Is the RIAA just going to start asking anyone that has been to Ms. Lindors home within a specified time to hand over their computers so they can check to see if they were the ones that they are looking for?
I wonder how many of these attorneys were guilty of sneaking over to a friends house to look at their older brothers porn mags? Sorry, I had access to porn way before the net was around and I'm sure my son is going to find a way to look at naked ladies regardless of what blocks are in place on the net, or anywhere else.
The story was submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer who is a lawyer actively working on these cases. I would say that it's a valid defense if he submitted it for us to read about. Of course, I'm guessing a judge could just flat out say, "That's not a valid defense." and it wouldn't be, but it looks good me, the layman.
We're a small manufacturing company with 3 office people and mostly laborers, not some large corporation or anything close to it. So yeah, our research consists of what we can do on our own time with hardware we have laying around. We don't have a large budget to invest in high end hardware. The servers consist of two PC's connected via high availability and a backup that runs nightly. Nope, it's not the best, latest, most expensive setup by any means. As we grow which we have over the past couple of years, our budget for hardware will grow. But, when you're a small business you do what you can with what you have. You can laugh all you want, but I will tell you this, our system is more robust than most other small businesses in the area.
Microsoft shops that want to deploy Linux must have something very specific in mind. I'd wager they'll use whatever they think is best. It may very well be Suse, but that will probably be for reasons that have nothing to do with Novell and Microsoft forging some sort of strange and obscure patent deal.
That's what we did at the company I work for. The only reason we went with Suse was because it's the only distro out of Red Hat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Debian, and Suse that would just flat out install and run with a minimal amount of tweaking/looking for drivers on PC's that I tried to put it on. Those PC's were my wife's Dell laptop, my Grandmother-in-laws HP, my moms laptop, and my custom built PC. Red Hat wouldn't install at all on the HP, it just stopped during the install and gave me an error saying it can't install. Ubuntu on my wife's laptop had issues with the touchpad sensitivity. I'm guessing it was a driver problem but I couldn't find a good solution online. There were various other problems with the other distros and for me, Suse allowed me to put it on whatever I wanted and was generally configured to my liking right off the disc. So, when it came time to upgrade our servers here at work, I picked Suse because I had good experiences with it. It had some descent backing (Novell) to go along with it, which I saw as a plus.
So now, they made a deal with Microsoft which may be good or bad, I just don't know yet. But, I don't really care that much. If it goes bad, I can just copy all of the config files for Samba, Users, Groups, etc. and move them all over to another distro with a minimum amount of fuss. Sure, it might be a bit of a pain, but that's one of the beauties of Linux. Nothing is really locked down to that distro, so if I need to change, then I can, and it won't cost me anything! Of course, I'll have to research which distro is the best for my situation again, but I can deal with that.
It's depressing because people have died and put their lives on the line for the right to vote. There are so many people that just blow voting off, it's sad. No, I don't want them to vote on issues they know nothing about, I want them to take an active role in choosing people that will run this country. It's not depressing that they aren't voting because they know nothing about the issues, it's depressing that they know nothing about the issues in the first place.
I've asked three people today so far if they're going to vote, and they all said roughly the same thing, "No, I haven't really read any of the measures and I don't know anything about who's running. So, rather than throw my vote at something I don't know anything about, I'm just not going to vote." That's just depressing to me.
I constantly see comments about how screwed up the digital voting system is, and I totally agree that what we are using is not working up to what I think the standard should be. But is it THAT much different from pen and paper? People seem to think that if they have written it down themselves, that all of the sudden it's etched in stone and nothing ever happens to those ballots. You see in the documentary that the Ohio recount had actual recorded voter cards that were "categorized" into two different piles. One democrat, and the other republican. This should never have happened, but someone seperated them, but NOBODY knew how. Using an old system where only pen and paper are used, what's to keep someone from creating forged ballots and replacing one stack for the other? "Oops, I dropped this stack on the ground!" *makes the switch*, there we go.
Also in the documentary, ballot tapes were thrown in the trash when it was against the law. Was anyone ever prosecuted for that? I didn't catch that part. It was just, "Look, we found these in the trash, that's against the law." Ok, so what now? I don't get the feeling that it's a conspiracy by some higher power, I think it's a bunch of people that want their side to win, and they're willing to break the law for it. It doesn't matter if it's digital or not, they'll find a way. Once you put your vote in someone else's hand, you have not control over what they do with it.
My question is, do you think it is ever going to be possible to have an un-corruptable system? If there are people using the system, someone along the line is going to try and fudge the numbers, no matter what. I don't think it's possible to ever have a truly accurate count no matter what we do.
It seems to me this person has more time than most. Wanting to sue someone for being annoying is just sad. It's an ad, hang up the phone! What did that take, 5 seconds, now move on with your life. I could understand if your phone was ringing off the hook and you were forced to unplug it due to the volume of calls. But this doesn't seem like the problem the person is having. How about using caller ID? If you don't know the number, don't answer the phone. If it's extremely important, the person would/should leave a message and if you recognize the voice, pick it up. If you're thinking that you shouldn't HAVE to do that, no, you shouldn't, but life has it's annoyances and ads on the phone are just one tiny fraction of what you're going to run up against. Are you going to track down and sue that kid that crank called you at 2am? This person probably would.
I'm on the fence about this. I agree that you can't watch your kids 100% of the time. Sometimes they'll get in trouble over at a friends house who has parents that don't keep as good an eye on them. But, I know I would definitely want SOMETHING done of people started spouting untrue things on the net about me. Not just that they think I'm mean, unfair for giving them detention, or the like. But saying I'm something I'm not, homosexual, child molester, etc. can be somewhat damaging to your future, especially if you're a public servant. It's just too easy to spread things that are untrue and ruin someone these days. Until more people start to realize that most of everything said on the net via myspace, facebook, blah blah blah is NOT true, something needs to be done. I don't know what the answer is, but I hope we find something reasonable soon.
People want good stories, period. It doesn't matter if you spend $200 million on one piece of crap, or 50-60 pieces of crap, they're still going to be crap. Tell us a good story, and we'll pay you for it.
"The article looks at the sloppy habits people have when using public terminals"
When I first read that, I thought it was going to talk about people picking their nose/teeth/ears while using the terminals. I wonder what those dangers are? "What's that green thing on the key there? EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwww..."
The battle over proprietary versus open documents software began heating up well before the ITD's September announcement. Observers say that lobbyists on both sides of the issue turned up on Beacon Hill earlier in 2005 and met with Galvin, Sen. Pacheco, chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, and others.
In July 2005, a registered Microsoft lobbyist, Maureen Glynn, donated $200 to Pacheco, according to campaign finance records. Glynn, who lobbies for other companies as well, also gave Pacheco $200 in 2003. In January 2004, Mario Rebello, then a Microsoft employee and lobbyist, donated $200 to Pacheco's campaign."
and
"The Initiative for Software Choice, a trade organization with close ties to Microsoft, also wrote a letter to Pacheco a few days before the October 2005 hearing, warning officials against the move toward open standards. "The ODF policy creates a biased procurement mandate for open-source vendors to the detriment of all other competitors," the letter stated.
At the same time, Sun and IBM were also lobbying in favor of ODF, including a major letter-writing campaign on the part of Sun employees in Massachusetts. Public records show that Microsoft paid Massachusetts lobbyists salaries totaling $69,200 in 2005, while Sun, which has a major facility in Burlington, paid $60,000 to its lobbyist. IBM paid its lobbyist $15,000. Employees from all three companies have also given contributions to various political campaigns in Massachusetts. (Since Jan. 1, 2003, Sun employees have given a total of $4,675 to Massachusetts candidates, while IBM employees have donated $12,375. Employees of Microsoft, which has significantly fewer workers in the state, contributed a total of $450.)
"A decision by any Microsoft employee to contribute is a personal decision," says Ginny Terzano, spokeswoman for Microsoft. "The industry, including Microsoft, has a very politically active employee base.""
I don't understand why everyone is getting so mad. It's not like they're going to use signal strength monitors to track the router in your moms basement. They're going to find neighborhoods that have a lot of vulnerabilities and distribute "FLYERS" to let people know how to secure their networks. If you don't want to secure it, don't. They aren't going to knock down doors and force you to do it. In my opinion, what they're doing is just a service. Of course, if they take it to the extreme and start forcing people to close their networks, it would be bad.
The best example I can think of is the police driving through my grandparents neighborhood and noticing a lot of roll up garage doors partially opened to vent the heat buildup in the garage. Do they knock down your door and force you to close it? No, they sent out a flyer notifying people of the possible crimes that could happen as a result of it being rolled up. Am I missing something here?
Since it wasn't the mother, she had no knowedge of computers, they moved right on to her daughter.
"The RIAA sued the defendant Candy Chan, who had no experience or knowledge of computers. It was possible that her 13 year old daughter may have had a file sharing account.
The RIAA continued to argue that Ms. Chan was indirectly liable for providing a computer to her teenage daughter. After taking Ms. Chan's deposition, the RIAA moved to add the 13 year old child as a defendant.
Ms. Chan's attorney, John Hermann of Berkley, Michigan, objected, arguing that the daughter was a minor and that the Court would have to appoint a guardian ad litem to protect the interests of the child, before for the child before they could proceed.
In the meantime, Mr. Hermann indicated that he would make a motion for summary judgment on behalf of Ms. Chan.
The RIAA then immediately moved to withdraw its own case against the mother."
More specifically, here's the info from the Directory of Lawyer Disciplinary Agencies. This is who to contact regarding lawyers in Ohio.
Jonathan E. Coughlan Disciplinary Counsel Office of the Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio 250 Civic Center Drive, Suite 325 Columbus, OH 43215 614/461-0256 FAX: 614/461-7205 Website: www.sconet.state.oh.us
Check out the title they chose for the Act. The "Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006". Whoever came up with that was pretty creative. When this crosses the desk of a non-tech savy parent, they may just ask themselves, "Why wouldn't I vote for deleting online predators?" Hopefully they'll actually READ what it is.
I changed majors from computer science about two years ago. It just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. In junior college I took C++, C, Assembly programming, and a Data Structures class. I did pretty good in all of the classes, and I attribute a lot of that to the instructors I had. At that point, I was excited. I was thinking that once I got to the University, I would become the equivalent of a code ninja! Sadly, that wasn't the case. Almost all of the classes I was taking were theoretical classes with things like building logic gates. Looking at the future, to the classes I was going to be taking to finish my degree, nothing, absolutely nothing seemed exciting. It looked like I might code in two or three more classes and that was it. I wanted to write useful programs for people!
Another thing was the quality of instruction I was getting. I'm not going to blame my declining computer science grades entirely on the instruction I was getting, but that was a contributing factor. It seems that the higher level classes you take, the more arrogant the instructors get, or their actual "teaching" skills deteriorate. They want to be able to come in, lecture with PowerPoint, and leave. If anyone has a question, you get the *sigh* "You should understand this, it's so simple." This also happened a lot in the higher level math classes like Linear Algebra. For the most part I also don't have a problem understanding people with thick accents, but some instructors were almost impossible to understand. I'm sure they are VERY smart and capable at what they do in the private sector, but they do not have "TEACHING" skills. I want a "TEACHER" at school, not someone that has worked in the field with a ton of experience that gets mad at me when I don't understand a concept, or gets frustrated by the language barrier. I'm learning!!
So, I took a year off and now I'm back in school. I changed majors in my senior year, much to the chagrin of my wife, but I just wasn't happy. It wasn't "fun" anymore. I liked writing code, solving problems, parsing text files to organize the data, etc. But that's not what I was doing in school. I thought computer science was the "smart" choice when I was starting out, and maybe it was. But by the time I hit my senior year, I HATED going to school. I loathed reading theory, sitting in a sea of zombies watching the powerpoint slides flash by. Shocked at how many people cut and paste code between each other, steal code, etc. I thought at the college level, cheating would be all but non-existent. Boy was I wrong. So now, I have all the classes I need for a minor in computer science, and I'm working on my B.F.A. in illustration. You know what? I'm loving every minute of it.
Slashdot Mirror
His e-mail address is dougj@iastate.edu, maybe you could ask him why directly? (pulled from a PDF listed above)
Is the RIAA just going to start asking anyone that has been to Ms. Lindors home within a specified time to hand over their computers so they can check to see if they were the ones that they are looking for?
I wonder how many of these attorneys were guilty of sneaking over to a friends house to look at their older brothers porn mags? Sorry, I had access to porn way before the net was around and I'm sure my son is going to find a way to look at naked ladies regardless of what blocks are in place on the net, or anywhere else.
The story was submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer who is a lawyer actively working on these cases. I would say that it's a valid defense if he submitted it for us to read about. Of course, I'm guessing a judge could just flat out say, "That's not a valid defense." and it wouldn't be, but it looks good me, the layman.
We're a small manufacturing company with 3 office people and mostly laborers, not some large corporation or anything close to it. So yeah, our research consists of what we can do on our own time with hardware we have laying around. We don't have a large budget to invest in high end hardware. The servers consist of two PC's connected via high availability and a backup that runs nightly. Nope, it's not the best, latest, most expensive setup by any means. As we grow which we have over the past couple of years, our budget for hardware will grow. But, when you're a small business you do what you can with what you have. You can laugh all you want, but I will tell you this, our system is more robust than most other small businesses in the area.
That's what we did at the company I work for. The only reason we went with Suse was because it's the only distro out of Red Hat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Debian, and Suse that would just flat out install and run with a minimal amount of tweaking/looking for drivers on PC's that I tried to put it on. Those PC's were my wife's Dell laptop, my Grandmother-in-laws HP, my moms laptop, and my custom built PC. Red Hat wouldn't install at all on the HP, it just stopped during the install and gave me an error saying it can't install. Ubuntu on my wife's laptop had issues with the touchpad sensitivity. I'm guessing it was a driver problem but I couldn't find a good solution online. There were various other problems with the other distros and for me, Suse allowed me to put it on whatever I wanted and was generally configured to my liking right off the disc. So, when it came time to upgrade our servers here at work, I picked Suse because I had good experiences with it. It had some descent backing (Novell) to go along with it, which I saw as a plus.
So now, they made a deal with Microsoft which may be good or bad, I just don't know yet. But, I don't really care that much. If it goes bad, I can just copy all of the config files for Samba, Users, Groups, etc. and move them all over to another distro with a minimum amount of fuss. Sure, it might be a bit of a pain, but that's one of the beauties of Linux. Nothing is really locked down to that distro, so if I need to change, then I can, and it won't cost me anything! Of course, I'll have to research which distro is the best for my situation again, but I can deal with that.
It's depressing because people have died and put their lives on the line for the right to vote. There are so many people that just blow voting off, it's sad. No, I don't want them to vote on issues they know nothing about, I want them to take an active role in choosing people that will run this country. It's not depressing that they aren't voting because they know nothing about the issues, it's depressing that they know nothing about the issues in the first place.
I've asked three people today so far if they're going to vote, and they all said roughly the same thing, "No, I haven't really read any of the measures and I don't know anything about who's running. So, rather than throw my vote at something I don't know anything about, I'm just not going to vote." That's just depressing to me.
I constantly see comments about how screwed up the digital voting system is, and I totally agree that what we are using is not working up to what I think the standard should be. But is it THAT much different from pen and paper? People seem to think that if they have written it down themselves, that all of the sudden it's etched in stone and nothing ever happens to those ballots. You see in the documentary that the Ohio recount had actual recorded voter cards that were "categorized" into two different piles. One democrat, and the other republican. This should never have happened, but someone seperated them, but NOBODY knew how. Using an old system where only pen and paper are used, what's to keep someone from creating forged ballots and replacing one stack for the other? "Oops, I dropped this stack on the ground!" *makes the switch*, there we go.
Also in the documentary, ballot tapes were thrown in the trash when it was against the law. Was anyone ever prosecuted for that? I didn't catch that part. It was just, "Look, we found these in the trash, that's against the law." Ok, so what now? I don't get the feeling that it's a conspiracy by some higher power, I think it's a bunch of people that want their side to win, and they're willing to break the law for it. It doesn't matter if it's digital or not, they'll find a way. Once you put your vote in someone else's hand, you have not control over what they do with it.
My question is, do you think it is ever going to be possible to have an un-corruptable system? If there are people using the system, someone along the line is going to try and fudge the numbers, no matter what. I don't think it's possible to ever have a truly accurate count no matter what we do.
It seems to me this person has more time than most. Wanting to sue someone for being annoying is just sad. It's an ad, hang up the phone! What did that take, 5 seconds, now move on with your life. I could understand if your phone was ringing off the hook and you were forced to unplug it due to the volume of calls. But this doesn't seem like the problem the person is having. How about using caller ID? If you don't know the number, don't answer the phone. If it's extremely important, the person would/should leave a message and if you recognize the voice, pick it up. If you're thinking that you shouldn't HAVE to do that, no, you shouldn't, but life has it's annoyances and ads on the phone are just one tiny fraction of what you're going to run up against. Are you going to track down and sue that kid that crank called you at 2am? This person probably would.
I'm on the fence about this. I agree that you can't watch your kids 100% of the time. Sometimes they'll get in trouble over at a friends house who has parents that don't keep as good an eye on them. But, I know I would definitely want SOMETHING done of people started spouting untrue things on the net about me. Not just that they think I'm mean, unfair for giving them detention, or the like. But saying I'm something I'm not, homosexual, child molester, etc. can be somewhat damaging to your future, especially if you're a public servant. It's just too easy to spread things that are untrue and ruin someone these days. Until more people start to realize that most of everything said on the net via myspace, facebook, blah blah blah is NOT true, something needs to be done. I don't know what the answer is, but I hope we find something reasonable soon.
People want good stories, period. It doesn't matter if you spend $200 million on one piece of crap, or 50-60 pieces of crap, they're still going to be crap. Tell us a good story, and we'll pay you for it.
"The article looks at the sloppy habits people have when using public terminals"
When I first read that, I thought it was going to talk about people picking their nose/teeth/ears while using the terminals. I wonder what those dangers are? "What's that green thing on the key there? EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwww..."
Here's an interesting link. http://www.cio.com/archive/040106/opensource.html? action=print
"Money in Politics
The battle over proprietary versus open documents software began heating up well before the ITD's September announcement. Observers say that lobbyists on both sides of the issue turned up on Beacon Hill earlier in 2005 and met with Galvin, Sen. Pacheco, chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, and others.
In July 2005, a registered Microsoft lobbyist, Maureen Glynn, donated $200 to Pacheco, according to campaign finance records. Glynn, who lobbies for other companies as well, also gave Pacheco $200 in 2003. In January 2004, Mario Rebello, then a Microsoft employee and lobbyist, donated $200 to Pacheco's campaign."
and
"The Initiative for Software Choice, a trade organization with close ties to Microsoft, also wrote a letter to Pacheco a few days before the October 2005 hearing, warning officials against the move toward open standards. "The ODF policy creates a biased procurement mandate for open-source vendors to the detriment of all other competitors," the letter stated.
At the same time, Sun and IBM were also lobbying in favor of ODF, including a major letter-writing campaign on the part of Sun employees in Massachusetts. Public records show that Microsoft paid Massachusetts lobbyists salaries totaling $69,200 in 2005, while Sun, which has a major facility in Burlington, paid $60,000 to its lobbyist. IBM paid its lobbyist $15,000. Employees from all three companies have also given contributions to various political campaigns in Massachusetts. (Since Jan. 1, 2003, Sun employees have given a total of $4,675 to Massachusetts candidates, while IBM employees have donated $12,375. Employees of Microsoft, which has significantly fewer workers in the state, contributed a total of $450.)
"A decision by any Microsoft employee to contribute is a personal decision," says Ginny Terzano, spokeswoman for Microsoft. "The industry, including Microsoft, has a very politically active employee base.""
I don't understand why everyone is getting so mad. It's not like they're going to use signal strength monitors to track the router in your moms basement. They're going to find neighborhoods that have a lot of vulnerabilities and distribute "FLYERS" to let people know how to secure their networks. If you don't want to secure it, don't. They aren't going to knock down doors and force you to do it. In my opinion, what they're doing is just a service. Of course, if they take it to the extreme and start forcing people to close their networks, it would be bad.
The best example I can think of is the police driving through my grandparents neighborhood and noticing a lot of roll up garage doors partially opened to vent the heat buildup in the garage. Do they knock down your door and force you to close it? No, they sent out a flyer notifying people of the possible crimes that could happen as a result of it being rolled up. Am I missing something here?
How is it not a defense? How about coming up with a good argument against it, rather than your own little rant. Google for Candy Chan and the RIAA and this is one you'll get. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2005 /09/priority-records-v-chan-riaa-case.html
Since it wasn't the mother, she had no knowedge of computers, they moved right on to her daughter.
"The RIAA sued the defendant Candy Chan, who had no experience or knowledge of computers. It was possible that her 13 year old daughter may have had a file sharing account.
The RIAA continued to argue that Ms. Chan was indirectly liable for providing a computer to her teenage daughter. After taking Ms. Chan's deposition, the RIAA moved to add the 13 year old child as a defendant.
Ms. Chan's attorney, John Hermann of Berkley, Michigan, objected, arguing that the daughter was a minor and that the Court would have to appoint a guardian ad litem to protect the interests of the child, before for the child before they could proceed.
In the meantime, Mr. Hermann indicated that he would make a motion for summary
judgment on behalf of Ms. Chan.
The RIAA then immediately moved to withdraw its own case against the mother."
If it was strictly for get in/out quickly, wouldn't they just paint the curb green with a "XX minute parking" label on it?
More specifically, here's the info from the Directory of Lawyer Disciplinary Agencies. This is who to contact regarding lawyers in Ohio.
Jonathan E. Coughlan
Disciplinary Counsel
Office of the Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio
250 Civic Center Drive, Suite 325
Columbus, OH 43215
614/461-0256
FAX: 614/461-7205
Website: www.sconet.state.oh.us
Check out the title they chose for the Act. The "Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006". Whoever came up with that was pretty creative. When this crosses the desk of a non-tech savy parent, they may just ask themselves, "Why wouldn't I vote for deleting online predators?" Hopefully they'll actually READ what it is.
I changed majors from computer science about two years ago. It just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. In junior college I took C++, C, Assembly programming, and a Data Structures class. I did pretty good in all of the classes, and I attribute a lot of that to the instructors I had. At that point, I was excited. I was thinking that once I got to the University, I would become the equivalent of a code ninja! Sadly, that wasn't the case. Almost all of the classes I was taking were theoretical classes with things like building logic gates. Looking at the future, to the classes I was going to be taking to finish my degree, nothing, absolutely nothing seemed exciting. It looked like I might code in two or three more classes and that was it. I wanted to write useful programs for people!
Another thing was the quality of instruction I was getting. I'm not going to blame my declining computer science grades entirely on the instruction I was getting, but that was a contributing factor. It seems that the higher level classes you take, the more arrogant the instructors get, or their actual "teaching" skills deteriorate. They want to be able to come in, lecture with PowerPoint, and leave. If anyone has a question, you get the *sigh* "You should understand this, it's so simple." This also happened a lot in the higher level math classes like Linear Algebra. For the most part I also don't have a problem understanding people with thick accents, but some instructors were almost impossible to understand. I'm sure they are VERY smart and capable at what they do in the private sector, but they do not have "TEACHING" skills. I want a "TEACHER" at school, not someone that has worked in the field with a ton of experience that gets mad at me when I don't understand a concept, or gets frustrated by the language barrier. I'm learning!!
So, I took a year off and now I'm back in school. I changed majors in my senior year, much to the chagrin of my wife, but I just wasn't happy. It wasn't "fun" anymore. I liked writing code, solving problems, parsing text files to organize the data, etc. But that's not what I was doing in school. I thought computer science was the "smart" choice when I was starting out, and maybe it was. But by the time I hit my senior year, I HATED going to school. I loathed reading theory, sitting in a sea of zombies watching the powerpoint slides flash by. Shocked at how many people cut and paste code between each other, steal code, etc. I thought at the college level, cheating would be all but non-existent. Boy was I wrong. So now, I have all the classes I need for a minor in computer science, and I'm working on my B.F.A. in illustration. You know what? I'm loving every minute of it.