The idiocy was making laws to protect DRM in my opinion if a copy right holder employs DRM they should loose all copyright protections since they are employing technical means they no longer need those copyright protections.
What you propose would be the opposite of the laws for physical theft, where the punishment is lowest if I take something away that is unprotected, worse if I break a lock, and worse again when I use force. Your argument says basically that if I try to steal your car, you defend it with a baseball bat and I shoot you, there should be no punishment.
If this package is not sold with a GPL license, then the copyright holders have the choice to sue for statutory damages of $150,000 or for actual damages. Actual damages would be whatever money the software was sold for.
DRM can be effectively and easily implemented by XORing a Copyright Notice on top of the data. it's as good a measure as any, costs virtually nothing in terms of performance, does not interfere with distribution mechanisms (IP Multicast for example), can be "claimed" to be "encryption" under the DMCA, and makes it bluntly, bluntly clear that anyone dumb enough to remove it and spread the resultant file around the internet is DEFINITELY violating Copyright.
That's not quite DRM yet. A player would obviously remove the XORing for playing, and if I make an illegal copy from your computer to mine, then my player would remove the XORing exactly the same as yours. There would actually be nothing that prevents access to the encrypted data.
What would be DRM: The user has to type a "User ID" and a password into the media player. The media player downloads the media, xors with copyright notice, user id, and password. It also writes copyright notice, user id, and password, in clear text to the encrypted media. Playback xors with copyright notice and the user id and password of that media player. So if I copy the media illegally from your computer, my player decodes with the wrong user id and password, which gives you copy protection. It is still very easily circumvented, because the user id and password that work are contained in the media as clear test.
The Phelps Gang tests the extreme end of free speech. I despise them with all my being, but if it came to push and shove and I had to either choose whether Phelps and his gang of vile hatemongers or Anonymous lived or died, I'm afraid I'd stand on the side of Phelps. Anonymous is attacking Phelps' right to freely express his views, no matter how noxious. Anonymous is wrong on this one, and should be ashamed of themselves, if they weren't, of course, a bunch of halfwitted scriptkiddies with as much of a hard-on for getting attention from the press as Phelps and Co.
I don't mind at all if you stand on the side of Phelps, as long as god gives us a sign in form of a huge lightning that burns the lot.
The problem is all speech can be called hate speech, so where to we draw the line?
We don't need to know where to draw the line. Well, you do, because apparently you cannot handle uncertainty. But we only need to know which speech is clearly on one side of the line, which speech is clearly on the other side of the line, and the speech that isn't quite clear we just don't worry about.
At half a cent per stream (and 1.5m plays a month) they would make 75k a month A MONTH. That would be 900k a year. There really arn't that many artists that I think should receive 900k a year. The ones who do deserve that, will have no issues getting the 1.5 million plays a month.
Go straight to your school and ask for your money back.
1 play = half a cent
2 plays = one cent
200 plays = 1 dollar
1000 plays = 5 dollar
10,000 plays = 50 dollar
100,000 plays = 500 dollar
1 million plays = 5,000 dollar
1.5 million plays = 7,500 dollar
Can anyone explain in plain non-legalese the difference between Apple's App Store and this Windows Marketplace, in terms of open source? Does either one allow GPL applications distributed? For a fee? IANAL and AFAIK, doesn't GPL 2 allow charging for distribution of executable code, as long as the source is available somewhere? Thanks---
Windows Marketplace says "no GPL allowed". App Store doesn't mention GPL at all. Apple says that any license agreement is between developer and end user, and Apple is just helping to put the app onto the end user's device. So if the copyright holder puts an app onto the app store with a GPL license, then Apple is fine with it, the copyright holder is obviously fine with it, so nobody who would have a right to complain is complaining, and everyone is happy.
In the case of VLC, one copyright holder was complaining. So we have the copyright holder, we have the guys who created the port to iOS, and we have Apple. The guys who wrote the port obviously believed they had the right to put it on the App Store. The copyright holder says they don't. Apple says "we don't care, you sort it out between you". So there are four possibilities: a. VLC stays off the App Store. b. The guys writing the port remove all code of the complainer. c. The guys writing the port take the complainer to court and win a judgement that putting the app on the App Store does _not_ violate the GPL. d. Complainer loses his job with Nokia, looks for a job with Apple, and therefore withdraws his complaint. Not saying anything about the likelihood of each outcome, just enumerating the possibilities.
So with Windows Marketplace the situation is: No GPL. With App Store the situation is: GPL unless someone threatens to take Apple to court. Why the difference? Two possibilities: One that Microsoft believes putting GPL'd apps on their store _will_ open them up to a lawsuit. Two that Microsoft doesn't want GPL code on their store.
I doubt that either Apple or MS want to ban free software. But allowing anyone to port open source over and upload it for profit (ads) just seems dangerous, legally.
One thing that you can _not_ do is put GPL'd code on the Apple App Store, charge money, and conform to the GPL license. The reason: The App Store terms say clearly that any payment is _for the license_ and not for the software. And the GPL allows charging for software, but doesn't allow charging for the license.
The article seems to ignore the rather obvious point that the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 themselves forbid using covered software in app stores that apply anti-circumvention measures, such as the Windows 7 mobile app store or the Apple App Store. This is one of the improvements in the GPL between versions 2 and 3. The restriction is specific to GPLv3 licenses, and does not apply to GPLv2 licenses, nor to Apache, nor to BSD.
The purpose of this change is to avoid companies fulfilling their GPL obligations by the letter while removing your freedom by allowing you to copy software or modifying it, but then having no chance to actually run it. On the App Store, you can modify and run the software - not without some cost, but then it is the same cost as for non-GPL software. You can't make copies, but anyone you would want to give a copy to can just download it themselves. So what exactly is this "improvement" that you are talking about?
Indeed, the whole point of the GPL is to protect the user's right to fix their software. Closed ecosystems with locked devices are fundamentally incompatible with this goal, so it's no surprise that the App Store and Windows Market exclude the GPL, since the GPL already excludes the App Store and Windows Market.
The App Store most definitely doesn't exclude GPL licensed applications. The App Store terms say quite clearly that any license agreement is not between Apple and customer, but between the people creating the application and the customer. However, it has happened that a copyright holder, who was not one of the people creating the application, threatened to sue Apple, so Apple removed the application.
The App Store terms do however make it impossible to distribute GPL licensed apps and charge money, because their terms say that whatever money is paid is paid for the license. And you are not allowed to charge for the GPL license. You can charge as much as you like for the software, you can charge cost for the source code, but you can't charge for the license.
Disagree. This simple and reasonable freedom must be upheld. The Developers are right to prevent Apple from distributing the results of their hard work if Jobs wants to impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom. So now VLC benefits the Android community and not Apple. There's going to be more of that.
The purpose of the GPL license is that anyone receiving the software can get the source code, can modify the source code, can use it wherever they like, and that if someone else wants a copy they can get it as well. The actual terms are slightly different, but what I wrote is the purpose. On Apple's App Store, we have exactly the opposite of the Tivo situation: On the Tivo, you had all the rights of the GPL 2.2 license, but then it turned out you couldn't run the code. With the App Store, it is argued that you don't have all the rights that the GPL license gives you (and Apple's attitude is: If you don't want your app in the App Store, go f*** yourself), but anyone downloading an app can actually do everything that the GPL wants them to be able to do. Complaining that you can't give me a copy of the software when I can just download it myself for free is plain idiotic.
I also wonder though, how much of that was brought on by the corporate culture. My boss doesn't know what SSH is, so him asking about it would be a red flag to me. But executives at HBGary may have used it all the time. And maybe the required root access frequently.
That is the one thing that was new to me and where I could have gone wrong myself (but then I'm not a security guy): The person imitating the boss _did_ have the root password. And you'd think that anyone who has the root password can be trusted because they have ultimate power over the machine anyway. They can _read_ and _change_ any user password, so you would think that giving them a user password shouldn't hurt. But the root password doesn't allow them access through SSL! A hacker with root password does need an ordinary user password to get into the machine through SSL!
From what I have read about the issue it is my understanding that most patents in the media codec area are somehow extensions or refinements of other patented methods. Which would mean that instead of 1,000 individual patents one would be looking at a card house of legal technicalities that would fold if the fundamental patents everyone else built upon were invalidated. Could someone in the field comment on whether that really is the case?
That isn't true at all. Let's say X is patented, and it may or may not deserve that patent. It may be really too obvious for a patent, for example. I invent Y, which is an improvement on X, and get a patent. That means my improvements over X were worth a patent. It doesn't matter what X itself is worth. If you manage to invalidate X, then my improvements over X are still the same as they were before, and they deserve or don't deserve a patent, totally independent from X.
That said, I live in Texas, and am pretty incensed that my state is trying to do the same thing a few other states have to companies that do business on the internet. The end result is they've cost quite a few jobs, meaning they've actually eliminated some tax revenue (no state income tax, but jobless people buy fewer things, so less sales tax). Also, that when I buy something from Amazon it's likely it will take a little bit longer to get to me (not a big deal, just me whining a little).
The difference between buying from Amazon and from the shop round the corner is that the shop round the corner has to collect sales tax from you, and send it to the government, while Amazon doesn't collect the tax from you, but you have the choice to either send the exact same money to the government, or to commit tax evasion and save some money. If all customers were one hundred percent knowledgable and honest, then Amazon wouldn't have this advantage (I suppose lots of people are honest and _believe_ that Amazon is cheaper because they have no clue they have to pay the tax anyway by law).
So you are arguing that jobs will be lost. On the contrary. The companies that are forced to collect the sales tax will have to fight less unfair competition, so they will sell more. That will create new jobs, exactly as many as are lost because of Amazon. And the jobs will be locally, so it will benefit the local population.
H.264 is "open" like the Microsoft Open Office XML standard is open. There are bear-traps that can prevent you from using it successfully. In the case of OOXML, one of those bear-traps is requiring your documents to interpret "Proprietary Microsoft Binary Blobs".
I'd call your comparison quite pathetic. h.264 is actually a useful standard. It provides a very, very clear specification for its compression and decompression, unlike WebM. It is widely used with a huge range of hardware implementations. It gives much better compression than WebM will ever have. It was created with the intention to produce the best possible video compression. From a technical point of view it is clearly superior to WebM, and Google is right now trying to force a sub-standard video compression onto the whole world. The OOXML standard, on the other hand, is ten times the size of the h.264 standard. It is full of bugs, unclear, unspecified in many areas, there are no implementations now and there will likely never be implementations (since Microsoft doesn't have any products that match this standard), and all these huge disadvantages are totally intentional.
The more I read about this the more it seems like Intel really went overboard halting production on everything. For starters this flaw doesn't impact all the SATA ports. For the ports it does impact it only happens in a small % of devices and even in those devices it is a progressive problem (meaning they won't be DOA).
In the UK, the manufacturer has to fix a computer for six years _if the fault was present when the computer was sold_. If the customer buys a computer with a perfectly fine SATA port and it breaks after one year and one day because of bad luck, that's the customer's problem. If the customer buys a computer with a chip that was broken on day one, but only affecting operation after a few years, that is the manufacturer's problem.
This is about his barbaric treatment of women. And it's apparent he's very afraid of having to answer any more questions about it.
1. Calling it "barbaric treatment" is the most stupid apology ever that I've heard from a slashdotter who can't get laid.
2. Assange has made repeated offers to answer any questions that Swedish prosecutors might have, for example at Scotland Yard, or in the Swedish embassy in London. In a place where he is safe from an illegal extradition to the USA, where some rather prominent people have made death threats against him. And we have seen what happens when Palin makes death threats.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if everybody get a chance to get vaccines, then the only people who are at risk because of not wanting vaccines are the people who have chosen it for themselves, correct?
Incorrect. Vaccination doesn't work 100%, only say 95%. So if everyone gets a vaccination, then 95% are actually immune, and that should be enough to stop an outbreak. If 5% don't get vaccination, then we have 5% not vaccinated, 5% failed vaccination, 90% immune. If the disease breaks out, then both those that were not vaccinated, and those where vaccination failed without any fault of their own, will suffer.
One way to reduce the risk of an outbreak is to ask everyone who got vaccinated to come back in the next year. If the vaccination worked, then another vaccination has no effect at all; if it didn't work then there is a good chance that the second vaccination worked. So these five percent who decided against vaccination doubled the cost of preventing an outbreak. And since money is limited, the money for this doubled cost is missing somewhere else, causing death and suffering in completely unrelated areas.
She uses it to listen to Pandora while she is at work. Her employer allows 0 bandwidth for personal uses, so she spends the entire 8 hours per day listening to Pandora on 3G.
If she had to pay the actual cost, then she wouldn't.
I have read a few cases of people driving into bodies of water and buildings. I cannot fathom how someone would just drive into water. I suspect they drove off the road because they were fidgeting with the GPS or something else instead of looking at the road, and then blamed the GPS
I have been at one place where GPS directions would have driven you right into a lake. I arrived there in bright daylight, so I had no problems. But I can very much appreciate that someone arriving there in the middle of the night would have got wet feet or worse.
Apple doesn't seem to feel accountable to anyone any more. This is another great example where they don't even think they have to answer their email messages.
It's very simple, actually. Apple will not and should not react to just a claim in an e-mail. What the copyright holder has to do is to send a DMCA takedown notice in the correct form. They have to state that they are the copyright holder, that the other copy on the store is infringing on their copyright, and they have to give the correct contact information that allows them to be identified. This was published on slashdot many times when someone tried to suppress information through an overzealous DMCA takedown notice. There are rules that the copyright holder has to follow, and if they are not followed then the website need not and should not take down the allegedly infringing work.
Once a proper DMCA notice is sent, Apple will have to take down the infringing work in a reasonable amount of time (less than 24 hours) or be on the hook for copyright infringement itself (if there was copyright infringement in the first place). In addition, they have to send the contact information to the alleged infringer, who can either accept this, or demand that the software is put back on the store, which they would do if they think there is no copyright infringement and they are willing to go to court about it. If that happens, then Apple is off the hook, and we can be sure there will be a court case.
It's trivial for Lawyer X to set up an account purporting to be Claimant X. He could then say all sorts of things about how fun it's going to be to defraud Company X, or how Claimant X loves to get stoned, or whatever. Even vacation photos can be lifted from some other site, like flickr, and the EXIF data can be changed to make it look like the claimant was enjoying a nice vacation after allegedly getting paralyzed in an accident, or whatever.
Except that you most likely couldn't pay the lawyer enough to do this. In Britain this would be called "perverting the course of justice". Lawyers can do lots of things and get away with it or get punished lightly, but this would be deep into criminal territory. Police, when alerted to the situation, would have to investigate. Likely result for the ex-lawyer would be a lengthy jail sentence.
Yes because nobody else could ever be driving my car. I hated that in Europe (German and England). Here's your ticket, even though we don't even know if it was you driving or not.
UK: When your car is caught speeding, you first get a letter in which you, as the holder of the car, are asked to state who was driving at the time. So if someone else was driving your car at the time, just tell them. That person will then get a letter where they are asked to pay a fine or go to court. So what are you complaining about?
Germany: Same thing. One difference in Germany is that you say it was your uncle from Australia driving, they will occasionally send a policeman to Australia to check, and if you lied it will be very, very expensive. And if you say you don't know who drove, and a judge thinks that happens too often, you can be told to have a log where you write down whoever is driving. And the next time if you don't know who drove, and your log doesn't say who drove, there's trouble as well.
I was wondering how that works - how can the judge "make the plaintiff" do anything? If there's a penalty for refusing, doesn't that make the whole "consent" invalid? (As in, signed under duress)?
The judge cannot make the plaintiff do anything. However, if in a civil case one side asks for information that is relevant to the case, and the other side refuses to give that information, then the judge is required by law that the information would be evidence against the person who refuses to give the information.
Say the defendant (maybe an insurance company) says "we were informed that the plaintiff was an a skiing trip two days after allegedly breaking both legs while slipping over a banana skin that our client allegedly left on the sidewalk. We want to see all holiday photos that the plaintiff put on facebook after the alleged accident". If the plaintiff refuses to hand the photos over, the judge is required by law to assume the plaintiff is hiding the fact that his legs were just fine.
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The idiocy was making laws to protect DRM in my opinion if a copy right holder employs DRM they should loose all copyright protections since they are employing technical means they no longer need those copyright protections.
What you propose would be the opposite of the laws for physical theft, where the punishment is lowest if I take something away that is unprotected, worse if I break a lock, and worse again when I use force. Your argument says basically that if I try to steal your car, you defend it with a baseball bat and I shoot you, there should be no punishment.
If this package is not sold with a GPL license, then the copyright holders have the choice to sue for statutory damages of $150,000 or for actual damages. Actual damages would be whatever money the software was sold for.
DRM can be effectively and easily implemented by XORing a Copyright Notice on top of the data. it's as good a measure as any, costs virtually nothing in terms of performance, does not interfere with distribution mechanisms (IP Multicast for example), can be "claimed" to be "encryption" under the DMCA, and makes it bluntly, bluntly clear that anyone dumb enough to remove it and spread the resultant file around the internet is DEFINITELY violating Copyright.
That's not quite DRM yet. A player would obviously remove the XORing for playing, and if I make an illegal copy from your computer to mine, then my player would remove the XORing exactly the same as yours. There would actually be nothing that prevents access to the encrypted data.
What would be DRM: The user has to type a "User ID" and a password into the media player. The media player downloads the media, xors with copyright notice, user id, and password. It also writes copyright notice, user id, and password, in clear text to the encrypted media. Playback xors with copyright notice and the user id and password of that media player. So if I copy the media illegally from your computer, my player decodes with the wrong user id and password, which gives you copy protection. It is still very easily circumvented, because the user id and password that work are contained in the media as clear test.
The Phelps Gang tests the extreme end of free speech. I despise them with all my being, but if it came to push and shove and I had to either choose whether Phelps and his gang of vile hatemongers or Anonymous lived or died, I'm afraid I'd stand on the side of Phelps. Anonymous is attacking Phelps' right to freely express his views, no matter how noxious. Anonymous is wrong on this one, and should be ashamed of themselves, if they weren't, of course, a bunch of halfwitted scriptkiddies with as much of a hard-on for getting attention from the press as Phelps and Co.
I don't mind at all if you stand on the side of Phelps, as long as god gives us a sign in form of a huge lightning that burns the lot.
The problem is all speech can be called hate speech, so where to we draw the line?
We don't need to know where to draw the line. Well, you do, because apparently you cannot handle uncertainty. But we only need to know which speech is clearly on one side of the line, which speech is clearly on the other side of the line, and the speech that isn't quite clear we just don't worry about.
At half a cent per stream (and 1.5m plays a month) they would make 75k a month A MONTH. That would be 900k a year. There really arn't that many artists that I think should receive 900k a year. The ones who do deserve that, will have no issues getting the 1.5 million plays a month.
Go straight to your school and ask for your money back.
1 play = half a cent
2 plays = one cent
200 plays = 1 dollar
1000 plays = 5 dollar
10,000 plays = 50 dollar
100,000 plays = 500 dollar
1 million plays = 5,000 dollar
1.5 million plays = 7,500 dollar
Can anyone explain in plain non-legalese the difference between Apple's App Store and this Windows Marketplace, in terms of open source? Does either one allow GPL applications distributed? For a fee? IANAL and AFAIK, doesn't GPL 2 allow charging for distribution of executable code, as long as the source is available somewhere? Thanks---
Windows Marketplace says "no GPL allowed". App Store doesn't mention GPL at all. Apple says that any license agreement is between developer and end user, and Apple is just helping to put the app onto the end user's device. So if the copyright holder puts an app onto the app store with a GPL license, then Apple is fine with it, the copyright holder is obviously fine with it, so nobody who would have a right to complain is complaining, and everyone is happy.
In the case of VLC, one copyright holder was complaining. So we have the copyright holder, we have the guys who created the port to iOS, and we have Apple. The guys who wrote the port obviously believed they had the right to put it on the App Store. The copyright holder says they don't. Apple says "we don't care, you sort it out between you". So there are four possibilities: a. VLC stays off the App Store. b. The guys writing the port remove all code of the complainer. c. The guys writing the port take the complainer to court and win a judgement that putting the app on the App Store does _not_ violate the GPL. d. Complainer loses his job with Nokia, looks for a job with Apple, and therefore withdraws his complaint. Not saying anything about the likelihood of each outcome, just enumerating the possibilities.
So with Windows Marketplace the situation is: No GPL. With App Store the situation is: GPL unless someone threatens to take Apple to court. Why the difference? Two possibilities: One that Microsoft believes putting GPL'd apps on their store _will_ open them up to a lawsuit. Two that Microsoft doesn't want GPL code on their store.
I doubt that either Apple or MS want to ban free software. But allowing anyone to port open source over and upload it for profit (ads) just seems dangerous, legally.
One thing that you can _not_ do is put GPL'd code on the Apple App Store, charge money, and conform to the GPL license. The reason: The App Store terms say clearly that any payment is _for the license_ and not for the software. And the GPL allows charging for software, but doesn't allow charging for the license.
The article seems to ignore the rather obvious point that the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 themselves forbid using covered software in app stores that apply anti-circumvention measures, such as the Windows 7 mobile app store or the Apple App Store. This is one of the improvements in the GPL between versions 2 and 3. The restriction is specific to GPLv3 licenses, and does not apply to GPLv2 licenses, nor to Apache, nor to BSD.
The purpose of this change is to avoid companies fulfilling their GPL obligations by the letter while removing your freedom by allowing you to copy software or modifying it, but then having no chance to actually run it. On the App Store, you can modify and run the software - not without some cost, but then it is the same cost as for non-GPL software. You can't make copies, but anyone you would want to give a copy to can just download it themselves. So what exactly is this "improvement" that you are talking about?
Indeed, the whole point of the GPL is to protect the user's right to fix their software. Closed ecosystems with locked devices are fundamentally incompatible with this goal, so it's no surprise that the App Store and Windows Market exclude the GPL, since the GPL already excludes the App Store and Windows Market.
The App Store most definitely doesn't exclude GPL licensed applications. The App Store terms say quite clearly that any license agreement is not between Apple and customer, but between the people creating the application and the customer. However, it has happened that a copyright holder, who was not one of the people creating the application, threatened to sue Apple, so Apple removed the application.
The App Store terms do however make it impossible to distribute GPL licensed apps and charge money, because their terms say that whatever money is paid is paid for the license. And you are not allowed to charge for the GPL license. You can charge as much as you like for the software, you can charge cost for the source code, but you can't charge for the license.
Disagree. This simple and reasonable freedom must be upheld. The Developers are right to prevent Apple from distributing the results of their hard work if Jobs wants to impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom. So now VLC benefits the Android community and not Apple. There's going to be more of that.
The purpose of the GPL license is that anyone receiving the software can get the source code, can modify the source code, can use it wherever they like, and that if someone else wants a copy they can get it as well. The actual terms are slightly different, but what I wrote is the purpose. On Apple's App Store, we have exactly the opposite of the Tivo situation: On the Tivo, you had all the rights of the GPL 2.2 license, but then it turned out you couldn't run the code. With the App Store, it is argued that you don't have all the rights that the GPL license gives you (and Apple's attitude is: If you don't want your app in the App Store, go f*** yourself), but anyone downloading an app can actually do everything that the GPL wants them to be able to do. Complaining that you can't give me a copy of the software when I can just download it myself for free is plain idiotic.
I also wonder though, how much of that was brought on by the corporate culture. My boss doesn't know what SSH is, so him asking about it would be a red flag to me. But executives at HBGary may have used it all the time. And maybe the required root access frequently.
That is the one thing that was new to me and where I could have gone wrong myself (but then I'm not a security guy): The person imitating the boss _did_ have the root password. And you'd think that anyone who has the root password can be trusted because they have ultimate power over the machine anyway. They can _read_ and _change_ any user password, so you would think that giving them a user password shouldn't hurt. But the root password doesn't allow them access through SSL! A hacker with root password does need an ordinary user password to get into the machine through SSL!
From what I have read about the issue it is my understanding that most patents in the media codec area are somehow extensions or refinements of other patented methods. Which would mean that instead of 1,000 individual patents one would be looking at a card house of legal technicalities that would fold if the fundamental patents everyone else built upon were invalidated. Could someone in the field comment on whether that really is the case?
That isn't true at all. Let's say X is patented, and it may or may not deserve that patent. It may be really too obvious for a patent, for example. I invent Y, which is an improvement on X, and get a patent. That means my improvements over X were worth a patent. It doesn't matter what X itself is worth. If you manage to invalidate X, then my improvements over X are still the same as they were before, and they deserve or don't deserve a patent, totally independent from X.
That said, I live in Texas, and am pretty incensed that my state is trying to do the same thing a few other states have to companies that do business on the internet. The end result is they've cost quite a few jobs, meaning they've actually eliminated some tax revenue (no state income tax, but jobless people buy fewer things, so less sales tax). Also, that when I buy something from Amazon it's likely it will take a little bit longer to get to me (not a big deal, just me whining a little).
The difference between buying from Amazon and from the shop round the corner is that the shop round the corner has to collect sales tax from you, and send it to the government, while Amazon doesn't collect the tax from you, but you have the choice to either send the exact same money to the government, or to commit tax evasion and save some money. If all customers were one hundred percent knowledgable and honest, then Amazon wouldn't have this advantage (I suppose lots of people are honest and _believe_ that Amazon is cheaper because they have no clue they have to pay the tax anyway by law).
So you are arguing that jobs will be lost. On the contrary. The companies that are forced to collect the sales tax will have to fight less unfair competition, so they will sell more. That will create new jobs, exactly as many as are lost because of Amazon. And the jobs will be locally, so it will benefit the local population.
H.264 is "open" like the Microsoft Open Office XML standard is open. There are bear-traps that can prevent you from using it successfully. In the case of OOXML, one of those bear-traps is requiring your documents to interpret "Proprietary Microsoft Binary Blobs".
I'd call your comparison quite pathetic. h.264 is actually a useful standard. It provides a very, very clear specification for its compression and decompression, unlike WebM. It is widely used with a huge range of hardware implementations. It gives much better compression than WebM will ever have. It was created with the intention to produce the best possible video compression. From a technical point of view it is clearly superior to WebM, and Google is right now trying to force a sub-standard video compression onto the whole world. The OOXML standard, on the other hand, is ten times the size of the h.264 standard. It is full of bugs, unclear, unspecified in many areas, there are no implementations now and there will likely never be implementations (since Microsoft doesn't have any products that match this standard), and all these huge disadvantages are totally intentional.
The more I read about this the more it seems like Intel really went overboard halting production on everything. For starters this flaw doesn't impact all the SATA ports. For the ports it does impact it only happens in a small % of devices and even in those devices it is a progressive problem (meaning they won't be DOA).
In the UK, the manufacturer has to fix a computer for six years _if the fault was present when the computer was sold_. If the customer buys a computer with a perfectly fine SATA port and it breaks after one year and one day because of bad luck, that's the customer's problem. If the customer buys a computer with a chip that was broken on day one, but only affecting operation after a few years, that is the manufacturer's problem.
Is it really so difficult to be original?
Well, yes :-)
This is about his barbaric treatment of women. And it's apparent he's very afraid of having to answer any more questions about it.
1. Calling it "barbaric treatment" is the most stupid apology ever that I've heard from a slashdotter who can't get laid.
2. Assange has made repeated offers to answer any questions that Swedish prosecutors might have, for example at Scotland Yard, or in the Swedish embassy in London. In a place where he is safe from an illegal extradition to the USA, where some rather prominent people have made death threats against him. And we have seen what happens when Palin makes death threats.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if everybody get a chance to get vaccines, then the only people who are at risk because of not wanting vaccines are the people who have chosen it for themselves, correct?
Incorrect. Vaccination doesn't work 100%, only say 95%. So if everyone gets a vaccination, then 95% are actually immune, and that should be enough to stop an outbreak. If 5% don't get vaccination, then we have 5% not vaccinated, 5% failed vaccination, 90% immune. If the disease breaks out, then both those that were not vaccinated, and those where vaccination failed without any fault of their own, will suffer.
One way to reduce the risk of an outbreak is to ask everyone who got vaccinated to come back in the next year. If the vaccination worked, then another vaccination has no effect at all; if it didn't work then there is a good chance that the second vaccination worked. So these five percent who decided against vaccination doubled the cost of preventing an outbreak. And since money is limited, the money for this doubled cost is missing somewhere else, causing death and suffering in completely unrelated areas.
She uses it to listen to Pandora while she is at work. Her employer allows 0 bandwidth for personal uses, so she spends the entire 8 hours per day listening to Pandora on 3G.
If she had to pay the actual cost, then she wouldn't.
I have read a few cases of people driving into bodies of water and buildings. I cannot fathom how someone would just drive into water. I suspect they drove off the road because they were fidgeting with the GPS or something else instead of looking at the road, and then blamed the GPS
I have been at one place where GPS directions would have driven you right into a lake. I arrived there in bright daylight, so I had no problems. But I can very much appreciate that someone arriving there in the middle of the night would have got wet feet or worse.
Apple doesn't seem to feel accountable to anyone any more. This is another great example where they don't even think they have to answer their email messages.
It's very simple, actually. Apple will not and should not react to just a claim in an e-mail. What the copyright holder has to do is to send a DMCA takedown notice in the correct form. They have to state that they are the copyright holder, that the other copy on the store is infringing on their copyright, and they have to give the correct contact information that allows them to be identified. This was published on slashdot many times when someone tried to suppress information through an overzealous DMCA takedown notice. There are rules that the copyright holder has to follow, and if they are not followed then the website need not and should not take down the allegedly infringing work.
Once a proper DMCA notice is sent, Apple will have to take down the infringing work in a reasonable amount of time (less than 24 hours) or be on the hook for copyright infringement itself (if there was copyright infringement in the first place). In addition, they have to send the contact information to the alleged infringer, who can either accept this, or demand that the software is put back on the store, which they would do if they think there is no copyright infringement and they are willing to go to court about it. If that happens, then Apple is off the hook, and we can be sure there will be a court case.
It's trivial for Lawyer X to set up an account purporting to be Claimant X. He could then say all sorts of things about how fun it's going to be to defraud Company X, or how Claimant X loves to get stoned, or whatever. Even vacation photos can be lifted from some other site, like flickr, and the EXIF data can be changed to make it look like the claimant was enjoying a nice vacation after allegedly getting paralyzed in an accident, or whatever.
Except that you most likely couldn't pay the lawyer enough to do this. In Britain this would be called "perverting the course of justice". Lawyers can do lots of things and get away with it or get punished lightly, but this would be deep into criminal territory. Police, when alerted to the situation, would have to investigate. Likely result for the ex-lawyer would be a lengthy jail sentence.
Yes because nobody else could ever be driving my car. I hated that in Europe (German and England). Here's your ticket, even though we don't even know if it was you driving or not.
UK: When your car is caught speeding, you first get a letter in which you, as the holder of the car, are asked to state who was driving at the time. So if someone else was driving your car at the time, just tell them. That person will then get a letter where they are asked to pay a fine or go to court. So what are you complaining about?
Germany: Same thing. One difference in Germany is that you say it was your uncle from Australia driving, they will occasionally send a policeman to Australia to check, and if you lied it will be very, very expensive. And if you say you don't know who drove, and a judge thinks that happens too often, you can be told to have a log where you write down whoever is driving. And the next time if you don't know who drove, and your log doesn't say who drove, there's trouble as well.
I was wondering how that works - how can the judge "make the plaintiff" do anything? If there's a penalty for refusing, doesn't that make the whole "consent" invalid? (As in, signed under duress)?
The judge cannot make the plaintiff do anything. However, if in a civil case one side asks for information that is relevant to the case, and the other side refuses to give that information, then the judge is required by law that the information would be evidence against the person who refuses to give the information.
Say the defendant (maybe an insurance company) says "we were informed that the plaintiff was an a skiing trip two days after allegedly breaking both legs while slipping over a banana skin that our client allegedly left on the sidewalk. We want to see all holiday photos that the plaintiff put on facebook after the alleged accident". If the plaintiff refuses to hand the photos over, the judge is required by law to assume the plaintiff is hiding the fact that his legs were just fine.