Hmm, let me think... Oh yeah, a system where not a single bank has gone under and the Government has not had to bail out any large corporation. If "backward" is a stable banking system with no recession then I'll be backward:)
BTW, credit cards are not your own money. This seems to be a disturbingly common misconception. Debit cards to access savings are typically "free" at last insofar as the fees are better hidden.
Personal cheques are a purely a cost to the average bank, shuffling paper and checking signatures does not make them scads of cash. They'd dearly love to replace them with credit cards for which they get to charge an annual fee to the card holder, monthly and annual fee plus a percentage commission from the merchant, and any interest accrued by the card holder at the usual inflated rates, and all riding on the back of a process that is essentially automated (reduced staff costs). Even the direct deposit substitute is a good money spinner with limited numbers of "free" transactions per month before fees kick in, and charges for daring to use an ATM. What's not for a bank bean counter to like about this?
I emphasize "try to collect" because it's really difficult and rarely successful unless you're an artist with fame or influence or already enough money to sue when you get ignored.
I find it depressing, but far from surprising, that corporate ethics on the part of player like Discovery Channel are so low that they just completely ignore the source of the material and the dues owed. They'll claim it is too hard to find the composer when all that seems to be required is to ask ASCAP. On the other hand, there's no way they'd ignore an Australian TV station or YouTube airing one of their shows.
"ASCAP collects these royalties for me, and I don't pay for that privilege. They do the work, take a very small percentage, and I get the occasional check." (emphasis mine). So you do pay for it, although granted it is probably far less than the cost of tracking all of that yourself. From the sound of it though, they are not capturing performances in major media channels in the US and not just those on the outskirts of Tromsø, Norway. If you know of particular performances, particularly "hundreds of broadcast performances in 20 years (including a repeated feature on the Discovery Channel)", then why are you not writing directly to the performer and asking for your cut? Do ASCAP as part of their service require you to relinquish the privilege of collecting your own royalties in specific instances?
The issues with composite materials are not with their strength or reliability during normal operation. The issues are predominantly with their failure modes. Much effort goes into detecting cracks and flaws before they become catastrophic. In aluminium spars and panels there are several good ways to detect cracks before their size becomes structurally significant: MK 1 eyeball, xrays, ultrasonics etc. The same tools for large composite structures are less developed in commercial circles, but they will get there. Boeing, and Aérospatiale, are acutely aware of these weakness in inspection ability and have done a lot of work to fill the gaps.
Not getting on an aircraft containing composite structures because of a perceived danger of composites is irrational if you then get in a car and drive home.
Indeed. There's no way I'd get on a modern passenger jet if it were generating thousands of controlled explosions in the engines (or elsewhere for that matter).
Your refusal is well founded. There are many political parties in Australia but, just like the USA, there are only two horses actually in the race to govern the nation: Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party/National Party coalition. Votes for minor parties typically convert to a preference vote for one of the major parties (directly by voter choice, or indirectly). The only place that small parties or independent members hold any direct sway is in the Federal Senate where, by accident and not design, they effectively hold the deciding vote between the major parties.
Spoiling your ballot paper, while legal, is not effective at obtaining change unless everybody did it.
As a general note; it is Australian Labor Party, in another confusing break with Australian English spelling.
I expect that the other companies will not say anything in public that would jeopardise their ability to make a behind-closed-doors accommodation with the litigating party, or with each other to cooperatively fight. Saying "we're not guilty and we'll see you in court" out loud is as good as saying "the other party is full of sh*t" and could possibly taint settlement possibilities (?). If you don't have a counter patent to play whack-a-mole with then it will go to court and be decided by third parties, so what you say is less important.
There's some reliance on honesty... but the automated gates don't open if it doesn't get a good chip read or the face metrics it is expecting: then a Customs officer wanders over. Happened to me the first time, hasn't happened since, and I haven't changed my appearance in between. Perhaps I didn't look rat-arsed enough after arriving back from St Louis via LA so the machinery thought I was suspicious.
The illusory "growth" that comes from a float (should it happen) is all well and good but it is no substitute for an actual product/income stream. Exactly what is Facebook's perpetual and stable income stream? Catering for fads and skimming advertising money off the top is one thing, but lasting more than a while in that line of work with an audience of with a well-formed, fickle throw-away mentality is quite another.
As you can possibly tell, I'm one of those people that really don't see what Facebook offers that is valuable.
If these same results had been printed and stapled together then there'd be no argument at all. The document would be the item described in the warrant and the whole document would be seized and ultimately presented intact in court (becoming a matter of public record). "Why should a digital document be any different?", is what the Govt. seems to be arguing.
Seems there's a bit of a double standard on both sides: the court is ignoring its own precedents in "won't someone think of the children" cases, and the Govt. is toting the equivalence line while actively pursuing ACTA, which is prescribing a massive divide between works in digital form and on paper.
The "way out" if ACTA makes it into US (or Australian in my case) law is to cripple the very economy that the people with their fingers in the ACTA pie are claiming to protect. Don't buy DRM encrusted shite. If the company openly supports ACTA, or is known to have had a hand in writing it, then don't buy their product at all. If they want to bleat about the loss of inflated potential earnings they consider their corporate birth-right then we should cause them some actual losses to teach a lesson through their shareholders. Publish details of every corporate ACTA author, every frivolous law suit, every three-strikes termination, every ludicrous over-reach of reasonable privilege (these are NOT rights, corporate entities and balance sheets are NOT people). They might claim there's no such thing as bad publicity: bollocks. Don't cede fair use (I think there would be a rich vein of parody to be had). Above all, educate the 'sheeple', they can't act on what they don't know (and almost certainly won't be presented to them by the vested interests in the 'media'). If a law is unjust then the people in a democracy have a right to have it changed or overturned and should vote by various means, although I suspect money is the most effective in this case.
If, indeed, US law does not require company directors to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders (rather than their own interest) then it goes a long way to explaining the golden parachute cloud currently hanging over the US. As you point out, "best interest of shareholders" is in the eye of the beholder (shareholder) and does not necessarily equal "maximise profit". However, a director acting in their own interests contrary to those of the company and shareholders probably is lying (perhaps by omission), defrauding and stealing in many people's eyes.
Actually, the states are going after the big guy (Amazon) here. I'm sure they are exploiting every tax reduction facility open to them because it is in the best interest of the company and shareholders... the law requires this of the company directors.
As an outside observer of the US tax system it strikes me that the real culprit here is a completely disjoint and inconsistent system that essentially guarantees non-compliance to some degree on the part on anyone trading cross-border.
It's in the summary, you don't even need to RTFA: "criminal conspiracy, accused of producing false documents and trading records at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York." Fraud is a generally crime. Conspiring to commit a crime is (generally) a crime. Providing deliberately inaccurate documentation to the stock market is almost certainly a crime under various corporate law. Given that their systems almost certainly produced false or deliberately misleading reports to investor and the market, it's certainly reasonable to suspect that these guys knew something of what was going on. They get their day in court and presumption of innocence.
In my experience, IT figures often get an extremely good overview of what exactly is going on with data in an organisation simply because that's essential to performing their job. It will be interesting to watch their defence. I expect that "I don't recall", "I've never seen that", "I plead the Fifth" etc. will take a prominent role
I too understand their reasoning: it's called profit.
They pay substantially less than the ticket price ($560) for the phone. So, when you do a purchase and cancel shuffle, and they pocket $550, they will be making the essentially the same profit as an outright purchase would have given them. They essentially lose their $10 bet that you will stick with the plan fees long enough for them to exceed this profit level (happens pretty quickly I expect). The original $375 probably also made them a small profit, but not as handsome, but was essentially a $185 bet you'd stick around.
Clearly the dynamic has changed a little, with people buying phones like fashion accessories and discarding them for the latest fad, rather than buying a phone for (egads!) making/taking phone calls and sticking to a fixed term contract. Seems that this is the logical result of that. Of course, I have never owned a mobile phone, so I could be talking crap.
OK. <sarcasm>Symantic makes viruses for NAV to have something to detect!</sarcasm>
Your argument is that your company is an MCP because it makes financial sense to be, and that to not sell Microsoft product would be financially difficult. I'm not disagreeing with you, it is precisely my point: Cenzic rides the Microsoft gravy train, and to a degree needs that to survive. They are, to a degree, financially coupled to Microsoft's fortunes which is the question that was posed.
On another note. I'm not ignorant you insensitive clod.
In what way is a Microsoft Certified Partnernot financially tied to the maintenance of the Microsoft ecosystem in the face of encroaching offerings, particularly in the browser space?
A more cynical person might assert that a company peddling security assessment tools for web servers would actively promote less secure server systems that kept them in business. Spreading FUD about a browser is only peripheral to that but it does feed the "non-Microsoft is bad" or "open-source is bad" ethic of senior management and bean counters... keeping major systems on Microsoft platforms and Cenzic in business. As I say though, you'd have to cynical;)
... how precisely do you determine that it is not a GPL violation?
Exactly the same way you determine that your code does not violate a software patent held by any of the big players. You cannot do it with certainty. You do your basic checks and then act in good faith should something be identified.
Cell phone.... what use is a cell phone? There are actually people in the western world who do not own or use a cell phone, myself included. Perhaps I should hand in my Slashdot number and geek card at the door.
It could be English of the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second of Australia or even freakin' Gilbertese for all the good it is going to do the blind people in the museum:)
The sighted people don't need to touch because they can see the exhibit and mostly don;'t need to be told not to touch, and the blind people cannot learn from the sign that they are permitted to touch some exhibits. Still I'm sure everyone feels good about the service they are providing the blind.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, let me think... Oh yeah, a system where not a single bank has gone under and the Government has not had to bail out any large corporation. If "backward" is a stable banking system with no recession then I'll be backward :)
BTW, credit cards are not your own money. This seems to be a disturbingly common misconception. Debit cards to access savings are typically "free" at last insofar as the fees are better hidden.
Personal cheques are a purely a cost to the average bank, shuffling paper and checking signatures does not make them scads of cash. They'd dearly love to replace them with credit cards for which they get to charge an annual fee to the card holder, monthly and annual fee plus a percentage commission from the merchant, and any interest accrued by the card holder at the usual inflated rates, and all riding on the back of a process that is essentially automated (reduced staff costs). Even the direct deposit substitute is a good money spinner with limited numbers of "free" transactions per month before fees kick in, and charges for daring to use an ATM. What's not for a bank bean counter to like about this?
Thanks for the insight.
I find it depressing, but far from surprising, that corporate ethics on the part of player like Discovery Channel are so low that they just completely ignore the source of the material and the dues owed. They'll claim it is too hard to find the composer when all that seems to be required is to ask ASCAP. On the other hand, there's no way they'd ignore an Australian TV station or YouTube airing one of their shows.
"ASCAP collects these royalties for me, and I don't pay for that privilege. They do the work, take a very small percentage, and I get the occasional check." (emphasis mine). So you do pay for it, although granted it is probably far less than the cost of tracking all of that yourself. From the sound of it though, they are not capturing performances in major media channels in the US and not just those on the outskirts of Tromsø, Norway. If you know of particular performances, particularly "hundreds of broadcast performances in 20 years (including a repeated feature on the Discovery Channel)", then why are you not writing directly to the performer and asking for your cut? Do ASCAP as part of their service require you to relinquish the privilege of collecting your own royalties in specific instances?
The issues with composite materials are not with their strength or reliability during normal operation. The issues are predominantly with their failure modes. Much effort goes into detecting cracks and flaws before they become catastrophic. In aluminium spars and panels there are several good ways to detect cracks before their size becomes structurally significant: MK 1 eyeball, xrays, ultrasonics etc. The same tools for large composite structures are less developed in commercial circles, but they will get there. Boeing, and Aérospatiale, are acutely aware of these weakness in inspection ability and have done a lot of work to fill the gaps.
Not getting on an aircraft containing composite structures because of a perceived danger of composites is irrational if you then get in a car and drive home.
Indeed. There's no way I'd get on a modern passenger jet if it were generating thousands of controlled explosions in the engines (or elsewhere for that matter).
Your refusal is well founded. There are many political parties in Australia but, just like the USA, there are only two horses actually in the race to govern the nation: Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party/National Party coalition. Votes for minor parties typically convert to a preference vote for one of the major parties (directly by voter choice, or indirectly). The only place that small parties or independent members hold any direct sway is in the Federal Senate where, by accident and not design, they effectively hold the deciding vote between the major parties.
Spoiling your ballot paper, while legal, is not effective at obtaining change unless everybody did it.
As a general note; it is Australian Labor Party, in another confusing break with Australian English spelling.
I expect that the other companies will not say anything in public that would jeopardise their ability to make a behind-closed-doors accommodation with the litigating party, or with each other to cooperatively fight. Saying "we're not guilty and we'll see you in court" out loud is as good as saying "the other party is full of sh*t" and could possibly taint settlement possibilities (?). If you don't have a counter patent to play whack-a-mole with then it will go to court and be decided by third parties, so what you say is less important.
Thanks ever-so-much much for that piece of doggerel verse :)
There's some reliance on honesty... but the automated gates don't open if it doesn't get a good chip read or the face metrics it is expecting: then a Customs officer wanders over. Happened to me the first time, hasn't happened since, and I haven't changed my appearance in between. Perhaps I didn't look rat-arsed enough after arriving back from St Louis via LA so the machinery thought I was suspicious.
The illusory "growth" that comes from a float (should it happen) is all well and good but it is no substitute for an actual product/income stream. Exactly what is Facebook's perpetual and stable income stream? Catering for fads and skimming advertising money off the top is one thing, but lasting more than a while in that line of work with an audience of with a well-formed, fickle throw-away mentality is quite another.
As you can possibly tell, I'm one of those people that really don't see what Facebook offers that is valuable.
If these same results had been printed and stapled together then there'd be no argument at all. The document would be the item described in the warrant and the whole document would be seized and ultimately presented intact in court (becoming a matter of public record). "Why should a digital document be any different?", is what the Govt. seems to be arguing.
Seems there's a bit of a double standard on both sides: the court is ignoring its own precedents in "won't someone think of the children" cases, and the Govt. is toting the equivalence line while actively pursuing ACTA, which is prescribing a massive divide between works in digital form and on paper.
The "way out" if ACTA makes it into US (or Australian in my case) law is to cripple the very economy that the people with their fingers in the ACTA pie are claiming to protect. Don't buy DRM encrusted shite. If the company openly supports ACTA, or is known to have had a hand in writing it, then don't buy their product at all. If they want to bleat about the loss of inflated potential earnings they consider their corporate birth-right then we should cause them some actual losses to teach a lesson through their shareholders. Publish details of every corporate ACTA author, every frivolous law suit, every three-strikes termination, every ludicrous over-reach of reasonable privilege (these are NOT rights, corporate entities and balance sheets are NOT people). They might claim there's no such thing as bad publicity: bollocks. Don't cede fair use (I think there would be a rich vein of parody to be had). Above all, educate the 'sheeple', they can't act on what they don't know (and almost certainly won't be presented to them by the vested interests in the 'media'). If a law is unjust then the people in a democracy have a right to have it changed or overturned and should vote by various means, although I suspect money is the most effective in this case.
If, indeed, US law does not require company directors to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders (rather than their own interest) then it goes a long way to explaining the golden parachute cloud currently hanging over the US. As you point out, "best interest of shareholders" is in the eye of the beholder (shareholder) and does not necessarily equal "maximise profit". However, a director acting in their own interests contrary to those of the company and shareholders probably is lying (perhaps by omission), defrauding and stealing in many people's eyes.
Actually, the states are going after the big guy (Amazon) here. I'm sure they are exploiting every tax reduction facility open to them because it is in the best interest of the company and shareholders... the law requires this of the company directors.
As an outside observer of the US tax system it strikes me that the real culprit here is a completely disjoint and inconsistent system that essentially guarantees non-compliance to some degree on the part on anyone trading cross-border.
It's in the summary, you don't even need to RTFA: "criminal conspiracy, accused of producing false documents and trading records at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York." Fraud is a generally crime. Conspiring to commit a crime is (generally) a crime. Providing deliberately inaccurate documentation to the stock market is almost certainly a crime under various corporate law. Given that their systems almost certainly produced false or deliberately misleading reports to investor and the market, it's certainly reasonable to suspect that these guys knew something of what was going on. They get their day in court and presumption of innocence.
In my experience, IT figures often get an extremely good overview of what exactly is going on with data in an organisation simply because that's essential to performing their job. It will be interesting to watch their defence. I expect that "I don't recall", "I've never seen that", "I plead the Fifth" etc. will take a prominent role
Defined only for all << World population
HMAS Onslow at Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney. Mind your head.
You can also inspect (but not climb over) the composite remains of a pair of Japanese midget submarines trapped in Sydney Harbour at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
It's a shame that AE2 (more AE2) is too hard to retrieve from the Sea of Marmara because it would be an interesting comparison.
I too understand their reasoning: it's called profit.
They pay substantially less than the ticket price ($560) for the phone. So, when you do a purchase and cancel shuffle, and they pocket $550, they will be making the essentially the same profit as an outright purchase would have given them. They essentially lose their $10 bet that you will stick with the plan fees long enough for them to exceed this profit level (happens pretty quickly I expect). The original $375 probably also made them a small profit, but not as handsome, but was essentially a $185 bet you'd stick around.
Clearly the dynamic has changed a little, with people buying phones like fashion accessories and discarding them for the latest fad, rather than buying a phone for (egads!) making/taking phone calls and sticking to a fixed term contract. Seems that this is the logical result of that. Of course, I have never owned a mobile phone, so I could be talking crap.
OK. <sarcasm>Symantic makes viruses for NAV to have something to detect!</sarcasm>
Your argument is that your company is an MCP because it makes financial sense to be, and that to not sell Microsoft product would be financially difficult. I'm not disagreeing with you, it is precisely my point: Cenzic rides the Microsoft gravy train, and to a degree needs that to survive. They are, to a degree, financially coupled to Microsoft's fortunes which is the question that was posed.
On another note. I'm not ignorant you insensitive clod.
In what way is a Microsoft Certified Partner not financially tied to the maintenance of the Microsoft ecosystem in the face of encroaching offerings, particularly in the browser space?
A more cynical person might assert that a company peddling security assessment tools for web servers would actively promote less secure server systems that kept them in business. Spreading FUD about a browser is only peripheral to that but it does feed the "non-Microsoft is bad" or "open-source is bad" ethic of senior management and bean counters... keeping major systems on Microsoft platforms and Cenzic in business. As I say though, you'd have to cynical ;)
Exactly the same way you determine that your code does not violate a software patent held by any of the big players. You cannot do it with certainty. You do your basic checks and then act in good faith should something be identified.
Cell phone.... what use is a cell phone? There are actually people in the western world who do not own or use a cell phone, myself included. Perhaps I should hand in my Slashdot number and geek card at the door.
Now that's caveman!
It could be English of the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second of Australia or even freakin' Gilbertese for all the good it is going to do the blind people in the museum :)
The sighted people don't need to touch because they can see the exhibit and mostly don;'t need to be told not to touch, and the blind people cannot learn from the sign that they are permitted to touch some exhibits. Still I'm sure everyone feels good about the service they are providing the blind.
I hope that sign is in Braille !