significant burden especially as a lot of individuals are reliant upon the machines for business purposes, so the burden of proof should be sufficient to justify the harm caused.
There are a lot of people out there who think it would be hilarious to find that FBI address and hide it all over there internet camouflaged and try to get it clicked as often as possible, both to waste the FBI time as well as make strangers and sometimes known enemies suffer.
I have got a better one than that, for a time my XP installation would decide that it was a new install, if you used the off switch to shut down the PC. I went through my 3 remaining activation in a coupe of days, and then had to waste time with phone calls to get the toy boot to work. It settled down after the double length licence number we think your a thief licence key.
Didn't affect work, I'm not that silly, that's on the work boot, Kubuntu, no B$, just good code.
Really all google are doing is getting their tech staff, to research, trial and test applications in their own time and at their own expense. When it works they do limited deployments in the company, interesting certainly, a tad exploitative definitely.
At the end of the day, it is all about a psychologists endeavouring to manipulate the greatest possible productivity out of the work force until they burn out. Google is a marketing company through and through, hence they use every marketing tactic available to recruit and manipulate the tech staff.
I can sum it up for quite succinctly what there is to fear in body part trading, 3rd world exports. Be careful where you go overseas on holidays, you might end up coming back baggage class.
To pick off both comments in the one hit. Being an employee of M$ does not make a person evil, they just happen to be an employee of M$ and they are defined by their behaviour while they are an employee of M$. An individual is nominated to the board, not a representative of M$, hence if that individual leaves, another individual will replace where ever they come from, whether it be M$ or not.
So it is all the the the qualifications and the qualities of the individual and how well they will fulfil that role, not race colour, creed, religion 'hehe' should they be currently employed by M$ and be some what considered as closed source fundamentalist. Personally I believe Bruce Perens to be the best candidate for the current vacancies and did the petition thing, how ever at some point in the future there will be other vacancies and just because a person is or has been employed by M$ should not exclude them, not that I can think of any current M$ employees that would be considered suitable for a 'chair' on the OSI board.
You failed to express yourself in technology that your mother could understand at a core level, technology that she has grown up with. Ask her if you think it would be OK for the government to open up her private mail and record anything that they might consider subversive, publicly publish it and black out those bits that they deem to be unsatisfactory.
Further clarify that concept with the current GOP principle of the reduced seperation between church and state, so the government also now is represented by the minister of faith and truth, who can also decide what is or is not appropriate based upon their personal opinions and administer punishments as they deem fit, for those that fail to be properly subservient to the will of the state.
So the ultimate question is whether you mother thinks it is more appropriate for her to know what those people who are meant to be representing her in government are up to or whether those representatives should be able look into her private life, to ensure that she properly and publicly supports them lest her or her family start to suffer disadvantage when it comes to accessing government services, employment opportunities or start to be strip searched every time they board a plane.
Actually there already is, it is called a social democracy, funnily but sadly enough already pretty well known but not implemented often enough, a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Never ever confuse socialism or any other kind of government with autocracy, monarchy just masquerading in another suit.
So if you want to see the benefits of socialised (for the people) infrastructure, you can only really look at modern social democracies. There are a whole range of fundamentally profound reasons why it is better to invest in free health care, free education and to retain essential infrastructure as being equally accessible, than in the military industrial complex, corporate profits and an ever growing prison population.
They are not entitled to block people from examining a voting machine. I think you have to remember that once it is sold it is no longer theirs to control. Now if Sequoia want to keep their machines private and secret, they simply need to stop selling them, and voila, every bodies problem is solved.
When you 'sell' stuff it is no longer protected by trade secrets, as it no longer is in the possession of the company. Now as for trade secrets, I don't see why any company is entitled to maintain the lie of trade secrets, the customer should always be fully legally entitled to know everything about the product they are being sold, after all there is patent and copyright protection. From my experience the only reason for trade secrets is to protect B$ advertising, where the marketing wildly diverges from the truth.
That was a very important point that you made, it really is about time that the whole concept of trade lies 'er' secrets be reviewed under law, so that companies become fully accountable for the true qualities or the lack there of, of their products.
It really depends upon who M$ sends to represent them. Whilst some individuals from M$ might be counted upon to make a valuable contribution, there are some others who really have no business being there at all, nor would they be expected to be anything other than destructive.
A seat on the board is all able growing and promoting open source software and not about aligning it with the profit based motives of any particular company. Any sitting board member must represent what they believe to be in the best interest of Open Source software and should completely ignore the interests of their current employer, if they can not they should not be there.
The real reason for the same stories in the main stream news web sites, is simply greed, news as a cost being used to sell adds. You don't really have all that many journalists, let alone reporters, all you have are copy and pasters taking in news from several main sources and cut and pasting it together in the cheapest way possible in order to be able to sell a range of adds.
It helps if the news is kept mild, and safe so as not to offend readers or advertisers.
The news is not being democratised, public opinion is being democratised. The forming of public opinion is being shaped by a much more democratic internet and not necessarily news sites but more by specialist sites that often follow only one topic, be it the slaughter in Iraq, the suppression of freedom in Tibet, election fraud in the US or the extinguishing of the Palestinians by Israel as a range of examples. A huge number of sites, that are in affect serialised news stories, that you can use to monitor a particular situation and watch how it progresses and that you can also compare to the news in mild and brief as presented by more typical news sites.
So the typical news websites have simply become a lead to more specialised news sites that cover a topic in far more detail and over a far longer period.
The modern reality of Yahoo forcing M$ into a hostile takeover is simply that M$ is forced to up it offer and shift it to a cash only. So The longer Yahoo can stretch it out and the more M$ is forced to commit and place it's prestige upon success, the better the return for Yahoo shareholders.
As for M$'s competitors the longer it takes and the more money M$ blows on the deal the batter off they are and then there is of course the added benefit that all those customers of Yahoo who use them in preference to M$ will immediately switch to another company to get away from M$, added to that staff who will jump to another company rather than waiting to be pushed, as the aggresive anti-customer MSN staff seek to protect their jobs in the merger.
The Chinese government is an autocracy, is it not really a government of China, it is just a government of a few self serving control freaks who prosper while the majority suffer and serve. They obviously want to maintain total control over what the majority hear, say or do, lest the majority realise that the government should serve and protect the majority rather than empower and enrich the minority.
So just like any sane person from a modern free democracy, there is no fear that the autocrats ideals 'won't hold water', there is an absolute certainty that the autocrats ideals 'don't hold water' and the only way they can hold back freedom and democracy is with carefully managed lies and the point of a bayonet.
The current Chinese governments insists it has the right to use military aggression to maintain and obtain dominance over countries based upon the flimsiest of historical ties, so Tibet, Taiwan, and even Korea as well as some other regions suffer under oppression or the threat of future aggression.
That the Olympics should be held in autocratic countries at all, points to that fact that Olympic sized profits and marketing deals take precedence over the ideals and values of amateur athletes from the past. Although it already appears that some athletes are bowing out rather than taking the risk of exposure to carcinogenic pollutants prevalent in the Beijing environment.
Slashdot Mirror
The interesting side note on this is, higher courts cost more and your need more skilled more expensive lawyers to win your case. So in Australia; attorney, solicitor, barrister, queens counsel (starting from left to right quick and cheap in small claims court up to seriously expensive in a high court)
This issue is far more important than OpenDocument, it is really about maintaining the integrity of the ISO standard process, of creating usable and accessible standards, and not pandering to one corporations greed and willingness to corrupt what is a very important process in interoperability, and product safety, all in sort perverse B$ marketing campaign, M$ has demonstrated it total contempt for every other business that relies on ISO standards to be able to function upon a global basis.
Of course that all breaks down when there is a misunderstanding, how ever goodwill and good manners will generally resolve this. Now trying to create programs to mimic this, is a sure recipe for GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, a whole lot of frustrated people and a bunch of broken keyboards.
Automatic court costs general favour the small guy, unless the company goes the endless civil suit route of appeals to higher and higher courts, with adjournments all to spend more than an individual can spend. This however fails when companies attempt to take on thousands of individuals because lose one case, precedent is set and they will likely lose every other case and basically big bucks go down the drain.
On top of that those laws are often in conjunction with barratry laws, where the winner of the case can effectively sue for damages and legal harassment (lost income while in court, stress, etc.), in the RIAAs case, lose a few too many cases as they have already done and it would also become automatic (really big bucks down the drain). So there is real reason why RIAA et al have been largely inactive against individuals in a lots of other countries.
With corporations like google we have to wait for an executive with a conscience to step forward and disclose exactly what google have been up to especially when it is very likely that the general public will not approve of those activities, obviously highly unlikely as greed typically takes precedence over conscience for most corporate executives.
The more likely route, the general public seek privacy audit laws which allows random inspections of corporate data archives that contain private about the public, ensure full disclosure of those activities and allow the public to have their, I repeat, their data removed, combined with significant fines for when privacy invasiveness exceeds the bounds of tighter privacy laws.
Now that would be a mistake. Take it to court not only to recover the money invested in the hardware but also the time and money lost in deploying the hardware and now required to seek and deploy alternate hardware ie. send them to the wall.
I this case it just seems to be the more bluff and bluster variety a last ditch pitch to the share holders. If they had a case they would really launch it immediately, yes, news flash, spinning platters are dying and solid state is taking over and only needs to price adjustment to become the default standard. Hard disk drive manufacturers are now seeking a way out of what is becoming a horse and buggy industry segment (and people wondered why IBM sold it hard disk drive business whilst it was still a lucrative proposition).
More specifically why can't they differentiate between education universities versus research universities or more accurately schools that actually teach actually employable skills rather than schools the fill employment positions for people who struggled in the work force, don't really want to teach and just need a place to hide amongst like minded peers.
Now the only public battle I saw between google and US agencies was, the very public battle that google fought so they did not have to give it away the valuable data they now own for free.
When it comes to securing a companies data, they of course mention the dominant provider of services, rather than rattling off a whole list. So why would any company allow external companies that also provide services to their competitors access to their companies data or their business communications. Whilst the certainly does put the carriers in the spot light and obviously require a complete review of their operations, it still makes google look far worse as they are the most infamous collectors and collators of other peoples information known on the net.
So really this is just the beginning, as privacy is catching up the the internet, and companies seek default secure communications and data enforced by law, so individuals will gain protection by those same laws, a major shift in privacy landscape, that google amongst many others will be forced to adjust to as the laws are updated.
So in this case much the same thing, while it is pretty well clear that the current US administration has been corrupt in every way imaginable way, there still remains all those people outside of the administration who shared in the proceeds of that corruption.
The rich and the greedy that participated in the betraying their country and sought to corrupt government and profit it by it regardless of the consequences, evidence was destroyed that would enable the pursuit of those criminals, and the consequential return of the public wealth stolen by them.
So presenting a clearly illogical idea that it is some how difficult to track down all the child porn links, eliminate the non US ones (clearly all those sites in the US which advertise child porn should already have be shut down), ain't really gonna leave all that many to behind. Perhaps you are saying that the FBI allows child pornography web sites to exist in the US so they can camouflage themselves amongst them.
I wouldn't know I don't know of any but, obviously you do, hmm.
You still do not get it, corporate executives know full well that their decisions will kill people, that as a result of their actions people will suffer and die, that is what they are indifferent to, they don't care how many people they kill to get what they personally desire. Where as of course the other side, the homicidal maniac side, the emotionally defective they actually want to kill people, that is what they desire. So which is worse, those that kill amorally or those that kill immorally, as they are both clearly mentally defective and belong in protective facilities away from the rest of society where they can do no harm to others, easy answer, which group is doing the most killing.
I don't really see it, both are just as evil as each other and should really be treated that way under law.
Personally I find those corporate executives who are utterly indifferent to the harm the cause to hundreds of millions of people to be far more offensive and contemptible, than terrorists. Especially taking into account the real harm they cause to society, things like poisoning people with junk additives, purposely using addictive ingredients, corrupting the political process, fraud upon a massive scale affecting millions of people, polluting the environment for generations to come, consistently lying and being deceitful about their products and, attempting to alter the nature of society to align with their twisted sociopathic concept that greed is everything.
Terrorists might have killed thousands but sociopath corporate executives have killed millions and, that is no exaggeration. Yet no governments have really start pursuing for those corporate executives for their crimes.
Personally because of the looseness of the whole internet, including ISPs recorded fro activities at specific times, the number of infected machines, IP spoofing etc. the recording of a data request from at IP address to another IP address is not really sufficiently valid for a destructive and life threatening raid.
Careful consideration needs to be made for the risks, ramifications and the damages caused by a raid and whether that record is really sufficient seeing that it can be so readily faked and an innocent party can suffer the repercussions.
The raid is an life threatening event (many innocent people have in fact died during raids), actual property damage can and does occur, confiscation of electronic equipment often for an indeterminate time also represents a significant burden especially as a lot of individuals are reliant upon the machines for business purposes, so the burden of proof should be sufficient to justify the harm caused.
There are a lot of people out there who think it would be hilarious to find that FBI address and hide it all over there internet camouflaged and try to get it clicked as often as possible, both to waste the FBI time as well as make strangers and sometimes known enemies suffer.
Didn't affect work, I'm not that silly, that's on the work boot, Kubuntu, no B$, just good code.
At the end of the day, it is all about a psychologists endeavouring to manipulate the greatest possible productivity out of the work force until they burn out. Google is a marketing company through and through, hence they use every marketing tactic available to recruit and manipulate the tech staff.
I can sum it up for quite succinctly what there is to fear in body part trading, 3rd world exports. Be careful where you go overseas on holidays, you might end up coming back baggage class.
So it is all the the the qualifications and the qualities of the individual and how well they will fulfil that role, not race colour, creed, religion 'hehe' should they be currently employed by M$ and be some what considered as closed source fundamentalist. Personally I believe Bruce Perens to be the best candidate for the current vacancies and did the petition thing, how ever at some point in the future there will be other vacancies and just because a person is or has been employed by M$ should not exclude them, not that I can think of any current M$ employees that would be considered suitable for a 'chair' on the OSI board.
Further clarify that concept with the current GOP principle of the reduced seperation between church and state, so the government also now is represented by the minister of faith and truth, who can also decide what is or is not appropriate based upon their personal opinions and administer punishments as they deem fit, for those that fail to be properly subservient to the will of the state.
So the ultimate question is whether you mother thinks it is more appropriate for her to know what those people who are meant to be representing her in government are up to or whether those representatives should be able look into her private life, to ensure that she properly and publicly supports them lest her or her family start to suffer disadvantage when it comes to accessing government services, employment opportunities or start to be strip searched every time they board a plane.
So if you want to see the benefits of socialised (for the people) infrastructure, you can only really look at modern social democracies. There are a whole range of fundamentally profound reasons why it is better to invest in free health care, free education and to retain essential infrastructure as being equally accessible, than in the military industrial complex, corporate profits and an ever growing prison population.
When you 'sell' stuff it is no longer protected by trade secrets, as it no longer is in the possession of the company. Now as for trade secrets, I don't see why any company is entitled to maintain the lie of trade secrets, the customer should always be fully legally entitled to know everything about the product they are being sold, after all there is patent and copyright protection. From my experience the only reason for trade secrets is to protect B$ advertising, where the marketing wildly diverges from the truth.
That was a very important point that you made, it really is about time that the whole concept of trade lies 'er' secrets be reviewed under law, so that companies become fully accountable for the true qualities or the lack there of, of their products.
A seat on the board is all able growing and promoting open source software and not about aligning it with the profit based motives of any particular company. Any sitting board member must represent what they believe to be in the best interest of Open Source software and should completely ignore the interests of their current employer, if they can not they should not be there.
It helps if the news is kept mild, and safe so as not to offend readers or advertisers.
The news is not being democratised, public opinion is being democratised. The forming of public opinion is being shaped by a much more democratic internet and not necessarily news sites but more by specialist sites that often follow only one topic, be it the slaughter in Iraq, the suppression of freedom in Tibet, election fraud in the US or the extinguishing of the Palestinians by Israel as a range of examples. A huge number of sites, that are in affect serialised news stories, that you can use to monitor a particular situation and watch how it progresses and that you can also compare to the news in mild and brief as presented by more typical news sites.
So the typical news websites have simply become a lead to more specialised news sites that cover a topic in far more detail and over a far longer period.
As for M$'s competitors the longer it takes and the more money M$ blows on the deal the batter off they are and then there is of course the added benefit that all those customers of Yahoo who use them in preference to M$ will immediately switch to another company to get away from M$, added to that staff who will jump to another company rather than waiting to be pushed, as the aggresive anti-customer MSN staff seek to protect their jobs in the merger.
So just like any sane person from a modern free democracy, there is no fear that the autocrats ideals 'won't hold water', there is an absolute certainty that the autocrats ideals 'don't hold water' and the only way they can hold back freedom and democracy is with carefully managed lies and the point of a bayonet.
The current Chinese governments insists it has the right to use military aggression to maintain and obtain dominance over countries based upon the flimsiest of historical ties, so Tibet, Taiwan, and even Korea as well as some other regions suffer under oppression or the threat of future aggression.
That the Olympics should be held in autocratic countries at all, points to that fact that Olympic sized profits and marketing deals take precedence over the ideals and values of amateur athletes from the past. Although it already appears that some athletes are bowing out rather than taking the risk of exposure to carcinogenic pollutants prevalent in the Beijing environment.