I don't expect a 1:1 return, but I expect if the airline makes a billion from in-flight calls, they'll pass on a couple of million in tickt price discounts. Remember, they're pretty tightly regulated, and too much profit has to be spent somewhere. I imaging a lot of it would go first to system improvements, newer planes, updated airports, but eventually (as I said, in the future) it would have an impact on ticket prices.
I can't discuss which power company it is, due to contractual issues, but I can tell you that the power company around here would not be susceptable to such an attack.
The computer systems that control the grid are extremely secure. So secure in fact, they do not HAVE a network connection outside of their own server to server interaction.
The mainframes, UNIX systems, and other systems that operate the switcing grid are isolated in a section of the building that even their own network engineers can not enter without being padded down to ensure they carry no computer media of any kind.
When media does need to be brought in, say to patch the OS on a machine for a bug, or to update the backup server software, the media for that must pass through a several step security scan, including scans by not less than 3 AV applications, repeated on not less than 3 different PCs. All install media for machines in that area are kept in that area, seperate from all other company media.
You wouldn't believe the process we had to go through to bring a new backup system in there...
These systems are so isolated it is virtually impossible to infect them.
On the other hand, the PCs connected to the billing systems, yes, they could be infected. These systems however are backed up in many ways, and even if they had to roll back the database a few days, all they'd have to do is correlate the accounting records with meter readings, and they'll know exactly how much everyone owes or paid. They might have to type a few customer change orders back into the system, but all that is in hard copy anyway... It would be an inconvenience, but not that big of one. Of course, the billing system is only accessible via terminal session from PCs on a specific VLAN that are not used for any other purposes (no web browser, document creation, etc), so infecting it is not exactly easy, and I doubt is could be done with a bot without intimate network design knowledge, a few passwords, and a lot of attempts. It would have to be a targeted hack.
This particular power company is a locally owned co-op, small time company. If they can implement security like this, I'm sure others do as well.
I imaging the power grid itself, not so much the systems controlling them, could somehow be hacked, or fooled with conflicting signals that could cause issues, but I seriously doubt anyone let these people try...
The issue was with old, pre-CDMA cell phones and extremely old avionics, like those found in small and mid-sized non-comercial aircraft about 40 years ago.
Modern cockpits have been retrofitted with systems that shield from various types of this radiation and signal interference, and the older touchy meters are only found in old, personally owned aircraft today. Also, not a single one of those old phones that DID cause the interference is in use today since those old networks were dismantled years ago.
This is what happens when people who do not understand technology are allowed to make decisions for people that do.
People forget to turn on or off their cell phones on every flight I've been on for years... I'll hear voicemail chimes start going off about a mile from the ground, typically about 10 minutes or so before landing. I'll also catch kids whipping out phones to play games in-flight, phones that I know for certain don't support radio-off airline operation modes.
Not one plane has complained about avionic radio interference. With tens of thousands of people in the air every day, and at least one person on every flight forgetting to turn it off (or leaving it on on purpose), we'd have heard about an issue.
If the medical industry was held to the standards of the FAA, we'd just now be seeing asprin appear on store shelves for the first time.... 45 billion test cases, not one single failure, but ya never know... we need to do more testing....
I've got no problem sticking a pair of ear phones in, cutting on the noise canceling, and letting them all chat away at $0.50 a minute premium air time. All they're doing is improving the airport's profits, and as a result, some of that will lower my ticket cost in the future...
Free wi-fi on planes, that's what I'm waiting for. It might not be free for everyone, but with my bundled iPhone, home phone, and AT&T internet service plan, I don't pay for wi-fi at airports, starbucks, or any other AT&T hotspot... (and almost all of them are, including the big push for in-flight hot spots.
Also, if they let wi-fi happen, likely people will be using skype or cell phones with wi-fi talk capability... might as well charge them a premium rate to use a real cell phone.
Piggly Wiggly, Krogers, Publics, and Bi-Lo, my 4 local grocers, all charge $3-4 for the bags, and give $0.01 for it's use, up to a maximum of a dime. If you're getting something other, maybe it's a local law forcing the grocer to comply...
As for careless people letting bags fly away, that's what the $500 littering fine is for... Besides, those plastic bags break down quickly in the open.
I accumulate a bunch of the damned things too. We have a nifty little bag in the pantry we stuff them in the top and pull from the bottom. When it's full, I take one bag out and open it, stuff all the other bags in it except a few, tie a not in the bag and trow it in the recylcing bin.
It takes me about 1 minute a month to keep them in order... a lot less time and energy than managing, cleaning, and having to remember those re-usable bags that I get screwed on buying, and which again, use more plastics and chemicals than over 100 plastic bags... There are some new ones out "made from 100% post-consumer material" but I'm recylcing my bags so that's irrelevent.
Any way you cut it, the plastic ones are a LOT better than paper. besides, they're not burned, so their use has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses, just oil costs. They still cost less than paper to manufacture, ship, and store, use less energy to make than paper, and pollute less than paper.
The re-usable bags, in a perfect world, yes, they cost less to make, and are clearly better than paper, and they only use a tiny bit more oil to make (than their shelf life equivolent voulme of plastic bags). Problem is all the energy and environmental impact of CLEANING them... That's where that process fails, badly.
OK, first, contrary to popular belief, we do not have a shortage of landfills in the USA. In fact, quite the opposite. We have a SHITLOAD of land that we'd like to make into landfill, but WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TRASH. Just our EXISTING landfills will last us more than 200 years...
next, no landfil in the history of the USA has ever leaked a hazardous chemical that has entered a water supply. If you look into how these things are made, you'll see why.
Next, grocery bags contain cornstarch aditives, and break down nearly 100 times faster than their paper equivolents in landfills.
Paper bags require more energy to make, cause more environmental damage to make (all those deisel engines cutting down forests and hauling away trees), take more warehouse space, more landfil space, and actually take LONGER to biodegrade.
Those "re-usable bags" Yea, did that for a few years... until i realized how many I was throwing out when they ripped, how much energy I wasted cleaning them when stuff leaked in them, and that 1 re-usable bag had more plastic in it than nearly 100 disposable bags (each of which I typically re-use 2-3 times bringing lunch to work) They don't give ya $0.10 per bag anymore either, it's a penny per purchase up to a dime, and costing $4 for a bag, I'm not going to be able to re-use it 400 times before it breaks. (I don't think I've had one last 50 trips yet).
From what I understand, there's a guy that drives, following a GPS. He has a simple indicator that there are no problems with the equipment. He does not monitor it so to say, but has a simple indicator it's not working, kind of like your engine light coming on...
When images are not recorded for some reason, or part of the data is corrupt or missing, they simple dispatch another driver to that location on a later run through town.
Actually, PA has a very specific law (that some other poster added to this chain) about private property being properly posed. Otherwise, a fense of other barrier would be assumed. If you haven't poseted it, it's assumed a salesman could come up to your front door, or a lost citezen looking for directions or a phone, and they are not tresspassing...
1) Show me a PA law that counters this. unless there is such a law, in a common law state like PA, this would be very hard to fight in court since there's no apparent damage incurred by turning around in someone's driveway.
2) OK, so PA has better laws regarding tresspassing than SC does. Note the property was NOT properly posted.
3) I saw all the pics, including the ones that are now removed. No signs were evident from any angle from any of the car's cameras, all the way up to the trampoline...
4) these pictures are already on public display, and you can NOT request the assessors office to restrict access to them. They also still appeared on a real estate website...
5) Turning a vehicle around in a driveway is not tresspassing in and state i can find a law on the books against. Not 20 minutes ago I had a COP turn around in my driveway.
I did look at the pics (all of them, before they were taken down). There was no way anyone would have noticed that road was marked private, and no way to turn around except in their driveway when they realized it wasn't a formal road.
-GPS is not infallable. -Google does not make the GPS (just the online maps) -Google offered to remove the offending images
At best, they have a case to sue Garmin, or maybe the city for providing the maps to Garmin (or whatever GPS unit google was using).
google admited fault, provided a free and reasonable resolution. this suit is bullshit....and images of their house are avalable for public viewing already via the assessor's office, the real estate firm that sold them the house 2 years ago, and the tax office.
My grandfathers's HOA owns and maintains his roads as well, but they show up on a county map because his HOA gave the local police permission to patrol the property, and with that, it's considered a public way even though it lies on private property. The city even orderted them to take down a "no thru traffic" sign they installed by the enterance. Even though it's private property, you can still get a speeding ticket in there...
It upsets me more that there are developers that 1) against Apple's FIRM reccomendation and EULA, used the beta on a production phone 2) don't know how to rollback firmware, and 3) don't understand they're going to get flamed for it if they complain here.
With programmers and developers of this quality, it's no wonder that Apple has a strict software policy on the phone, why they didn't want developers from 3rd parties at all, and why they will have exclusive rights to distribute software for iPhones, free or not, via iTunes Store.
For all of you complaining about why there's won't be iPhione software just floating around on the web for you to get like you could do for your Palm or Windows Mobile device (without hacking or unlocking it), here's a reason not to complain... Bad developers exist. Apple is offering a way to protect you from them. I wish Microsoft did this...
Although I agree that expiring the beta before releasing an additional one was a bad move, but hearing developers complain about having their phone bricked is bullshit.
Apple's policy is that phones used for 2.0 beta are not used for personal or business calls, outside of beta testing needs. If you were using your own phone because you were too cheap or too dumb to have a dedicated phone for beta testing, it's your own fault, and you should have expected downtime. You could allways firmware reload it with 1.1.4 and use it until the next beta is out.
Even it it wasn't a recomendation of the program from Apple, developers should know better that to use beta code in a production environment. Downtime happens and test patforms are unavailable. During these times, you shift to code development and pause testing. Your PC that you write code on isn't down, just the test rig. Get over it, they'll have it fixed in 8-10 hours...
A lot of cities have started installing new road signs that are white on blue, or even a faint yellow on blue. They're also making the text paint reflective, but not the background blue. Unfortunately, the cost of replacing all the road signs is prohibitively expensive, but at least new ones going up are a lot easier to read.
I still wish someone would start requiring road signs to be sized appropriately for the speed of the roads. Speed limit signs are required to be larger in places where drivers go faster to give them additional distance (time) to be able to recognize the sign. Road signes need to do the same.
Additionally, we should have cross street hanging signs (the big ones hanging from traffic light wires) on every block in cities... Here in my city, it's hit and miss, some streets have them, others don't. if I'm in the left lane, there's little hope I can read a street sign, even when parked at a light. It's simply too far away to read 3" tall letters... especially on green backing.
Wether a contract was in place or not, or if one could even be implied, Lucas Arts does in fact hold copywrite on the design of the stormtrooper uniform. If he wished to challenge that copywrite, I think this guy would have a hard time proving prior art, especially considdering lucas sketched his ideas for the storm troopers on story boards years before the film actually went into production, and further described them in written scripts before that.
Actually, one of the clauses in Lucas's legal contract is the the terms of the contract can not be made public, on the pain of forfiting all salary and rights. many film companies do that as they don't want people getting word of what they're planning, but in this case, it might prevent the lawyers on either side from openly discussing those terms.
My guess, he had an intellectual property clause in that contract. Even I've had one for almost every IT firm I've worked for, and I'm not even a developer...
It's called a non-compete agreement, and usually includes language like this: "any designs, ideas, products, documentation, or other works of art, science, or labor created while in the employ of XXX are the exclusive property of XXX, and XXX reserves all rights to such property for any future use, sale, marketing, likeness, promotional materials, merchandise...."
This guy didn't create the storm trooper. He didn't create the idea of the storm trooper. He didn't even draw the first mock up of a storm trooper. Lucal and his writing team did all that. They even story boarded a ton of it out before it was approved for filming and received a budget.
This guy was a highered hand to take Lucas's concepts and realize them into a wearable armor. yes the guy used some creative license, but he did so under the direction and employ of Lucas Arts (or whatever they were called back then). That design is property of lucas arts. he could sell Storm Trooper costumes all he wants, if he was licensed to do so. unfortunately for him, other companies already have those rights, and he was infringing.
This is cut and dry. there is no case....and, if his contract with them as an employee and an artist was for fixed pay (hourly, salary, job oriented, whatever) and did not include merchandising rights, then he gets nothing of their 12 billion... (except to pay the legal fees for George Lucas's attourneys when he looses his countersuit, assuming he has anything left to take).
The cameras, and when and how they snap shots, are controlled by computer. they snap images not based on a time interval or some other random event, but based on position. Per the GPS, the driveaw was listed as a road. Keep in mind, it's not google that makes the road map, but the city surveyor's office. Blame them.
When the vans turn around in ordinary driveways, or enter private communities who's roads are not included in GPS data, the cameras don't take pictures... If he parks in front of a starbucks and leaves the van running while his buddy refills their coffee, it takes 1 image, not dozens, since it's running in a computer and knows it has not moved...
Per the computer, that was not a driveway, so it snapped images. If he turned around in MY driveway, this would not have occurred since he would have been off the GPS indicated road.
Per the information in their maping system, that road, though private, was part of the city's road system. the "private road" sign is not visible in any of the images captures, so my guess is the driver, concerned about turning his van down a dirt lane, didn't notice it either, and kept going since the GPS information, again, prepared by city assossors, not google, indicated it was in fact a road.
Once the mistake was realized, where do you expect him to turn around a big van on a single lane dirt path with no shoulders? the driveway was his only choice...
Well, from the way the images depict it, the "road" he was on was a single lane gravel road, that according to his GPS, the map for which is from local city assessors offices, that was in fact a road. When he realized it ended in a driveway, he likely though to turn around in the nice concrete pad where it was convenient instead of trying to mull an 95 point K-turn with a big van on gravel roads with no shoulders...
You likely would have done the same.
The driver has no control of the cameras in the vehicle. He could not turn them off to do this maneuver.
1: it is assumed that a driveway can be reasonably used at will to turn a vehicle around.
2: tresspassing is not automatic. In most states even when properly posted, you can still go onto private land and go up to the front door. Even salesman can ring bells at homes posted no soliciting in SC. The onyl poewr you have is to ask them to leave. It only becomes tresspassing if they refuse to or if they return later. Neither of these conditions happened.
3: the proerty itself was not marked, posted, fenced with a gate, not in any other way abvious that is was private. I can't see in any of the pictures the van took where their so called private road sign exists, let alone complies with their state's laws concerning use of proper singage (including regionally accepted or universal images to assist those who can't read).
4: all they had to do was ask for the images to be removed.
5: the engineer in the vehicle has no control over the images being taken, not can he catalog or document them. This is ON PURPOSE to prevent tampering with the image feeds, and to keep the image recorder in sync with GPS information.
Uh, all the time in my home town. Many roads were nothing more than cross cuts between fields or around farms, and short sections would be dirt, gravel, or paved. Many paved sections would have long runs where there were not lines painted on it. Some of these roads led to as few as 2 or 3 houses. Some to public parks. Some to the community running track and socker field. What was a road or a driveway was not clearly obvious.
Also, perhaps the driver was simply pulling up to see if there was part of the driveway to turn around in, without having to pitch a k-turn on a single lane gravel road in a big google van...
Well, digital information, wether on a HDD, CD media, DVD media, it is in fact physically recorded there. Even if you ignore this, you still have received a license for use. That license may prohibit resale, but you still have purchased the license. It's your choice to burn it to a physical media if you choose, but how are bits on a CD different from bits on a HDD?
You can buy a PDF copy of a book (ebook) from Amazon.com. You pay tax on it no differently that you do on the real book. If you chose, you could print it to physical media and make a "tangible" copy, but regardless, magnetic bits on disk are still a physical thing. You could copy your iTunes music to a CD, even print the cover art and inserts. How is this really different from buying a disk in a store?
now, music acquired as part of a service (for a monthly fee, not on a per-item transaction) in some states this can get sticky. In SC for instance, services (labor) can not be taxed (with sales tax), only product. However, Cable services have specific taxes attached by SC. So it can be done, and it's not illegal.
You can control your music, interact with it, move it from place to place, hear it, "feel" the bass, etc. In digital or any other form, it's still real.
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I don't expect a 1:1 return, but I expect if the airline makes a billion from in-flight calls, they'll pass on a couple of million in tickt price discounts. Remember, they're pretty tightly regulated, and too much profit has to be spent somewhere. I imaging a lot of it would go first to system improvements, newer planes, updated airports, but eventually (as I said, in the future) it would have an impact on ticket prices.
I can't discuss which power company it is, due to contractual issues, but I can tell you that the power company around here would not be susceptable to such an attack.
The computer systems that control the grid are extremely secure. So secure in fact, they do not HAVE a network connection outside of their own server to server interaction.
The mainframes, UNIX systems, and other systems that operate the switcing grid are isolated in a section of the building that even their own network engineers can not enter without being padded down to ensure they carry no computer media of any kind.
When media does need to be brought in, say to patch the OS on a machine for a bug, or to update the backup server software, the media for that must pass through a several step security scan, including scans by not less than 3 AV applications, repeated on not less than 3 different PCs. All install media for machines in that area are kept in that area, seperate from all other company media.
You wouldn't believe the process we had to go through to bring a new backup system in there...
These systems are so isolated it is virtually impossible to infect them.
On the other hand, the PCs connected to the billing systems, yes, they could be infected. These systems however are backed up in many ways, and even if they had to roll back the database a few days, all they'd have to do is correlate the accounting records with meter readings, and they'll know exactly how much everyone owes or paid. They might have to type a few customer change orders back into the system, but all that is in hard copy anyway... It would be an inconvenience, but not that big of one. Of course, the billing system is only accessible via terminal session from PCs on a specific VLAN that are not used for any other purposes (no web browser, document creation, etc), so infecting it is not exactly easy, and I doubt is could be done with a bot without intimate network design knowledge, a few passwords, and a lot of attempts. It would have to be a targeted hack.
This particular power company is a locally owned co-op, small time company. If they can implement security like this, I'm sure others do as well.
I imaging the power grid itself, not so much the systems controlling them, could somehow be hacked, or fooled with conflicting signals that could cause issues, but I seriously doubt anyone let these people try...
The issue was with old, pre-CDMA cell phones and extremely old avionics, like those found in small and mid-sized non-comercial aircraft about 40 years ago.
Modern cockpits have been retrofitted with systems that shield from various types of this radiation and signal interference, and the older touchy meters are only found in old, personally owned aircraft today. Also, not a single one of those old phones that DID cause the interference is in use today since those old networks were dismantled years ago.
This is what happens when people who do not understand technology are allowed to make decisions for people that do.
People forget to turn on or off their cell phones on every flight I've been on for years... I'll hear voicemail chimes start going off about a mile from the ground, typically about 10 minutes or so before landing. I'll also catch kids whipping out phones to play games in-flight, phones that I know for certain don't support radio-off airline operation modes.
Not one plane has complained about avionic radio interference. With tens of thousands of people in the air every day, and at least one person on every flight forgetting to turn it off (or leaving it on on purpose), we'd have heard about an issue.
If the medical industry was held to the standards of the FAA, we'd just now be seeing asprin appear on store shelves for the first time.... 45 billion test cases, not one single failure, but ya never know... we need to do more testing....
I've got no problem sticking a pair of ear phones in, cutting on the noise canceling, and letting them all chat away at $0.50 a minute premium air time. All they're doing is improving the airport's profits, and as a result, some of that will lower my ticket cost in the future...
Free wi-fi on planes, that's what I'm waiting for. It might not be free for everyone, but with my bundled iPhone, home phone, and AT&T internet service plan, I don't pay for wi-fi at airports, starbucks, or any other AT&T hotspot... (and almost all of them are, including the big push for in-flight hot spots.
Also, if they let wi-fi happen, likely people will be using skype or cell phones with wi-fi talk capability... might as well charge them a premium rate to use a real cell phone.
Piggly Wiggly, Krogers, Publics, and Bi-Lo, my 4 local grocers, all charge $3-4 for the bags, and give $0.01 for it's use, up to a maximum of a dime. If you're getting something other, maybe it's a local law forcing the grocer to comply...
As for careless people letting bags fly away, that's what the $500 littering fine is for... Besides, those plastic bags break down quickly in the open.
I accumulate a bunch of the damned things too. We have a nifty little bag in the pantry we stuff them in the top and pull from the bottom. When it's full, I take one bag out and open it, stuff all the other bags in it except a few, tie a not in the bag and trow it in the recylcing bin.
It takes me about 1 minute a month to keep them in order... a lot less time and energy than managing, cleaning, and having to remember those re-usable bags that I get screwed on buying, and which again, use more plastics and chemicals than over 100 plastic bags... There are some new ones out "made from 100% post-consumer material" but I'm recylcing my bags so that's irrelevent.
Any way you cut it, the plastic ones are a LOT better than paper. besides, they're not burned, so their use has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses, just oil costs. They still cost less than paper to manufacture, ship, and store, use less energy to make than paper, and pollute less than paper.
The re-usable bags, in a perfect world, yes, they cost less to make, and are clearly better than paper, and they only use a tiny bit more oil to make (than their shelf life equivolent voulme of plastic bags). Problem is all the energy and environmental impact of CLEANING them... That's where that process fails, badly.
OK, first, contrary to popular belief, we do not have a shortage of landfills in the USA. In fact, quite the opposite. We have a SHITLOAD of land that we'd like to make into landfill, but WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TRASH. Just our EXISTING landfills will last us more than 200 years...
next, no landfil in the history of the USA has ever leaked a hazardous chemical that has entered a water supply. If you look into how these things are made, you'll see why.
Next, grocery bags contain cornstarch aditives, and break down nearly 100 times faster than their paper equivolents in landfills.
Paper bags require more energy to make, cause more environmental damage to make (all those deisel engines cutting down forests and hauling away trees), take more warehouse space, more landfil space, and actually take LONGER to biodegrade.
Those "re-usable bags" Yea, did that for a few years... until i realized how many I was throwing out when they ripped, how much energy I wasted cleaning them when stuff leaked in them, and that 1 re-usable bag had more plastic in it than nearly 100 disposable bags (each of which I typically re-use 2-3 times bringing lunch to work) They don't give ya $0.10 per bag anymore either, it's a penny per purchase up to a dime, and costing $4 for a bag, I'm not going to be able to re-use it 400 times before it breaks. (I don't think I've had one last 50 trips yet).
The driver doesn't snap pictures, a computer he has no control over does that.
From what I understand, there's a guy that drives, following a GPS. He has a simple indicator that there are no problems with the equipment. He does not monitor it so to say, but has a simple indicator it's not working, kind of like your engine light coming on...
When images are not recorded for some reason, or part of the data is corrupt or missing, they simple dispatch another driver to that location on a later run through town.
Actually, PA has a very specific law (that some other poster added to this chain) about private property being properly posed. Otherwise, a fense of other barrier would be assumed. If you haven't poseted it, it's assumed a salesman could come up to your front door, or a lost citezen looking for directions or a phone, and they are not tresspassing...
1) Show me a PA law that counters this. unless there is such a law, in a common law state like PA, this would be very hard to fight in court since there's no apparent damage incurred by turning around in someone's driveway.
2) OK, so PA has better laws regarding tresspassing than SC does. Note the property was NOT properly posted.
3) I saw all the pics, including the ones that are now removed. No signs were evident from any angle from any of the car's cameras, all the way up to the trampoline...
4) these pictures are already on public display, and you can NOT request the assessors office to restrict access to them. They also still appeared on a real estate website...
5) Turning a vehicle around in a driveway is not tresspassing in and state i can find a law on the books against. Not 20 minutes ago I had a COP turn around in my driveway.
I did look at the pics (all of them, before they were taken down). There was no way anyone would have noticed that road was marked private, and no way to turn around except in their driveway when they realized it wasn't a formal road.
...and images of their house are avalable for public viewing already via the assessor's office, the real estate firm that sold them the house 2 years ago, and the tax office.
-GPS is not infallable.
-Google does not make the GPS (just the online maps)
-Google offered to remove the offending images
At best, they have a case to sue Garmin, or maybe the city for providing the maps to Garmin (or whatever GPS unit google was using).
google admited fault, provided a free and reasonable resolution. this suit is bullshit.
My grandfathers's HOA owns and maintains his roads as well, but they show up on a county map because his HOA gave the local police permission to patrol the property, and with that, it's considered a public way even though it lies on private property. The city even orderted them to take down a "no thru traffic" sign they installed by the enterance. Even though it's private property, you can still get a speeding ticket in there...
It upsets me more that there are developers that 1) against Apple's FIRM reccomendation and EULA, used the beta on a production phone 2) don't know how to rollback firmware, and 3) don't understand they're going to get flamed for it if they complain here.
With programmers and developers of this quality, it's no wonder that Apple has a strict software policy on the phone, why they didn't want developers from 3rd parties at all, and why they will have exclusive rights to distribute software for iPhones, free or not, via iTunes Store.
For all of you complaining about why there's won't be iPhione software just floating around on the web for you to get like you could do for your Palm or Windows Mobile device (without hacking or unlocking it), here's a reason not to complain... Bad developers exist. Apple is offering a way to protect you from them. I wish Microsoft did this...
Although I agree that expiring the beta before releasing an additional one was a bad move, but hearing developers complain about having their phone bricked is bullshit.
Apple's policy is that phones used for 2.0 beta are not used for personal or business calls, outside of beta testing needs. If you were using your own phone because you were too cheap or too dumb to have a dedicated phone for beta testing, it's your own fault, and you should have expected downtime. You could allways firmware reload it with 1.1.4 and use it until the next beta is out.
Even it it wasn't a recomendation of the program from Apple, developers should know better that to use beta code in a production environment. Downtime happens and test patforms are unavailable. During these times, you shift to code development and pause testing. Your PC that you write code on isn't down, just the test rig. Get over it, they'll have it fixed in 8-10 hours...
A lot of cities have started installing new road signs that are white on blue, or even a faint yellow on blue. They're also making the text paint reflective, but not the background blue. Unfortunately, the cost of replacing all the road signs is prohibitively expensive, but at least new ones going up are a lot easier to read.
I still wish someone would start requiring road signs to be sized appropriately for the speed of the roads. Speed limit signs are required to be larger in places where drivers go faster to give them additional distance (time) to be able to recognize the sign. Road signes need to do the same.
Additionally, we should have cross street hanging signs (the big ones hanging from traffic light wires) on every block in cities... Here in my city, it's hit and miss, some streets have them, others don't. if I'm in the left lane, there's little hope I can read a street sign, even when parked at a light. It's simply too far away to read 3" tall letters... especially on green backing.
Actually, driving on grass would be a serious offense had the driver left any marks on it doing so...
Wether a contract was in place or not, or if one could even be implied, Lucas Arts does in fact hold copywrite on the design of the stormtrooper uniform. If he wished to challenge that copywrite, I think this guy would have a hard time proving prior art, especially considdering lucas sketched his ideas for the storm troopers on story boards years before the film actually went into production, and further described them in written scripts before that.
Actually, one of the clauses in Lucas's legal contract is the the terms of the contract can not be made public, on the pain of forfiting all salary and rights. many film companies do that as they don't want people getting word of what they're planning, but in this case, it might prevent the lawyers on either side from openly discussing those terms.
My guess, he had an intellectual property clause in that contract. Even I've had one for almost every IT firm I've worked for, and I'm not even a developer...
It's called a non-compete agreement, and usually includes language like this: "any designs, ideas, products, documentation, or other works of art, science, or labor created while in the employ of XXX are the exclusive property of XXX, and XXX reserves all rights to such property for any future use, sale, marketing, likeness, promotional materials, merchandise...."
...and, if his contract with them as an employee and an artist was for fixed pay (hourly, salary, job oriented, whatever) and did not include merchandising rights, then he gets nothing of their 12 billion... (except to pay the legal fees for George Lucas's attourneys when he looses his countersuit, assuming he has anything left to take).
This guy didn't create the storm trooper. He didn't create the idea of the storm trooper. He didn't even draw the first mock up of a storm trooper. Lucal and his writing team did all that. They even story boarded a ton of it out before it was approved for filming and received a budget.
This guy was a highered hand to take Lucas's concepts and realize them into a wearable armor. yes the guy used some creative license, but he did so under the direction and employ of Lucas Arts (or whatever they were called back then). That design is property of lucas arts. he could sell Storm Trooper costumes all he wants, if he was licensed to do so. unfortunately for him, other companies already have those rights, and he was infringing.
This is cut and dry. there is no case.
The cameras, and when and how they snap shots, are controlled by computer. they snap images not based on a time interval or some other random event, but based on position. Per the GPS, the driveaw was listed as a road. Keep in mind, it's not google that makes the road map, but the city surveyor's office. Blame them.
When the vans turn around in ordinary driveways, or enter private communities who's roads are not included in GPS data, the cameras don't take pictures... If he parks in front of a starbucks and leaves the van running while his buddy refills their coffee, it takes 1 image, not dozens, since it's running in a computer and knows it has not moved...
Per the computer, that was not a driveway, so it snapped images. If he turned around in MY driveway, this would not have occurred since he would have been off the GPS indicated road.
Per the information in their maping system, that road, though private, was part of the city's road system. the "private road" sign is not visible in any of the images captures, so my guess is the driver, concerned about turning his van down a dirt lane, didn't notice it either, and kept going since the GPS information, again, prepared by city assossors, not google, indicated it was in fact a road.
Once the mistake was realized, where do you expect him to turn around a big van on a single lane dirt path with no shoulders? the driveway was his only choice...
Well, from the way the images depict it, the "road" he was on was a single lane gravel road, that according to his GPS, the map for which is from local city assessors offices, that was in fact a road. When he realized it ended in a driveway, he likely though to turn around in the nice concrete pad where it was convenient instead of trying to mull an 95 point K-turn with a big van on gravel roads with no shoulders...
You likely would have done the same.
The driver has no control of the cameras in the vehicle. He could not turn them off to do this maneuver.
1: it is assumed that a driveway can be reasonably used at will to turn a vehicle around.
2: tresspassing is not automatic. In most states even when properly posted, you can still go onto private land and go up to the front door. Even salesman can ring bells at homes posted no soliciting in SC. The onyl poewr you have is to ask them to leave. It only becomes tresspassing if they refuse to or if they return later. Neither of these conditions happened.
3: the proerty itself was not marked, posted, fenced with a gate, not in any other way abvious that is was private. I can't see in any of the pictures the van took where their so called private road sign exists, let alone complies with their state's laws concerning use of proper singage (including regionally accepted or universal images to assist those who can't read).
4: all they had to do was ask for the images to be removed.
5: the engineer in the vehicle has no control over the images being taken, not can he catalog or document them. This is ON PURPOSE to prevent tampering with the image feeds, and to keep the image recorder in sync with GPS information.
Uh, all the time in my home town. Many roads were nothing more than cross cuts between fields or around farms, and short sections would be dirt, gravel, or paved. Many paved sections would have long runs where there were not lines painted on it. Some of these roads led to as few as 2 or 3 houses. Some to public parks. Some to the community running track and socker field. What was a road or a driveway was not clearly obvious.
Also, perhaps the driver was simply pulling up to see if there was part of the driveway to turn around in, without having to pitch a k-turn on a single lane gravel road in a big google van...
Well, digital information, wether on a HDD, CD media, DVD media, it is in fact physically recorded there. Even if you ignore this, you still have received a license for use. That license may prohibit resale, but you still have purchased the license. It's your choice to burn it to a physical media if you choose, but how are bits on a CD different from bits on a HDD?
You can buy a PDF copy of a book (ebook) from Amazon.com. You pay tax on it no differently that you do on the real book. If you chose, you could print it to physical media and make a "tangible" copy, but regardless, magnetic bits on disk are still a physical thing. You could copy your iTunes music to a CD, even print the cover art and inserts. How is this really different from buying a disk in a store?
now, music acquired as part of a service (for a monthly fee, not on a per-item transaction) in some states this can get sticky. In SC for instance, services (labor) can not be taxed (with sales tax), only product. However, Cable services have specific taxes attached by SC. So it can be done, and it's not illegal.
You can control your music, interact with it, move it from place to place, hear it, "feel" the bass, etc. In digital or any other form, it's still real.