This is all fine and good if it actually makes us safer, but it won't. Maj. Hasan was investigated by the FBI for his contacts with radical clerics well before he went on a shooting rampage, but he was still allowed to buy a gun because this information or even a flag was never placed into the instant background check database, and the terrorism task force that was watching him didn't receive notice that he bought a gun and a bunch of ammo. Here's an idea, make it so the FBI knows when a terrorist it's investigating is buying a bunch of guns and ammo. Why don't we start there?
EA already uses "Service Updates" as an excuse to stop supporting online play after a certain period of time for many of its titles. http://www.ea.com/2/service-updates Now, it's going to restrict the ability to even update the game? FTA, "According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads . . .." So, to paraphrase, if I want to play my game on another console, or my console croaks and I replace it, I might not be able to download the updates (and there will be updates because the title shipped will be buggy) without paying again?
college sports players are the same and need to be paid for playing . . ..
Fixed that for you.
Seriously, how is this the same? College athletes are paid. They're paid with an education, and the cost of that education can be stratospheric. Take Duke, a big time basketball school in the Final Four. Tuition and fees, room and board, and other expenses add up to over $53,000 PER YEAR. http://www.admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/finaid.html As another example, TCU, a big time football school, has annual costs of over $41,000. http://www.fam.tcu.edu/cost.asp How may 18 year old kids are worth $53,000 or $41,000 per year? That's $41,000 or $53,000 worth of education for every player on the team. How is that not enough? Most college athletic departments are in the red and don't pay for themselves. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2010-04-01-coaches-salaries-cover_N.htm
College players get to go to school and don't have to pay for it. Most families can't afford to send their children to a college like Duke or TCU. Maybe the college athlete wins the sports lottery and gets drafted, or maybe he just gets a great education that opens a lot of doors. Either way, college athletes have nothing in common with interns who get paid NOTHING and get NOTHING in return for their time. No salary, no TUITION, no ROOM AND BOARD. Nothing.
All it takes is a court order. So essentially the only thing slowing the investigations would be an unwilling Federal government.
You're obviously new to how a "court order" works. If I'm in a lawsuit involving my Toyota, and I want data from my Toyota, I can get a court order for my Toyota. However, if in that same lawsuit I try to get a court order for every Toyota, Toyota the corporation is going to appeal any discovery order that it turn over all of the data from all of its cars, or even all of one model from one model year. It will appeal, and it will win. If you disagree with me on this, go sue your insurance company for a denied claim and then try to get access for all of its records of similar claims. It's simply not going to happen. As a practical matter, assuming that you could get an order for all of the EDR data, that doesn't mean much. If Toyota only has had only one laptop in the U.S.A. capable of reading the data and Toyota will only read the data with a court order, then for all practical purposes the data from most Toyota crashes is never recorded. It's just gone because there has been no physical way to record all of that data.
"There's only one laptop in the entire U.S.A. capable of reading the data" sounds like some very good lawyering to me. Toyota should have a company-wide "Hug Your Lawyer Day."
This is GREAT news in our house! Finally, the Halo Green Xbox will be out of our lives. Micro$oft has done what I didn't have the strength to do myself. First, there was the move from the big TV in the living room to a guest bedroom. Then, the Xbox made its way to the Garage, BUT IT WOULDN"T DIE!!! No, our unlikely hero was able to play Halo 2 with his brothers in the garage!!! WDS? W Who?
Sure, I dutifully bought my Xbox Gold card every year so I could play Xbox with brothers, but IT WAS WRONG!!! Don't you see? My constant, yearly Xbox subscription was just feeding my addiction. I mean, isn't it time I pick a decent midlife crisis? Video games? Time to grow up and get a convertible.
This would be awesome, clutter-reducing, wife-inspring news if Microsoft would support blu-ray on the Xbox. Then, we could get rid of both our POS cable box AND move our blu-ray player to another room AND (this next part is the holy grail of my house) have a good excuse to connect a console to our big flat screen in the living room. Woo-hoo!!! "Just ONE box connected to the TV, Honey!!!" . . . . "Yes, I KNOW it's a game console, but JUST ONE BOX!!!"
Eventually the "just one box" mantra would win out. F*** you, Microsoft, for not supporting blu-ray.
The big problem is really obvious. It's the quality of teachers. And it's not that the teachers are bad per se, it's that they're unmotivated to do better. Teacher's unions make it so that you get paid on years on the job and tenure, not how well you teach. Decoupling rewards with results in this way has been the single worst decision in education in this country.
Look at most charter schools. They flourish. Why? Because the teachers are motivated to teach well, not just do well until they get to tenure status.
I'm hesitant to say that nothing would do more to solve the world's problems than the availability of cheap, clean energy, but it would be on my top five. However, every few years I hear about a new fusion project, and then I never hear anything else about it. Here's to hoping that it works and that it works in a way that can be commercialized before we destroy the planet.
I'm 12 years old, and a regular Slashdot reader.
I'd like to offer my opinion on this:
We don't need longer school days. We need more courses and teachers. Specifically, we need more separation of classes based on ability. To Heck with this 'fairness' stuff. We really need at least two classes: advanced and less-advanced. . . .
If we're going to do anything, I suggest we, in some way or another, give kids material that is at the right level for them. Maybe once we get that done, we can think about longer school years or days. . . .
You're referring to homogeneous classrooms, and it's decidedly out of favor. When I was a kid, we had the same 20 or so kids in basically all of my classes since 6th grade. We all did well; we all went to college. We were the "honors" or "gifted and talented" kids, and we all got a lot out of being in class with one another. My mother, a teacher, later told me that my school district went to heterogenous teaching, or lumping everyone together. Presumably, there were some studies done showing that the dumb kids get a lot out of being with the average and smart kids. Of course, the smart kids don't get anything out of it, but we have to be fair . . ..
The lawyers among you will know that that was a totally improper question, and that the Court should not have even allowed it, much less based her holding upon the answer to it
For those of us who aren't lawyers, why was it improper?
It wasn't improper. FTFA, Tenenbaum admitted his liability during direct examination from the RIAA's attorney. This wasn't a criminal trial, it was civil, and he testified to his own liability. When you admit to the elements of the cause of action, the only thing left is damages. End of story. What a dumbass. I mean, what the f--- was the jury supposed to do? Reward him for admitting under oath that, earlier, he lied under oath and lied on his discovery responses? Please. Juries HAMMER people who get caught lying. There is no more GOTCHA litigation in civil trials in the U.S.A. You're supposed to tell the truth to discovery questions, even if the answers hurt your case. If you don't tell the truth you get hammered. If your lawyer lets you get away with it, he can lose his meal ticket. It's that simple. He lied, and he got popped for it.
On the bright side, at least he can to ditch the "superstar" legal team for someone out of the "bankruptcy attorneys" section in the yellow pages. Hopefully that case will go more smoothly.
I think what we should be looking for is games that had a great idea but went off in the wrong direction. Where the original idea was novel, stunning, the foundation of a truely great game, but the game itself was lacking in some way. Or games where the first installment was awesome but they botched it with the sequels.
Wilderness. It was a great game for the Apple II that was engaging and involved a great deal of problem solving, not to mention being, to my 12 year old self, informative. I would love to see this remade for a modern computer with decent graphics for my kids to play. I sank hour and hours into that game playing as different body types with different starting assumptions. Truly excellent.
Earlier this week IDG News Service reported that it's unlikely that Zer01 could be technically able to offer the unlimited mobile voice and data service that it is advertising.
If you mean unlimited in the sense that they wouldn't cap your usage, sure they could do this. If you mean unlimited, usable voice and data, that's another thing entirely. They could call it "unlimited" but not have the bandwidth to deliver a decent, or even functional, user experience.
Sure we need consumer protections, but a healthy dose of caveat emptor is never a bad thing. If the service contract says "unlimited," and it ends up being unlimited 2400 baud data, that's still unlimited. Chickens**t, but still unlimited.
Simple. Some movie quote described the shuttle as "10 million parts all made by the lowest bidder." That's what happens when you get politics involved. Every congressman wants some company in his district to have a piece of the pie, or NASA wants that to be the case to guarantee program survivability. It's stupid and probably doesn't make a lot of business or engineering sense. But it makes a lot of political sense, and if you're going to get something done with government money, it has to make political sense, which also means it often lacks common sense.
My last company relied on a program called isys to index and search documents and email. You don't have to worry about what a document is named, just the type of content you're looking for. This solution can save a lot of time, especially if your users are good and phrasing queries. On the other hand, I did not have to maintain it, so I have no idea how much administration time was devoted to keeping it working.
I am assuming that you will be living in the dorm, otherwise the CMU website gives a list of ISPs. http://www.oit.cmich.edu/it/it_isps.asp The list includes mobile broadband cards from Sprint, etc., so I'm not sure what you mean by no wireless broadband providers, though this would be a huge downgrade from the internet speed you can probably get on campus.
The Acceptable Use Policy looks to be general CYA boilerplate B.S. which lets you know that you have some expectations of privacy, but don't hold your breath if there's a subpoena or other legal action trying to get the data. As to the CSA, this appears to be an overreaction to the perceived security risks of Windows systems. On the other hand, bandwidth is expensive, and the IT department may have decided that this is a good way to prevent the spread of viruses and bots on the campus network. All of this is probably academic as it doesn't look like it's Windows only. http://www.oit.cmich.edu/faq/faq_network_dialup.asp#get Mac or Linux should probably work.
How much trouble it would be to add the ability for a game's level editor to grab info from Street View and then extrapolate the Street View data into a realistic 3-D environment? I would gladly pay a subscription for this level of functionality if I could play a FPS level that looked just like my neighborhood. My side hedges would make an excellent place from which to snipe.
1) Register a company with a cool sounding name . . ..
Have you heard about Android Data before google made their move? Thought so.
It doesn't matter whether anyone had heard of his company before. The bottom line is he, apparently, had registered his trademark and his registered trademark was still valid with the USPTO. I really don't see what the argument from Google is other than something along the lines of "Our use of the cool sounding name will be cooler." Just to make sure it's clear, Google knew that this guy had an active trademark, and Google used the registered trademark anyway. What. Idiots.
Is this the IP version of "Kill them all, and let God sort them out"? Personally, I'm getting really tired of news stories about Google taking things that belong to someone else. Of course, repackaging other people's content is Google's M.O.
Ah, the joys of market bubbles. Seriously, this was primarily a Time Warner stumble. If I remember correctly, AOL was worth more than Time Warner at the time of the merger. Hence, "AOL Time Warner." In retrospect, that was ludicrous. It would have made as much sense for Time Warner to have changed it's name to "Time Warner.com" or something idiotic like that. It seemed that the most mundane business models, or no business models at all, were getting VC money because "it uses the internet." This, and the current recession, both serve to illustrate that business leaders often behave stupidly and are susceptible to hype.
Steve Case saved shareholder value for his AOL shareholders, the only people to whom he owed any duty. If, I don't know, Microsoft and GM were to merge, smart money would bet on Microsoft shareholders losing a LOT of money, but I would suspect GM's shareholders would be pretty happy with the deal. It all depends on how you define the loser.
Ah, the joys of market bubbles. Seriously, this was primarily a Time Warner stumble. If I remember correctly, AOL was worth more than Time Warner at the time of the merger. Hence, "AOL Time Warner." In retrospect, that was ludicrous. It would have made as much sense for Time Warner to have changed it's name to "Time Warner.com" or something idiotic like that. It seemed that the most mundane business models, or no business models at all, were getting VC money because "it uses the internet." This, and the current recession, both serve to illustrate that business leaders often behave stupidly and are susceptible to hype.
Steve Case saved shareholder value for his AOL shareholders, the only people to whom he owed any duty. If, I don't know, Microsoft and GM were to merge, smart money would bet on Microsoft shareholders losing a LOT of money, but I would suspect GM's shareholders would be pretty happy with the deal. It all depends on how you define the loser.
Much of the clothing, camping, and cold weather gear available at a local REI performs better than what is issued to U.S. soldiers. The military has been slow to adopt consumer products which may work better than what is currently being supplied. This is gradually changing, and it's a change for the better. You don't always need everything to be radiation hardened. Sometimes the best product for a given job is available now, and you don't want to wait for it to be tested ad nauseum, debated, defended, and advocated through the convoluted military procurement process. An iPod Touch is relatively cheap, cheap enough that it's almost disposable. On the other hand, it's too bad there's not an option for AA batteries. Recharging is tough in the field.
We can all agree that punch cards are terrible, but there are other alternatives which are secure and accountable. Scantron ballots are used in Texas, and there's always a paper ballot trail of the actual vote in case of a ballot contest. I'm no Luddite, but I've never understood this rush to replace technology that works with the next big thing just because it's the next big thing.
This is ridiculous. I know plenty of people, myself included, who have no trouble streaming Netflix. I stream to a Mac connected to our home theater with almost no buffering.
It's obviously this guy's connection, and the obvious solution is to change ISPs. There doesn't have to be some conspiracy to throttle throughput. It could simply be congestion. Performance where I live is always better at off peak times.
... Honestly, for all non-violent offenses there should be no jail time whatsoever. It seems like we are using jail time as more or less a "time out" rather then to keep all the violent criminals off the street (the reason jails should be used), and theres a reason why our prisons are overcrowded, we seem to send people to prison for trivial offenses (like this one), or for offenses that are totally nonviolent in nature (tax evasion, etc)....
I suppose that I'm about to get some seriously negative karma.
True, but we put people in jail for months for having a single joint, driving without a valid license, and stealing food. But you know what, we also put a lot of people in jail who had a first or second or third chance and still said "F*** it." Sure there are a lot of drug addicts in prison, but a lot of them are there to keep them from breaking into your house to steal your stuff to sell so they can buy more drugs. I don't care why someone's breaking into my house, that f***er needs to be in prison.
I don't care how shitty the album is, this is theft, plain and simple, and the product hadn't even reached the market yet. If the album is shitty, don't buy it, but this is a crime, and I'm surprised the prosecutors are only asking for 6 months.
What would be the damages if someone stole a movie that cost $100M to produce and uploaded it as a torrent? Does anyone really believe that all of the people who downloaded the movie would either (a) not go to the movie anyway or (b) go see it again once it's on the big screen for the big screen experience? Certainly not. Personally, I watch a movie once and that's enough for me. Whether it's at the cinema or on Netflix, once is enough. This try before you buy attitude to justify stealing someone's work is ridiculous. Want to sample a song? Listen to the 30 second clip on Amazon or iTunes after it's been released.
This guy is a jerk, pure and simple. More importantly, he's a thief. How anyone here can defend what he did or to say that it's not that important is beyond me. In most states, trying to take something out of the store is theft. You don't even have to make it out. It's enough that you've exercised control over something with the intent to deprive the owner of his property. If the feds don't lock him up, maybe the L.A. D.A. will grow a pair and prosecute him to lock him up. Different laws, different sovereigns.
My immediate thought was related: The US government probably does have the info hidden away in some obscure department's archives, hidden behind a wall of secrecy and classification. The repair guys just don't have the right clearances, and instead of saying "We can't give you that information", the agency says "We don't have that information".
Sure, like NASA had the instructions for building the Saturn V rockets hidden away for that fateful day when the country needed a new heavy lifter.
You can almost be guaranteed that the "repair guys" have the right clearances. How many people, excluding Slashdot readers, really have the expertise to work on thermonuclear warheads?
Slashdot Mirror
This is all fine and good if it actually makes us safer, but it won't. Maj. Hasan was investigated by the FBI for his contacts with radical clerics well before he went on a shooting rampage, but he was still allowed to buy a gun because this information or even a flag was never placed into the instant background check database, and the terrorism task force that was watching him didn't receive notice that he bought a gun and a bunch of ammo. Here's an idea, make it so the FBI knows when a terrorist it's investigating is buying a bunch of guns and ammo. Why don't we start there?
EA already uses "Service Updates" as an excuse to stop supporting online play after a certain period of time for many of its titles. http://www.ea.com/2/service-updates Now, it's going to restrict the ability to even update the game? FTA, "According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads . . . ." So, to paraphrase, if I want to play my game on another console, or my console croaks and I replace it, I might not be able to download the updates (and there will be updates because the title shipped will be buggy) without paying again?
Oni 2. I've been waiting years for a sequel to Oni. Maybe they could call it Offi.
college sports players are the same and need to be paid for playing . . . .
Fixed that for you.
Seriously, how is this the same? College athletes are paid. They're paid with an education, and the cost of that education can be stratospheric. Take Duke, a big time basketball school in the Final Four. Tuition and fees, room and board, and other expenses add up to over $53,000 PER YEAR. http://www.admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/finaid.html As another example, TCU, a big time football school, has annual costs of over $41,000. http://www.fam.tcu.edu/cost.asp How may 18 year old kids are worth $53,000 or $41,000 per year? That's $41,000 or $53,000 worth of education for every player on the team. How is that not enough? Most college athletic departments are in the red and don't pay for themselves. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2010-04-01-coaches-salaries-cover_N.htm
College players get to go to school and don't have to pay for it. Most families can't afford to send their children to a college like Duke or TCU. Maybe the college athlete wins the sports lottery and gets drafted, or maybe he just gets a great education that opens a lot of doors. Either way, college athletes have nothing in common with interns who get paid NOTHING and get NOTHING in return for their time. No salary, no TUITION, no ROOM AND BOARD. Nothing.
All it takes is a court order. So essentially the only thing slowing the investigations would be an unwilling Federal government.
You're obviously new to how a "court order" works. If I'm in a lawsuit involving my Toyota, and I want data from my Toyota, I can get a court order for my Toyota. However, if in that same lawsuit I try to get a court order for every Toyota, Toyota the corporation is going to appeal any discovery order that it turn over all of the data from all of its cars, or even all of one model from one model year. It will appeal, and it will win. If you disagree with me on this, go sue your insurance company for a denied claim and then try to get access for all of its records of similar claims. It's simply not going to happen. As a practical matter, assuming that you could get an order for all of the EDR data, that doesn't mean much. If Toyota only has had only one laptop in the U.S.A. capable of reading the data and Toyota will only read the data with a court order, then for all practical purposes the data from most Toyota crashes is never recorded. It's just gone because there has been no physical way to record all of that data.
"There's only one laptop in the entire U.S.A. capable of reading the data" sounds like some very good lawyering to me. Toyota should have a company-wide "Hug Your Lawyer Day."
This is GREAT news in our house! Finally, the Halo Green Xbox will be out of our lives. Micro$oft has done what I didn't have the strength to do myself. First, there was the move from the big TV in the living room to a guest bedroom. Then, the Xbox made its way to the Garage, BUT IT WOULDN"T DIE!!! No, our unlikely hero was able to play Halo 2 with his brothers in the garage!!! WDS? W Who?
Sure, I dutifully bought my Xbox Gold card every year so I could play Xbox with brothers, but IT WAS WRONG!!! Don't you see? My constant, yearly Xbox subscription was just feeding my addiction. I mean, isn't it time I pick a decent midlife crisis? Video games? Time to grow up and get a convertible.
This would be awesome, clutter-reducing, wife-inspring news if Microsoft would support blu-ray on the Xbox. Then, we could get rid of both our POS cable box AND move our blu-ray player to another room AND (this next part is the holy grail of my house) have a good excuse to connect a console to our big flat screen in the living room. Woo-hoo!!! "Just ONE box connected to the TV, Honey!!!" . . . . "Yes, I KNOW it's a game console, but JUST ONE BOX!!!"
Eventually the "just one box" mantra would win out. F*** you, Microsoft, for not supporting blu-ray.
...
The big problem is really obvious. It's the quality of teachers. And it's not that the teachers are bad per se, it's that they're unmotivated to do better. Teacher's unions make it so that you get paid on years on the job and tenure, not how well you teach. Decoupling rewards with results in this way has been the single worst decision in education in this country.
Look at most charter schools. They flourish. Why? Because the teachers are motivated to teach well, not just do well until they get to tenure status.
Unions are NOT the problem. The unions in Europe are incredibly strong, probably much stronger than any teachers unions in the U.S. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/feb/01/speakout-american-teachers-unions-the-fatal-flaw/ Why don't we put the blame on teacher training and certification instead. How else can you explain how 16% of U.S. science teachers are creationists? http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13930-16-of-us-science-teachers-are-creationists.html
I'm hesitant to say that nothing would do more to solve the world's problems than the availability of cheap, clean energy, but it would be on my top five. However, every few years I hear about a new fusion project, and then I never hear anything else about it. Here's to hoping that it works and that it works in a way that can be commercialized before we destroy the planet.
I'm 12 years old, and a regular Slashdot reader. I'd like to offer my opinion on this: We don't need longer school days. We need more courses and teachers. Specifically, we need more separation of classes based on ability. To Heck with this 'fairness' stuff. We really need at least two classes: advanced and less-advanced. . . . If we're going to do anything, I suggest we, in some way or another, give kids material that is at the right level for them. Maybe once we get that done, we can think about longer school years or days. . . .
You're referring to homogeneous classrooms, and it's decidedly out of favor. When I was a kid, we had the same 20 or so kids in basically all of my classes since 6th grade. We all did well; we all went to college. We were the "honors" or "gifted and talented" kids, and we all got a lot out of being in class with one another. My mother, a teacher, later told me that my school district went to heterogenous teaching, or lumping everyone together. Presumably, there were some studies done showing that the dumb kids get a lot out of being with the average and smart kids. Of course, the smart kids don't get anything out of it, but we have to be fair . . . .
For those of us who aren't lawyers, why was it improper?
It wasn't improper. FTFA, Tenenbaum admitted his liability during direct examination from the RIAA's attorney. This wasn't a criminal trial, it was civil, and he testified to his own liability. When you admit to the elements of the cause of action, the only thing left is damages. End of story. What a dumbass. I mean, what the f--- was the jury supposed to do? Reward him for admitting under oath that, earlier, he lied under oath and lied on his discovery responses? Please. Juries HAMMER people who get caught lying. There is no more GOTCHA litigation in civil trials in the U.S.A. You're supposed to tell the truth to discovery questions, even if the answers hurt your case. If you don't tell the truth you get hammered. If your lawyer lets you get away with it, he can lose his meal ticket. It's that simple. He lied, and he got popped for it.
On the bright side, at least he can to ditch the "superstar" legal team for someone out of the "bankruptcy attorneys" section in the yellow pages. Hopefully that case will go more smoothly.
...
I think what we should be looking for is games that had a great idea but went off in the wrong direction. Where the original idea was novel, stunning, the foundation of a truely great game, but the game itself was lacking in some way. Or games where the first installment was awesome but they botched it with the sequels.
Wilderness. It was a great game for the Apple II that was engaging and involved a great deal of problem solving, not to mention being, to my 12 year old self, informative. I would love to see this remade for a modern computer with decent graphics for my kids to play. I sank hour and hours into that game playing as different body types with different starting assumptions. Truly excellent.
Earlier this week IDG News Service reported that it's unlikely that Zer01 could be technically able to offer the unlimited mobile voice and data service that it is advertising.
If you mean unlimited in the sense that they wouldn't cap your usage, sure they could do this. If you mean unlimited, usable voice and data, that's another thing entirely. They could call it "unlimited" but not have the bandwidth to deliver a decent, or even functional, user experience.
Sure we need consumer protections, but a healthy dose of caveat emptor is never a bad thing. If the service contract says "unlimited," and it ends up being unlimited 2400 baud data, that's still unlimited. Chickens**t, but still unlimited.
So what went wrong?
Simple. Some movie quote described the shuttle as "10 million parts all made by the lowest bidder." That's what happens when you get politics involved. Every congressman wants some company in his district to have a piece of the pie, or NASA wants that to be the case to guarantee program survivability. It's stupid and probably doesn't make a lot of business or engineering sense. But it makes a lot of political sense, and if you're going to get something done with government money, it has to make political sense, which also means it often lacks common sense.
My last company relied on a program called isys to index and search documents and email. You don't have to worry about what a document is named, just the type of content you're looking for. This solution can save a lot of time, especially if your users are good and phrasing queries. On the other hand, I did not have to maintain it, so I have no idea how much administration time was devoted to keeping it working.
I am assuming that you will be living in the dorm, otherwise the CMU website gives a list of ISPs. http://www.oit.cmich.edu/it/it_isps.asp The list includes mobile broadband cards from Sprint, etc., so I'm not sure what you mean by no wireless broadband providers, though this would be a huge downgrade from the internet speed you can probably get on campus.
The Acceptable Use Policy looks to be general CYA boilerplate B.S. which lets you know that you have some expectations of privacy, but don't hold your breath if there's a subpoena or other legal action trying to get the data. As to the CSA, this appears to be an overreaction to the perceived security risks of Windows systems. On the other hand, bandwidth is expensive, and the IT department may have decided that this is a good way to prevent the spread of viruses and bots on the campus network. All of this is probably academic as it doesn't look like it's Windows only. http://www.oit.cmich.edu/faq/faq_network_dialup.asp#get Mac or Linux should probably work.
How much trouble it would be to add the ability for a game's level editor to grab info from Street View and then extrapolate the Street View data into a realistic 3-D environment? I would gladly pay a subscription for this level of functionality if I could play a FPS level that looked just like my neighborhood. My side hedges would make an excellent place from which to snipe.
1) Register a company with a cool sounding name . . . .
Have you heard about Android Data before google made their move? Thought so.
It doesn't matter whether anyone had heard of his company before. The bottom line is he, apparently, had registered his trademark and his registered trademark was still valid with the USPTO. I really don't see what the argument from Google is other than something along the lines of "Our use of the cool sounding name will be cooler." Just to make sure it's clear, Google knew that this guy had an active trademark, and Google used the registered trademark anyway. What. Idiots.
Is this the IP version of "Kill them all, and let God sort them out"? Personally, I'm getting really tired of news stories about Google taking things that belong to someone else. Of course, repackaging other people's content is Google's M.O.
Ah, the joys of market bubbles. Seriously, this was primarily a Time Warner stumble. If I remember correctly, AOL was worth more than Time Warner at the time of the merger. Hence, "AOL Time Warner." In retrospect, that was ludicrous. It would have made as much sense for Time Warner to have changed it's name to "Time Warner.com" or something idiotic like that. It seemed that the most mundane business models, or no business models at all, were getting VC money because "it uses the internet." This, and the current recession, both serve to illustrate that business leaders often behave stupidly and are susceptible to hype.
Steve Case saved shareholder value for his AOL shareholders, the only people to whom he owed any duty. If, I don't know, Microsoft and GM were to merge, smart money would bet on Microsoft shareholders losing a LOT of money, but I would suspect GM's shareholders would be pretty happy with the deal. It all depends on how you define the loser.
Ah, the joys of market bubbles. Seriously, this was primarily a Time Warner stumble. If I remember correctly, AOL was worth more than Time Warner at the time of the merger. Hence, "AOL Time Warner." In retrospect, that was ludicrous. It would have made as much sense for Time Warner to have changed it's name to "Time Warner.com" or something idiotic like that. It seemed that the most mundane business models, or no business models at all, were getting VC money because "it uses the internet." This, and the current recession, both serve to illustrate that business leaders often behave stupidly and are susceptible to hype.
Steve Case saved shareholder value for his AOL shareholders, the only people to whom he owed any duty. If, I don't know, Microsoft and GM were to merge, smart money would bet on Microsoft shareholders losing a LOT of money, but I would suspect GM's shareholders would be pretty happy with the deal. It all depends on how you define the loser.
Much of the clothing, camping, and cold weather gear available at a local REI performs better than what is issued to U.S. soldiers. The military has been slow to adopt consumer products which may work better than what is currently being supplied. This is gradually changing, and it's a change for the better. You don't always need everything to be radiation hardened. Sometimes the best product for a given job is available now, and you don't want to wait for it to be tested ad nauseum, debated, defended, and advocated through the convoluted military procurement process. An iPod Touch is relatively cheap, cheap enough that it's almost disposable. On the other hand, it's too bad there's not an option for AA batteries. Recharging is tough in the field.
We can all agree that punch cards are terrible, but there are other alternatives which are secure and accountable. Scantron ballots are used in Texas, and there's always a paper ballot trail of the actual vote in case of a ballot contest. I'm no Luddite, but I've never understood this rush to replace technology that works with the next big thing just because it's the next big thing.
This is ridiculous. I know plenty of people, myself included, who have no trouble streaming Netflix. I stream to a Mac connected to our home theater with almost no buffering.
It's obviously this guy's connection, and the obvious solution is to change ISPs. There doesn't have to be some conspiracy to throttle throughput. It could simply be congestion. Performance where I live is always better at off peak times.
... Honestly, for all non-violent offenses there should be no jail time whatsoever. It seems like we are using jail time as more or less a "time out" rather then to keep all the violent criminals off the street (the reason jails should be used), and theres a reason why our prisons are overcrowded, we seem to send people to prison for trivial offenses (like this one), or for offenses that are totally nonviolent in nature (tax evasion, etc). ...
I suppose that I'm about to get some seriously negative karma.
True, but we put people in jail for months for having a single joint, driving without a valid license, and stealing food. But you know what, we also put a lot of people in jail who had a first or second or third chance and still said "F*** it." Sure there are a lot of drug addicts in prison, but a lot of them are there to keep them from breaking into your house to steal your stuff to sell so they can buy more drugs. I don't care why someone's breaking into my house, that f***er needs to be in prison.
I don't care how shitty the album is, this is theft, plain and simple, and the product hadn't even reached the market yet. If the album is shitty, don't buy it, but this is a crime, and I'm surprised the prosecutors are only asking for 6 months.
What would be the damages if someone stole a movie that cost $100M to produce and uploaded it as a torrent? Does anyone really believe that all of the people who downloaded the movie would either (a) not go to the movie anyway or (b) go see it again once it's on the big screen for the big screen experience? Certainly not. Personally, I watch a movie once and that's enough for me. Whether it's at the cinema or on Netflix, once is enough. This try before you buy attitude to justify stealing someone's work is ridiculous. Want to sample a song? Listen to the 30 second clip on Amazon or iTunes after it's been released.
This guy is a jerk, pure and simple. More importantly, he's a thief. How anyone here can defend what he did or to say that it's not that important is beyond me. In most states, trying to take something out of the store is theft. You don't even have to make it out. It's enough that you've exercised control over something with the intent to deprive the owner of his property. If the feds don't lock him up, maybe the L.A. D.A. will grow a pair and prosecute him to lock him up. Different laws, different sovereigns.
My immediate thought was related: The US government probably does have the info hidden away in some obscure department's archives, hidden behind a wall of secrecy and classification. The repair guys just don't have the right clearances, and instead of saying "We can't give you that information", the agency says "We don't have that information".
Sure, like NASA had the instructions for building the Saturn V rockets hidden away for that fateful day when the country needed a new heavy lifter.
You can almost be guaranteed that the "repair guys" have the right clearances. How many people, excluding Slashdot readers, really have the expertise to work on thermonuclear warheads?