This just reeks of stock manipulation. Hold back your sales figures for an extra quarter, cash in those stock options, and then suddenly announce, 'oh yeah, we had these coupons, so we had to hold back our sales figures.' Then watch your stock price shoot through the roof.
In the 60s and 70s, FM radio, unlike its predecesoor AM radio, was about as close to lossless as it got. That's why the RIAA tried to block the adoption of FM -- people could record music off the air! People would stop buying records!
And net radio, MP3, AAC, etc. aren't lossless either. Sure, there's things like FLAC, but lossless encoding eats up a lot of space and bandwidth very quickly.
The difference between the two cases is the difference between criminal and civil law. The RIAA lawsuits are a matter of civil law. Civil law treats minors very differently than criminal law. For one, minors can't be held to a contract, because it is illegal to make a contract with a child (but, interestingly, the child can hold you up to your end of the contact, but not the other way around). Similarly, you can't sue a minor, only the minor's parents. You can't typically subpoena a minor in a civil case, either -- I think in some states you can't subpoena them in a criminal case, either -- so they can't make her testify.
You think a fire will destroy the contents of your hard drive.
It might, it might not. It depends on how hot the fire gets. A battery fire that doesn't set off a 5-alarm blaze isn't like to do much to your average HDD's platters, if anything. A 5-alarm blaze that burns hot enough in close proximity can very easily melt a typical HDD's aluminum platters to the point that data cannot be recovered. (aluminum has a very low melting point) Note that there's no guarantees, though, that at least SOME data MIGHT be salvageable, since HDDs have been known to survive fires with some or even all data intact.
So, if they get emails at this honey pot email account, and they are able to make deductions and say that a certain outfit was responsible for mining that email address and giving it to spammers... does that hold any legal weight*?
Ask the RIAA. The same tactics have worked for them at least half the time -- other half is spent suing grandmothers and small children.
Oh, c'mon. It's an obvious Slackware joke, or should be for anyone who downloaded all 35 bazillion 1.44mb floppy images back in the day over a dialup connection...
how's it coming wiping your butt with one piece of paper?
I don't know, you'd have to ask Sheryl Crow. But this article is about Spinal Tap, whose amps go up to 11, not Sheryl Crow, who sometimes doesn't even use amps.
They continue the appeals process. If they win on appeal, Vonage continues doing business. If they exhaust all available appeals and lose, the injuction goes back into effect, Vonage can't sign up any more customers and eventually goes out of business, unless it gets bought out by Verizon.
As a very happy Vonage customer, I'm hoping they win.
The stay is granted until the appeals process is concluded. IOW, if Vonage loses in the appeals process, of course, the District Court's injuction goes back into effect.
Agreed. The NET Act is horrible public policy. Not only that, the guy himself says that "criminal sanctions do not deter warez traders", linking to this paper on warez trading and the law, which "...discusses the motivations for warez trading, how criminalizing the behavior may counterproductively encourage it, and why legislators and prosecutors continue to target warez trading despite the counterproductive effects," in order to state his case, but then turns around and says that "[r]emoving warez traders from the Net, one by one, is a crude but ultimately effective method for curtailing warez trading" becuase "a couple of hundred warez traders have been busted by the law." (Whoop-de-doo!) So, uh, which is it? The law doesn't deter warez traders, or is the law effecting in curtailing them? You can't have it both ways.
Of course you do... hey, someone's taking over my key....
Hello, this is the U.S. Service. We have recorded your IP address of 127.0.0.1 and are coming to arrest you for threatening the President -- immediately.
No kidding. And what about other legal expenses between 2001 and 2004? They can't all go to patents.
Business have legal expenses everyday. Lawyers have to look over or participate in the writing of contract agreements, EULAs, disclaimers and so forth. And those aren't even the most expensive legal fees. I'm pretty sure Microsoft was involved in more than one lawsuit between 2001-2004. Don't you suppose they'd have had to hire a lawyer or two for that?
And, as you say, each of Microsoft's products incurs some legal expense. It's unavoidable.
A company the size of Microsoft has enormous legal expenses. Duh. Since when is this news? Never mind stuff that matters!
One could make the argument that you're not unbiased. Especially if that one had just competed in a chair-throwing contest...
Seriously, if Microsoft's motives were entirely philanthropic, don't you think that they would use their very large and powerful cone of influence to provide these schools with some cheap hardware? I'll bet some folks at Microsoft have a few contacts at a few major OEMs who might just help them out if pressed...
No doubt. A little lesson in critical thinking applies here. If people are going to break the law to get some child porn, don't you think that they might try to hide their actions by breaking the law, too? I suppose these same police would be shocked to learn that even in jurisdications where radar/lidar detectors are illegal, many speeders use the devices anyway. Except that speeding isn't such an emotionally-charged issue as child porn; speeders are looked at as a minor nuisance to be given a fine and sent on their merry way, while pedophiles are viewed as being evil, vile creatures that must be stopped at all costs. Not that that perspective is wrong, mind you, it's just that strong emotions tend to cloud the thinking of folks who would otherwise be consummate professionals.
In fact, I'm using the torrents now. I love it when a release announcement on Slashdot goes up -- the more people downloading using the torrents, the faster it is for everyone.
Or, he wanted to give the impression he was in talks with Dell without explicitly saying so. He might do this even if it weren't true, because just implying that Shuttleworth and Dell were in talks about Ubuntu being pre-installed on Dell computers gives Ubuntu some extra cred, at least temporarily.
Wasn't Feisty Fawn just released this week? If he's been using it, he's either been using the beta or else he just installed it, right? And if Dell were really in talks with Canonical to distribute Ubuntu 7.04 on Dell PCs, wouldn't we be hearing about it from Canonical and/or Mark Shuttleworth?
I've never had a problem with documentation. Are you saying the only reason you discounted PostgreSQL as a superior database was the documentation, despite the fact that for years, MySQL would happily drop data without telling you?
I am! Let me tell you: PostgreSQL's documentation, until very recently, was quite lacking. I agree the poster you're replying to: the docs were a disorganized mess and were missing important parts.
A piece of software is only useful if you can figure out how to use it without having to run to the forums or google for answers every 5 minutes. The key to being able to figure out something as complicated as an RDBMS is documentation.
Put another way: how useful would [insert your favorite distro] Linux be to even a seasoned UNIX administrator with no Linux experience if it had either no manpages or poorly written ones?
Not quite. The Supremes have ruled that local and state governments are allowed to set laws regarding sexually-explicit content based on 'the standards of the community'. Again, there are no federal regulations regarding sexually-explicit material. The Supremes have basically held consistently that it's a matter of states' rights over any sort of federal control or standards.
Slashdot Mirror
This just reeks of stock manipulation. Hold back your sales figures for an extra quarter, cash in those stock options, and then suddenly announce, 'oh yeah, we had these coupons, so we had to hold back our sales figures.' Then watch your stock price shoot through the roof.
But, I just looked at their insider trading roster and actually Bill Gates sold off a suspiciously large number of shared in Feb. I wonder why?
In the 60s and 70s, FM radio, unlike its predecesoor AM radio, was about as close to lossless as it got. That's why the RIAA tried to block the adoption of FM -- people could record music off the air! People would stop buying records!
And net radio, MP3, AAC, etc. aren't lossless either. Sure, there's things like FLAC, but lossless encoding eats up a lot of space and bandwidth very quickly.
The difference between the two cases is the difference between criminal and civil law. The RIAA lawsuits are a matter of civil law. Civil law treats minors very differently than criminal law. For one, minors can't be held to a contract, because it is illegal to make a contract with a child (but, interestingly, the child can hold you up to your end of the contact, but not the other way around). Similarly, you can't sue a minor, only the minor's parents. You can't typically subpoena a minor in a civil case, either -- I think in some states you can't subpoena them in a criminal case, either -- so they can't make her testify.
It might, it might not. It depends on how hot the fire gets. A battery fire that doesn't set off a 5-alarm blaze isn't like to do much to your average HDD's platters, if anything. A 5-alarm blaze that burns hot enough in close proximity can very easily melt a typical HDD's aluminum platters to the point that data cannot be recovered. (aluminum has a very low melting point) Note that there's no guarantees, though, that at least SOME data MIGHT be salvageable, since HDDs have been known to survive fires with some or even all data intact.
Sure they will. With a nice a big stick.
Hence the reason you concentrate the salicylic acid from the willow bark by making a tea out of it.
Ask the RIAA. The same tactics have worked for them at least half the time -- other half is spent suing grandmothers and small children.
So these guys are using the same tactics as the RIAA to catch spammers? I smell a patent lawsuit! ;)
Did you hear about their liquidation sale? Deals so hot, they'll EXPLODE! Their sales staff are ON FIRE! Call now!
Oh, c'mon. It's an obvious Slackware joke, or should be for anyone who downloaded all 35 bazillion 1.44mb floppy images back in the day over a dialup connection ...
Patrick Volkerding? Is that you?
I don't know, you'd have to ask Sheryl Crow. But this article is about Spinal Tap, whose amps go up to 11, not Sheryl Crow, who sometimes doesn't even use amps.
They continue the appeals process. If they win on appeal, Vonage continues doing business. If they exhaust all available appeals and lose, the injuction goes back into effect, Vonage can't sign up any more customers and eventually goes out of business, unless it gets bought out by Verizon.
As a very happy Vonage customer, I'm hoping they win.
The stay is granted until the appeals process is concluded. IOW, if Vonage loses in the appeals process, of course, the District Court's injuction goes back into effect.
It ain't over 'til it's over.
Yes.
But the Legislation would never impose this penalty on themselves!
Oh, you mean for the criminals...
Agreed. The NET Act is horrible public policy. Not only that, the guy himself says that "criminal sanctions do not deter warez traders", linking to this paper on warez trading and the law, which "...discusses the motivations for warez trading, how criminalizing the behavior may counterproductively encourage it, and why legislators and prosecutors continue to target warez trading despite the counterproductive effects," in order to state his case, but then turns around and says that "[r]emoving warez traders from the Net, one by one, is a crude but ultimately effective method for curtailing warez trading" becuase "a couple of hundred warez traders have been busted by the law." (Whoop-de-doo!) So, uh, which is it? The law doesn't deter warez traders, or is the law effecting in curtailing them? You can't have it both ways.
Of course you do ... hey, someone's taking over my key....
Hello, this is the U.S. Service. We have recorded your IP address of 127.0.0.1 and are coming to arrest you for threatening the President -- immediately.
Thanks,
Agent Smith
U.S. Secret Service
No kidding. And what about other legal expenses between 2001 and 2004? They can't all go to patents.
Business have legal expenses everyday. Lawyers have to look over or participate in the writing of contract agreements, EULAs, disclaimers and so forth. And those aren't even the most expensive legal fees. I'm pretty sure Microsoft was involved in more than one lawsuit between 2001-2004. Don't you suppose they'd have had to hire a lawyer or two for that?
And, as you say, each of Microsoft's products incurs some legal expense. It's unavoidable.
A company the size of Microsoft has enormous legal expenses. Duh. Since when is this news? Never mind stuff that matters!
Seriously, if Microsoft's motives were entirely philanthropic, don't you think that they would use their very large and powerful cone of influence to provide these schools with some cheap hardware? I'll bet some folks at Microsoft have a few contacts at a few major OEMs who might just help them out if pressed...
No doubt. A little lesson in critical thinking applies here. If people are going to break the law to get some child porn, don't you think that they might try to hide their actions by breaking the law, too? I suppose these same police would be shocked to learn that even in jurisdications where radar/lidar detectors are illegal, many speeders use the devices anyway. Except that speeding isn't such an emotionally-charged issue as child porn; speeders are looked at as a minor nuisance to be given a fine and sent on their merry way, while pedophiles are viewed as being evil, vile creatures that must be stopped at all costs. Not that that perspective is wrong, mind you, it's just that strong emotions tend to cloud the thinking of folks who would otherwise be consummate professionals.
In fact, I'm using the torrents now. I love it when a release announcement on Slashdot goes up -- the more people downloading using the torrents, the faster it is for everyone.
Or, he wanted to give the impression he was in talks with Dell without explicitly saying so. He might do this even if it weren't true, because just implying that Shuttleworth and Dell were in talks about Ubuntu being pre-installed on Dell computers gives Ubuntu some extra cred, at least temporarily.
Wasn't Feisty Fawn just released this week? If he's been using it, he's either been using the beta or else he just installed it, right? And if Dell were really in talks with Canonical to distribute Ubuntu 7.04 on Dell PCs, wouldn't we be hearing about it from Canonical and/or Mark Shuttleworth?
I am! Let me tell you: PostgreSQL's documentation, until very recently, was quite lacking. I agree the poster you're replying to: the docs were a disorganized mess and were missing important parts.
A piece of software is only useful if you can figure out how to use it without having to run to the forums or google for answers every 5 minutes. The key to being able to figure out something as complicated as an RDBMS is documentation.
Put another way: how useful would [insert your favorite distro] Linux be to even a seasoned UNIX administrator with no Linux experience if it had either no manpages or poorly written ones?
Not quite. The Supremes have ruled that local and state governments are allowed to set laws regarding sexually-explicit content based on 'the standards of the community'. Again, there are no federal regulations regarding sexually-explicit material. The Supremes have basically held consistently that it's a matter of states' rights over any sort of federal control or standards.