This anonymous post should be moderated up, as this information is obviously from someone else who has had experience with the BSA. Everything written above is fully relevant and directly articulates some points clearer than I did in my post.
First order of business, pull up information on the lawyer that initiated contact with you to determine how much experience they have at the firm. If you're a small company they may have someone with limited experience, say three years, and if so, argue as much as possible and you may distract them from one of my other points.
Secondly, forget anything you believe to be true about software licensing and forget about license agreements included with software. What Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe, etc. licensing department tell you on the phone and what they state in their licensing terms is not true and will not hold up legally unless you have more money than the fines to afford lawyers to fight the big guns. It's not a legitimate license unless you have a receipt. This is important, I repeat, you do not have a legitimate license unless you have a receipt for it. It doesn't matter if it's past 7 years, you have product keys on the side of your chassis, or you have discs; you must have it on the receipt.
Thirdly, do not provide information unless you're specifically asked for it. Read what they've requested, interpret it as literally as possible and if that allows you to include some information and not include other information. This point may not seem relevant to you and I'm not going to get into detail, but I want you to consider this point for at least an hour as the outcome may have a huge monetary difference.
Fourth, you can't buy stuff now and attempt to pass it off as something you'd purchased before they served you. Don't even consider back-buying software you didn't own before. Date of receipt ties into point number two.
Fifth, consider how they obtained this information and how much the person who provided it really knows. I won't give you advice on what to do with the software this person may not be aware of but I'd ensure your file servers are Linux and if you've ever made a transition from Windows to Linux, hopefully it was a transparent process to the users.
I won't get into details over our case as it cost us a tremendous amount of money, five figures, and at the same time, they may have missed a lot of stuff (the site is certainly fully legal now). If you have any other questions, feel free to fire them off and I'll try to answer as well as possible. The best advice I can give you is to consider this a logic problem.
50 kids complained they couldn't connect to World of Warcraft? It MUST be their ISP, no way it could be their routers, software, torrent downloading, etc.
I see a lot of comments that contain a lot of words articulating ideological beliefs; but I don't see people relaying realism.
Yes, parents should bond with their children more. Yes, parents should browse the internet with their children. Yes, kids live in a world where there's a lot of bad things going on and kids may encounter these bad things off the internet. Unfortunately, these words are not accurate to reality. Regardless of how Slashdot posters raise their children, if those advising even have children, the reality is that kids are continually conducting research online, playing kids games online and there's no reason why, if the technology exists, a safe harbour for kids can't exist online.
Has anyone used Microsoft Family & Safety? It works fantastic. You can blacklist * on the internet and only allow specific sites, customizing their favourites. As kids age though, they want more than crayola and build-a-bear; fortunately, Microsoft has an approved child-friendly list available. You can safely, with confidence, plop a child down in front of the computer and let them click to their hearts content and not fear they'll see anything they shouldn't.
The downside of this is, that kids can't google search for these sites as google is not 'child-friendly' and is on the block list, as you can search for nice sounding things and have the worst results imaginable. Having a kids.google.com would be a great tool, not just for allowing a child to learn how to browse the internet unattended but for a parent to safely search with their child beside them.
As a border Canadian who has access to both SyFy and Space, I can authoritatively state that Space caters more to the crowd that wants to watch their station, rather than trying to pull in more of the general crowd. Padding sci-fi shows with coverage of comic book, sci-fi and toy conventions... man, who else wants to see that but nerds? All they really need is more, varied content rather than repeating the same shows throughout the day.
Agree with you re: HP Procurve. I've found Cisco devices to be unnecessarily expensive and no better for many tasks than lower cost alternatives. I was also previously a huge fan of 3Com but they seem to be considerably less popular these days.
Well, that and as a reseller, I absolutely hate some Cisco small business devices that require you to register on their site and jump through hoops for required software, and the inability to create non-proprietary VPN connections... but that's a whole 'nother topic.
Because you're hard of hearing, you devolve to name calling? I'm sorry that you're too young to afford a quality sound system, but many of us adults who are listening to music on equipment other than your PC speakers can immediately discern the difference between CD audio /.flac and.mp3. Also, you're doing it wrong; try and convert your CD audio to.flac rather than your.mp3 collection and perhaps you'll understand the conversation the adults are having. I'm wondering if that little bit of irony is why you were modded 'funny'.
Back when it was widely used, I thought it was free piece of software as local internet providers were sending out disks (and later discs) with this software as part of their internet signup. Based on how many times I've installed it without realizing it for various people, I feel a little guilty over my naivete.
So, a select few Canadian song writers would benefit from this, despite the fact that I don't listen to them? What about the Canadian song writers that I do listen to, that aren't a member of the SOCAN outfit? How do they obtain my money? (Outside of me buying their albums and paying to hear them live, which I already do)
I agree with you. I'd prefer there be some effort to voting, so those who care are the ones who make a difference. "Hai 4chan guyz, let's all show how powerful anon is and let's all vote xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
So rather than politically engaged voters who care, travelling their voting station to cast a ballot, we can now encourage everyone to click vote, based on who has the best style, a trustworthy face and catchy slogans! Like. Comment. Vote.
It's ironic that people demand cheap, disposable $499 laptops yet complain that they're filled with junk. When Google pays a manufacturer $1 per every 3000 searches for setting Google as the default search engine, or Yahoo a similar deal, you're going to find such junk on PC's to help offset the cost of providing a low cost PC. It's also unfortunate that Microsoft changed their OEM distribution method of Microsoft Office, since 2007, so every manufacturer has to preload it, bloating the size of the images and other areas.
As someone who espoused the virtues of protecting your children online with the proper tools and configuring them, without barring them from using the computer, I found that Windows Vista made a huge leap forward in terms of integrating online safety with an operating system. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft removed this integration from the OS, removed some abilities and made it a downloadable aspect of Windows Live Essentials while downgrading it's functionality.
With a properly configured Windows Vista machine, I could confidently allow an 8 year old child to browse the internet unmonitored as there was no way they could see anything they weren't supposed to, even accidentally. The Windows 7 downloadable Family Safety has many issues which has sadly removed my confidence in the product.
I'm genuinely interested to hear how a real competitive market can't be in place; or rather, what's stopping competition from existing? Are there real barriers or simply a great deal of complaining by the smaller ISP's?
Originally, Stargate was a show with open ended possibilities. You had doorways to an *unlimited* number of worlds and the possibility of occasionally peppering a season with the sci-fi wet dream of temporal malfunctions. Create a team of four people with unique personalities that most viewers could relate to, toss in some humour and we had an enjoyable, adventurous romp through space that started and ended with practically every episode. How can you go wrong!? How can you not have 10 seasons of fun!?
Fast forward a few years and we take that formula, add in an overarching story line with an evil warring race, maybe a few extra characters to the team and, while it's not the same, it's still pretty damned good.
Fast forward a few more years and we take the mythos, remove the humour, and apply what we'd seen in the successful Battlestar Galactica franchise minus the deadly yet cool robots, and we have... a cancellation.
It seemed as though we were moving in a decent direction at the end of the most recent season, where they were finally gaining control of the ship and moving in a Star Trek Voyager direction but maybe it's too little, too late. Where's the sci-fi? Where's the space exploration? They're in deep space for crying out loud, why aren't they encountering bizarre worlds with amazing effects, aliens with odd customs and why are they continually engaging in human drama. How many episodes of Rush friction do we have to deal with?
As a solutions provider, I experience a definite distinction between "business users" and "home users" as different markets have different requirements and expectations of their smart 'phone.'
Consider an enthusiast 16 year old kid who thinks he knows it all and enjoys wasting time hacking around with his android and doesn't care that it may occasionally bug up whereas a corporate user or small business owner wants his emails and he wants them now, with a reliable experience that never fails. The latter market typically cares less about playing music, watching shows or taking pictures of lolfriends.
My BlackBerry Bold 9700 does not have alleged signal issues and has been extremely reliable. I do not accept his deflection of blame, especially after 1 out of 1 friends I'd asked could reproduce the iPhone 4 issue. So far, 100% of the people I know with an iPhone 4 are experiencing the issue.
If the Chinese government believes that foreign governments are monitoring the blogs or online activities of their active duty military personnel, perhaps they're engaging in this behaviour to monitor the military activities of other governments?
Reading some of the comments here, it seems as though there's a bias against PowerPoint for some ridiculous reasons. While I have read some reasons that were legitimate personal differences a person has in how they learn, I wonder if people would complain less and be more willing to learn if OpenOffice Impress were used instead of PowerPoint?
Thank you. I'd posted the same thing in another forum that brought this up yesterday. "The last thing this country needs is more uninformed citizens being able to easily and quickly click vote. Online voting isn't going to decrease political apathy."
Your 14 year old, WoW uber-player quip is lost on me as I don't play the game. I just work with a pile of people that complain their accounts were circumvented, then affirm they recently installed some new mod or addon around the same time. Maybe it's the installer, I don't know. I read the Blizzard notes from TFA and it seemed reasonable that Blizzard asserting control might prevent against whatever it is that's causing all of these accounts to get hijacked, or have all their items dumped.
Slashdot Mirror
This anonymous post should be moderated up, as this information is obviously from someone else who has had experience with the BSA. Everything written above is fully relevant and directly articulates some points clearer than I did in my post.
First order of business, pull up information on the lawyer that initiated contact with you to determine how much experience they have at the firm. If you're a small company they may have someone with limited experience, say three years, and if so, argue as much as possible and you may distract them from one of my other points.
Secondly, forget anything you believe to be true about software licensing and forget about license agreements included with software. What Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe, etc. licensing department tell you on the phone and what they state in their licensing terms is not true and will not hold up legally unless you have more money than the fines to afford lawyers to fight the big guns. It's not a legitimate license unless you have a receipt. This is important, I repeat, you do not have a legitimate license unless you have a receipt for it. It doesn't matter if it's past 7 years, you have product keys on the side of your chassis, or you have discs; you must have it on the receipt.
Thirdly, do not provide information unless you're specifically asked for it. Read what they've requested, interpret it as literally as possible and if that allows you to include some information and not include other information. This point may not seem relevant to you and I'm not going to get into detail, but I want you to consider this point for at least an hour as the outcome may have a huge monetary difference.
Fourth, you can't buy stuff now and attempt to pass it off as something you'd purchased before they served you. Don't even consider back-buying software you didn't own before. Date of receipt ties into point number two.
Fifth, consider how they obtained this information and how much the person who provided it really knows. I won't give you advice on what to do with the software this person may not be aware of but I'd ensure your file servers are Linux and if you've ever made a transition from Windows to Linux, hopefully it was a transparent process to the users.
I won't get into details over our case as it cost us a tremendous amount of money, five figures, and at the same time, they may have missed a lot of stuff (the site is certainly fully legal now). If you have any other questions, feel free to fire them off and I'll try to answer as well as possible. The best advice I can give you is to consider this a logic problem.
50 kids complained they couldn't connect to World of Warcraft? It MUST be their ISP, no way it could be their routers, software, torrent downloading, etc.
Ayn Rand-reading nerds? So... they're trading gold pieces?
I see a lot of comments that contain a lot of words articulating ideological beliefs; but I don't see people relaying realism.
Yes, parents should bond with their children more. Yes, parents should browse the internet with their children. Yes, kids live in a world where there's a lot of bad things going on and kids may encounter these bad things off the internet. Unfortunately, these words are not accurate to reality. Regardless of how Slashdot posters raise their children, if those advising even have children, the reality is that kids are continually conducting research online, playing kids games online and there's no reason why, if the technology exists, a safe harbour for kids can't exist online.
Has anyone used Microsoft Family & Safety? It works fantastic. You can blacklist * on the internet and only allow specific sites, customizing their favourites. As kids age though, they want more than crayola and build-a-bear; fortunately, Microsoft has an approved child-friendly list available. You can safely, with confidence, plop a child down in front of the computer and let them click to their hearts content and not fear they'll see anything they shouldn't.
The downside of this is, that kids can't google search for these sites as google is not 'child-friendly' and is on the block list, as you can search for nice sounding things and have the worst results imaginable. Having a kids.google.com would be a great tool, not just for allowing a child to learn how to browse the internet unattended but for a parent to safely search with their child beside them.
As a border Canadian who has access to both SyFy and Space, I can authoritatively state that Space caters more to the crowd that wants to watch their station, rather than trying to pull in more of the general crowd. Padding sci-fi shows with coverage of comic book, sci-fi and toy conventions... man, who else wants to see that but nerds? All they really need is more, varied content rather than repeating the same shows throughout the day.
Agree with you re: HP Procurve. I've found Cisco devices to be unnecessarily expensive and no better for many tasks than lower cost alternatives. I was also previously a huge fan of 3Com but they seem to be considerably less popular these days.
Well, that and as a reseller, I absolutely hate some Cisco small business devices that require you to register on their site and jump through hoops for required software, and the inability to create non-proprietary VPN connections... but that's a whole 'nother topic.
Because you're hard of hearing, you devolve to name calling? I'm sorry that you're too young to afford a quality sound system, but many of us adults who are listening to music on equipment other than your PC speakers can immediately discern the difference between CD audio / .flac and .mp3. Also, you're doing it wrong; try and convert your CD audio to .flac rather than your .mp3 collection and perhaps you'll understand the conversation the adults are having. I'm wondering if that little bit of irony is why you were modded 'funny'.
Back when it was widely used, I thought it was free piece of software as local internet providers were sending out disks (and later discs) with this software as part of their internet signup. Based on how many times I've installed it without realizing it for various people, I feel a little guilty over my naivete.
So, a select few Canadian song writers would benefit from this, despite the fact that I don't listen to them? What about the Canadian song writers that I do listen to, that aren't a member of the SOCAN outfit? How do they obtain my money? (Outside of me buying their albums and paying to hear them live, which I already do)
I agree with you. I'd prefer there be some effort to voting, so those who care are the ones who make a difference. "Hai 4chan guyz, let's all show how powerful anon is and let's all vote xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
So rather than politically engaged voters who care, travelling their voting station to cast a ballot, we can now encourage everyone to click vote, based on who has the best style, a trustworthy face and catchy slogans! Like. Comment. Vote.
It's ironic that people demand cheap, disposable $499 laptops yet complain that they're filled with junk. When Google pays a manufacturer $1 per every 3000 searches for setting Google as the default search engine, or Yahoo a similar deal, you're going to find such junk on PC's to help offset the cost of providing a low cost PC. It's also unfortunate that Microsoft changed their OEM distribution method of Microsoft Office, since 2007, so every manufacturer has to preload it, bloating the size of the images and other areas.
As someone who espoused the virtues of protecting your children online with the proper tools and configuring them, without barring them from using the computer, I found that Windows Vista made a huge leap forward in terms of integrating online safety with an operating system. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft removed this integration from the OS, removed some abilities and made it a downloadable aspect of Windows Live Essentials while downgrading it's functionality.
With a properly configured Windows Vista machine, I could confidently allow an 8 year old child to browse the internet unmonitored as there was no way they could see anything they weren't supposed to, even accidentally. The Windows 7 downloadable Family Safety has many issues which has sadly removed my confidence in the product.
I'm genuinely interested to hear how a real competitive market can't be in place; or rather, what's stopping competition from existing? Are there real barriers or simply a great deal of complaining by the smaller ISP's?
Originally, Stargate was a show with open ended possibilities. You had doorways to an *unlimited* number of worlds and the possibility of occasionally peppering a season with the sci-fi wet dream of temporal malfunctions. Create a team of four people with unique personalities that most viewers could relate to, toss in some humour and we had an enjoyable, adventurous romp through space that started and ended with practically every episode. How can you go wrong!? How can you not have 10 seasons of fun!?
Fast forward a few years and we take that formula, add in an overarching story line with an evil warring race, maybe a few extra characters to the team and, while it's not the same, it's still pretty damned good.
Fast forward a few more years and we take the mythos, remove the humour, and apply what we'd seen in the successful Battlestar Galactica franchise minus the deadly yet cool robots, and we have... a cancellation.
It seemed as though we were moving in a decent direction at the end of the most recent season, where they were finally gaining control of the ship and moving in a Star Trek Voyager direction but maybe it's too little, too late. Where's the sci-fi? Where's the space exploration? They're in deep space for crying out loud, why aren't they encountering bizarre worlds with amazing effects, aliens with odd customs and why are they continually engaging in human drama. How many episodes of Rush friction do we have to deal with?
As a solutions provider, I experience a definite distinction between "business users" and "home users" as different markets have different requirements and expectations of their smart 'phone.' Consider an enthusiast 16 year old kid who thinks he knows it all and enjoys wasting time hacking around with his android and doesn't care that it may occasionally bug up whereas a corporate user or small business owner wants his emails and he wants them now, with a reliable experience that never fails. The latter market typically cares less about playing music, watching shows or taking pictures of lolfriends.
My BlackBerry Bold 9700 does not have alleged signal issues and has been extremely reliable. I do not accept his deflection of blame, especially after 1 out of 1 friends I'd asked could reproduce the iPhone 4 issue. So far, 100% of the people I know with an iPhone 4 are experiencing the issue.
If the Chinese government believes that foreign governments are monitoring the blogs or online activities of their active duty military personnel, perhaps they're engaging in this behaviour to monitor the military activities of other governments?
TFA is wrong, in talking about a group called "Anonymous." Gullible people who aren't so up on things need to stop giving this meme credibility.
Reading some of the comments here, it seems as though there's a bias against PowerPoint for some ridiculous reasons. While I have read some reasons that were legitimate personal differences a person has in how they learn, I wonder if people would complain less and be more willing to learn if OpenOffice Impress were used instead of PowerPoint?
Thank you. I'd posted the same thing in another forum that brought this up yesterday. "The last thing this country needs is more uninformed citizens being able to easily and quickly click vote. Online voting isn't going to decrease political apathy."
You've accurately summarized my opinion on the matter and I'd mod you up if I had the points (but I don't think you'll need them :) Well said.
Your 14 year old, WoW uber-player quip is lost on me as I don't play the game. I just work with a pile of people that complain their accounts were circumvented, then affirm they recently installed some new mod or addon around the same time. Maybe it's the installer, I don't know. I read the Blizzard notes from TFA and it seemed reasonable that Blizzard asserting control might prevent against whatever it is that's causing all of these accounts to get hijacked, or have all their items dumped.
Fail, indeed. And info stealer keygens don't exist?