I think this case is a good example of how the digital age is affecting current law. Before coupons printed in the newspaper were impossible for the average citizen to duplicate. Most came with the rule "Limit 2 items per customer" or some such, limiting the company's exposure to loss of revenue. Nowadays, you can print (and in fact are required to print in many cases) your own coupons from the Internet. The real issue here is that the company bringing the claim no doubt has a business relationship with the companies providing the items for sale and they are probably required to limit the number of coupons per customer by the companies that are selling the product (same old requirement to limit loss of revenue). I have to wonder whether the coupons are such a good deal that the limit per customer is really necessary. After all, coupons are just another way to compete with your competitors on price. Truthfully, if your product is already so in demand that giving out coupons would increase sales but reduce revenue (this happens when your existing customers use the coupon on their next purchase) then you wouldn't create the coupon in the first place (your competitors would publish theirs to take some of your business away).
I wouldn't be surprised if they find Vista is spending all its time making sure those precious audio tracks aren't being illegally copied during playback...damn those thieving music lovers...
Not entirely true. It is implied that you can print at least one, else the coupon would not be usable. However, "normal" copyright law would cover the limit of 2 set be the copyright holder. The DMCA becomes involved because they are saying that he violated copyright by bypassing the protection method. So in fact (assuming the DMCA portion is valid) he would be guilty twice. Of course, this also point to the fact that the DMCA is entirely redundant and unnecessary (i.e. not really about copyright), but who's concerned about that...
Interesting thought. If you didn't have any mass then you would be pure energy (discounting the hypothetical possibility of dark matter and dark energy) and therefore could travel as fast as a photon (an energy entity). However, even pure energy doesn't travel faster than light, so I suspect that even of we find a way to have mass act like energy we will still not be able to go faster than light.
As far as I have read (I'm no physics scientist) the only way anything has managed to go faster than light from our perspective is by expanding spacetime itself. So I think that's our best approach to this problem. Learn to warp spacetime by artificially bringing two separate places closer together and then cross the intervening space and voila, faster than light travel in our {3|4|10|11} dimensional universe.
Actually, the speed is about 186,282.397 miles per second in a perfect vacuum (not that anything in this universe is perfect). And it is true that Einstein's theory says it is impossible to travel at the speed of light. If you could just get over that hump, then you could travel as fast as you want by applying a little negative energy. No problem.
In the grand scheme of things, spam doesn't rate very high when compared to a bomb threat. Resource limitations dictate that the FBI concentrate on music downloading, bomb threats, and spam, in that order;)...
You're right, of course. More regulation isn't usually a good idea. What we need is good regulation to replace the bad that we already have. Unfortunately, it is rare that any legislation is rescinded outright. Normally it is revised again and again until we end up with a mess of legislation that contradicts itself. Which, for this topic, means we need to vote with our dollars (the "marketplace will sort it out" mantra) and pay more than lowest cost so that the big players will (hopefully) get the message. Plus, vote against politicians that favor the current state of broadband players. Unfortunately, many politicians simply don't understand the issues (and to be fair have much more important worries to deal with -- and I'm not talking about reelection).
I, for one, would like to see power line based broadband in my area. I would love to test it. At the moment, I live where I can use either DSL or cable for broadband. The problem is they are both expensive, neither works well, and the phone company and cable company (one of each only) do not compete with each other in any meaningful way.
The US broadband definition itself is brain dead. Defining broadband as anything over 200k in one direction is like describing a puddle of water in your driveway as a major inland sea. At best, any given place in the US has two choices for broadband (usually large cities), at worst no choice. Where you have choice, the best price always requires purchasing a bundled deal. Bundling by definition is not optimal for the consumer (less competition between the same service from different vendors and the act of bundling itself raises the entry barrier for smaller players).
No major infrastructure player (i.e. cable TV or phone provider) is required to allow competitors access to their hardware (as is the case for most electricity providers). Phone companies used public funds to build their infrastructure and yet still have NOT delivered on their promises of true broadband they used to secure that funding; now they want to charge their customers AGAIN for that increased bandwidth that we already paid for.
All of these issues and more can be traced back to the corruption in our political system. John Kneuer says that new government regulation would interfere with the marketplace. That is a misdirection. We already have government regulation; the problem is current regulation favors the established players and eliminates competition. In other words, our current regulation ALREADY interferes with the marketplace. What we need is regulation that levels the playing field. And that is what the established players are fighting tooth and nail to stop.
On the other hand, this was not actually paying in advance since he was required to pay by the institute at that point in time. Calling it a "prepayment" does not make it a "payment before services are rendered". If it were then he could choose to pay the $100 at a later time. Or so it seems to me.
Actually, the speed was calculated to be 99.9997% but there was a rounding problem when the report was generated via their new-fangled AI system and the system kept crashing from the unexpected logical impossibility...
I would think that any business which accepts money from a person and then routes their email (that turns out to be spam) around spam filters would be considered a co-spammer. Wonder what the courts would think about that...
Being serious for a moment, there may be a simpler explanation to the reason we see so many planets crossing the star's disk...
Generally, almost everything that spins also wobbles around the axis of spin at least a little bit. All other things being equal, I assume solar systems as a single gravitational whole also wobble (over an extended time frame, no doubt). If so, at any given instant there will be some small percentage of systems where their orbital plane lines up with our line-of-sight in relation to the star in question. Still means there is a lot of planets out there, however.
Also, Stephan202 correctly points out I meant the Drake equation, which attempts to derive the upper bound of intelligent civilizations that could exist (most of us would agree that the lower bound is 1).
Considering the statistically unlikely percentage of planetary orbits that would naturally line up so that the planet would transit its sun from our point of view, planets must be pretty much common as dust. Either that or God was nice enough to line them up so it's easy for us to find them (possible, I hear God is a very nice person)...
The thing is I originally accepted TD Waterhouse's explanation that the email was probably intercepted via some wayspot server forwarding the email as it traveled to my email account. However, the discussion concerning Ameritrade's issues let me reach a much more plausible explanation, that being that the difference was that I started receiving the spam once TD Waterhouse hooked up with Ameritrade. Since Ameritrade account owners are still complaining of the same issues (and I was unaware of the Ameritrade problems before now), I must assume the problem is still around, hence it's time to move the money.
On the other hand, I also use TDWaterhouse and I also always use a unique email address for every system where I have an account, including for TDWaterhouse. And at the same time TDWaterhouse combined with Ameritrade, I started getting pump & dump stock scams sent to my TDWaterhouse email address (which was the same email address I was using before TDWaterhhouse and Ameritrade combined). It seems to me that pretty much confirms that Ameritrade has some kind of ONGOING security problem. And since access to my TDWaterhouse (now TDAmeritrade) account means access to my money, I will be moving my accounts ASAP.
Slashdot Mirror
Try this link for the heat to sound to electricity stuff: http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=053007-1
Plus, there's the guys doing electricity by converting solar heat using sterling engines http://www.stirlingenergy.com/default.asp and the work converting heat into electricity using an intermediate sound conversion step http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/07060 3225026.htm.
1 billion years later...
Someone turn off that damn light!!!
A new source for government conspiracy theories...
I think this case is a good example of how the digital age is affecting current law. Before coupons printed in the newspaper were impossible for the average citizen to duplicate. Most came with the rule "Limit 2 items per customer" or some such, limiting the company's exposure to loss of revenue. Nowadays, you can print (and in fact are required to print in many cases) your own coupons from the Internet. The real issue here is that the company bringing the claim no doubt has a business relationship with the companies providing the items for sale and they are probably required to limit the number of coupons per customer by the companies that are selling the product (same old requirement to limit loss of revenue). I have to wonder whether the coupons are such a good deal that the limit per customer is really necessary. After all, coupons are just another way to compete with your competitors on price. Truthfully, if your product is already so in demand that giving out coupons would increase sales but reduce revenue (this happens when your existing customers use the coupon on their next purchase) then you wouldn't create the coupon in the first place (your competitors would publish theirs to take some of your business away).
I wouldn't be surprised if they find Vista is spending all its time making sure those precious audio tracks aren't being illegally copied during playback...damn those thieving music lovers...
Not entirely true. It is implied that you can print at least one, else the coupon would not be usable. However, "normal" copyright law would cover the limit of 2 set be the copyright holder. The DMCA becomes involved because they are saying that he violated copyright by bypassing the protection method. So in fact (assuming the DMCA portion is valid) he would be guilty twice. Of course, this also point to the fact that the DMCA is entirely redundant and unnecessary (i.e. not really about copyright), but who's concerned about that...
Interesting thought. If you didn't have any mass then you would be pure energy (discounting the hypothetical possibility of dark matter and dark energy) and therefore could travel as fast as a photon (an energy entity). However, even pure energy doesn't travel faster than light, so I suspect that even of we find a way to have mass act like energy we will still not be able to go faster than light.
As far as I have read (I'm no physics scientist) the only way anything has managed to go faster than light from our perspective is by expanding spacetime itself. So I think that's our best approach to this problem. Learn to warp spacetime by artificially bringing two separate places closer together and then cross the intervening space and voila, faster than light travel in our {3|4|10|11} dimensional universe.
As long as we're being technical here...
Actually, the speed is about 186,282.397 miles per second in a perfect vacuum (not that anything in this universe is perfect). And it is true that Einstein's theory says it is impossible to travel at the speed of light. If you could just get over that hump, then you could travel as fast as you want by applying a little negative energy. No problem.
No one is buying Vista anyway.
There will be plenty to see once the image is filled in...
In the grand scheme of things, spam doesn't rate very high when compared to a bomb threat. Resource limitations dictate that the FBI concentrate on music downloading, bomb threats, and spam, in that order ;)...
And in small print at the bottom...God help us all...
You're right, of course. More regulation isn't usually a good idea. What we need is good regulation to replace the bad that we already have. Unfortunately, it is rare that any legislation is rescinded outright. Normally it is revised again and again until we end up with a mess of legislation that contradicts itself. Which, for this topic, means we need to vote with our dollars (the "marketplace will sort it out" mantra) and pay more than lowest cost so that the big players will (hopefully) get the message. Plus, vote against politicians that favor the current state of broadband players. Unfortunately, many politicians simply don't understand the issues (and to be fair have much more important worries to deal with -- and I'm not talking about reelection).
I, for one, would like to see power line based broadband in my area. I would love to test it. At the moment, I live where I can use either DSL or cable for broadband. The problem is they are both expensive, neither works well, and the phone company and cable company (one of each only) do not compete with each other in any meaningful way.
Heh, I like your example. For my own soapbox:
The US broadband marketplace is very much closed.
The US broadband definition itself is brain dead. Defining broadband as anything over 200k in one direction is like describing a puddle of water in your driveway as a major inland sea. At best, any given place in the US has two choices for broadband (usually large cities), at worst no choice. Where you have choice, the best price always requires purchasing a bundled deal. Bundling by definition is not optimal for the consumer (less competition between the same service from different vendors and the act of bundling itself raises the entry barrier for smaller players).
No major infrastructure player (i.e. cable TV or phone provider) is required to allow competitors access to their hardware (as is the case for most electricity providers). Phone companies used public funds to build their infrastructure and yet still have NOT delivered on their promises of true broadband they used to secure that funding; now they want to charge their customers AGAIN for that increased bandwidth that we already paid for.
All of these issues and more can be traced back to the corruption in our political system. John Kneuer says that new government regulation would interfere with the marketplace. That is a misdirection. We already have government regulation; the problem is current regulation favors the established players and eliminates competition. In other words, our current regulation ALREADY interferes with the marketplace. What we need is regulation that levels the playing field. And that is what the established players are fighting tooth and nail to stop.
Ironically, I agree with you.
Oh good grief...655,360 central processing units ought to be enough for anyone.
On the other hand, this was not actually paying in advance since he was required to pay by the institute at that point in time. Calling it a "prepayment" does not make it a "payment before services are rendered". If it were then he could choose to pay the $100 at a later time. Or so it seems to me.
Actually, the speed was calculated to be 99.9997% but there was a rounding problem when the report was generated via their new-fangled AI system and the system kept crashing from the unexpected logical impossibility...
I would think that any business which accepts money from a person and then routes their email (that turns out to be spam) around spam filters would be considered a co-spammer. Wonder what the courts would think about that...
Being serious for a moment, there may be a simpler explanation to the reason we see so many planets crossing the star's disk...
Generally, almost everything that spins also wobbles around the axis of spin at least a little bit. All other things being equal, I assume solar systems as a single gravitational whole also wobble (over an extended time frame, no doubt). If so, at any given instant there will be some small percentage of systems where their orbital plane lines up with our line-of-sight in relation to the star in question. Still means there is a lot of planets out there, however.
Also, Stephan202 correctly points out I meant the Drake equation, which attempts to derive the upper bound of intelligent civilizations that could exist (most of us would agree that the lower bound is 1).
You are correct, my mistake.
Considering the statistically unlikely percentage of planetary orbits that would naturally line up so that the planet would transit its sun from our point of view, planets must be pretty much common as dust. Either that or God was nice enough to line them up so it's easy for us to find them (possible, I hear God is a very nice person)...
The thing is I originally accepted TD Waterhouse's explanation that the email was probably intercepted via some wayspot server forwarding the email as it traveled to my email account. However, the discussion concerning Ameritrade's issues let me reach a much more plausible explanation, that being that the difference was that I started receiving the spam once TD Waterhouse hooked up with Ameritrade. Since Ameritrade account owners are still complaining of the same issues (and I was unaware of the Ameritrade problems before now), I must assume the problem is still around, hence it's time to move the money.
On the other hand, I also use TDWaterhouse and I also always use a unique email address for every system where I have an account, including for TDWaterhouse. And at the same time TDWaterhouse combined with Ameritrade, I started getting pump & dump stock scams sent to my TDWaterhouse email address (which was the same email address I was using before TDWaterhhouse and Ameritrade combined). It seems to me that pretty much confirms that Ameritrade has some kind of ONGOING security problem. And since access to my TDWaterhouse (now TDAmeritrade) account means access to my money, I will be moving my accounts ASAP.