Kaching -- it is about getting government money to increase crappy sofware quality. Or just getting government money, who's to say.
Not true. Look at the names on this proposal (including the sub-groups). They're all companies that have enough dough and size to be able to handle a complete structure change in how their software is designed and built. Think the 5-person shop in your neighbor's basement is going to be able to write software if it requires 10 regulators checking and documenting all their processes and code (at their expense)? Also, it is a small step to take to say that "Open-Source is not documented and secure by these standards, so it must be banned for the good of the people". That's the ulterior motive - control. The big software houses would be the only ones left 'cause the guvment would be closin' these "terrorist coding cells" down. That would have the side affect you mentioned, but it's all about cutting the bottom out of their smaller, more agile competitors.
Just a few notes here:
* The warg attack did exist in the book. IIRC, it got moved from just prior to entering Moria to the march to Helms Deep.
* The "second lunch" comments did exist in the book.
* The dwarf-tossing lines were (I think) a pitch-in to appeal to the AD&D crowd. They did not appear in the book (IIRC).
* Arwen getting a bigger piece of the action (so to speak) was clearly to get away from a completely male-dominated movie, especially in the first one.
* The love triangle is actually there in the books, it's just not as obvious.
PJ clearly had to pander to a few studio execs and their "audience surveys", but I think it's great that the few changes he made were to explain or enhance ideas you wouldn't get otherwise (except from reading the book). And the book would fit most of the "successful movie" criteria by itself.
Re:Executive Summary
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have an problem with this analysis of the Grokster/Morpheus ruling. The dismissal of each suit was for slightly different reasons, which will have a major impact on Sharman Networks and all sublicensors of their technology.
Neither company operates "supernodes", which facilitate entry into the P2P network. Grokster does rely on Sharman to operate a "supernode" for all clients attaching to the KaZaa network. Once connected, the clients do not go through this central machine. According to the logic of the ruling, operating this server would be equal to contributory infringement. It was specifically noted that Grokster did at one time operate a server. It can be deduced that Sharman will be found liable using the same logic, and may be forced to shut their server down (if it is located in the US anyway). This will effectively "decapitate" the KaZaa P2P network, as no new clients will be able to be connected.
Morpheus (and all other Gnutella-based systems) will not have this liability, and if this ruling is not overturned on appeal, will be basically immune from these types of lawsuits. Those that rely on a central server for anything can and will be held accountable based on this ruling.
As for the P2P vs. Apple/Other services, it's a basic principle - Get rid of the "free" but cumbersome and unreliable option (via lawsuits) while opening up a cheap and quality service on the other side. Now if the RIAA did this on their own, they might be raking in the dough... good luck ever changing thugs like them without a shotgun and backup though.
Not so here. Just had my iBook in for repair, and decided to do a "fresh" install of everything from scratch. 10.2.4 was released while it was in the shop, so I did a 10.2->10.2.4 combo update,then reinstalled all my apps. I then noticed that my battery life went to hell. I let it go for a while, but after reading about similar complaints with 10.2.4, I looked a bit further into the problem. It seems to be an issue with the 10.2.4 software updating the chip in the batteries to lower their capacity incorrectly. I have two batteries - one get 90 minutes (closer to what I had previously, but stll pretty low), the other about 20 minutes (drastically dead comparatively). The "deader" battery was in my system during the install - the "better" one was not. What's appalling here is that there has been no official Apple response, even to the over 100 messages about this on their own discussion boards! I am getting the one battery replaced, then I'm testing some options. If I kill the second battery, I'm calling up my corporate Apple contacts and bitching them out for the lack of public info.
What's the current price of the average CD? I guarantee you're paying more that $1 per track now. If this helps bring the cost of the CD down, it would be a great thing. The ideal advertising for that would be "Buy the whole CD for $9.95, and get the liner notes, artwork, etc., along with all the songs for less than paying for each song individually."
People use credit cards because the massive lapses in security are never properly publicised and also, whenever someone steals from their card, they get the money refunded.
Liability for CC fraud is not the responsibility of the card-holder. This is mandated by banking laws. It is the responsiblity of the card-issuer. However, the major CC companies shift the liability to the individual merchants as part of the merchant agreements that they must sign in order to accept CCs. The reason you never hear about major CC theft is individual merchants are generally too small to make a big stink. Besides, most of them either have insurance to cover this, or the big retailers all have a substantial fraud write-off built into the budget.
Another way of saying this is to say that credit cards are secure enough just as they are. Of the millions of credit card transactions processed every day, only the slightest fraction are fraudulent, and in those cases, the customer is taken care of appropriately practically every time. In other words, most of the time it's secure, and when it isn't, there's no real harm done.
One of the reasons it's secure is that there is a separate processing network with dedicated encryption hardware in place to handle all these transactions. Fraudulent transactions almost never originate from inside the network - they are entered into the system by a vendor. And since everything's encoded with the vendor ID, it can be tracked back to the originating site quickly. Once Internet stores started accepting CC's for on-line purchases, CC fraud went through the roof because all you need is a few names and numbers. And since there's no way to "show" the store your card, with your name on it, the CC companies jacked up the merchant rates (something on the order of.5% of the transaction for off-line purchases, and 2-3% for on-line purchases). Still, there isn't an law on the books regulating every aspect of internet purchases. But, a lot of the confidence in the current CC processing networks is in the fact that every aspect of the process is gonverned by laws, with strict penalties, and not by one company. You can argue that VISA and MC are an oligarchy, but they still have strict regulations to follow. MS has no regulations to follow here - and given their refusal to admit to any wrongdoing in the anti-trust case, even after an appeals court upheld the conviction, does not bode well for their handling this kind of sensitive data in a responsible or secure manner (Trustworthy Computing be damned).
1) How long before they try to become a "one-stop-shop" again, by matching physical to e-mail addresses?
2) At least they're not selling their mailing list (yet).
3) Which ISP(s) do they have agreements with, and isn't this a violation of the terms of service? I would think that a spam clearing house would be something that even the big backbones want to keep off the 'net. Bets on how long they're around, or how long before their net connection is cut?
4) Most spam is now pr0n and Mafia-backed schemes. That's where the only real money is made. How long before an FBI investigation uncovers organized crime connections here?
Is there such a thing as a 'native firewire' drive?
Can having an ATA controller in a firewire case make it possible to get around the motherboard limitations?
1) Yes, it is possible to have a "native" firewire drive. However, since nobody but apple has an internal firewire port, no drive manufacturer is going to make one. They'll stick with bridge chipsets and cheap IDE disks.
2) Yes, a FireWire bridge is the second best method to get around chipset limitations. The best is to use a PCI expansion card, as the PCI bus is (currently) faster than FireWire in terms of transfer speeds.
Can UPS block the appeals process by not giving out the name of the port director? This makes an appeal impossible, because the appeal has to be filed with that person. I would think that UPS could be held liable for something here, since they are essentially blocking a citizen's right to an appeal.
As for the customs rules mentioned, if it was "piratical" it should be siezed and held by customs, not returned to the sender. Something sounds extremely fishy here.
Here's the problem: If the true value of their system is determined to be a certain figure, but only after all the cable companies have already found alternates or built their own replacements, who is going to buy them? And even if they did manage to get back to business, how many of the cable companies are going to go back to them? This sounds like the deaths throes of idiotic bond holders trying to suck the last bits of life out. Either that, or AT&T is using the shutdown to get the bondholders to accept a lower (!) offer, since the company no longer has customers, no cashflow, and lots of staff. Unless they give out pick slips tonight at midnight as well, count the company gone. BTW: My AT&T Cable modem is no longer functioning. It went belly up about 20 mintues after the first annoucement on CNet that the contracts were cancelled. Hrm.
They asked to have the lower Court's rulings delayed, as the appeal deals with whether or not the Appeals Court should have thrown out the enitre trial and had it start over with a new judge. M$ is not asking for the Supremes to rule on the whole case, just on whether the Appeals Court compromise that left the earlier rulings (mostly) intact should be thrown out.
The problem with this, though, is that M$ is asking for a writ saying that there needs to be a retrial. AFAIK, this means that the SC will only rule on whether the existing rulings stand, or if there has to be a re-trial. If there isn't a retrial, then the proceedings in the District Court go ahead. But at that point, all the Civil trials get tons of fodder, in that the Findings of Fact have been validated by the Supremes.
Also, did anyone see the petition M$ filed for a stay in the Appeals Court? They seemed to spit in the face of all of the Appeals judges at once. Can you say burning brides anyone? If this thing gets sent back to the Appeals level, M$ comes back looking much more like the bully than before.
Let's see... M$ Win2K Server box (x4 for redundnacy), M$ SQL Server 2000 with Clustering License, M$ BizTalk Server with Clustering, all on 4-processor boxes for decent performance, and you're now talking high six figures for the software alone. Add that to the hardware cost, and support, and you have a 7-figure implementation cost. Yipes!
At base of this seems to me to be a general addatude in busness of suing just to sue.
Basicly busnesses... sue anyone who violates there IP even if it's violated in a way that benifiets them. With IP law you don't need to prove damages unless someone invokes "fair use" the idea being nobody is going to sue if they aren't damaged. That hasn't been the case in recent years. Microsoft isn't the worst in this area. Matel seems to stop short of suing little girls...
IIRC in most IP laws, if you don't defend your IP, you also lose the right to defend it. So that would mean that if it wasn't licensed (read paid for), it would have to be fought, even if the unlicensed IP violation was what would save the company from oblivion. This is one of those stupid contradicions in American law that caters to lawyers, not logic. (IANAL)
According to this ruling, we could start a class-action suit against Microsoft for having IE, Outlook Express, those stupid "Online Services" files, and more junk extraneous to the OS even existing on the HD. That is depriving the rightful owner of the equipment of a percentage of what (s)he bought in the first place, all for the benefit of MS alone. How much money would 75MB of space, and 3% of CPU be when multiplied across all the PCs sold in 5 years?
Reading through the post, it looks like any paragraph over a certain length got cut, and merged with the next paragraph. I counted at least 3 of these (including the one cited already).
I used to work for a survey company (hey, i was poor and needed the money for beer) and we were not allowed to call after 9:00 pm local time. I think that's a US law, not a state one, regarding any commercial calls. The idea is that after 9, you're probably asleep, and the company calling you can be cited for invasion of privacy or something like that.
Even better would be a server extension that would check for both large numbers of individual mails from a single IP (>10 per minute), or a larger recipient list (>15 or so) and log it. If the originator is known, simply add a service fee for their email (25 cents per recipient per message; 20 cents per KB; etc.). If not, block further email from that IP for some (variable) time.
[1]Just in case Amazon DOES try to patent this, here's some prior art I've got an idea for a system thats connected to a database that can print paper catlogues on demand. You could have it so that it can create a downloadable printable document for home printing, or be printed elsewhere and delivered
[OFF T] Been there, done that. In '96 I put together a Web-based DB-driven catalog system that worked with Macs to produce full catalogs of a warehouse full of merchandise. After a year of data checking and image renaming, we could put out a 1000 page catalog in a day (just needed time for proofreading). I shoulda patented it, dammit.
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Kaching -- it is about getting government money to increase crappy sofware quality. Or just getting government money, who's to say.
Not true. Look at the names on this proposal (including the sub-groups). They're all companies that have enough dough and size to be able to handle a complete structure change in how their software is designed and built. Think the 5-person shop in your neighbor's basement is going to be able to write software if it requires 10 regulators checking and documenting all their processes and code (at their expense)? Also, it is a small step to take to say that "Open-Source is not documented and secure by these standards, so it must be banned for the good of the people". That's the ulterior motive - control. The big software houses would be the only ones left 'cause the guvment would be closin' these "terrorist coding cells" down. That would have the side affect you mentioned, but it's all about cutting the bottom out of their smaller, more agile competitors.
Just a few notes here:
* The warg attack did exist in the book. IIRC, it got moved from just prior to entering Moria to the march to Helms Deep.
* The "second lunch" comments did exist in the book.
* The dwarf-tossing lines were (I think) a pitch-in to appeal to the AD&D crowd. They did not appear in the book (IIRC).
* Arwen getting a bigger piece of the action (so to speak) was clearly to get away from a completely male-dominated movie, especially in the first one.
* The love triangle is actually there in the books, it's just not as obvious.
PJ clearly had to pander to a few studio execs and their "audience surveys", but I think it's great that the few changes he made were to explain or enhance ideas you wouldn't get otherwise (except from reading the book). And the book would fit most of the "successful movie" criteria by itself.
Neither company operates "supernodes", which facilitate entry into the P2P network. Grokster does rely on Sharman to operate a "supernode" for all clients attaching to the KaZaa network. Once connected, the clients do not go through this central machine. According to the logic of the ruling, operating this server would be equal to contributory infringement. It was specifically noted that Grokster did at one time operate a server. It can be deduced that Sharman will be found liable using the same logic, and may be forced to shut their server down (if it is located in the US anyway). This will effectively "decapitate" the KaZaa P2P network, as no new clients will be able to be connected.
Morpheus (and all other Gnutella-based systems) will not have this liability, and if this ruling is not overturned on appeal, will be basically immune from these types of lawsuits. Those that rely on a central server for anything can and will be held accountable based on this ruling.
As for the P2P vs. Apple/Other services, it's a basic principle - Get rid of the "free" but cumbersome and unreliable option (via lawsuits) while opening up a cheap and quality service on the other side. Now if the RIAA did this on their own, they might be raking in the dough... good luck ever changing thugs like them without a shotgun and backup though.
Not so here. Just had my iBook in for repair, and decided to do a "fresh" install of everything from scratch. 10.2.4 was released while it was in the shop, so I did a 10.2->10.2.4 combo update ,then reinstalled all my apps. I then noticed that my battery life went to hell. I let it go for a while, but after reading about similar complaints with 10.2.4, I looked a bit further into the problem. It seems to be an issue with the 10.2.4 software updating the chip in the batteries to lower their capacity incorrectly. I have two batteries - one get 90 minutes (closer to what I had previously, but stll pretty low), the other about 20 minutes (drastically dead comparatively). The "deader" battery was in my system during the install - the "better" one was not. What's appalling here is that there has been no official Apple response, even to the over 100 messages about this on their own discussion boards! I am getting the one battery replaced, then I'm testing some options. If I kill the second battery, I'm calling up my corporate Apple contacts and bitching them out for the lack of public info.
What's the current price of the average CD? I guarantee you're paying more that $1 per track now. If this helps bring the cost of the CD down, it would be a great thing. The ideal advertising for that would be "Buy the whole CD for $9.95, and get the liner notes, artwork, etc., along with all the songs for less than paying for each song individually."
Liability for CC fraud is not the responsibility of the card-holder. This is mandated by banking laws. It is the responsiblity of the card-issuer. However, the major CC companies shift the liability to the individual merchants as part of the merchant agreements that they must sign in order to accept CCs. The reason you never hear about major CC theft is individual merchants are generally too small to make a big stink. Besides, most of them either have insurance to cover this, or the big retailers all have a substantial fraud write-off built into the budget.
Another way of saying this is to say that credit cards are secure enough just as they are. Of the millions of credit card transactions processed every day, only the slightest fraction are fraudulent, and in those cases, the customer is taken care of appropriately practically every time. In other words, most of the time it's secure, and when it isn't, there's no real harm done.
One of the reasons it's secure is that there is a separate processing network with dedicated encryption hardware in place to handle all these transactions. Fraudulent transactions almost never originate from inside the network - they are entered into the system by a vendor. And since everything's encoded with the vendor ID, it can be tracked back to the originating site quickly. .5% of the transaction for off-line purchases, and 2-3% for on-line purchases). Still, there isn't an law on the books regulating every aspect of internet purchases.
Once Internet stores started accepting CC's for on-line purchases, CC fraud went through the roof because all you need is a few names and numbers. And since there's no way to "show" the store your card, with your name on it, the CC companies jacked up the merchant rates (something on the order of
But, a lot of the confidence in the current CC processing networks is in the fact that every aspect of the process is gonverned by laws, with strict penalties, and not by one company. You can argue that VISA and MC are an oligarchy, but they still have strict regulations to follow. MS has no regulations to follow here - and given their refusal to admit to any wrongdoing in the anti-trust case, even after an appeals court upheld the conviction, does not bode well for their handling this kind of sensitive data in a responsible or secure manner (Trustworthy Computing be damned).
1) How long before they try to become a "one-stop-shop" again, by matching physical to e-mail addresses?
2) At least they're not selling their mailing list (yet).
3) Which ISP(s) do they have agreements with, and isn't this a violation of the terms of service? I would think that a spam clearing house would be something that even the big backbones want to keep off the 'net. Bets on how long they're around, or how long before their net connection is cut?
4) Most spam is now pr0n and Mafia-backed schemes. That's where the only real money is made. How long before an FBI investigation uncovers organized crime connections here?
Is there such a thing as a 'native firewire' drive?
Can having an ATA controller in a firewire case make it possible to get around the motherboard limitations?
1) Yes, it is possible to have a "native" firewire drive. However, since nobody but apple has an internal firewire port, no drive manufacturer is going to make one. They'll stick with bridge chipsets and cheap IDE disks.
2) Yes, a FireWire bridge is the second best method to get around chipset limitations. The best is to use a PCI expansion card, as the PCI bus is (currently) faster than FireWire in terms of transfer speeds.
Considering how much Apples are used in Marketing and Advertising, you'd think Apple would already be infected with crap and gayness. ;-)
where's the "first post EVER" and "AppleSeed Cluster" posts? :P
Can UPS block the appeals process by not giving out the name of the port director? This makes an appeal impossible, because the appeal has to be filed with that person. I would think that UPS could be held liable for something here, since they are essentially blocking a citizen's right to an appeal.
As for the customs rules mentioned, if it was "piratical" it should be siezed and held by customs, not returned to the sender. Something sounds extremely fishy here.
Here's the problem: If the true value of their system is determined to be a certain figure, but only after all the cable companies have already found alternates or built their own replacements, who is going to buy them? And even if they did manage to get back to business, how many of the cable companies are going to go back to them? This sounds like the deaths throes of idiotic bond holders trying to suck the last bits of life out. Either that, or AT&T is using the shutdown to get the bondholders to accept a lower (!) offer, since the company no longer has customers, no cashflow, and lots of staff. Unless they give out pick slips tonight at midnight as well, count the company gone.
BTW: My AT&T Cable modem is no longer functioning. It went belly up about 20 mintues after the first annoucement on CNet that the contracts were cancelled. Hrm.
They asked to have the lower Court's rulings delayed, as the appeal deals with whether or not the Appeals Court should have thrown out the enitre trial and had it start over with a new judge. M$ is not asking for the Supremes to rule on the whole case, just on whether the Appeals Court compromise that left the earlier rulings (mostly) intact should be thrown out.
The problem with this, though, is that M$ is asking for a writ saying that there needs to be a retrial. AFAIK, this means that the SC will only rule on whether the existing rulings stand, or if there has to be a re-trial. If there isn't a retrial, then the proceedings in the District Court go ahead. But at that point, all the Civil trials get tons of fodder, in that the Findings of Fact have been validated by the Supremes. Also, did anyone see the petition M$ filed for a stay in the Appeals Court? They seemed to spit in the face of all of the Appeals judges at once. Can you say burning brides anyone? If this thing gets sent back to the Appeals level, M$ comes back looking much more like the bully than before.
Let's see... M$ Win2K Server box (x4 for redundnacy), M$ SQL Server 2000 with Clustering License, M$ BizTalk Server with Clustering, all on 4-processor boxes for decent performance, and you're now talking high six figures for the software alone. Add that to the hardware cost, and support, and you have a 7-figure implementation cost. Yipes!
IIRC in most IP laws, if you don't defend your IP, you also lose the right to defend it. So that would mean that if it wasn't licensed (read paid for), it would have to be fought, even if the unlicensed IP violation was what would save the company from oblivion. This is one of those stupid contradicions in American law that caters to lawyers, not logic. (IANAL)
According to this ruling, we could start a class-action suit against Microsoft for having IE, Outlook Express, those stupid "Online Services" files, and more junk extraneous to the OS even existing on the HD. That is depriving the rightful owner of the equipment of a percentage of what (s)he bought in the first place, all for the benefit of MS alone. How much money would 75MB of space, and 3% of CPU be when multiplied across all the PCs sold in 5 years?
Reading through the post, it looks like any paragraph over a certain length got cut, and merged with the next paragraph. I counted at least 3 of these (including the one cited already).
I used to work for a survey company (hey, i was poor and needed the money for beer) and we were not allowed to call after 9:00 pm local time. I think that's a US law, not a state one, regarding any commercial calls. The idea is that after 9, you're probably asleep, and the company calling you can be cited for invasion of privacy or something like that.
Even better would be a server extension that would check for both large numbers of individual mails from a single IP (>10 per minute), or a larger recipient list (>15 or so) and log it. If the originator is known, simply add a service fee for their email (25 cents per recipient per message; 20 cents per KB; etc.). If not, block further email from that IP for some (variable) time.
[OFF T] Been there, done that. In '96 I put together a Web-based DB-driven catalog system that worked with Macs to produce full catalogs of a warehouse full of merchandise. After a year of data checking and image renaming, we could put out a 1000 page catalog in a day (just needed time for proofreading). I shoulda patented it, dammit.
Or more like a flame bot piped through the enCheferizer (bork bork bork!)
...has lost all 5-day forecast data...
I installed the patch. It works fine... but only on the first dialup over 56K modem. After that, all TCP apps die with refused connections.
It still crashed about 10 seconds after the thing was posted....