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User: Squirmy+McPhee

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Comments · 179

  1. Re:Differences Abound on Copyright Infringement and Shoplifting Contrasted · · Score: 1
    The copyright industry could easily come after you for every infringing song or movie on your hard drive. It'd rather go after sharers, because in a public relations point of view, they seem more culpable.

    I believe another reason it would rather go after sharers is because they generally can only sue you for damage to the commercial value of the work you illegally copied. In other words, if you have an illegal copy of a $15 CD on your hard drive, they can only get you for $15. However, if they can show you distributed 1,000 copies of the CD, they can get you for $15,000.

    I'm not an attorney, so I could be wrong, but this copyright attorney's web page seems to say roughly the same thing.

  2. Re:Another IDN bug on Firefox on Shmoo Group Finds Exploit For non-IE Browsers · · Score: 1
    You weren't reading what I wrote. Restart your browser, THEN it stops working

    Whoops! I misunderstood -- I thought you (and others) were saying it didn't work even after restarting. But you're right, I restart the browser and it stops working....

  3. Re:Another IDN bug on Firefox on Shmoo Group Finds Exploit For non-IE Browsers · · Score: 1
    To disable IDN as a workaround for this problem (on Gecko-based browsers): hit about:config and set network.enableIDN to false.

    That is a great suggestion, except for the part where it does not work.

    It works perfectly for me with Firefox 1.0 and fully patched WinXP -- I didn't even have to restart the browser or clear the cache or anything. Clearly it isn't working for everybody, though.

  4. Probably not 30% on If The Problem Persists, Reboot The Car · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ABI Research estimated that roughly 30% of all warranty issues with new cars were microprocessor- and software-related

    Having formerly worked for an auto supplier designing microprocessor-based control modules for the Big Three, I have first-hand experience with microprocessor- and software-related warranty returns. I would not be the least bit surprised if this 30% figure is significantly on the high side. There was one vehicle model in particular that we got an enormous number of warranty returns on. We checked each and every one of them against the mechanic's report and found that less than 2% of the returned modules were actually defective, and the vast majority of those were unrelated to software or the microprocessor. My question, of course, is whether the ABI study would include ALL of those warranty returns, or just the ones that were actually defective.

    The real problem was twofold: The module in question stored all of the fault codes for the entire vehicle, and it was located in a place where the mechanic could replace it in less than 10 minutes. As a result, the mechanic would see a fault code, match it up with an easy-to-replace module, and simply replace the module storing the fault code (never mind that the code was generated by, say, the engine controller). We would get the module back as a warranty return, and the mechanic would go on looking for the true source of the problem. I understand that certain expensive components are purposely made horribly difficult to replace so they won't be returned unless there truly is a problem with them.

    This is not to say our software was perfect. We once discovered a bug that would reset the odometer if you took the right combination of actions. It was a very unusual combination of actions, but the bug was highly reproducible.