1. Why locate off-shore when there is plenty of space on land?
2. Who is going to pay the port fees? Not including the tow fees necessary to periodically reposition the vessel.
3. Why take the hit on maintenance? Periodic dry docking, corrosion management, bilge checks...
4. Why pay additional expenses for a vessel agent? (They are NOT cheap).
5. What about mooring? evacuations due to hurricanes? environmental impact (ballast water & bunkering)?
6. Why take the risk associated with being in navigable water (vessel collision, dredging)?
7. Insurance?
8. On the subject of decommissioned cargo ships -- Most cargo ships are decommissioned only after they are in such sad shape that the operators fear that metal fatigue may jeopardize the vessel, or the safety systems have deteriorated to the point that the cost of repairs (to make them pass coast guard inspection) are too high. Why not use deep sea barges like Odysea, Crowley TMT, or Land Bridge uses? Less maintenance, and you won't have to hire three tugs to reposition the damn thing.
Uhhh, no. Most licensing agreements are between two private parties. A large number of licensing agreements specifically prohibit dissemination to the general public.
Well there is public and there is "general public" (grin). I see your point, and sort of agree. What I meant to say was "After all the point of licensing something Creative Commons is to make it available to the public..."
I agree the model release has nothing to do with Creative Commons licensing. I was only addressing the part of your comment regarding the photographer's responsibility in the matter.
I think that, regardless of the media, it is the publisher's responsibility to insure all legal measures are taken when publishing content NOT some third party license organization.
By releasing the photo under CC, the photographer is only addressing the copyright of the photo, not other issues such as the need for a model release. Further, it is the publisher of an image (in this case, Virgin Mobile) who is responsible for making sure there is a model release.
Isn't the photographer a publisher when he (or she) posts the photograph on flicker and makes it public? If so, wouldn't the photographer need to secure a model release prior to posting the photograph? Wouldn't the photographer need a model release before licensing the photograph under the CC? After all the point of licensing something is to make it available to the public...
What has to be remembered is that Google is a business, Red Hat is a business, News Corp is a business too, and yet none of them actively tried to sabotage the OLPC foundation they had contracted to be a part of.
May I point out the obvious?
Google = Internet search engine and advertisement. Gains penetration into new markets at the very beginning of their internet age.
Red Hat = Linux distribution. They too gain penetration into the new market.
News Corp = Content publisher. Ditto.
Out of all your examples, Intel had the least to gain from the OLPC campaign. No brand recognition, no market penetration, nothing...
So I can see why it was best for Intel to leave the party. Why pump money into something that helps AMD, Google, Red Hat, and News Corp when you can offer an alternative product completely in-house?
It is way too rugged by spec than it really needs to be I think (droppable from X meters, waterproof?) (and simultaneously has noncommodity/support issues, which I suppose may be fixed at some point).
Technology aimed at kids needs to be rugged. Never underestimate the damage potential of a 8 year old hyped up on kool-aide.
They can drop it and they can accidently poor liquids on it.
Also the fact that your particular health facility follows very very poor security protocols, does justify your comments about the lack of need for password authentication.
Sorry typo -- should read:
Also the fact that your particular health facility follows very very poor security protocols, does NOT justify your comments about the lack of need for password authentication.
We track the mac address of EEE PCs which connect to the wireless router; that's all the security that seems to matter.
I think you are misunderstanding people's reaction to your lack of security. It's not about enforcing a 1-to-1 bond between machine and computer account via MAC address. It is about authenticating the person who has possession of the EEE PC.
Also the fact that your particular health facility follows very very poor security protocols, does justify your comments about the lack of need for password authentication.
If anything, it makes me worry about how well my medical records are being handle if my hospital outsources their patient record keeping to India.
No need for any useless login, active desktop, active directory etc.
I don't know... I figured having the ability to authenticate the user of the portable device would be a useful thing when it comes to something that would provide access to patient records. I guess India doesn't have those "pesky" privacy laws like the US does.
You missed the point, say you never ever touch a p2p network ever again, what stops the RIAA from posting the latest Britney Spears song, marking it ith YOUR watermark, and then sue you for $100.000.
No his point was if music was reasonably priced and DRM free then there would be little incentive to download music from p2p networks...
Your watermark conspiracy is way out in left field in this discussion. The question I have is why RIAA or anybody else would want to harm a PAYING customer? In addition, why would RIAA want to jeopardize their unique watermarks in order to frame a paying customer? If they got caught doing this, it would cause enough doubt and uncertainty about the watermark's link to the distributer to make it useless in the court of law.
Watermark is a great solution to everyone (except of course the habitual file sharers). We get to do what we want with our copy of a song, except of course giving it away for free, and the music industry can still make revenue from the distribution of the songs.
Of course, if we did have reasonably priced music (still not there yet), watermarked, and DRM free then we would see how healthy the p2p networks remain and if the participants were bullshitting about their intent (you know its not about the free music, its about blah blah blah).
Is (for example) a software algorithm for controlling packet routing really that different than a mechanical device which controls fuel flow in an internal combustion engine? They're both just making logical decisions, even though one is more analogue than the other.
Well actually the router device that uses the algorithm to route the packets would be patentable, not the algorithm itself. Just like you would seek a patent on the mechanical device that controlled fuel flow, not its internal parts.
Why the distinction? The routing algorithm uses logic and math, and these in itself is not patentable.
Don't forget that the patent establishment has invested a huge amount of money and effort, over the last 150+ years, to promote a mythology to support its claims to perpetuate its system of exclusive privileges. The myths are deep and taken as real by many who should be more skeptical. I debunked the main myths on Free Software Magazine.
One of the big old myths is the "inventor" and "invention" myths. In fact, innovation is well understood (since the mid-1800's at least) to be a social effect, driven by market demand for new products and enabled by technological progress. Produce a new material in cheap enough quantities, and dozens of "inventors" will come up with similar new applications for it.
There is little doubt that since "necessity is the mother of invention" several individuals would be working independently to solve the same problem. The "social effect" can be little more than trying to fill a need (or more aptly trying to satisfy demand). If there is demand for a solution, then naturally you would have more than one person looking to meet that demand (and possibly earn a living doing it).
In addition, as the technical aptitude of the populace increases the likelihood that someone would build "a better mousetrap" increases. Taking this into consideration, these social effects could be simply what you would expect statistically given a large enough population.
So the real question becomes, does the likelihood of multiple individuals creating a similar solution to solve a particular problem diminishes the justification of the patent system? No. It simply rewards the first one who created a working solution.
The next question becomes, does the patent system improve society since it rewards the innovator with a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosing the method to how the problem was solved? Yes. Before the patent system, there were secret societies and guilds that kept their monopoly by keeping their methods secret and exerting political pressure within a township. We have the technological savvy today because others are able to learn from these disclosures.
So why is the patent system being attacked? Well on one side you have an overworked and poorly equipped staff of the patent office that must deal with applications written by lawyers that have mastered the art of bullshit. On the other side, you have a generational shift from the "That idea was so simple, I'm surprised that I didn't think of it first" to the "That idea was so simple, it is blatantly obvious and I could have gotten a patent on it earlier if I wanted to." Of course this is a gross simplification of the generational shift, but it does accurately portray the attitude of most of the comments posted here on slashdot.
Is the patent system perfect? Hell no.
The controversy over the patent system has more to do with patentability of software than the existence of the system. So does software algorithms deserve patent protection? No. Does a method of performing something tangible that may include a software component deserve a patent? Maybe. I leave it to the reader to look at the many slashdot discussions that have been made in the past...
Spread spectrum makes radio signals less susceptible to interference, they are not immune.
Agreed. In fact, it's in my parent post (emphasis added).
...In addition, SS devices are not as susceptible to traditional RF interference (thanks to frequency hopping)
I remember attending a symposium in Tampa back in the 90's, and a RF engineer was preaching the gospel of SS. For the most part, everything he talked about (undetectability, robust interference mitigation, increase security) still remain mostly true. Of course, during the symposium, the majority of the SS devices in existence probably were at the demonstration (I'm joking). The catch being that the benefits begin to deteriorate as the number of devices increase within a shrinking RF frequency space. His application did not have the same bandwidth requirements that consumer applications have today.
Here is a test for you. If your wireless network is running fine go try a 2.4GHz cordless phone, it will bring your network to its knees guaranteed (BTW cordless phones use spread spectrum as well).
I must of been luckier than most, because I didn't experience any issues with my cordless phone. Thanks to an electrical storm, I have replaced my phone with a 5 GHz model so I can't test if this is still true.
Spread spectrum on spread spectrum violence, the humanity:)
Humor aside, I agree. Having multiple devices near each other and using SS can't be good. If most consumer devices uses a similar RF chipset because it's cheap and plentiful, we are bound to have collisions.
As I mentioned in my parent post, nothing brings down 2.4 GHz receivers like a cheap and leaky microwave... Brute force eventually wins.
Seriously, anybody that has ever tried to use an analog 2.4Ghz cordless phone near a busy wi-fi network knows that they do cause interference.
To be fair, I didn't say that the signal wasn't detectable only that it didn't (at least shouldn't) cause interference that made another RF device inoperable. I admit that it would be nice to not have to listen to some background noise (which I did mention in my orig post) when using your analog 2.4GHz phone, but such as the life of using an FCC part 15 device in the ISM band...
And you can't fix it either! Access points use a static channelization for their transmission, and controllers/phones use spread spectrum. Why is that bad??
Devices that use spread spectrum do not cause interference. They may add to the signal noise floor of the frequency band in use, but ideally it doesn't adversely affect any other users of the RF space. In addition, SS devices are not as susceptible to traditional RF interference (thanks to frequency hopping). I admit that I am not an RF engineer, and I haven't had to work with it in a long time but I don't think anything has changed in the past decade.
What I have found to be the most likely culprit is the cheap microwave ovens that you can find at retailers like Walmart. They leak 2.4 GHz RF like a sieve. Since there are XBOX 360s nearby, I bet there are more than a few of these low cost microwave ovens nearby too.
I don't assume it's safe. But I don't assume anything is safe. I assume that every machine in my office is going to be stolen tomorrow, and I try to imagine what would be in my report to the state if that were to happen. Is our security airtight? Not by a longshot. Anyone telling you that their security is airtight either works at the Pentagon, or has a dangerously sad understanding of security. (or both) However, I can say that we've used the best technology available and practical to assure that the data on our networks doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
I agree. It's never a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The idea behind encryption is to try to delay the information from being interpreted until after it is no longer valuable.
I know that EBCDIC -> ASCII isn't a big deal to geeks like us, but any person that even knows what those words mean can make more money in the IT industry than stealing car stereos.
You assume the car thief is the same person doing the ID theft. Chances are good that the thief passed the cassette to someone else, and the press unwittingly authenticated the cassette to the potential buyer.
I like your other point, too. There are far more serious breaches being made every day auctioning off equipment at state auctions and on eBay.
Well that wasn't really my point. My point was that a reader for the cassette is not that hard to come by. State governments are always auctioning off excess or out-of-date equipment.
You make some assumptions of the technical abilities of a "common" thief. I remember when there were a rash of credit card number thefts from unscrupulous waiters/waitresses swiping credit cards in a portable card reader and selling the stored numbers on the internet. There a lot of unauthorized cable and satellite viewers who are not in the I.T. business. Let's not forget about the script kiddies!
Besides why can't I.T. professionals be car thieves? They could be recently unemployed from the last round of outsourcing to India.
At any case, it was a very bad thing to have a backup tape in an employee's car. It is also a very bad thing to assume that the cassette tape is safe because it may be obscured.
I know your joking, but 3 million dollars is a significant reduction in launch costs.
The biggest hurdle I experienced in developing a low cost research satellite bus was the "impedance mismatch" between the cost of the satellite and the cost to launch it into orbit. It is almost impossible to sell a satellite that lowered costs by accepting some higher mission risks when you'll have to raise $30 million to put it in orbit. Even dividing this cost through multiple payloads is not always that great a deal since the secondary payloads are subjected to the requirements of the primary payload. This usually means accepting a less-than prime orbit inclination for your intended mission.
Ditto. I also can say yes, yes, and yes. May I add:
First rule I have is that even though I have more than a couple of decades of experience, I am only human and make occasional mistakes. This is why I always have my code reviewed by my colleagues.
Second rule, I have is to not rush the client interview. I lost count on the number of times I witnessed a programmer talk to the client and think he fully understands what is wanted. They must suffer from attention deficit disorder, think the client doesn't know what they want, or worse think they have a better way of doing things and actually believe that the client will fall instantly in love with their "radical" design. Seriously, I seen client interviews last less than 20 minutes. Feature creep and cowboy coding are usually the result of the programmer not understanding the task that the client hired him to do.
Third rule, document the work. Nothing chaps my hide like a programmer who thinks that the more obscured he makes the code the more indispensable he will be. Sadly, they never seem to last past a couple of months and find it hard to get on another project with us...
If I could boil everything down to a single word, it would be RESPECT. Respect your limitations. Respect your client. Respect your colleagues. Respect who may inherit you code.
Well turbines are BIG and tend to be an eye sore for most. They usually are built in groups and cover large distances. I know I can see the ones in New Mexico for miles.
Wind turbines are noisy. Granted some of the newer ones have a noise level right at below 45db, this is louder than the background noise. I find it funny that Wind Turbine supporters compare the noise levels to levels found in urban environments, while completely ignoring that these turbines tend to be located in a more isolated locations (usually around ridges).
Winds are not constant, and we need to make up for it with the number of these turbines at different locations.
Wind turbines are not exactly a migratory bird's best friend. Even though wind turbines are considered clean energy, it does have some environmental impacts.
My point is that wind turbines are not that easy of a way...
Therefore, for most complaints, making a report anonymously is safe regardless of the means used.
Unless the District Attorney really needs your eye witness testimony.
I may be entirely mistaken, but if the DA can force you to testify (using a subpoena) isn't your identity available to the defense attorney regardless how well the criminal is connected?
What, you think it's impossible for "them" to put cameras up near pay phones? In other words, if someone wants to monitor you, it's already a done deal. Don't kid yourself into thinking that someone cannot find out who used a payphone to make a certain call. With enough resources (and I'd bet AT&T and the NSA have it) you cannot be anonymous. Do you really think those payphones at airports aren't monitored closely?
The real question:
Is my using a pay phone really worth the time and expense for At&T or NSA to figure out who I am?
Pay phones make it more expensive for whoever would like to track you, using a cellphone makes it easy and cheap for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. This idea is completely out-of-the-box.
I have questions:
1. Why locate off-shore when there is plenty of space on land?
2. Who is going to pay the port fees? Not including the tow fees necessary to periodically reposition the vessel.
3. Why take the hit on maintenance? Periodic dry docking, corrosion management, bilge checks...
4. Why pay additional expenses for a vessel agent? (They are NOT cheap).
5. What about mooring? evacuations due to hurricanes? environmental impact (ballast water & bunkering)?
6. Why take the risk associated with being in navigable water (vessel collision, dredging)?
7. Insurance?
8. On the subject of decommissioned cargo ships -- Most cargo ships are decommissioned only after they are in such sad shape that the operators fear that metal fatigue may jeopardize the vessel, or the safety systems have deteriorated to the point that the cost of repairs (to make them pass coast guard inspection) are too high. Why not use deep sea barges like Odysea, Crowley TMT, or Land Bridge uses? Less maintenance, and you won't have to hire three tugs to reposition the damn thing.
Just asking...
Well there is public and there is "general public" (grin). I see your point, and sort of agree. What I meant to say was "After all the point of licensing something Creative Commons is to make it available to the public..."
I agree the model release has nothing to do with Creative Commons licensing. I was only addressing the part of your comment regarding the photographer's responsibility in the matter.
I think that, regardless of the media, it is the publisher's responsibility to insure all legal measures are taken when publishing content NOT some third party license organization.
Isn't the photographer a publisher when he (or she) posts the photograph on flicker and makes it public? If so, wouldn't the photographer need to secure a model release prior to posting the photograph? Wouldn't the photographer need a model release before licensing the photograph under the CC? After all the point of licensing something is to make it available to the public...
May I point out the obvious?
Google = Internet search engine and advertisement. Gains penetration into new markets at the very beginning of their internet age.
Red Hat = Linux distribution. They too gain penetration into the new market.
News Corp = Content publisher. Ditto.
Out of all your examples, Intel had the least to gain from the OLPC campaign. No brand recognition, no market penetration, nothing...
So I can see why it was best for Intel to leave the party. Why pump money into something that helps AMD, Google, Red Hat, and News Corp when you can offer an alternative product completely in-house?
Because he enjoys spending the money that MS sends him too much...
Technology aimed at kids needs to be rugged. Never underestimate the damage potential of a 8 year old hyped up on kool-aide.
They can drop it and they can accidently poor liquids on it.
Sorry typo -- should read:
Also the fact that your particular health facility follows very very poor security protocols, does NOT justify your comments about the lack of need for password authentication.
I think you are misunderstanding people's reaction to your lack of security. It's not about enforcing a 1-to-1 bond between machine and computer account via MAC address. It is about authenticating the person who has possession of the EEE PC.
Also the fact that your particular health facility follows very very poor security protocols, does justify your comments about the lack of need for password authentication.
If anything, it makes me worry about how well my medical records are being handle if my hospital outsources their patient record keeping to India.
I don't know... I figured having the ability to authenticate the user of the portable device would be a useful thing when it comes to something that would provide access to patient records. I guess India doesn't have those "pesky" privacy laws like the US does.
No his point was if music was reasonably priced and DRM free then there would be little incentive to download music from p2p networks...
Your watermark conspiracy is way out in left field in this discussion. The question I have is why RIAA or anybody else would want to harm a PAYING customer? In addition, why would RIAA want to jeopardize their unique watermarks in order to frame a paying customer? If they got caught doing this, it would cause enough doubt and uncertainty about the watermark's link to the distributer to make it useless in the court of law.
Watermark is a great solution to everyone (except of course the habitual file sharers). We get to do what we want with our copy of a song, except of course giving it away for free, and the music industry can still make revenue from the distribution of the songs.
Of course, if we did have reasonably priced music (still not there yet), watermarked, and DRM free then we would see how healthy the p2p networks remain and if the participants were bullshitting about their intent (you know its not about the free music, its about blah blah blah).
Well actually the router device that uses the algorithm to route the packets would be patentable, not the algorithm itself. Just like you would seek a patent on the mechanical device that controlled fuel flow, not its internal parts.
Why the distinction? The routing algorithm uses logic and math, and these in itself is not patentable.
There is little doubt that since "necessity is the mother of invention" several individuals would be working independently to solve the same problem. The "social effect" can be little more than trying to fill a need (or more aptly trying to satisfy demand). If there is demand for a solution, then naturally you would have more than one person looking to meet that demand (and possibly earn a living doing it).
In addition, as the technical aptitude of the populace increases the likelihood that someone would build "a better mousetrap" increases. Taking this into consideration, these social effects could be simply what you would expect statistically given a large enough population.
So the real question becomes, does the likelihood of multiple individuals creating a similar solution to solve a particular problem diminishes the justification of the patent system? No. It simply rewards the first one who created a working solution.
The next question becomes, does the patent system improve society since it rewards the innovator with a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosing the method to how the problem was solved? Yes. Before the patent system, there were secret societies and guilds that kept their monopoly by keeping their methods secret and exerting political pressure within a township. We have the technological savvy today because others are able to learn from these disclosures.
So why is the patent system being attacked? Well on one side you have an overworked and poorly equipped staff of the patent office that must deal with applications written by lawyers that have mastered the art of bullshit. On the other side, you have a generational shift from the "That idea was so simple, I'm surprised that I didn't think of it first" to the "That idea was so simple, it is blatantly obvious and I could have gotten a patent on it earlier if I wanted to." Of course this is a gross simplification of the generational shift, but it does accurately portray the attitude of most of the comments posted here on slashdot.
Is the patent system perfect? Hell no.
The controversy over the patent system has more to do with patentability of software than the existence of the system. So does software algorithms deserve patent protection? No. Does a method of performing something tangible that may include a software component deserve a patent? Maybe. I leave it to the reader to look at the many slashdot discussions that have been made in the past...
Agreed. In fact, it's in my parent post (emphasis added).
I remember attending a symposium in Tampa back in the 90's, and a RF engineer was preaching the gospel of SS. For the most part, everything he talked about (undetectability, robust interference mitigation, increase security) still remain mostly true. Of course, during the symposium, the majority of the SS devices in existence probably were at the demonstration (I'm joking). The catch being that the benefits begin to deteriorate as the number of devices increase within a shrinking RF frequency space. His application did not have the same bandwidth requirements that consumer applications have today.
I must of been luckier than most, because I didn't experience any issues with my cordless phone. Thanks to an electrical storm, I have replaced my phone with a 5 GHz model so I can't test if this is still true.
Humor aside, I agree. Having multiple devices near each other and using SS can't be good. If most consumer devices uses a similar RF chipset because it's cheap and plentiful, we are bound to have collisions.
As I mentioned in my parent post, nothing brings down 2.4 GHz receivers like a cheap and leaky microwave... Brute force eventually wins.
To be fair, I didn't say that the signal wasn't detectable only that it didn't (at least shouldn't) cause interference that made another RF device inoperable. I admit that it would be nice to not have to listen to some background noise (which I did mention in my orig post) when using your analog 2.4GHz phone, but such as the life of using an FCC part 15 device in the ISM band...
Devices that use spread spectrum do not cause interference. They may add to the signal noise floor of the frequency band in use, but ideally it doesn't adversely affect any other users of the RF space. In addition, SS devices are not as susceptible to traditional RF interference (thanks to frequency hopping). I admit that I am not an RF engineer, and I haven't had to work with it in a long time but I don't think anything has changed in the past decade.
What I have found to be the most likely culprit is the cheap microwave ovens that you can find at retailers like Walmart. They leak 2.4 GHz RF like a sieve. Since there are XBOX 360s nearby, I bet there are more than a few of these low cost microwave ovens nearby too.
I agree. It's never a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The idea behind encryption is to try to delay the information from being interpreted until after it is no longer valuable.
You assume the car thief is the same person doing the ID theft. Chances are good that the thief passed the cassette to someone else, and the press unwittingly authenticated the cassette to the potential buyer.
Well that wasn't really my point. My point was that a reader for the cassette is not that hard to come by. State governments are always auctioning off excess or out-of-date equipment.
You make some assumptions of the technical abilities of a "common" thief. I remember when there were a rash of credit card number thefts from unscrupulous waiters/waitresses swiping credit cards in a portable card reader and selling the stored numbers on the internet. There a lot of unauthorized cable and satellite viewers who are not in the I.T. business. Let's not forget about the script kiddies!
Besides why can't I.T. professionals be car thieves? They could be recently unemployed from the last round of outsourcing to India.
At any case, it was a very bad thing to have a backup tape in an employee's car. It is also a very bad thing to assume that the cassette tape is safe because it may be obscured.
It's amazing what you can find at state auctions, and maybe even eBay.
My point being don't count on the cassette tape from being completely useless, and EBCDIC to ASCII translation is not that big a deal.
I know your joking, but 3 million dollars is a significant reduction in launch costs.
The biggest hurdle I experienced in developing a low cost research satellite bus was the "impedance mismatch" between the cost of the satellite and the cost to launch it into orbit. It is almost impossible to sell a satellite that lowered costs by accepting some higher mission risks when you'll have to raise $30 million to put it in orbit. Even dividing this cost through multiple payloads is not always that great a deal since the secondary payloads are subjected to the requirements of the primary payload. This usually means accepting a less-than prime orbit inclination for your intended mission.
Ditto. I also can say yes, yes, and yes. May I add:
First rule I have is that even though I have more than a couple of decades of experience, I am only human and make occasional mistakes. This is why I always have my code reviewed by my colleagues.
Second rule, I have is to not rush the client interview. I lost count on the number of times I witnessed a programmer talk to the client and think he fully understands what is wanted. They must suffer from attention deficit disorder, think the client doesn't know what they want, or worse think they have a better way of doing things and actually believe that the client will fall instantly in love with their "radical" design. Seriously, I seen client interviews last less than 20 minutes. Feature creep and cowboy coding are usually the result of the programmer not understanding the task that the client hired him to do.
Third rule, document the work. Nothing chaps my hide like a programmer who thinks that the more obscured he makes the code the more indispensable he will be. Sadly, they never seem to last past a couple of months and find it hard to get on another project with us...
If I could boil everything down to a single word, it would be RESPECT. Respect your limitations. Respect your client. Respect your colleagues. Respect who may inherit you code.
Well turbines are BIG and tend to be an eye sore for most. They usually are built in groups and cover large distances. I know I can see the ones in New Mexico for miles.
Wind turbines are noisy. Granted some of the newer ones have a noise level right at below 45db, this is louder than the background noise. I find it funny that Wind Turbine supporters compare the noise levels to levels found in urban environments, while completely ignoring that these turbines tend to be located in a more isolated locations (usually around ridges).
Winds are not constant, and we need to make up for it with the number of these turbines at different locations.
Wind turbines are not exactly a migratory bird's best friend. Even though wind turbines are considered clean energy, it does have some environmental impacts.
My point is that wind turbines are not that easy of a way...
(I am not a lawyer)
Of course the case isn't about what was intended, it was about what had actually taken place.
Did the CEOs intend to transfer the copyright? Sure.
Did they actually perform the transfer with a specific written document? Evidently not.
The Novel CEO could have intended to sell the copyright, but SCO couldn't cough up the cash.
The Novel CEO could have intended to sell the copyright, but the employees closer to the negotiation decided against it.
Who knows why the terms changed?
Evidently what is known is that SCO couldn't provide written proof of the copyright transfer.
Unless the District Attorney really needs your eye witness testimony.
I may be entirely mistaken, but if the DA can force you to testify (using a subpoena) isn't your identity available to the defense attorney regardless how well the criminal is connected?
The real question:
Is my using a pay phone really worth the time and expense for At&T or NSA to figure out who I am?
Pay phones make it more expensive for whoever would like to track you, using a cellphone makes it easy and cheap for them.