That OPINION page (read: the place the papers throw unsubstantiated crap) merely documents unsubstantiated rumors that the Auto Task Force may have played a hand in selecting the dealerships to close. 88%[1] of political contributions by dealerships went to republicans, so if 90% of dealerships closed are republican that isn't a surprise. Sure the method used to select dealerships isn't clear, my guess is that larger dealerships were more likely to be axed (a smaller dealership is more appropriate for a smaller market). The most reliable source in the page is the lawyer for the axed firms, and it's his job to distort the facts to best benefit his clients (that isn't to attack lawyers, it's simply a truth of the profession).
AFAIK The President has no such power over bankruptcy proceedings, and Chrysler is currently in bankruptcy proceedings. Further,I don't see how throwing out the bonds would make it more necessary to close dealerships, in fact, it would make it less necessary (fewer liabilities).
Get a brain, Chrysler is closing down those dealerships as part of its bankruptcy *because it ran its business poorly and is out of money*. It would have run out of money sooner without government bailouts. Unless you can prove that:
1) The government picked the dealerships to be closed AND 2) A disproportionate number of dealerships were republican funders (e.g. how many of ALL Chrysler dealerships donated to the GOP verus number that were closed)
You're just making shit up. You cannot prove #1, so even if #2 is true it's Chrysler's decision, not the Government.
Are you honestly saying that Chrysler should get more government money to save their failing business? Isn't that Socialism?
Yes, anti-SLAPP is part of criminal law I believe.
Copyright infringement is simply not against the law. It may be in contradiction with license of a copyrighted work, but it isn't against the law. Similarly, if my work contract says I must be present during certain hours, and I'm not, I haven't broken the law.
"The murder of a person shall be a felony." (oversimplified, but not by a lot) describes an act and states that it is a crime. "The author has an exclusive right to distribute the work." (again simplified) describes a government-granted right.
In fact, blatant failure to protect the right can lead to its loss by estoppel (sp?).
Of course, I'm not familiar with EU law or member state law in this area. I admit I was speaking from an American POV. However our own media has a tendency to conflate infringement with theft.
The only way you can "fail to abide" by civil law is to file an improper claim, in which case the claim would be rejected by the court. At least, that's the closest I can imagine to "breaking" civil law.
Perhaps you could sue over a copyright you don't really have, in which case the defendant might have the right to countersue. But even then you haven't actually broken a law, you merely created a situation in which the other person has the right to sue you.
There's no such thing as violating civil law. Copyright Law gives the copyright holder the right to sue if someone uses their copyrighted work without permission. It does not state that the act of using a work without permission is in itself a violation.
Civil Law is always stated to give a right to someone, not to deny it to another. The effect of the law may of course be to restrict a right.
Thus, in the absence of a criminal statute, it is disingenuous to say that copyright infringement is "illegal", let alone the mere act of providing a third party access to an electronic file.
I use greasemonkey, and I am an asshole user. It's even possible AdBlock would build a mechanism to automatically bypass any "protection" on the target site. However, I think I made it clear in my post that I could give a damn about those who got in bed with the people that make annoying ads, and that's more or less everyone with ads on their site.
If scripting is disabled, don't show the page at all. Most advertising systems require JavaScript, so if scripting is disabled the viewer can't see the ads. Assuming you only care about browsers that support CSS, you could hide it with CSS and then change the style with JS. If you really want to make sure only "paying" views are accepted, the best I can think of is to require a specific cookie to be sent. If the cookie isn't sent, show a page that says the site "needs advertising" the page would of course have an ad and if the ad is shown it would set the cookie and reload the page using javascript.
They're not modifying the content in any way, as the content is the source of the page, not the display. Rather, AdBlock changes the display of content based on the user's preferences. You are not required to watch TV on a color screen, and you are not required to view web pages with a browser capable of displaying ads. Web browsers apply plenty of rules to display a page, adblock merely extends those rules. It is not illegal at all.
If you want to make sure people are looking at your ads, come up with a mechanism that ensure they are, and make them leave if they aren't. I don't feel like come up with the mechanism now, but it could be as simple as having the JavaScript for the ad set a variable in page. If the variable isn't set when the page finishes loading, redirect them to another page that tells them to go away.
If I opened a page in links or another text-mode browser I wouldn't see ads either, are you saying those browsers are illegal? If a site doesn't want me there because I'm not looking at their ads, fine, I'll leave. The fact is that advertisers are too greedy, with ads that move, some that even play sound. Internet Advertising is killing itself with bullshit like that, and blaming it on AdBlock Plus is ridiculous. People want to be able to browse the web and read without being constantly distracted by a moving ad on the side, and without worrying that their speakers will suddenly start blasting because they navigated to a page that has a jackass advertiser on it.
If your response is "well not all ads do that, AdBlock should only block the bad ones" then consider advertisers brought the block on themselves by allowing those advertisers to exist. If they want to save their industry, they need to stand up and say that obnoxious ads shouldn't exist, and that they won't do business with anyone who displays them. That means that Google shouldn't show ads for a company that also has obnoxious ads (IBM is a good example). Until serious self-regulation occurs, ABP will keep getting more users.
Not to disagree, but do you have a source for ISPs paying on usage not bandwidth? I was under the impression that it was charged based on the amount of bandwidth the ISP used (based on how much they use "most" of the time) and not on the number of gigabytes transferred over a period of time.
Exactly. Here in NY the power delivery company can't own the power plants. I don't see why the cable TV company can own an ISP. It's clearly a detriment to customers, and exactly what the government is supposed to protect us from.
More and more people are becoming "heavy users" blu-ray players that support Netflix, plus the Roku. My parents stream netflix movies all the time. If you're a "light user" then you can get RR Lite, and pay less. Plus, TW can (and does) degrade the service for super-heavy users so that light users still get good service.
44gigs in a month is not going to kill TW's network, they just want to make sure they're the only source of video so they can charge $80/month for it.
People know that an ISP can only do best effort for the advertised speed. If streaming is too slow, they'll stop using it, or use it less often (low reliability = low usage). There's also the fact that both of these services use Akamai. Simple solution, get Akamai to put a server on your (the ISPs) local net, pay them money for it if you have to. Akamai's business is getting data to people fast, if they're not doing it somewhere I would think they would want to fix that.
The simple fact is that TW is trying to protect their Cable TV business by degrading their internet service. For this reason I think the government should get involved and split RR from TWC. Obviously TW's conflict of interest in this area threatens people's access to a service that has become a necessity of modern life (Cable TV still isn't). Letting them arbitrate how much internet access people get is unacceptable.
Charging people for using the internet "too much" is ridiculous. The problem is bandwidth on the pipe, not the number of bits it can handle in a month. Offer them speed tiers, not usage tiers.
Just to note, that doesn't work. I clicked movies, typed "The Simpsons" into the search box and got everything back. However, it seems they finally added a "Power Search" feature that fixes this in the latest update. Of course, I had to install the update twice. The first time, I opened iTunes, clicked "OK" to have it update, unchecked Safari and MobileMe (good to know Apple is still trying to sneak stuff in through "updates"), clicked install. It downloaded, and started installing, then mysteriously went back to the update screen without an error message.
It turns out you need to close iTunes before updating, which they never tell you nor do they attempt to close it for you. The update just fails without error and without updating. Of course, when I restarted iTunes after the first failure it also didn't tell me that it still needed to be updated, I had to check the version number to see that it failed.
Their search function sucks. It has no ability to say "search for The Simpsons in TV Shows" so you get the shows, and the sountracks. If I remember correctly the label for both of them in the results is just "Comedy". I have Windows, I don't use iTunes because I can't watch the videos on my TV and I can't find anything I'm looking for anyway.
Apple takes the whole "the user is stupid give them a simple interface" way too far.
Macs are IBM clones, unless you mean that the last conference you went to had lots of Apple 68k or PowerPC developers, in which case I don't think we care about a conference that happened 10 years ago.
Hint, IBM clones are basically any normal x86 machine. I'll grant you that Macs don't use BIOS, but "IBM Clones" don't necessarily either.
If there is a true majority party, then there is no need for a coalition. A coalition is only needed if no party gains a majority. The advantage to proportional systems is that voting for a third party isn't "throwing your vote away" and therefore the diversity of opinions are more accurately represented.
How about a republic with a proportional allocation system like the rest of the civilized world, rather than the insanity we have here in the U.S.? If you're in the minority vote you still get a minority of parliament, and if you have enough minorities they start to outnumber the "majority".
Sorry for the misprint, that was the amount they spent on maintaining the network exact quote:
"In 2008, TW made $4,159 Million, on high speed data alone, and then had to turn around and spend $146 Million to support the cost of the network. 2008 total profit on high speed data: $4.013 Billion"
Of course there are network costs, but I wonder, how profitable are their Digital Phone and Cable TV services? TW claims that light users are subsidizing the heavy users, what are RR users subsidizing that TW should just get rid of?
Time Warner spent $150 million on network upgrades while receiving $4.1 Billion in revenue from their high speed data services. We're a long, long way off from getting our money's worth on services here in the states.
Slashdot Mirror
That OPINION page (read: the place the papers throw unsubstantiated crap) merely documents unsubstantiated rumors that the Auto Task Force may have played a hand in selecting the dealerships to close. 88%[1] of political contributions by dealerships went to republicans, so if 90% of dealerships closed are republican that isn't a surprise. Sure the method used to select dealerships isn't clear, my guess is that larger dealerships were more likely to be axed (a smaller dealership is more appropriate for a smaller market). The most reliable source in the page is the lawyer for the axed firms, and it's his job to distort the facts to best benefit his clients (that isn't to attack lawyers, it's simply a truth of the profession).
Source[1]: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/news-flash-car-dealers-are-republicans.html
AFAIK The President has no such power over bankruptcy proceedings, and Chrysler is currently in bankruptcy proceedings. Further,I don't see how throwing out the bonds would make it more necessary to close dealerships, in fact, it would make it less necessary (fewer liabilities).
Get a brain, Chrysler is closing down those dealerships as part of its bankruptcy *because it ran its business poorly and is out of money*. It would have run out of money sooner without government bailouts. Unless you can prove that:
1) The government picked the dealerships to be closed
AND
2) A disproportionate number of dealerships were republican funders (e.g. how many of ALL Chrysler dealerships donated to the GOP verus number that were closed)
You're just making shit up. You cannot prove #1, so even if #2 is true it's Chrysler's decision, not the Government.
Are you honestly saying that Chrysler should get more government money to save their failing business? Isn't that Socialism?
Yes, anti-SLAPP is part of criminal law I believe.
Copyright infringement is simply not against the law. It may be in contradiction with license of a copyrighted work, but it isn't against the law. Similarly, if my work contract says I must be present during certain hours, and I'm not, I haven't broken the law.
"The murder of a person shall be a felony." (oversimplified, but not by a lot) describes an act and states that it is a crime.
"The author has an exclusive right to distribute the work." (again simplified) describes a government-granted right.
In fact, blatant failure to protect the right can lead to its loss by estoppel (sp?).
Speeding is a criminal violation, infringing on a patent is not illegal. It is up to the patent holder to enforce his rights.
Of course, I'm not familiar with EU law or member state law in this area. I admit I was speaking from an American POV. However our own media has a tendency to conflate infringement with theft.
The only way you can "fail to abide" by civil law is to file an improper claim, in which case the claim would be rejected by the court. At least, that's the closest I can imagine to "breaking" civil law.
Perhaps you could sue over a copyright you don't really have, in which case the defendant might have the right to countersue. But even then you haven't actually broken a law, you merely created a situation in which the other person has the right to sue you.
There's no such thing as violating civil law. Copyright Law gives the copyright holder the right to sue if someone uses their copyrighted work without permission. It does not state that the act of using a work without permission is in itself a violation.
Civil Law is always stated to give a right to someone, not to deny it to another. The effect of the law may of course be to restrict a right.
Thus, in the absence of a criminal statute, it is disingenuous to say that copyright infringement is "illegal", let alone the mere act of providing a third party access to an electronic file.
I use greasemonkey, and I am an asshole user. It's even possible AdBlock would build a mechanism to automatically bypass any "protection" on the target site. However, I think I made it clear in my post that I could give a damn about those who got in bed with the people that make annoying ads, and that's more or less everyone with ads on their site.
If scripting is disabled, don't show the page at all. Most advertising systems require JavaScript, so if scripting is disabled the viewer can't see the ads. Assuming you only care about browsers that support CSS, you could hide it with CSS and then change the style with JS. If you really want to make sure only "paying" views are accepted, the best I can think of is to require a specific cookie to be sent. If the cookie isn't sent, show a page that says the site "needs advertising" the page would of course have an ad and if the ad is shown it would set the cookie and reload the page using javascript.
They're not modifying the content in any way, as the content is the source of the page, not the display. Rather, AdBlock changes the display of content based on the user's preferences. You are not required to watch TV on a color screen, and you are not required to view web pages with a browser capable of displaying ads. Web browsers apply plenty of rules to display a page, adblock merely extends those rules. It is not illegal at all.
If you want to make sure people are looking at your ads, come up with a mechanism that ensure they are, and make them leave if they aren't. I don't feel like come up with the mechanism now, but it could be as simple as having the JavaScript for the ad set a variable in page. If the variable isn't set when the page finishes loading, redirect them to another page that tells them to go away.
If I opened a page in links or another text-mode browser I wouldn't see ads either, are you saying those browsers are illegal? If a site doesn't want me there because I'm not looking at their ads, fine, I'll leave. The fact is that advertisers are too greedy, with ads that move, some that even play sound. Internet Advertising is killing itself with bullshit like that, and blaming it on AdBlock Plus is ridiculous. People want to be able to browse the web and read without being constantly distracted by a moving ad on the side, and without worrying that their speakers will suddenly start blasting because they navigated to a page that has a jackass advertiser on it.
If your response is "well not all ads do that, AdBlock should only block the bad ones" then consider advertisers brought the block on themselves by allowing those advertisers to exist. If they want to save their industry, they need to stand up and say that obnoxious ads shouldn't exist, and that they won't do business with anyone who displays them. That means that Google shouldn't show ads for a company that also has obnoxious ads (IBM is a good example). Until serious self-regulation occurs, ABP will keep getting more users.
Not to disagree, but do you have a source for ISPs paying on usage not bandwidth? I was under the impression that it was charged based on the amount of bandwidth the ISP used (based on how much they use "most" of the time) and not on the number of gigabytes transferred over a period of time.
Exactly. Here in NY the power delivery company can't own the power plants. I don't see why the cable TV company can own an ISP. It's clearly a detriment to customers, and exactly what the government is supposed to protect us from.
More and more people are becoming "heavy users" blu-ray players that support Netflix, plus the Roku. My parents stream netflix movies all the time. If you're a "light user" then you can get RR Lite, and pay less. Plus, TW can (and does) degrade the service for super-heavy users so that light users still get good service.
44gigs in a month is not going to kill TW's network, they just want to make sure they're the only source of video so they can charge $80/month for it.
People know that an ISP can only do best effort for the advertised speed. If streaming is too slow, they'll stop using it, or use it less often (low reliability = low usage). There's also the fact that both of these services use Akamai. Simple solution, get Akamai to put a server on your (the ISPs) local net, pay them money for it if you have to. Akamai's business is getting data to people fast, if they're not doing it somewhere I would think they would want to fix that.
The simple fact is that TW is trying to protect their Cable TV business by degrading their internet service. For this reason I think the government should get involved and split RR from TWC. Obviously TW's conflict of interest in this area threatens people's access to a service that has become a necessity of modern life (Cable TV still isn't). Letting them arbitrate how much internet access people get is unacceptable.
Charging people for using the internet "too much" is ridiculous. The problem is bandwidth on the pipe, not the number of bits it can handle in a month. Offer them speed tiers, not usage tiers.
Just to note, that doesn't work. I clicked movies, typed "The Simpsons" into the search box and got everything back. However, it seems they finally added a "Power Search" feature that fixes this in the latest update. Of course, I had to install the update twice. The first time, I opened iTunes, clicked "OK" to have it update, unchecked Safari and MobileMe (good to know Apple is still trying to sneak stuff in through "updates"), clicked install. It downloaded, and started installing, then mysteriously went back to the update screen without an error message.
It turns out you need to close iTunes before updating, which they never tell you nor do they attempt to close it for you. The update just fails without error and without updating. Of course, when I restarted iTunes after the first failure it also didn't tell me that it still needed to be updated, I had to check the version number to see that it failed.
Their search function sucks. It has no ability to say "search for The Simpsons in TV Shows" so you get the shows, and the sountracks. If I remember correctly the label for both of them in the results is just "Comedy". I have Windows, I don't use iTunes because I can't watch the videos on my TV and I can't find anything I'm looking for anyway.
Apple takes the whole "the user is stupid give them a simple interface" way too far.
HAHA
Macs are IBM clones, unless you mean that the last conference you went to had lots of Apple 68k or PowerPC developers, in which case I don't think we care about a conference that happened 10 years ago.
Hint, IBM clones are basically any normal x86 machine. I'll grant you that Macs don't use BIOS, but "IBM Clones" don't necessarily either.
I doubt we would have a majority party in the U.S., as it is both our parties just barely manage to get enough for a president.
If there is a true majority party, then there is no need for a coalition. A coalition is only needed if no party gains a majority. The advantage to proportional systems is that voting for a third party isn't "throwing your vote away" and therefore the diversity of opinions are more accurately represented.
How about a republic with a proportional allocation system like the rest of the civilized world, rather than the insanity we have here in the U.S.? If you're in the minority vote you still get a minority of parliament, and if you have enough minorities they start to outnumber the "majority".
However, it does seem unlikely that even a doubling of network costs would bankrupt them, and yet they want to cap usage.
Sorry for the misprint, that was the amount they spent on maintaining the network exact quote:
"In 2008, TW made $4,159 Million, on high speed data alone, and then had to turn around and spend $146 Million to support the cost of the network. 2008 total profit on high speed data: $4.013 Billion"
Of course there are network costs, but I wonder, how profitable are their Digital Phone and Cable TV services? TW claims that light users are subsidizing the heavy users, what are RR users subsidizing that TW should just get rid of?
http://stopthecap.com/2009/04/10/why-is-time-warner-saying-costs-increasing-to-consumers-but-decreasing-to-stockholders/
Time Warner spent $150 million on network upgrades while receiving $4.1 Billion in revenue from their high speed data services. We're a long, long way off from getting our money's worth on services here in the states.