A lot of people are talking about how 65 years seems like a lot. Perhaps, but 250k fine seems low. How much money did he make off his scamming? I got the impression that these types of activities are highly lucrative, so I hope the fines are proportional to his profits. It seems to me I keep hearing stories about companies making money off of some illegal practice, then getting fines that are less than the profit they made. Could that be the case here?
The market should be allowed to solve the Net-neutrality issue This doesn't make sense in two ways:
1) What market is he talking about? Being a broadband provider is a regulated monopoly. There are only two in my area: Comcast cable and Verizon DSL. Nobody else is allowed in now that the telcos don't have to lease their lines.
2) Ironically, net neutrality is what would restore fair competition to the market. Without that, the issue can't solve itself.
I thought this too. But MSI doesn't do what the Linux/BSD packagers do. These packagers work by tracking every single file or update done to the entire system. Then they track dependencies between files and packages. They store all this in a database format, which allows you to ask questions like "what is every package that uses MSVCRT71.DLL? And "what will break if I update package GIF_VIEWER from version 1.0 to version 1.1?" They also manage side-by-side installs, provide a central repository for searching for packages and upgrades, and provide a safe digitally signed repository for applications.
This is one of the killer features of Linux that I miss on Windows. But I suspect it won't work for the same reasons it doesn't work on Linux. It's only useful if 100% of the applications use it. If any one of them doesn't, then the whole system can come crumbling down. But basically, it is a fix to DLL hell, so it can't make things on Windows any worse.
On a note of MSI, MSI may seem to do the above, but it doesn't. It's a packaging format, and it allows for install and rollback much like the Linux packaging systems do. But most of the time it is unrealistic to expect the repair/rollback/uninstall features to actually work. I've worked at a few companies who have made MSIs, and generally you take some other EXE or script-based installer, then you wrap it in an MSI and say you are done. You rarely use the actual MSI features because they are too complicated and the tools don't generall support them. And Windows installs are full of kluges like editing a registry key here, adding a shell extension there, etc. Things generally don't fit into the nicely packaged mentality.
I constantly hear stories about how politicians took money from place A and spent it on place B. I suspect this varies between states, but can someone explain to me how this works? As far as I know, there's no special bank account where money is deposited for each organization: the budget is set by law - so if the law says "$50 goes here and $100 goes here" I don't see how it is possible to take it from any one of those buckets without passing another law that overrides it. Can someone please explain this?
the only thing it possibly does is make Microsoft look silly Except that Microsoft has made press releases about how the deal means that Novell acknowledges that Microsoft has patents on Linux. And guess which company has the bigger spin machine?
I can give multiple examples of this kind of stuff. I know of 2 Dell PC's purchased a year apart, and both of them came with 3 CD burning programs, all of which ran in the background, and none of them worked because they conflicted with each other. So right out of the box you could not burn CDs. That's unacceptable.
But his energy isn't focused. He attacks the wrong targets. He's not starting a PR compaign to make parents aware of ratings. He isn't threatening retailers with boycotts for selling mature games to children. He's suing a company who has no control over the situation, and no legal responsibility. That's not focused energy. It's the kind of random misdirected energy I expect from a crack addict.
This quote has the essence of the biggest problem in the 20th century, boiled down to one simple sentence:
Although my attorney assures me that reselling gift certificates bought from AllOfMP3.com isn't breaking any laws, it isn't worth the possibility of engagement with their legal machine.' I would paraphrase that to:
Although what I am doing is legal, I dare not engage the legal system Which makes justice impossible. No justice, kiss freedom goodbye.
How is this related to this discussion? The post links to a shell script that must be run as administrator. Not something that can be embedded into an OpenOffice Javas plug-in running as non-admin.
in summer because I'm smart and bought a brick house, which stays very comfortable in even the July heat Brick is not a very good insulator. Wood is better. Wood with fiberglass insulation in between is about 10 times better. Or is a brick house good in Arizona because it breathes? I live on the U.S. East Coast, where insulation is the key to a cool summer because you want to keep the humidity out. Maybe the "dry heat" thing out west changes things?
If the bill is vetoed, then can the president claim he really does have this power? What if the bill is repealed?
Creating a bill like this implies that the current practices are legal, and that this law changes that. In the minds of the players, the law actually weakens exactly what they are trying to protect.
I can attest to that. I don't have cable TV, I have NetFlix. It's cheaper and I see more of what I want on the schedule I want. BattleStar Galactica happens to be the series of DVD's I'm receiving.
Software firewalls are a non-sequitor in my opinion. It's really an added layer of obscurity.
If someone installs a firewall and say "please block port 123" I can't help but ask "Why did you open port 123 in the first place, then build a wall in front of it?" The fact that these firewalls exist just shows how stupidly the operating-systems UI is that it is so complicated to determine what apps are listening on the network, and what apps aren't.
Blocking outgoing apps is a completely different issue, and software firewall might make sense for that, if you don't trust the applications on your machine (which is a sad state of affairs anyway)
Nice try, but I don't think so. If this were the case, then copyright, medical privacy laws, laws protecting identity theft, etc. would all be unconstitutional. It just doesn't make sense. They are really grasping for straws.
I'm confused. Are you telling me that they don't sign-off on it? Or are you being sarcastic and telling me that they do sign-off? If so, how does one get to that?
Laws aren't just written on a white board so that anybody who wants to can erase a part and change it. Surely there's some way to track it right...?
...from section 408 of the proposed bill, and it's buried beneath the innocuous headline "Liability Defense." How can a citizen find out who added this clause? As someone pointed out, it is unconstitutional. If a representative puts a blatently unconstitutional paragraph into a law, it should be grounds for immediate removal from office IMHO. (Nevermind the obvious ethical implications) Someone who does that is not qualified for their position, and is not upholding their duty in office. I can't make that happen, but I should at least know who it is, and make others aware.
Hopefully, other countries will start to make DVD drives that can do bit-for-bit reads, and we can use those until the U.S. and friends decide to make that illegal.
Except, that it defeats the purpose. I don't want to download movies over BitTorrent and IRC. I'm not a pirate. I just want to be able to dump my favorite movies onto my own hard drive. And to cut scenes from them for desktop wallpapers. And to do my own voice over when I'm drunk and laugh about it later. And edit the naughty scenes so I can watch it with my younger brother. To do this, I don't need a BitTorrented copy, I need the keys. I need my fair use rights.
So one person cracking it and putting it up on P2P is not functionally the same as everyone being able to read the disk. It doesn't preserve fair use.
It woudl be nice if *nix commands offered standardized extensible input and output formats like what Powershell has with objects. Sysadmins write commands using pipes to connect processes together, then later when you upgrade the OS your scripts break because the format varies ever-so-slightly. Worse yet, without a standard error reporting mechanism nothing ever knows. The script can't tell "file1.txt 12345" from "error! 12345" so it just carries on with invalid data until somebody notices.
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A lot of people are talking about how 65 years seems like a lot. Perhaps, but 250k fine seems low. How much money did he make off his scamming? I got the impression that these types of activities are highly lucrative, so I hope the fines are proportional to his profits. It seems to me I keep hearing stories about companies making money off of some illegal practice, then getting fines that are less than the profit they made. Could that be the case here?
1) What market is he talking about? Being a broadband provider is a regulated monopoly. There are only two in my area: Comcast cable and Verizon DSL. Nobody else is allowed in now that the telcos don't have to lease their lines.
2) Ironically, net neutrality is what would restore fair competition to the market. Without that, the issue can't solve itself.
I thought this too.
But MSI doesn't do what the Linux/BSD packagers do. These packagers work by tracking every single file or update done to the entire system. Then they track dependencies between files and packages. They store all this in a database format, which allows you to ask questions like "what is every package that uses MSVCRT71.DLL? And "what will break if I update package GIF_VIEWER from version 1.0 to version 1.1?" They also manage side-by-side installs, provide a central repository for searching for packages and upgrades, and provide a safe digitally signed repository for applications.
This is one of the killer features of Linux that I miss on Windows. But I suspect it won't work for the same reasons it doesn't work on Linux. It's only useful if 100% of the applications use it. If any one of them doesn't, then the whole system can come crumbling down. But basically, it is a fix to DLL hell, so it can't make things on Windows any worse.
On a note of MSI, MSI may seem to do the above, but it doesn't. It's a packaging format, and it allows for install and rollback much like the Linux packaging systems do. But most of the time it is unrealistic to expect the repair/rollback/uninstall features to actually work. I've worked at a few companies who have made MSIs, and generally you take some other EXE or script-based installer, then you wrap it in an MSI and say you are done. You rarely use the actual MSI features because they are too complicated and the tools don't generall support them. And Windows installs are full of kluges like editing a registry key here, adding a shell extension there, etc. Things generally don't fit into the nicely packaged mentality.
I constantly hear stories about how politicians took money from place A and spent it on place B. I suspect this varies between states, but can someone explain to me how this works? As far as I know, there's no special bank account where money is deposited for each organization: the budget is set by law - so if the law says "$50 goes here and $100 goes here" I don't see how it is possible to take it from any one of those buckets without passing another law that overrides it. Can someone please explain this?
I know 225 ways in which you are incorrect. But it's too difficult to administer the post them all. :-)
I can give multiple examples of this kind of stuff. I know of 2 Dell PC's purchased a year apart, and both of them came with 3 CD burning programs, all of which ran in the background, and none of them worked because they conflicted with each other. So right out of the box you could not burn CDs. That's unacceptable.
But his energy isn't focused. He attacks the wrong targets. He's not starting a PR compaign to make parents aware of ratings. He isn't threatening retailers with boycotts for selling mature games to children. He's suing a company who has no control over the situation, and no legal responsibility. That's not focused energy. It's the kind of random misdirected energy I expect from a crack addict.
How is this related to this discussion? The post links to a shell script that must be run as administrator. Not something that can be embedded into an OpenOffice Javas plug-in running as non-admin.
If the bill is vetoed, then can the president claim he really does have this power? What if the bill is repealed?
Creating a bill like this implies that the current practices are legal, and that this law changes that. In the minds of the players, the law actually weakens exactly what they are trying to protect.
I can attest to that. I don't have cable TV, I have NetFlix. It's cheaper and I see more of what I want on the schedule I want. BattleStar Galactica happens to be the series of DVD's I'm receiving.
If you are rushing, check out the EFF's page on the Real ID act. They have a summary and a sample letter. Join them while you are there!
Software firewalls are a non-sequitor in my opinion. It's really an added layer of obscurity.
If someone installs a firewall and say "please block port 123" I can't help but ask "Why did you open port 123 in the first place, then build a wall in front of it?" The fact that these firewalls exist just shows how stupidly the operating-systems UI is that it is so complicated to determine what apps are listening on the network, and what apps aren't.
Blocking outgoing apps is a completely different issue, and software firewall might make sense for that, if you don't trust the applications on your machine (which is a sad state of affairs anyway)
A young man, armed only with a whip, travels to Dracula's castle to destroy Dracula.
(I love these games. But... they are going to have to embelish a little...)
Nice try, but I don't think so. If this were the case, then copyright, medical privacy laws, laws protecting identity theft, etc. would all be unconstitutional. It just doesn't make sense. They are really grasping for straws.
I'm confused. Are you telling me that they don't sign-off on it? Or are you being sarcastic and telling me that they do sign-off? If so, how does one get to that?
Laws aren't just written on a white board so that anybody who wants to can erase a part and change it. Surely there's some way to track it right...?
...from section 408 of the proposed bill, and it's buried beneath the innocuous headline "Liability Defense." How can a citizen find out who added this clause? As someone pointed out, it is unconstitutional. If a representative puts a blatently unconstitutional paragraph into a law, it should be grounds for immediate removal from office IMHO. (Nevermind the obvious ethical implications) Someone who does that is not qualified for their position, and is not upholding their duty in office. I can't make that happen, but I should at least know who it is, and make others aware.Hopefully, other countries will start to make DVD drives that can do bit-for-bit reads, and we can use those until the U.S. and friends decide to make that illegal.
Except, that it defeats the purpose. I don't want to download movies over BitTorrent and IRC. I'm not a pirate. I just want to be able to dump my favorite movies onto my own hard drive. And to cut scenes from them for desktop wallpapers. And to do my own voice over when I'm drunk and laugh about it later. And edit the naughty scenes so I can watch it with my younger brother. To do this, I don't need a BitTorrented copy, I need the keys. I need my fair use rights.
So one person cracking it and putting it up on P2P is not functionally the same as everyone being able to read the disk. It doesn't preserve fair use.
Can you cite a source for the 80% figure? I've always theorized that end-of-life was expensive, but I never found anything to corroborate it.
It woudl be nice if *nix commands offered standardized extensible input and output formats like what Powershell has with objects. Sysadmins write commands using pipes to connect processes together, then later when you upgrade the OS your scripts break because the format varies ever-so-slightly. Worse yet, without a standard error reporting mechanism nothing ever knows. The script can't tell "file1.txt 12345" from "error! 12345" so it just carries on with invalid data until somebody notices.
Why isn't Microsoft's AJAX.NET reviewed? I figured they would be a major player in this, right?