weather.com, the weather channel and weather underground are all owned by the same company. Expect WU to go down the same path as the weather.com :-(
WU was only recently (since 2012) bought by The Weather Channel, and so far they haven't destroyed it. I was a little concerned, having submitted weather data to them since 2005, that things were going to go south. So far they have kept a hands-off policy, and the two sites (weather.com/wunderground.com) still have separate teams.
Do you have a reference for that other than a court document? Those are kind of boring. :-)
I have no problem reading court documents. A reference to an actual court document that backs antidirt's rambling would be helpful for me, but he doesn't even provide those.
Luckily, The US Copyright Office has a report that seems to debunk some of what he says. Specifically covered was the fact that the US Supreme Court in 1908 held in White-Smith vs. Apollo that "a piano roll was not a 'copy' of the musical composition embodied in it because the composition could not be 'read' from the roll by the naked eye." In 1976, the copyright law was enacted that "fixed" this issue.
Why not find a way to allow customers to switch ISPs without rolling a truck?
A couple months ago, I went into the cable storefront to ask them to increase my internet to their super-ultimate-nerd-class internet package (because of the higher caps, which are ridiculous and should be illegal.) They wanted to roll a truck (which would cost me a fee.)
After I showed them that I already had a DOCSIS 3 modem capable of handling the speed, and that internet was working fine for me at the previous levels, they still wanted to roll a truck. Because reasons (and I suspect, to get a salesperson in the door to try to sell me something else I didn't want for the money I just paid them to do nothing.)
Finally, after arguing with them for 30 minutes, and getting a supervisor involved, I told them they were welcome to roll a truck, but they wouldn't step foot in my house and it would be a waste of everyone's time. I nearly walked out of the place, figuring that I just wasted 30 minutes to get another 100GB a month on my cap. The manager called me back and said they would upgrade me without needing to roll a truck since I already had working internet and a DOCSIS 3 modem (duh.)
The sad thing is the whole time driving home, I was highly suspicious that my internet would no longer be working when I got home, just so that they could charge me a fee to get a salesperson in the door. Luckily, they weren't that evil/inept, and everything worked fine.
Re: In a world where there's only two cable providers...
In a world where there's only two cable providers... ...they'll come to realize that customers who leave their company for the other will eventually come back.
Maybe, but maybe not as likely as you expect. Cable cutters, cable nevers, and cable reducers have shown that if you keep screwing your customer over and over again, eventually they do a back of the napkin assessment on the value of your service vs the value of the time, energy, and effort lost by dealing with you, and slowly but increasingly, they realize that is easier to forgo your service than it is to use your service.
I am to the point where I just have internet from my provider, because everything else they were providing was far more expensive than it was worth. If there was another game in town, I'd leave their internet behind too. As it is, I have cable internet or I have cell-phone based internet, with all the stupidity that involves, or I have no internet. And they haven't pissed me off enough to make me think that cell-based internet or going without is of more value.
Lenovo did not steal people's bank information. Not even close. What they did do was make online banking less secure but Lenovo itself never copied/viewed anything that anyone did on their computers.
This. Lenovo's crime here is getting greedy (in that they were paid by Superfish to install software that did bad stuff they weren't aware of.) And unlike Superfish/Komodia, they eventually decided to change their business model.
Microsoft also has made online backing less secure over the years, think of all the security patches you see from them each month.
The intelligence agencies have, allegedly, actively done far more to make banking less secure, as well as computing less secure, in the last couple decades. Microsoft just sucks at programming, and is extremely slow at fixing stuff reported to them. Not defending Microsoft for their stupidity, but so long as computers are programmed by humans, we will continue to have these problems.
If we stop shipping items based on bad PR caused purely by marketing of the product, even if the product itself doesn't violate the law, what the hell are we doing?
Creating an opportunity for competition from companies who don't have an issue with transporting legal merchandise from one place to another. So long as it is legal to transport legal merchandise, and there are no artificial barriers to the business (which sadly, may be the case.) If it becomes illegal to transport legal merchandise, than we have much bigger problems. If CNC machines become illegal merchandise, then we have much bigger problems as well.
If UPS (who, in the Ars Technica article say they won't transport these CNC machines as well,) and FedEx wish to leave money on the table, let them, so long as they don't then run to their buddies and complain and quash someone else who is willing to pick up the money and transport legal merchandise in their place.
It sucks, and will likely make this endeavor cost more in the short run as they search for another company, but in the long run it just means more competition that is sorely needed. Isn't this exactly how capitalism works?
Betamax was a superior product design to VHS, but Sony wouldn't allow porn on it.
Sony wouldn't allow a lot of things, like other manufacturers to manufacture the BetaMax tapes, while JVC allowed just about anyone who would pay the low licensing costs to manufacture their own VHS tapes. The result was that VHS tapes and players/recorders were far less expensive than BetaMax. Nobody is going to spend $999 on a Sony BetaMax VCR, especially when they can buy a Sharp VHS VCR for $60.
JVC won the battle by being cheaper and far more open and non-controlling, and Sony learned to be less of a dick when the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle appeared on the horizon years later (though, they are Sony, they will always be dicks...they learned their lesson and saturated the market with Blu-Ray players which helped them win that battle.)
Also why I can get laughs from certain crowds by commenting that I engage in intercourse hundreds of times every day.
Probably the same group of people who blush when you tell them you masticate a bunch several times a day. I masticated this morning during breakfast, then again around lunch time, and will probably do it again around dinner time. Sometimes I even masticate in my sleep, though my dentist gave me something to prevent that.
With my employees, the only thing that I cared about was that they didn't break the law at work and that they did excellent work on time. As long as they were doing that, I couldn't care less about anything else they did.
That is not the normal way government works. Sadly, in my experience, it isn't whether you're excellent work is on time, but whether you sit in your desk during your scheduled "duty" day and look busy. I've seen people read the newspaper all day, but so long as they looked like they were doing work, they were good.
Government tends to wear down "hackers" (the smart people that keep things working,) because they tend to do as much as they possibly can as quickly as they can, and then goof-off for a while until they need to get busy again. Its why government tends to shun things like telecommuting, because they can't be sure that folks look like their working instead of giving employees their tasks, priorities, and due-dates and let them get busy in their own way.
No, that's correct. From ancient days, the flag has been a visible rallying point and a symbol of the strength of one's army, and capturing an enemy flag was considered a great feat of valor.
Even further, during the American Civil War, a flag barer or also known as color barer and color guard (who were responsible for keeping the color barer safe, but often failed, and if the color barer was lost, they stepped in to take the position,) was a very esteemed and privileged and also very deadly position. Your job was to keep the flag flying at all costs, and when you lost yours, another flag barer would step forward to take the position. Flag barers couldn't fight back, as their hands kept the flag flying and thus couldn't manipulate their weapons.
It is the main reason why military and civilian barers are flanked by color guard with ceremonial weapons today...
However, the best way to fix this disrespect for the flag is through talk, not through locking the person up and preventing them from getting an education. Teach them why the flag is so important, and why so many people died *under*, not over, the flag. They didn't die for the flag, they died for their brother or sister, or the ideal of America. The kid probably hasn't had a good influence in their life to sit them down and show them what it really means.
I guess you could say the loss of Mr Tran's once valuable trademark to descriptiveness?
Maybe, but like John, I see Sriracha and I immediately think of "Cock Sauce" (because of the giant rooster on the packaging.) I tend to use a lot of it, and like Mr. Geigner, it holds a special place in my refrigerator.
French's produces a Worcestershire sauce (which actually sucks, if you buy it thinking it is Lea & Perrins, a Heinz company, Worcestershire sauce.) When someone talks about Worcestershire sauce (or embalming fluid, thanks South Park,) I immediately think of Lea & Perrins, not French's brand Worcestershire.
It may be that it is what most of us grew up with, and that in the future, French's Worcestershire might replace Lea & Perrins as the version everyone thinks of, but I think it is still a description of specific brand and not a general sauce.
I'm not sure it is Apple so much as Apple users who are petty. Most of my friends have iPhones, and I prefer an Android, partly because I own the phone and the OS, and everything running on it, and don't have to kiss someone's ring if I want to install something that isn't sanctioned. Yet I've never heard anyone say that my SMS messages piss them off.
I think what we have here is a small but vocal pretentious crowd of iPhone cultists. The same type of cultists you have surrounding horribly inefficient and more destructive to the environment Prius drivers who won't talk to you because you drive a gasoline-powered or battery-powered vehicle and not a hybrid.
I've got two of them, both bricks after an automatic update after the vendor decided to stop supporting them, at some point when I get some time, I'm going to crack open one of them and start playing. Luckily, I didn't pay $449 (list) for either of them, but I wasted way too much money on what I did pay for them.
YouTube directly monetizes plays of songs for the artist/label. Spotify gives it's payments to the record labels who pretend to distribute it to the artists.
Fine. But that is not what her stated grievance was. She stated that the reason she didn't want her music on Spotify was because it would be made available to both subscribers and "free-loaders", and that there was no way to make the music only available to paid subscribers.
I always found her reasoning to be disingenuous, especially since YouTube doesn't offer the same thing that she is slamming Spotify for. If her reason for hating Spotify and loving YouTube is about the amount of money each gives her, then she should say that. The problem with her saying that is that she was the one who signed the contract, not her fans, that allowed her label to steal so much money from her via Spotify vs. YouTube, and blaming Spotify because she or her representation is bad at handling her affairs seems equally disingenuous.
Is it Taylor swift acting, or the corporate people behind her?
This is the same Taylor Swift that badmouth'd Spotify and forced them to take down all her music for daring to do the same thing that she praised YouTube for doing...making her music available to fans in a walled garden without making them available to everyone (which I am pretty sure I can get to Taylor Swift's music (if I wanted to) on YouTube without paying or subscribing, thereby defeating her very complaints about Spotify.)
Re: One result I expect to be unforseen by Samsung
Jailbroken smart televisions.
I hope sooner than later.
I suppose product manufacturers and venders being dicks is how we test ans build our society's autoimmune system to such bullshit.
Still waiting for someone to jailbreak my Buffalo PC-P3LWG/DVD. I hate proprietary auto-updating firmware, but unfortunately it is so pervasive these days.
"No "probably" about it. Hookers are much better at that than corporations are."
Until you get your blood test results...
Uhm...doesn't that kinda prove the point?
Independent discovery doesn't change their secrecy handling skills. It's kinda like getting upset with, and suing someone for disclosing one of your Trade Secrets when you didn't tell anyone about your Trade Secret to begin with.
On the post: Verizon Latest To Balk At Weather Channel Rate Hikes For 'Weather Coverage' That's 70% Fluff And Nonsense
Re: Re: A long time coming
WU was only recently (since 2012) bought by The Weather Channel, and so far they haven't destroyed it. I was a little concerned, having submitted weather data to them since 2005, that things were going to go south. So far they have kept a hands-off policy, and the two sites (weather.com/wunderground.com) still have separate teams.
On the post: Licensing Your 3D Printed Stuff: Why 3D Printed Objects Challenge Our Copyright Beliefs
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Licensing Your 3D Printed Stuff: Why 3D Printed Objects Challenge Our Copyright Beliefs
Re: Re:
I have no problem reading court documents. A reference to an actual court document that backs antidirt's rambling would be helpful for me, but he doesn't even provide those.
Luckily, The US Copyright Office has a report that seems to debunk some of what he says. Specifically covered was the fact that the US Supreme Court in 1908 held in White-Smith vs. Apollo that "a piano roll was not a 'copy' of the musical composition embodied in it because the composition could not be 'read' from the roll by the naked eye." In 1976, the copyright law was enacted that "fixed" this issue.
On the post: Cable Proudly Declares Smart Shoppers A 'Lower Quality' Of Customer They Have No Interest In
Re: New way
A couple months ago, I went into the cable storefront to ask them to increase my internet to their super-ultimate-nerd-class internet package (because of the higher caps, which are ridiculous and should be illegal.) They wanted to roll a truck (which would cost me a fee.)
After I showed them that I already had a DOCSIS 3 modem capable of handling the speed, and that internet was working fine for me at the previous levels, they still wanted to roll a truck. Because reasons (and I suspect, to get a salesperson in the door to try to sell me something else I didn't want for the money I just paid them to do nothing.)
Finally, after arguing with them for 30 minutes, and getting a supervisor involved, I told them they were welcome to roll a truck, but they wouldn't step foot in my house and it would be a waste of everyone's time. I nearly walked out of the place, figuring that I just wasted 30 minutes to get another 100GB a month on my cap. The manager called me back and said they would upgrade me without needing to roll a truck since I already had working internet and a DOCSIS 3 modem (duh.)
The sad thing is the whole time driving home, I was highly suspicious that my internet would no longer be working when I got home, just so that they could charge me a fee to get a salesperson in the door. Luckily, they weren't that evil/inept, and everything worked fine.
On the post: Cable Proudly Declares Smart Shoppers A 'Lower Quality' Of Customer They Have No Interest In
Re: In a world where there's only two cable providers...
...they'll come to realize that customers who leave their company for the other will eventually come back.
Maybe, but maybe not as likely as you expect. Cable cutters, cable nevers, and cable reducers have shown that if you keep screwing your customer over and over again, eventually they do a back of the napkin assessment on the value of your service vs the value of the time, energy, and effort lost by dealing with you, and slowly but increasingly, they realize that is easier to forgo your service than it is to use your service.
I am to the point where I just have internet from my provider, because everything else they were providing was far more expensive than it was worth. If there was another game in town, I'd leave their internet behind too. As it is, I have cable internet or I have cell-phone based internet, with all the stupidity that involves, or I have no internet. And they haven't pissed me off enough to make me think that cell-based internet or going without is of more value.
On the post: MPAA Abusing DMCA Takedowns To Attempt A Poor Man's SOPA
Re:
$150K per file for each owner. Since they deprived everyone on the planet of their property, that could be about $1.05e+15.
Cash or Charge?
On the post: Did Lenovo/Superfish Break The Law?
Re: Re: Lenovo Superfish
This. Lenovo's crime here is getting greedy (in that they were paid by Superfish to install software that did bad stuff they weren't aware of.) And unlike Superfish/Komodia, they eventually decided to change their business model.
Microsoft also has made online backing less secure over the years, think of all the security patches you see from them each month.
The intelligence agencies have, allegedly, actively done far more to make banking less secure, as well as computing less secure, in the last couple decades. Microsoft just sucks at programming, and is extremely slow at fixing stuff reported to them. Not defending Microsoft for their stupidity, but so long as computers are programmed by humans, we will continue to have these problems.
On the post: FedEx Refuses To Ship Perfectly Legal Milling Machine (Which Can Also Craft Gun Parts), Can't Provide A Coherent Reason Why
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: FedEx has a point.
Creating an opportunity for competition from companies who don't have an issue with transporting legal merchandise from one place to another. So long as it is legal to transport legal merchandise, and there are no artificial barriers to the business (which sadly, may be the case.) If it becomes illegal to transport legal merchandise, than we have much bigger problems. If CNC machines become illegal merchandise, then we have much bigger problems as well.
If UPS (who, in the Ars Technica article say they won't transport these CNC machines as well,) and FedEx wish to leave money on the table, let them, so long as they don't then run to their buddies and complain and quash someone else who is willing to pick up the money and transport legal merchandise in their place.
It sucks, and will likely make this endeavor cost more in the short run as they search for another company, but in the long run it just means more competition that is sorely needed. Isn't this exactly how capitalism works?
On the post: Google Gets Prude: Says No More Adult Content On Blogger
Re: Historically, this is a bad policy.
Sony wouldn't allow a lot of things, like other manufacturers to manufacture the BetaMax tapes, while JVC allowed just about anyone who would pay the low licensing costs to manufacture their own VHS tapes. The result was that VHS tapes and players/recorders were far less expensive than BetaMax. Nobody is going to spend $999 on a Sony BetaMax VCR, especially when they can buy a Sharp VHS VCR for $60.
JVC won the battle by being cheaper and far more open and non-controlling, and Sony learned to be less of a dick when the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle appeared on the horizon years later (though, they are Sony, they will always be dicks...they learned their lesson and saturated the market with Blu-Ray players which helped them win that battle.)
On the post: Google Gets Prude: Says No More Adult Content On Blogger
Re: Re: Human intercourse
Probably the same group of people who blush when you tell them you masticate a bunch several times a day. I masticated this morning during breakfast, then again around lunch time, and will probably do it again around dinner time. Sometimes I even masticate in my sleep, though my dentist gave me something to prevent that.
On the post: Bill Introduced To Keep Bored Federal Employees From Viewing Porn While On The Clock
Re: Re: Porn @ Work
That is not the normal way government works. Sadly, in my experience, it isn't whether you're excellent work is on time, but whether you sit in your desk during your scheduled "duty" day and look busy. I've seen people read the newspaper all day, but so long as they looked like they were doing work, they were good.
Government tends to wear down "hackers" (the smart people that keep things working,) because they tend to do as much as they possibly can as quickly as they can, and then goof-off for a while until they need to get busy again. Its why government tends to shun things like telecommuting, because they can't be sure that folks look like their working instead of giving employees their tasks, priorities, and due-dates and let them get busy in their own way.
On the post: School Principal Contacts FBI After Student Throws American Flag Out A Window
Re: Re: Re:
Even further, during the American Civil War, a flag barer or also known as color barer and color guard (who were responsible for keeping the color barer safe, but often failed, and if the color barer was lost, they stepped in to take the position,) was a very esteemed and privileged and also very deadly position. Your job was to keep the flag flying at all costs, and when you lost yours, another flag barer would step forward to take the position. Flag barers couldn't fight back, as their hands kept the flag flying and thus couldn't manipulate their weapons.
It is the main reason why military and civilian barers are flanked by color guard with ceremonial weapons today...
However, the best way to fix this disrespect for the flag is through talk, not through locking the person up and preventing them from getting an education. Teach them why the flag is so important, and why so many people died *under*, not over, the flag. They didn't die for the flag, they died for their brother or sister, or the ideal of America. The kid probably hasn't had a good influence in their life to sit them down and show them what it really means.
On the post: Sriracha Boss On Trademark: Mmmmm, No Thanks
Re: Re: Re:
Maybe, but like John, I see Sriracha and I immediately think of "Cock Sauce" (because of the giant rooster on the packaging.) I tend to use a lot of it, and like Mr. Geigner, it holds a special place in my refrigerator.
French's produces a Worcestershire sauce (which actually sucks, if you buy it thinking it is Lea & Perrins, a Heinz company, Worcestershire sauce.) When someone talks about Worcestershire sauce (or embalming fluid, thanks South Park,) I immediately think of Lea & Perrins, not French's brand Worcestershire.
It may be that it is what most of us grew up with, and that in the future, French's Worcestershire might replace Lea & Perrins as the version everyone thinks of, but I think it is still a description of specific brand and not a general sauce.
On the post: FBI Says All Public Records Requests For Stingray Documents Must Be Routed Through It
Re: Re: Re: Your Freedoms...
He said it back in the 18th Century, so I believe he was being prescient.
On the post: Green Bubbles: How Apple Quietly Gets iPhone Users To Hate Android Users
Re:
I'm not sure it is Apple so much as Apple users who are petty. Most of my friends have iPhones, and I prefer an Android, partly because I own the phone and the OS, and everything running on it, and don't have to kiss someone's ring if I want to install something that isn't sanctioned. Yet I've never heard anyone say that my SMS messages piss them off.
I think what we have here is a small but vocal pretentious crowd of iPhone cultists. The same type of cultists you have surrounding horribly inefficient and more destructive to the environment Prius drivers who won't talk to you because you drive a gasoline-powered or battery-powered vehicle and not a hybrid.
On the post: Samsung Ad Injections Perfectly Illustrate Why I Want My 'Smart' TV To Be As Dumb As Possible
Re: The nest vengeance.
I've got two of them, both bricks after an automatic update after the vendor decided to stop supporting them, at some point when I get some time, I'm going to crack open one of them and start playing. Luckily, I didn't pay $449 (list) for either of them, but I wasted way too much money on what I did pay for them.
On the post: Taylor Swift One Ups Katy Perry Again: Threatens To Sue Fans For Etsy Fan Products
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Fine. But that is not what her stated grievance was. She stated that the reason she didn't want her music on Spotify was because it would be made available to both subscribers and "free-loaders", and that there was no way to make the music only available to paid subscribers.
I always found her reasoning to be disingenuous, especially since YouTube doesn't offer the same thing that she is slamming Spotify for. If her reason for hating Spotify and loving YouTube is about the amount of money each gives her, then she should say that. The problem with her saying that is that she was the one who signed the contract, not her fans, that allowed her label to steal so much money from her via Spotify vs. YouTube, and blaming Spotify because she or her representation is bad at handling her affairs seems equally disingenuous.
On the post: Taylor Swift One Ups Katy Perry Again: Threatens To Sue Fans For Etsy Fan Products
Re: Re:
This is the same Taylor Swift that badmouth'd Spotify and forced them to take down all her music for daring to do the same thing that she praised YouTube for doing...making her music available to fans in a walled garden without making them available to everyone (which I am pretty sure I can get to Taylor Swift's music (if I wanted to) on YouTube without paying or subscribing, thereby defeating her very complaints about Spotify.)
On the post: Samsung Ad Injections Perfectly Illustrate Why I Want My 'Smart' TV To Be As Dumb As Possible
Re: One result I expect to be unforseen by Samsung
I hope sooner than later.
I suppose product manufacturers and venders being dicks is how we test ans build our society's autoimmune system to such bullshit.
Still waiting for someone to jailbreak my Buffalo PC-P3LWG/DVD. I hate proprietary auto-updating firmware, but unfortunately it is so pervasive these days.
On the post: Samsung Ad Injections Perfectly Illustrate Why I Want My 'Smart' TV To Be As Dumb As Possible
Re: Re: Re: What I want?
Until you get your blood test results...
Uhm...doesn't that kinda prove the point?
Independent discovery doesn't change their secrecy handling skills. It's kinda like getting upset with, and suing someone for disclosing one of your Trade Secrets when you didn't tell anyone about your Trade Secret to begin with.
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