Again, I did file a complaint about the laptop, following the specified procedure by mail, and my claim was denied.
Regarding the guy holding up my money, this was long past the x-ray. This was not a matter of some shadow on the x-ray being possibly similar to a bomb. The x-ray screener had no problem telling exactly what it was, and they did not need to open the case for visual inspection. They didn't even have to run it through the x-ray a second time. No problem.
This was at the gate, while they were still doing those "random" searches of people in line to board at the gate. The random search was conducted at a table just to the side of the door, and there was no privacy screen, so everyone at the gate could see everything. Specifically, everyone getting onto the same flight could see the money, could see what bag it was in, and could see what I looked like. Not good if I have to leave my seat to use the toilet and leave my bag behind.
I *did* immediately in a very low but firm voice demand to see the supervisor *now*. While everyone else was boarding, we waited for a supervisor to be called to the gate, which took quite a while. The gate agents were trying to close the door without me on the plane. The supervisor finally showed up, and I explained how the screener had utterly failed to enhance my security and how.
The screener *did* get in trouble, and for all I know lost his job. I did write down names and employee numbers, but there was no means for me to do anything in writing at the time, just a phone number to call. The ultimate outcome is unknown to me. I had a flight to catch. And was just barely allowed to get on the plane at all.
And funny thing, for the next dozen flights or so, I was usually pulled aside for another "random" search of my carry-on bag. At least I didn't get put on the No-Fly List for speaking out.
I did submit the claim, and it was denied. At the moment it happened, I *politely* requested to speak to the supervisor. He came over and gave me a phone number to call to make a claim.
I called that number, they took my address and mailed a form. I completed the form, included a copy of my boarding pass as instructed, and mailed it to the address specified.
Both of the complaints I made to TSA where acted on promptly, and in a satisfying manner:
My experience has been different. On one trip the TSA screener didn't know how to open a laptop computer with a latch on the screen, and just forced it, breaking the latch. I complained and asked for the Supervisor (and no doubt earned a special note in my "file"). I was told it was my problem, TSA had no responsibility for damage they caused. This was just 2 years ago, long after the 9/11 hysterical reaction.
I was left with a new laptop with a broken latch, and a $200 repair bill to fix it.
On many other trips, I have been fortunate enough to win an extra personal screening of my carryon bag filled with computer cables, batteries, and papers. Every single time, the screener has completely ignored the cables, wires, batteries, and electronic equipment. They have focused on the business papers in my carryon, looking at each page and each book. I happened to have some money in my carryon, so that it was not in my pocket to fall out or be picked. The screener held it up in plain view of everyone at the gate, and asked in a loud voice why I had money in my carryon bag. Needless to say, this greatly enhanced my personal security on that flight...
There is no justification for this kind of nonsense relating to security of the flight, since there is no relationship to security.
In any other context, this kind of search (of personal papers and reading material) would be expected to cause an enormous outcry, and would not be tolerated. Unfortunately, the climate of hysteria and "we don't know what we're doing, let's at least look busy" procedures is at its heart an effort to make the public comfortable with the idea of carrying ID at all times ("Your travel documents please!") and putting up with being stopped, questioned, and even detained at any time for any cause real or imagined, all in the name of "Security".
It's been done before. (approximately 70 years ago) Itty-bitty steps down a slippery slope; by the time anyone notices, it's too late.
On a business trip in Europe a while ago [1990, pre-EU], at last minute I had to take a slight side trip from Switzerland into Italy. The border crossing was kind of like crossing from the Boston airport into Boston -- just drive through. I was looking forward to having the Italy stamp in my passport, and expressed my disappointment to the local folks who were driving. They circled around so I could officially pass through Immigration and Customs, and get the stamp. It delayed us by 2 hours. I got the stamp in my passport to show I had been in Italy (for a few hours), but I don't think I'll do that again. [out-take to stamp collectors jumping through hoops to get First Day of Issue postmarks on First Day Covers]
With an RFID passport, they [Italy, Switzerland, EU, of course the US superpower] would know my passport (not necessarily me) had crossed the border, but I would not have gathered the souvenir. [second out-take to stamp collectors lamenting the demise of real paper commemorative postage stamps and cancellations, replaced by uninteresting postage meters and computer-printed postage labels]
Disclaimer: Steve was a college classmate of mine over 30 years ago.
From TFA with commentary: "he has started four companies, all based on his frustrations with existing products or services" Unless they're all still in business that's probably 3 failures on record.
Well, here's some more info on those 3 companies:
1) I'd guess that many computer users today are familiar with an optical mouse, instead of one that leads to all those jokes about cleaning mouse balls. Steve invented the optical mouse. That was one company, Mouse Systems. I'm not sure I would buy into your conjecture that the invention of the optical mouse was a failure.
2) Many typesetters and publishers still use FrameMaker by preference instead of the latest-released products from Adobe and others for page layout and publishing. Another of Steve's companies, bought out by Adobe. And while deliberate orphaning of a product acquired by purchasing a competitor might be interpreted as failure, I would disagree. But then, even today I still use FrameMaker on an older Mac system I maintain just for that purpose, because FrameMaker is so much better for my typesetting and publishing needs. Just Google for it (oops)
3) Infoseek was, in its day, one of the top 3 web search engines. Youngsters may only know Google and maybe Yahoo; names like AltaVista, Lycos, and InfoSeek are such ancient history that the memory has faded. Back in the day, we checked Infoseek *and* AltaVista *and* Lycos. Now y'all just take the first hit on Google and write your term paper.
This new venture into spam fighting is just that, a new venture. There are technical issues to be sure. But even though it is against SlashDot tradition to keep discussions focused on technical issues instead of questionable personal attacks, it would be nice to buck that tradition. The man has a good track record. Before you try to trash it, you should do a little research to make sure you don't come out looking foolish yourself.
Warner Music is thought to be preparing to acquire Front Line Management, the nation's largest artist-management firm whose roster includes Aerosmith and Christina Aguilera. Rob Malda is thought to be acquiring some crystal meth, by sucking off dudes.
Funny, the OP addition indicated above in boldface doesn't show in the original. Clearly my browser is in error, and the AC's mirror is correct.
Gotta fix that med dose, AC! Those hallucinations are leaking out.
Most empty hives have been discovered at large, commercial migrating bee farms - and that has led some beekeepers to theorize that it's the stress of being trucked cross-country that's killing the bees.
Many amateur beekeepers (including my wife) are finding 90% or more of their hives wiped out here in California. These hives are not commercial, do not migrate.
Some people blame the high-fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed the bees in the large-scale operations.
This is generally known to be not the best thing to feed bees, and weakens them. The beekeepers here are not feeding their bees sugar water.
This problem is real, even if it is not happening everywhere. It is quite widespread in California, and many other places, more so than in memory or written records of the beekeepers.
Absolute and utterly untrue. Either you are lying through your teeth, or you have no connection to the credit card industry (in which case you are lying through your teeth).
Those same rules say that the card need not be accepted at all if the transaction can not be authorized in real time (system is down, etc.).
You don't want to show ID? Fine. The card can't read read, and the transaction won't run. Cash only, thank you, it's nicely anonymous. We don't accept checks from people we don't know (trust).
What I find more interesting about the "See ID" idea, on most of the credit cards I've seen, they all have a clause that says "Not valid unless signed".
The blank ones are even better. The thief doesn't even need to try to forge a signature, they just sign the card using their own writing. Then the signature on the transaction slip will match for sure.
The credit card companies pay nothing for credit card fraud. Their excuse for the usurious interest rates (24% and up in many cases) is to cover their losses. But in reality, the banks have zero losses due to credit card fraud. All losses are paid by the merchant victims, who accepted the card in good faith. The total cost to the credit card issuers is the overhead for paperwork. Cost to the consumer is time. Cost to the merchant is real $$.
And the credit card issuers advertise that they "protect" the cardholder from credit card fraud. That's fraud right there. The issuers simply charge it back to the merchant who did everything right -- ID check, address verification, signature, everything that could possibly be verified. If the cardholder disputes a charge simply because they don't remember it, the merchant is automatically charged a fine, and the transaction amount reversed. Then, after "investigation", the cardholder admits that the charge was correct, the merchant is still in the hole for the fine and the "research fee", which total at least $50 and can exceed $100 for a single $10 transaction which was correct and is eventually confirmed by the cardholder.
Eventually this cost must be passed through to the customer. Not all at once, and not across the board at all merchants: just like increases in postage, gas, utilities, etc., some merchants will absorb the added cost for a time. Some will raise prices sooner, some will raise them later. But eventually, equilibrium again will be reached, and prices at all merchants will reflect the increase, one way or another, and the differences in price between merchants will again be due to all the other usual factors.
Or, at least in my case, where every single fraudulent purchase I've had made with my cards (and there's been a lot, sadly) have come, 100% of the time, from merchants who didn't verify the card owner when the shipping address was different than the billing address.
How often do you make fraudulent purchases? And do you think it's a good idea to admit to doing so online?
A good way to do it is to always send a rejection back to the sender with a reason why. In the event that a real user is rejected, at least they know and can try again via another account, fax, or phone.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure that by "send a rejection back" you meant "return a rejection SMTP response at SMTP time". You just said it sloppily.
Of course, you never want to generate a new email message to report rejected email. That new email would almost certainly be going to a non-existent address (at best) or an innocent bystander (worse) or even an automated spamtrap address (worst of all). The "From:", "Reply-To:", and "Return-Path:" headers on spam are almost always bogus.
A properly configured email server is set up to reject email at SMTP time, with either a 5xx permanent or a 4xx temporary status. Never, ever generate a new email to a supposed sender of an email unless you know for sure that it's going to the right place (for example, if it's a local address and the original message was verified with SMTP auth or other mechanism).
If that's *not* what you meant, then you should not be surprised when your own email server gets its IP address added to numerous blocklists.
Out here in the boonies, TPC says we won't have DSL or even ISDN in our lifetimes. Cable modem? Needs a cable. Satellite? There's a mountain in the way of line-of-sight (not to mention the latency issues).
We have a Telco Remote Interface in town, basically a remote central office for the phone company. It concentrates calls, and even handles local in-town calls without bothering the outside world. But its own pipe back to the mother ship is not much more than a single DSL.
So when d'ya think we might expect WiMax?
The bummer about technologies that require population density to be cost-effective is that they, well, require population density.
It really wasn't all that long ago (pre so-called "Rural Electrification") that it was common for there to be no electricity in a given home or even a business.
Guess I'll have to be content with burning fossil fuel to get down the hill to $day_job, rather than telecommuting, for the foreseeable future.
Recall that IBM has been the losing defendant in several anti-trust action based on their attempts to prevent customers (purchaser of IBM software) from running that software on non-IBM hardware, agreeing to various consent decrees negotiated with the Justice department.
This is long before the PC.
It goes back even before 1956, when IBM was forced to stop requiring customers to purchase punch cards only from IBM. In the '70s, another anti-trust action forced IBM to allow purchasers of IBM software to run it on Amdahl-made IBM-compatible equipment. And of course there are many cases in connection with IBM-compatible PCs.
If IBM's army of lawyers could not prevent the US DOJ and the courts from ruling that it is legal to run software on machines made by another company, then I expect that Apple will learn the same.
The problem is that lots of lawyers will make lots of money between now and then, and as usual the public will be the ones that pay.
Just for fun I logged into Amazon tonight (haven't for about a year), and looked at my "Wish List". I've never used the Wish List feature on Amazon.com, so I was surprised to find that my Wish List had more than 20 items on it, not just books, that I had never even browsed. And some of them were pretty bizarre choices!
This convinces me just how valuable the data being mined is. It isn't.
Granted, it would be hard for me to prove that I did not put those items into my Wish List. But since I did not, I would expect that they could not prove that I did.
Makes the paranoid side of me wonder how I could protect myself if some PTB falsified evidence against me as Wish List items, and then prosecuted (or persecuted) based on that false evidence.
I had carefully provisioned our company with redundant T1 lines (x2) and one DSL line, served by 3 different ISPs, but all the copper was owned & served by PacBell (now SBC). It took some doing, but our city is well wired, and I was able to get metallic pairs coming in from different poles in different directions, and one underground. Still one CLEC, but at least cutting one cable would not knock it all out.
The routing of the cables was traced and verified as separate by the guy in the field, not just the office. Supporting evidence was the different CO prefix for POTS phones lines for alarms served by the given cables, the CO's were in different locations. That's about as good as it gets for telco redundancy.
With 3 different ISPs, a single router/DNS/BGP/accounting fsck-up wouldn't take us down. It took a lot of calls, a lot of persistence, and a long time, but we got it.
Well, recently we moved to a neighboring city (18 miles). All that redundancy is now gone, no infrastructure to support it. Only one cable at the street, hanging up where it can get hit by a tall truck or someone with a long ax handle. Local office that thinks 25 pairs in the same cable is more redundancy than we would ever need. Sigh. Hoping for WiMax soon to add my own redundancy bypassing SBC.
Appears to me that OP is correct. The MS operating system effects many a security problem.
(hey, you can assume you know what he/she means, and then assume bad grammar, or you can take it as stated and read the words to figure out what the poster means.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Again, I did file a complaint about the laptop, following the specified procedure by mail, and my claim was denied.
Regarding the guy holding up my money, this was long past the x-ray. This was not a matter of some shadow on the x-ray being possibly similar to a bomb. The x-ray screener had no problem telling exactly what it was, and they did not need to open the case for visual inspection. They didn't even have to run it through the x-ray a second time. No problem.
This was at the gate, while they were still doing those "random" searches of people in line to board at the gate. The random search was conducted at a table just to the side of the door, and there was no privacy screen, so everyone at the gate could see everything. Specifically, everyone getting onto the same flight could see the money, could see what bag it was in, and could see what I looked like. Not good if I have to leave my seat to use the toilet and leave my bag behind.
I *did* immediately in a very low but firm voice demand to see the supervisor *now*. While everyone else was boarding, we waited for a supervisor to be called to the gate, which took quite a while. The gate agents were trying to close the door without me on the plane. The supervisor finally showed up, and I explained how the screener had utterly failed to enhance my security and how.
The screener *did* get in trouble, and for all I know lost his job. I did write down names and employee numbers, but there was no means for me to do anything in writing at the time, just a phone number to call. The ultimate outcome is unknown to me. I had a flight to catch. And was just barely allowed to get on the plane at all.
And funny thing, for the next dozen flights or so, I was usually pulled aside for another "random" search of my carry-on bag. At least I didn't get put on the No-Fly List for speaking out.
I did submit the claim, and it was denied. At the moment it happened, I *politely* requested to speak to the supervisor. He came over and gave me a phone number to call to make a claim.
I called that number, they took my address and mailed a form. I completed the form, included a copy of my boarding pass as instructed, and mailed it to the address specified.
The claim was denied.
Both of the complaints I made to TSA where acted on promptly, and in a satisfying manner:
My experience has been different. On one trip the TSA screener didn't know how to open a laptop computer with a latch on the screen, and just forced it, breaking the latch. I complained and asked for the Supervisor (and no doubt earned a special note in my "file"). I was told it was my problem, TSA had no responsibility for damage they caused. This was just 2 years ago, long after the 9/11 hysterical reaction.
I was left with a new laptop with a broken latch, and a $200 repair bill to fix it.
On many other trips, I have been fortunate enough to win an extra personal screening of my carryon bag filled with computer cables, batteries, and papers. Every single time, the screener has completely ignored the cables, wires, batteries, and electronic equipment. They have focused on the business papers in my carryon, looking at each page and each book. I happened to have some money in my carryon, so that it was not in my pocket to fall out or be picked. The screener held it up in plain view of everyone at the gate, and asked in a loud voice why I had money in my carryon bag. Needless to say, this greatly enhanced my personal security on that flight...
There is no justification for this kind of nonsense relating to security of the flight, since there is no relationship to security.
In any other context, this kind of search (of personal papers and reading material) would be expected to cause an enormous outcry, and would not be tolerated. Unfortunately, the climate of hysteria and "we don't know what we're doing, let's at least look busy" procedures is at its heart an effort to make the public comfortable with the idea of carrying ID at all times ("Your travel documents please!") and putting up with being stopped, questioned, and even detained at any time for any cause real or imagined, all in the name of "Security".
It's been done before. (approximately 70 years ago) Itty-bitty steps down a slippery slope; by the time anyone notices, it's too late.
[almost OT]
It's not just air travel, nor cruise ships.
On a business trip in Europe a while ago [1990, pre-EU], at last minute I had to take a slight side trip from Switzerland into Italy. The border crossing was kind of like crossing from the Boston airport into Boston -- just drive through. I was looking forward to having the Italy stamp in my passport, and expressed my disappointment to the local folks who were driving. They circled around so I could officially pass through Immigration and Customs, and get the stamp. It delayed us by 2 hours. I got the stamp in my passport to show I had been in Italy (for a few hours), but I don't think I'll do that again. [out-take to stamp collectors jumping through hoops to get First Day of Issue postmarks on First Day Covers]
With an RFID passport, they [Italy, Switzerland, EU, of course the US superpower] would know my passport (not necessarily me) had crossed the border, but I would not have gathered the souvenir. [second out-take to stamp collectors lamenting the demise of real paper commemorative postage stamps and cancellations, replaced by uninteresting postage meters and computer-printed postage labels]
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...
From TFA with commentary:
"he has started four companies, all based on his frustrations with existing products or services"
Unless they're all still in business that's probably 3 failures on record.
Well, here's some more info on those 3 companies:
1) I'd guess that many computer users today are familiar with an optical mouse, instead of one that leads to all those jokes about cleaning mouse balls. Steve invented the optical mouse. That was one company, Mouse Systems. I'm not sure I would buy into your conjecture that the invention of the optical mouse was a failure.
2) Many typesetters and publishers still use FrameMaker by preference instead of the latest-released products from Adobe and others for page layout and publishing. Another of Steve's companies, bought out by Adobe. And while deliberate orphaning of a product acquired by purchasing a competitor might be interpreted as failure, I would disagree. But then, even today I still use FrameMaker on an older Mac system I maintain just for that purpose, because FrameMaker is so much better for my typesetting and publishing needs. Just Google for it (oops)
3) Infoseek was, in its day, one of the top 3 web search engines. Youngsters may only know Google and maybe Yahoo; names like AltaVista, Lycos, and InfoSeek are such ancient history that the memory has faded. Back in the day, we checked Infoseek *and* AltaVista *and* Lycos. Now y'all just take the first hit on Google and write your term paper.
This new venture into spam fighting is just that, a new venture. There are technical issues to be sure. But even though it is against SlashDot tradition to keep discussions focused on technical issues instead of questionable personal attacks, it would be nice to buck that tradition. The man has a good track record. Before you try to trash it, you should do a little research to make sure you don't come out looking foolish yourself.
Warner Music is thought to be preparing to acquire Front Line Management, the nation's largest artist-management firm whose roster includes Aerosmith and Christina Aguilera. Rob Malda is thought to be acquiring some crystal meth, by sucking off dudes.
Funny, the OP addition indicated above in boldface doesn't show in the original. Clearly my browser is in error, and the AC's mirror is correct.
Gotta fix that med dose, AC! Those hallucinations are leaking out.
...1999, only 2 years after NeXT bought Apple.
Ahem. Is that your final answer?
Most empty hives have been discovered at large, commercial migrating bee farms - and that has led some beekeepers to theorize that it's the stress of being trucked cross-country that's killing the bees.
Many amateur beekeepers (including my wife) are finding 90% or more of their hives wiped out here in California. These hives are not commercial, do not migrate.
Some people blame the high-fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed the bees in the large-scale operations.
This is generally known to be not the best thing to feed bees, and weakens them. The beekeepers here are not feeding their bees sugar water.
This problem is real, even if it is not happening everywhere. It is quite widespread in California, and many other places, more so than in memory or written records of the beekeepers.
Absolute and utterly untrue. Either you are lying through your teeth, or you have no connection to the credit card industry (in which case you are lying through your teeth).
Those same rules say that the card need not be accepted at all if the transaction can not be authorized in real time (system is down, etc.).
You don't want to show ID? Fine. The card can't read read, and the transaction won't run. Cash only, thank you, it's nicely anonymous. We don't accept checks from people we don't know (trust).
What I find more interesting about the "See ID" idea, on most of the credit cards I've seen, they all have a clause that says "Not valid unless signed".
The blank ones are even better. The thief doesn't even need to try to forge a signature, they just sign the card using their own writing. Then the signature on the transaction slip will match for sure.
The credit card companies pay nothing for credit card fraud. Their excuse for the usurious interest rates (24% and up in many cases) is to cover their losses. But in reality, the banks have zero losses due to credit card fraud. All losses are paid by the merchant victims, who accepted the card in good faith. The total cost to the credit card issuers is the overhead for paperwork. Cost to the consumer is time. Cost to the merchant is real $$.
5 323876/
And the credit card issuers advertise that they "protect" the cardholder from credit card fraud. That's fraud right there. The issuers simply charge it back to the merchant who did everything right -- ID check, address verification, signature, everything that could possibly be verified. If the cardholder disputes a charge simply because they don't remember it, the merchant is automatically charged a fine, and the transaction amount reversed. Then, after "investigation", the cardholder admits that the charge was correct, the merchant is still in the hole for the fine and the "research fee", which total at least $50 and can exceed $100 for a single $10 transaction which was correct and is eventually confirmed by the cardholder.
Eventually this cost must be passed through to the customer. Not all at once, and not across the board at all merchants: just like increases in postage, gas, utilities, etc., some merchants will absorb the added cost for a time. Some will raise prices sooner, some will raise them later. But eventually, equilibrium again will be reached, and prices at all merchants will reflect the increase, one way or another, and the differences in price between merchants will again be due to all the other usual factors.
Same old story, same old Slashdot. See the similar thread from Feb 2003: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54226&cid=
Same season, 4 years ago. Same story.
Or, at least in my case, where every single fraudulent purchase I've had made with my cards (and there's been a lot, sadly) have come, 100% of the time, from merchants who didn't verify the card owner when the shipping address was different than the billing address.
How often do you make fraudulent purchases? And do you think it's a good idea to admit to doing so online?
[Have you stopped beating your wife/dog/wang?]
Sorry, couldn't resist.
>No way to dock them properly.
Ignorance of the facts is no excuse. Nonetheless:
http://www.bookendzdocks.com/
A good way to do it is to always send a rejection back to the sender with a reason why. In the event that a real user is rejected, at least they know and can try again via another account, fax, or phone.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure that by "send a rejection back" you meant "return a rejection SMTP response at SMTP time". You just said it sloppily.
Of course, you never want to generate a new email message to report rejected email. That new email would almost certainly be going to a non-existent address (at best) or an innocent bystander (worse) or even an automated spamtrap address (worst of all). The "From:", "Reply-To:", and "Return-Path:" headers on spam are almost always bogus.
A properly configured email server is set up to reject email at SMTP time, with either a 5xx permanent or a 4xx temporary status. Never, ever generate a new email to a supposed sender of an email unless you know for sure that it's going to the right place (for example, if it's a local address and the original message was verified with SMTP auth or other mechanism).
If that's *not* what you meant, then you should not be surprised when your own email server gets its IP address added to numerous blocklists.
Man, I'd be pleased with Fiber To The Town.
Out here in the boonies, TPC says we won't have DSL or even ISDN in our lifetimes. Cable modem? Needs a cable. Satellite? There's a mountain in the way of line-of-sight (not to mention the latency issues).
We have a Telco Remote Interface in town, basically a remote central office for the phone company. It concentrates calls, and even handles local in-town calls without bothering the outside world. But its own pipe back to the mother ship is not much more than a single DSL.
So when d'ya think we might expect WiMax?
The bummer about technologies that require population density to be cost-effective is that they, well, require population density.
It really wasn't all that long ago (pre so-called "Rural Electrification") that it was common for there to be no electricity in a given home or even a business.
Guess I'll have to be content with burning fossil fuel to get down the hill to $day_job, rather than telecommuting, for the foreseeable future.
Your right to walk the streets unmolested by the police outweighs my right not to get blown up.
Are you sure about that signature? The sense of the test might be reversed...
If not, then if you don't mind I'll make sure I'm always down the street from you.
We will patent no invention before its time.
Recall that IBM has been the losing defendant in several anti-trust action based on their attempts to prevent customers (purchaser of IBM software) from running that software on non-IBM hardware, agreeing to various consent decrees negotiated with the Justice department.
This is long before the PC.
It goes back even before 1956, when IBM was forced to stop requiring customers to purchase punch cards only from IBM. In the '70s, another anti-trust action forced IBM to allow purchasers of IBM software to run it on Amdahl-made IBM-compatible equipment. And of course there are many cases in connection with IBM-compatible PCs.
If IBM's army of lawyers could not prevent the US DOJ and the courts from ruling that it is legal to run software on machines made by another company, then I expect that Apple will learn the same.
The problem is that lots of lawyers will make lots of money between now and then, and as usual the public will be the ones that pay.
Just for fun I logged into Amazon tonight (haven't for about a year), and looked at my "Wish List". I've never used the Wish List feature on Amazon.com, so I was surprised to find that my Wish List had more than 20 items on it, not just books, that I had never even browsed. And some of them were pretty bizarre choices!
This convinces me just how valuable the data being mined is. It isn't.
Granted, it would be hard for me to prove that I did not put those items into my Wish List. But since I did not, I would expect that they could not prove that I did.
Makes the paranoid side of me wonder how I could protect myself if some PTB falsified evidence against me as Wish List items, and then prosecuted (or persecuted) based on that false evidence.
Shiver...
The disc is useful only as a toy until you enter into this second contract.
Even that's doubtful...
No doubt the use of a CD/DVD as a toy is covered by patent.
Splorf! You owe me a new keyboard!
Er?
Aye, there's the rub!
I had carefully provisioned our company with redundant T1 lines (x2) and one DSL line, served by 3 different ISPs, but all the copper was owned & served by PacBell (now SBC). It took some doing, but our city is well wired, and I was able to get metallic pairs coming in from different poles in different directions, and one underground. Still one CLEC, but at least cutting one cable would not knock it all out.
The routing of the cables was traced and verified as separate by the guy in the field, not just the office. Supporting evidence was the different CO prefix for POTS phones lines for alarms served by the given cables, the CO's were in different locations. That's about as good as it gets for telco redundancy.
With 3 different ISPs, a single router/DNS/BGP/accounting fsck-up wouldn't take us down. It took a lot of calls, a lot of persistence, and a long time, but we got it.
Well, recently we moved to a neighboring city (18 miles). All that redundancy is now gone, no infrastructure to support it. Only one cable at the street, hanging up where it can get hit by a tall truck or someone with a long ax handle. Local office that thinks 25 pairs in the same cable is more redundancy than we would ever need. Sigh. Hoping for WiMax soon to add my own redundancy bypassing SBC.
Appears to me that OP is correct. The MS operating system effects many a security problem.
:-)
(hey, you can assume you know what he/she means, and then assume bad grammar, or you can take it as stated and read the words to figure out what the poster means.