You actually have an SLA...chances are GP doesn't, like most of us residential customers. There's nothing we can point to contractually that will (should?) make them jump and fix the problem now. Personally, I want to pay Comcast as little as possible per month. In general they don't try to go the extra mile for me, so I don't place a premium on their service.
The time they scan it in is beside the point. (In fact there was an investigation into our branch office for doing just that -- scanning mail as delivered without actually delivering it or scanning as delivered prior to actual delivery.) The problem is that employees, contracted or federal, can steal any mailpiece except for registered mail and possibly get away with it because of how many hands it can change between scans. When every change of hands requires a physical record and signature, which only happens with reg mail, it's impossible to game the system -- USPS points the finger at the last employee who signed for the mailpiece. And yes, I've had to track down seemingly lost registered mail by calling each office where the piece stopped, inquiring based on lock and seal numbers kept in paper records. That's why I argue registered mail just doesn't get lost; no one wants a lost mailpiece pinned on them.
Express Mail gets lost. Trust me, I've had it happen once or twice in my two years' work at a contract postal unit (meaning I work for a business which runs a USPS-funded post office) because EMS is just like any other of the "usual" services - Delivery/Signature Confirmation, Certified Mail, Insured Mail. These barcoded services are traceable, but only at certain points, and in some cases (e.g. DC and Certified) USPS only guarantees you'll get a delivery scan; intermediate scans are basically a "courtesy" to the customer. The only advantage of EMS is it includes $100 of insurance and it's scanned in at every stopping point.
If you really don't want something to get lost, send it Registered Mail. Registered stuff doesn't get lost; it's someone's job, because they can literally narrow it down to one employee who last had the item in their possession. Every employee who takes a registered item into possession has to sign for it, so there's a traceable system of receipts linking an item to an employee from acceptance to delivery.
If you mean refuse SMS messages on a selective basis, no. But Sprint will block SMS messages entirely if you call customer service, you just have to yell at them for a while before they get the point.
I'm sure they have a way of putting a block on a particular service -- I've been with Cingular (before the AT&T merge) and Sprint and both of them can block SMS, you just have to call and push the CSR to do it. And if they tell you they can't, ask for next-tier support. If they tell you no, threaten to take the matter up with your state's AG and the FCC. That usually gets a quick response. (If Sprint can do it, and their customer service is quite possibly the worst I've ever encountered, then T-Mobile can do it.)
last time i checked, the replacement for the shuttle is a step back to the Apollo style capsule.
My understanding is that the implied "step forward" called the Space Shuttle prevented manned exploration outside Earth's orbit. If you're so much in favor of manned space exploration, why are you bashing our best, most viable method to reach the Moon or Mars?
1. You propose using a 1D barcode along the side to "encode" the selection(s). It deliberately contains the minimal amount of data necessary to record the vote at the time of counting. Yet the barcode contains data that links it to a session on the voting machine, so that the printed ballot can be linked to a physical use at the machine. How do you obfuscate the session so you can't connect a particular voter to the vote, and how do you prevent someone from creating a lot of sessions and generating multiple receipts, i.e. stuffing the box?
(I did think of one possible solution for #1 but you introduce additional hardware into the system. Right now the touchscreen voting systems I've used, someone hands you a smart card, you put it in the system, it keeps the card locked in until it's recorded whatever you've entered, and then you hand it back to the election official. You could do the same thing, except the card is merely an "access card," rather than a "vote-recording card.")
2. Continuing with the barcode, how do you encode a short-enough code that still permits write-in candidates? Obviously you can't use a barcode format like [session-number]-[candidate-number] if you provide a "Write-in" option.
If you have a "corporate" build of WinXP (e.g. 2600) it doesn't require activation. Retail builds do, and even "OEM"-style software I've downloaded through MSDNAA requires activation. Otherwise in 30 days, poof, your access to the OS is limited.
WGA will just lock you out of updates should your software, OS or otherwise, be "not genuine." I don't think anyone's had WGA disable the software yet.
My local paper had the audacity to run a front-page article and not just use Wikipedia as a source about some type of illegal substance, but included the phrase "according to Wikipedia." Instead of asking the local police "Can you define what $illegal_substance is?" they went to #*@&ing Wikipedia. The lot of 'em need to be fired, reporters and editors.
I know the newspaper industry isn't exactly thriving, and cable and Internet news are pushing the papers to get content out quicker and not devote as long to a story, but any paper that cites Wikipedia as a source deserves to go bankrupt. If they don't do proper vetting and fact-checking, they should be ashamed to call themselves a newspaper -- they're a #*@^ing tabloid, nothing more.
Parent's point is that you can take any NIB Mac and triple boot, no questions asked, no software hacks, no checking to make sure the machine has the necessary specs. Try installing OS X on non-Apple hardware with a vanilla image (it won't work) or installing OS X on a low-end Dell (it'll cry in the corner, assuming Installer even boots). I've also yet to see a copy of OS X threaten to disable itself in 30 days if it doesn't phone home and tie itself to my hardware profile (an "activation code").
FWIW, I do have a copy of OS X working in VM to play around with, and I used to dual-boot it on my desktop. I could never get full graphics acceleration on either copy.
Slashvertisement it may be, but it shows just how far some people in the U.S. have to go to get even semi-high-speed networks where they live despite the countless dollars in subsidies given to the telcos for improving network access across the country. Obviously AT&T, Verizon et al. have done so much with the help of subsidies that financiers are trampling each other like gold miners to get in on the Vermont market.
The argument is about whether first sale doctrine applies to unsolicited product, not products you pay for. Presumably UMD claims that the sticker is a contract, and that UMD can enforce this contract the second it arrives (presumably unsolicited) into a person's mailbox.
IANAL, and I don't know what precedents exist for first sale doctrine and software delivered on a physical medium, but what you're bringing up is a different issue.
I think it's been reported a number of times that so-called "reputable sellers" on eBay (meaning one with a high-count, high-quality feedback count) have had their account jacked by a scammer who put up fake auctions to funnel money their way before the account gets locked out. If that's true, then you can't necessarily blame the buyer.
(FWIW, I've never been scammed by eBay, and the only problem I've had was a reseller who took the "as-is" approach on a refurbished monitor that died two days after I got it, without specifying in the auction that it was as-is.)
But the government doesn't use VHS tapes to disseminate public information (as previously mentioned, Presidential debates et al.) and emergency information, it uses the airwaves of radio and television -- the public schools always say "during inclement weather, visit our website or tune to a radio or TV station for delays and closings information," and weather watches, warnings, and EAS notifications are disseminated primarily through radio and TV. Given that the government is breaking one of those primary vectors of information and profiting from it, it only makes sense for the government to spend some of those profits to ensure that everyone who currently uses it will still have access to it after February 2009.
At my high school your course grade was on a 5.0 scale instead of a 4.0 if you passed the exam (a 3+ on AP, or 4+ on IB). I think our valedictorian graduated with something like a 4.8 overall GPA -- nearly all of her junior and senior classes were on the 5.0 scale.
And IB (International Baccalaureate - http://www.ibo.org/) is the same way, but while it has smaller "market share" of "advanced" courses, from what I know it's growing at a faster clip than AP in schools. Besides certificates in particular courses/subjects, there is also a diploma programme: complete a four-year set of Pre-IB and IB courses and you graduate HS with this magical Diploma that makes college easier. I had friends that graduated with an IB diploma and depending on which college they went to, they got anywhere from two years of courses waived to only getting courses waived that paired with HL-level (similar to AP's AB level) exams. Plus the school had to pay a full-time coordinator for the program, plus the money, time and effort into the certification process, and arranging transport for students outside that school's district. After going through the programme myself, I'm not sure it's really worth it for the students or the taxpayers (since the schools usually pick up the cost of the exams and teacher/course certifications).
Sure, you'll learn valuable material and occasionally come across great teachers who have a passion for their course, but more often than not these courses and programs do nothing more than put an enormous amount of stress on high-school students and give them the illusion that they're not only preparing themselves for college but earning college credit early. I started the IB program my freshman year in high school and ultimately ended up only doing an IB cert in Latin IV (so I'm disappointed to see Latin literature go away, as well) and an AP Comparative History course, the latter of which actually earned me college credit (that I couldn't use). It's a decent program if you're looking for more advanced classes, but I've seen too many people go into those courses thinking they'll be ahead in college by taking the exams.
But then again, after the SAT grading fiasco a few years back (the abnormally low scores from damaged answer sheets), one has to wonder just how big of a profit margin the College Board is actually running.
So far, no issues except for the guy who rebuilt his machine and didn't put on any virus protection. We got hit by a nasty virus that infected a bunch of servers for about a day.
And this is why the question "Should IT shops let users manage their own PCs?" cannot be answered without taking the network security policy into account (which is by definition out of the question's scope) unless their PC will not be connected to a network. You shouldn't even be thinking about allowing personal machines on the network without a way to block them (e.g. port, MAC address) should they start spewing crap on the wire. Making the user's problems his or her own is easy, but it becomes your problem if the user steps on the toes of other people and things.
Since the fundamental problem seems to deal with license issues, potential installation of adware/malware/spyware, and other beyond-recognition system mucking -- can the user be trusted? -- the question should be defined as "Given adequate network security policies, should IT shops let users manage their own PCs?"
They're still used in new configurations too (not just legacy software). At work we still roll out Crestron A/V consoles using RS232 to send commands between touch-screen interfaces and the switching equipment. The Crestron code is fairly new, too, and by no means not legacy software. For simple back-and-forth control commands, I don't know why you'd replace RS232.
Except in many parts of the U.S. you cannot switch because of a monopoly (no one else offers cable service), technical limitation (cable available but too far away for DSL), or lack of comparable service from competitors (e.g. Verizon 512/256 @ $29.99/mo, or Speakeasy 384/128 @ $99.99/mo).
Apple by no means holds a monopoly on the smartphone market. It's obvious that the technical limitations imposed by Apple can be worked around -- it doesn't take long for someone to jailbreak the iPhone after an update. And while I don't know of a product with features similar to the iPhone, there are lots of smartphones out there that do pretty much everything the iPhone does except visual voicemail and a touch-sensitive UI. Plus, a lot of smartphones I see in the stores don't have the iPhone's price tag, and some can even do 3G.
Let's try that argument out again, with a small difference:
Since the original OTA television show is FREE and the copied television show is FREE nobody is losing or gaining here so I don't see a big problem with it.
Let's say the original show is "Firefly." I create a work called "CowboyNeal in Space." I shoot some of my own scenes with their own dialogue and characters, but for the most part "CowboyNeal in Space" still uses scenes, music, dialog, CG from "Firefly." Some of those copied scenes reference things that don't even exist based on the "CowboyNeal in Space" scenes (e.g. referring to the captain as "Malcolm Reynolds" instead of "CowboyNeal").
Am I gonna get the living #$*% sued out of me if I upload it to Youtube? Faster than Mal can say "shiny." I've done exactly what the website has done - taken an original work, tweaked a few things to make it fit my needs, forgotten to tweak some things causing continuity reasons (the presence of snow and ice cubes), and posted it.
The fact that "Firefly" was free to watch (when it did air on Fox; obviously watching it on DVD or Sci-Fi Channel meant you had to pay for them) doesn't mean it's okay to copy it. The value of the asset has nothing to do with whether it's protected by copyright. If you put it in the public domain and waive all copyright protection, it's free game. If you use a very small portion for limited academic purposes (or other fair use purposes), you shouldn't be sued, but it depends on the amount of the original work used and in what context. But free != public domain. Unfortunately the internets propagate this myth.
You'll know the IP lawyers are desperate when one of them brings a copyright infringement suit against someone for uploading/distributing John Cage's 4' 33".
Those of us with limited bandwidth on our Linux servers and developing PHP on Windows workstations use something like PHPEclipse with XAMPP and test locally first, then upload to the remote server and do final testing and tweaking from there.
Slashdot Mirror
You actually have an SLA...chances are GP doesn't, like most of us residential customers. There's nothing we can point to contractually that will (should?) make them jump and fix the problem now. Personally, I want to pay Comcast as little as possible per month. In general they don't try to go the extra mile for me, so I don't place a premium on their service.
The time they scan it in is beside the point. (In fact there was an investigation into our branch office for doing just that -- scanning mail as delivered without actually delivering it or scanning as delivered prior to actual delivery.) The problem is that employees, contracted or federal, can steal any mailpiece except for registered mail and possibly get away with it because of how many hands it can change between scans. When every change of hands requires a physical record and signature, which only happens with reg mail, it's impossible to game the system -- USPS points the finger at the last employee who signed for the mailpiece. And yes, I've had to track down seemingly lost registered mail by calling each office where the piece stopped, inquiring based on lock and seal numbers kept in paper records. That's why I argue registered mail just doesn't get lost; no one wants a lost mailpiece pinned on them.
IAACPRC (contract postal retail clerk)
Express Mail gets lost. Trust me, I've had it happen once or twice in my two years' work at a contract postal unit (meaning I work for a business which runs a USPS-funded post office) because EMS is just like any other of the "usual" services - Delivery/Signature Confirmation, Certified Mail, Insured Mail. These barcoded services are traceable, but only at certain points, and in some cases (e.g. DC and Certified) USPS only guarantees you'll get a delivery scan; intermediate scans are basically a "courtesy" to the customer. The only advantage of EMS is it includes $100 of insurance and it's scanned in at every stopping point.
If you really don't want something to get lost, send it Registered Mail. Registered stuff doesn't get lost; it's someone's job, because they can literally narrow it down to one employee who last had the item in their possession. Every employee who takes a registered item into possession has to sign for it, so there's a traceable system of receipts linking an item to an employee from acceptance to delivery.
If you mean refuse SMS messages on a selective basis, no. But Sprint will block SMS messages entirely if you call customer service, you just have to yell at them for a while before they get the point.
I'm sure they have a way of putting a block on a particular service -- I've been with Cingular (before the AT&T merge) and Sprint and both of them can block SMS, you just have to call and push the CSR to do it. And if they tell you they can't, ask for next-tier support. If they tell you no, threaten to take the matter up with your state's AG and the FCC. That usually gets a quick response. (If Sprint can do it, and their customer service is quite possibly the worst I've ever encountered, then T-Mobile can do it.)
My understanding is that the implied "step forward" called the Space Shuttle prevented manned exploration outside Earth's orbit. If you're so much in favor of manned space exploration, why are you bashing our best, most viable method to reach the Moon or Mars?
"Commentator" (in the submitter's context) refers to the author of the article at p2pnews making a comment on the ruling.
Definition of "commentator" as found by Google
Definition of "commentor" as found by Google
"Commentator" == Princeton definition
"Commentor" == not a word (also consulted OED, no hits)
Two questions:
1. You propose using a 1D barcode along the side to "encode" the selection(s). It deliberately contains the minimal amount of data necessary to record the vote at the time of counting. Yet the barcode contains data that links it to a session on the voting machine, so that the printed ballot can be linked to a physical use at the machine. How do you obfuscate the session so you can't connect a particular voter to the vote, and how do you prevent someone from creating a lot of sessions and generating multiple receipts, i.e. stuffing the box?
(I did think of one possible solution for #1 but you introduce additional hardware into the system. Right now the touchscreen voting systems I've used, someone hands you a smart card, you put it in the system, it keeps the card locked in until it's recorded whatever you've entered, and then you hand it back to the election official. You could do the same thing, except the card is merely an "access card," rather than a "vote-recording card.")
2. Continuing with the barcode, how do you encode a short-enough code that still permits write-in candidates? Obviously you can't use a barcode format like [session-number]-[candidate-number] if you provide a "Write-in" option.
If you have a "corporate" build of WinXP (e.g. 2600) it doesn't require activation. Retail builds do, and even "OEM"-style software I've downloaded through MSDNAA requires activation. Otherwise in 30 days, poof, your access to the OS is limited.
WGA will just lock you out of updates should your software, OS or otherwise, be "not genuine." I don't think anyone's had WGA disable the software yet.
My local paper had the audacity to run a front-page article and not just use Wikipedia as a source about some type of illegal substance, but included the phrase "according to Wikipedia." Instead of asking the local police "Can you define what $illegal_substance is?" they went to #*@&ing Wikipedia. The lot of 'em need to be fired, reporters and editors.
I know the newspaper industry isn't exactly thriving, and cable and Internet news are pushing the papers to get content out quicker and not devote as long to a story, but any paper that cites Wikipedia as a source deserves to go bankrupt. If they don't do proper vetting and fact-checking, they should be ashamed to call themselves a newspaper -- they're a #*@^ing tabloid, nothing more.
Parent's point is that you can take any NIB Mac and triple boot, no questions asked, no software hacks, no checking to make sure the machine has the necessary specs. Try installing OS X on non-Apple hardware with a vanilla image (it won't work) or installing OS X on a low-end Dell (it'll cry in the corner, assuming Installer even boots). I've also yet to see a copy of OS X threaten to disable itself in 30 days if it doesn't phone home and tie itself to my hardware profile (an "activation code").
FWIW, I do have a copy of OS X working in VM to play around with, and I used to dual-boot it on my desktop. I could never get full graphics acceleration on either copy.
What about CDs that are no longer in print (and impossible to find second-hand), or hard-to-find DVDs that are encoded for a region other than yours?
Slashvertisement it may be, but it shows just how far some people in the U.S. have to go to get even semi-high-speed networks where they live despite the countless dollars in subsidies given to the telcos for improving network access across the country. Obviously AT&T, Verizon et al. have done so much with the help of subsidies that financiers are trampling each other like gold miners to get in on the Vermont market.
The argument is about whether first sale doctrine applies to unsolicited product, not products you pay for. Presumably UMD claims that the sticker is a contract, and that UMD can enforce this contract the second it arrives (presumably unsolicited) into a person's mailbox.
IANAL, and I don't know what precedents exist for first sale doctrine and software delivered on a physical medium, but what you're bringing up is a different issue.
I think it's been reported a number of times that so-called "reputable sellers" on eBay (meaning one with a high-count, high-quality feedback count) have had their account jacked by a scammer who put up fake auctions to funnel money their way before the account gets locked out. If that's true, then you can't necessarily blame the buyer.
(FWIW, I've never been scammed by eBay, and the only problem I've had was a reseller who took the "as-is" approach on a refurbished monitor that died two days after I got it, without specifying in the auction that it was as-is.)
But the government doesn't use VHS tapes to disseminate public information (as previously mentioned, Presidential debates et al.) and emergency information, it uses the airwaves of radio and television -- the public schools always say "during inclement weather, visit our website or tune to a radio or TV station for delays and closings information," and weather watches, warnings, and EAS notifications are disseminated primarily through radio and TV. Given that the government is breaking one of those primary vectors of information and profiting from it, it only makes sense for the government to spend some of those profits to ensure that everyone who currently uses it will still have access to it after February 2009.
At my high school your course grade was on a 5.0 scale instead of a 4.0 if you passed the exam (a 3+ on AP, or 4+ on IB). I think our valedictorian graduated with something like a 4.8 overall GPA -- nearly all of her junior and senior classes were on the 5.0 scale.
And IB (International Baccalaureate - http://www.ibo.org/) is the same way, but while it has smaller "market share" of "advanced" courses, from what I know it's growing at a faster clip than AP in schools. Besides certificates in particular courses/subjects, there is also a diploma programme: complete a four-year set of Pre-IB and IB courses and you graduate HS with this magical Diploma that makes college easier. I had friends that graduated with an IB diploma and depending on which college they went to, they got anywhere from two years of courses waived to only getting courses waived that paired with HL-level (similar to AP's AB level) exams. Plus the school had to pay a full-time coordinator for the program, plus the money, time and effort into the certification process, and arranging transport for students outside that school's district. After going through the programme myself, I'm not sure it's really worth it for the students or the taxpayers (since the schools usually pick up the cost of the exams and teacher/course certifications).
Sure, you'll learn valuable material and occasionally come across great teachers who have a passion for their course, but more often than not these courses and programs do nothing more than put an enormous amount of stress on high-school students and give them the illusion that they're not only preparing themselves for college but earning college credit early. I started the IB program my freshman year in high school and ultimately ended up only doing an IB cert in Latin IV (so I'm disappointed to see Latin literature go away, as well) and an AP Comparative History course, the latter of which actually earned me college credit (that I couldn't use). It's a decent program if you're looking for more advanced classes, but I've seen too many people go into those courses thinking they'll be ahead in college by taking the exams.
But then again, after the SAT grading fiasco a few years back (the abnormally low scores from damaged answer sheets), one has to wonder just how big of a profit margin the College Board is actually running.
And this is why the question "Should IT shops let users manage their own PCs?" cannot be answered without taking the network security policy into account (which is by definition out of the question's scope) unless their PC will not be connected to a network. You shouldn't even be thinking about allowing personal machines on the network without a way to block them (e.g. port, MAC address) should they start spewing crap on the wire. Making the user's problems his or her own is easy, but it becomes your problem if the user steps on the toes of other people and things.
Since the fundamental problem seems to deal with license issues, potential installation of adware/malware/spyware, and other beyond-recognition system mucking -- can the user be trusted? -- the question should be defined as "Given adequate network security policies, should IT shops let users manage their own PCs?"
They're still used in new configurations too (not just legacy software). At work we still roll out Crestron A/V consoles using RS232 to send commands between touch-screen interfaces and the switching equipment. The Crestron code is fairly new, too, and by no means not legacy software. For simple back-and-forth control commands, I don't know why you'd replace RS232.
Replying to cancel out an erroneous mod point
Except in many parts of the U.S. you cannot switch because of a monopoly (no one else offers cable service), technical limitation (cable available but too far away for DSL), or lack of comparable service from competitors (e.g. Verizon 512/256 @ $29.99/mo, or Speakeasy 384/128 @ $99.99/mo).
Apple by no means holds a monopoly on the smartphone market. It's obvious that the technical limitations imposed by Apple can be worked around -- it doesn't take long for someone to jailbreak the iPhone after an update. And while I don't know of a product with features similar to the iPhone, there are lots of smartphones out there that do pretty much everything the iPhone does except visual voicemail and a touch-sensitive UI. Plus, a lot of smartphones I see in the stores don't have the iPhone's price tag, and some can even do 3G.
Let's try that argument out again, with a small difference:
Let's say the original show is "Firefly." I create a work called "CowboyNeal in Space." I shoot some of my own scenes with their own dialogue and characters, but for the most part "CowboyNeal in Space" still uses scenes, music, dialog, CG from "Firefly." Some of those copied scenes reference things that don't even exist based on the "CowboyNeal in Space" scenes (e.g. referring to the captain as "Malcolm Reynolds" instead of "CowboyNeal").
Am I gonna get the living #$*% sued out of me if I upload it to Youtube? Faster than Mal can say "shiny." I've done exactly what the website has done - taken an original work, tweaked a few things to make it fit my needs, forgotten to tweak some things causing continuity reasons (the presence of snow and ice cubes), and posted it.
The fact that "Firefly" was free to watch (when it did air on Fox; obviously watching it on DVD or Sci-Fi Channel meant you had to pay for them) doesn't mean it's okay to copy it. The value of the asset has nothing to do with whether it's protected by copyright. If you put it in the public domain and waive all copyright protection, it's free game. If you use a very small portion for limited academic purposes (or other fair use purposes), you shouldn't be sued, but it depends on the amount of the original work used and in what context. But free != public domain. Unfortunately the internets propagate this myth.
You'll know the IP lawyers are desperate when one of them brings a copyright infringement suit against someone for uploading/distributing John Cage's 4' 33".
Those of us with limited bandwidth on our Linux servers and developing PHP on Windows workstations use something like PHPEclipse with XAMPP and test locally first, then upload to the remote server and do final testing and tweaking from there.