Slashback: Bankruptcy, SUVdiving, Singalongs 508
Not like that un-American GPL. agentZ writes "The first Microsoft government customer to buy access to the Windows source code is Russia according to this CNet story. Interesting to note FAPSI, one of their intelligence agencies, authorized the purchase. Perhaps they're looking for vulnerabilities in the U.S. Government's dependence on Microsoft?"
The difference between Chapter 11 and The End. prostoalex writes "In regards to a recent heated discussion on whether tech companies can make it out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, XO Communications, the telecom company of the dot-com era, seems to be doing quite well after filing Chapter 11. The article on Internet.com also mentions another company, Covad Communications, picking up customers and more business after filing for Chapter 11."
There's hope in PCI Land. Regarding the Slashdot post of a few days ago about the PCI-SIG ("The End of the Free PCI Device List"), PCI-SIG Chairman Tony Pierce writes
"YourVote.com Supporters:Thank you for making us aware of your concerns regarding Jim Boemler's online Vendor and Device Lists for the PCI technology.
There has been a misunderstanding between PCI-SIG and Jim - PCI-SIG officers are currently working with Jim to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. We respect Jim Boemler's work and are committed to support the PCI specification efforts industry-wide. We are confident that we will come to an amicable resolution.
We are pleased to see the strong industry support for PCI technologies and value your response to the issues. We understand this site has been a very valuable tool and are working together to find a solution to make sure that the tool is available to the public in some way.
Thank you for your support over the years. We will be sure to keep you informed as we come to resolution in this situation."
This lowers Finland on my list of vacation spots. E-Tray writes "It seems that Finnish equivalents of American RIAA, Teosto, which represents songwriters and publishers, and Gramex, which represents music producers and artists, want to force Finnish day nurseries to pay royalties every time nursery staff sings along with kids. Previously Teosto enforced a law that taxi drivers have to pay royalties if they play music while a customer is in the backseat."
Would still rather see a statement signed in blood. Error27 writes "Earlier this week, Slashdot linked to a Maureen O'Gara article that claimed SCO was probably going to try charge Linux users $96 per CPU. More than one person thought SCO's denial was, "Awfully ambiguous". Hopefully this article clears up any doubts. Essentially, SCO will continue to charge IBM but not RedHat or SCO's UnitedLinux partners."
Perhaps I can volunteer my dad's Suburbans? Finally, joe jennings writes
"A few months ago you ran a story about the cars my team and I skydived with and crashed into the desert. This is a bit of an update.Next month, we're going to blow up my Nissan Pathfinder. Its twisted remains will be welded to a steel beam and planted on a plot of land in the mojave desert. We're starting "suv ranch," a tribute to gas guzzlers, a dying trend (we hope).
I intend to thoroughly document the project and will post images and quicktime videos on gaspig.com."
The gaspig.com link is incorrect. (Score:4, Informative)
Fair Use? (Score:3, Informative)
mail in rebates are evil (Score:2, Informative)
i never got back the $200 dollar rebate for installation
be careful with those things, $200 dollars may not be a lot to some but it really screwed me over
Re:Fair Use? (Score:1, Informative)
Just to be clear, In America you don't have Fair Use that allows people to sing other's copyrighted songs. There's an exemption for educational uses, but then documentaries aren't education and neither are non-state schools.
Singing copyrighted material is illegal (ie, most buskers are breaking the law). They get away with it because it's not enforced.
Even the 'Happy Birthday' song is copyrighted, so if you sing it without paying you're breaking the law.
Re:That's awfully Microsoft of them. (Score:5, Informative)
(We'll forget about the fact that UnitedLinux based distros are extremely expensive already and don't need anything else to make them MORE expensive. Adding a SCO ABI library license fee to what you already have to pay for UnitedLinux distros does little more than make the system more expensive to buy.)
As for your second to the last comment, I have no earthly idea where you get that "Red Hat's Success" == "SCO Rapes Red Hat for License Fees". If Red Hat doesn't ship SCO's ABI libraries, exactly what do you think they're going to use to suck money out of Red Hat? The UNIX trademark? If you read the article (or knew any UNIX history) you'd know that Ray Noorda gave the UNIX trademark to the Open Group back when Novell owned UNIX. SCO doesn't own the trademark: they license it, as does everyone else who wants the word "UNIX" associated with their OS.
(Good grief, why do I bother responding to these posts?...)
Re:Parachuting cars is saving the enviroment? (Score:5, Informative)
Read more about the loop-hole that NEEDS to get plugged here [commondreams.org]
The good news? This loophole costs the American Tresury close 1 Billion per year (source [detroitproject.com])
FAPSI (Score:3, Informative)
As for the dangers of showing off the s3kr1t code running "sensitive" tasks to shady foreign agencies, we all know at which point the mistake has been made, don't we?
Another Anti-SUV site (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gas Guzzlers... (Score:2, Informative)
Bah. I could carry just as many people in my "old" (circa 2000) Monte Carlo as my friends can in their Jeep Grand Cherokee or Ford Explorer. More, in fact, because it was more comfortable to squeeze four in the back of the Monte than it is to squeeze four in the back of either SUV (and nobody's going to ride in the cargo space behind the rear bench). I no longer have the Monte, which means I suffer with my friends' SUVs (often driving an SUV home from a night on the town when they've had too much to drink), but everytime I squeeze in or find myself at the wheel, I can't help but wish for my old car back (I love the car I replaced it with, but it's hardly a people mover). As for cargo space, I could fit just as much cargo in the Monte as you could in an SUV. The only difference would be how many passengers would also be able to go along. At least for me, when I'm hauling cargo, I'm not hauling passengers and vice versa, so it really doesn't matter.
Somehow, my parents always got by with nothing more than an Oldsmobile sedan in the heartland of Central Illinois, even hauling around three kids. If you know how to drive, AWD is really not necessary. If you don't know how to drive, AWD is going to get you into a lot of trouble (sure, you can get going, but pray tell, how are you going to stop?). So how again is it a neccessity to have an SUV in the Midwest?
Re:Gas Guzzlers... (Score:4, Informative)
2WD in snow (Score:3, Informative)
Driving in snow is mostly just a matter of driving appropriately for road conditions.
AWD or 4WD might help you get going if it is deep, or hilly. But it won't help you stop or steer any better. People that don't understand this end up in the ditch a lot.
I mostly see 2 types of vehicles in the ditch in the winter.
AWD/4WD SUV's is one.
The other is people with snow covered windows with only a small window to see.
Suggest to me the biggest danger isn't the vehicle you drive, but HOW you drive.
Finland (Score:2, Informative)
Finland has arguably the best laws regarding crypto., and personal privacy is guaranteed to a greater degree there than most everywhere else. Note that OpenSSH is based there.
Crime rate is disgustingly low; prisons do not even have walls or bars or armed guards. You can leave your baby in a pram on the sidewalk while you're shopping and Nothing Will Happen.
They are also a very technology-centric country, with the highest concentration of mobile phones per capita, for example.
Oh, and medical care is every citizen's right
Re:Fair Use? (Score:3, Informative)
Fair use applies to everything. You can sing in the shower, or at someone's birthday party, without fear. If you making a "public performance", mechanical royalties are due.
XO Communications... (Score:5, Informative)
They have been billing our company roughly $54 a month, for 3 years for services we never ordered and do not desire. Namely, web hosting space.
Then, after multiple letters to their billing, then legal offices, they have the nerve to stick a collecter on us.
Last time I talked to the collector, I said, you want the money, sue us! Because the counter claim will include a federal charge of "false billing by mail" and other collection violations under Georgia law.
He said, "they won't sue you, they just hope you are dumb enough to pay."
Hrm, I wonder just how many "bad debts" they have been writing off each year on the books. Or how much they have in "accounts receivable".
Re:Parachuting cars is saving the enviroment? (Score:3, Informative)
In case some here have never ran a business or know much about small business economics this is why it is done. First the vehicle has to be used demonstrativly by the business (shown at an audit, if not you are levied a HUGE fine). So if this is the case it needs to be deducted. For example, my parents business grosses something aroun 250 thousand a year, I make slightly over 30k a year. In take home usable money (money to pay bills, buy "stuff", eat, etc..) I make more than they do simply becuase the business costs a HUGE amount to run. They require the use of several large offroad type vehicles with large carrying capacity - either a pickup truck or an SUV. They place something along the lines of 50-75 thousand miles per year on each vehicle, under continuous load. Tax write offs such as this keep them making some profit (even the article says this was meant for farmers). And becuase the larger trucks/SUV's cost a singifigant amount more than a smaller one this really helps.
Not to mention the the money is deductable from your income, not money that is given to you. Big difference between the govt allowing a 24000 dollar deduction over 3 years and them handing a person 24000 dollars.
Do some poeple abuse this? Of course. But how many small businesses legitamtly need this deduction - are you willing to run many of them into the ground because someone is abusing it? For many of the complaints people post, yea the abuse they show is not right, but there are MANY other uses (and in my parents case required) of deductions such as this.
And my last pet peeve (and a large one): This loophole costs the American Tresury close 1 Billion per year. No, it doesn't cost them anything. The govt didn't make as much as they could. By that reasoning just imagine the amount they are loosing by not increasing the tax rate by another 2%, or a new special tax on softdrinks, or any other thing they could conceivable raise/add taxes on (anything). That is some of the shittiest logic I ever see bandied about. It assumes the govt owns all my money and I only have money by thier good will, anything I keep on my own that I do not have an absolute need for is costing the taxpayers through the nose. Just like me copying a song I would never have bought in the first place costs the RIAA 15 dollars for the CD: FUCK NO!
Called Elvis... no Teosto (Score:2, Informative)
I just did something I normally never do: I called Teosto and complained. I had a nice chat with the lady in the other end of the phone, and she promised to take my complaints further. Cities have BTW paid a certain sum based on the city's population to Teosto every year since 1979, which includes all activities maintained by the city, i.e. elderly people's homes, hospitals, etc. *Private* nurseries have not been included so far, and that's what they're targetting now.
If someone else wants to call and complain, be polite if you want to get your message through (and speak fluently Finnish and preferrably live in Finland as well). Oh, and the next person to call remembers to say that musicians live (I hope!) mostly on the income of their recording contracts and not on Teosto sponsorings.
-pfl
Re:big cars (Score:2, Informative)
Even with these gas prices SUVs are getting more and more popular over here, though most people drive 10 year old japanese cars.
Most people use public transportation in the large cities (I live in Stockholm) because it's much cheaper (about $55 per month for unlimited use) and there are almost no parking places.
So don't whine about gas prices in the U.S
Re:SUVs (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID
Bumper Mentality
By Stephanie Mencimer, Washington Monthly
December 20, 2002
Have you ever wondered why sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such assholes? Surely it's no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator.
Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, "High and Mighty," the connection between the two isn't a coincidence. Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.
According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."
He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler's market research director, tells Bradsher, "If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you're still single."
Armed with such research, automakers have, over the past decade, ramped up their SUV designs to appeal even more to the "reptilian" instincts of the many Americans who are attracted to SUVs not because of their perceived safety, but for their obvious aggressiveness. Automakers have intentionally designed the latest models to resemble ferocious animals. The Dodge Durango, for instance, was built to resemble a savage jungle cat, with vertical bars across the grille to represent teeth and big jaw-like fenders. Bradsher quotes a former Ford market researcher who says the SUV craze is "about not letting anything get in your way, and at the extreme, about intimidating others to get out of your way."
Not surprisingly, most SUV customers over the past decade hail from a group that is the embodiment of American narcissism: baby boomers. Affluent and often socially liberal, baby boomers have embraced the four-wheel-drive SUV as a symbol of their ability to defy the conventions of old age, of their independence and "outdoorsiness," making the off-road vehicle a force to be reckoned with on the American blacktop.
But as Bradsher declares in his title, this baby boomer fetish is considerably more harmful than the mere annoyance of yet another Rolling Stones tour or the endless commercials for Propecia. In their attempt to appear youthful and hip, SUV owners have filled the American highways with vehicles that exact a distinctly human cost, frequently killing innocent drivers who would have survived a collision with a lesser vehicle. Bradsher quotes auto execs who concede that the self-centered lifestyle of SUV buyers is apparent in "their willingness to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."
After covering the auto industry for six years, Bradsher is an unabashed critic of sport-utility vehicles and the automakers that continue to churn them out knowing full well the dangers they pose. He doesn't equivocate in his feeling that driving an SUV is a deeply immoral act that places the driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to mention the health of the environment. Ironically, and though most supposedly safety-conscious owners don't realize it, SUVs even imperil those who drive them.
Road Rodeo
Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he'll invariably insist that it's for safety reasons - the kids, you know - not because he's too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar. Automakers themselves know otherwise - their own market research tells them so.
But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing, a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.
The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars - 8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be.
Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive, SUV drivers tend to overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs, particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers - ever image-conscious and overconfident - seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.
While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.
Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little protection against an SUV hitting them from the side - not because of the weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or chest, where injuries are more life-threatening.
But before you get an SUV just for defensive purposes, think again. Any safety gains that might accrue are cancelled out by the high risk of rollover deaths, which usually don't involve other cars.
Ironically, SUVs are particularly dangerous for children, whose safety is often the rationale for buying them in the first place. Because these beasts are so big and hard to see around (and often equipped with dark-tinted glass that's illegal in cars), SUV drivers have a troubling tendency to run over their own kids. Just recently, in October, a wealthy Long Island doctor made headlines after he ran over and killed his 2-year-old in the driveway with his BMW X5. He told police he thought he'd hit the curb.
To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher finds people who rave about how they've survived accidents with barely a scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even bigger SUV.)
The tragedy of SUVs is that highway fatalities were actually in decline before SUVs came into vogue, even though Americans were driving farther. This is true largely for one simple reason: the seatbelt. Seatbelt usage rose from 14 percent in 1984 to 73 percent in 2001. But seatbelts aren't much help if you're sideswiped by an Escalade, a prospect that looms yet more ominously as SUVs enter the used-car market. Not surprisingly, last year, for the first time in a decade, the number of highway deaths actually rose.
No Roads Scholars Here
Bradsher blames government for failing to adequately regulate SUVs, but doesn't fully acknowledge the degree to which it has encouraged SUV production by becoming a major consumer of them. Law enforcement and public safety agencies in particular seem enamored of the menacing vehicles, a fact on proud display when officers finally apprehended the alleged snipers in the Washington, D.C., area and transported them to the federal courthouse in a parade of black Ford Explorers and Expeditions.
Judging from the number of official SUVs on the road today, law enforcement officials - those most likely to know firsthand the grisly effects of a rollover - are enthusiastic customers. Like the rest of America, police departments seem to believe that replacing safe, sturdy cars with SUVs is a good idea, though it's hard to imagine a more dangerous vehicle for an officer conducting a high-speed chase.
Government's taste for SUVs isn't limited to cops and firemen. There's hardly a city in America where the mayor's chauffeured Lincoln Town Car hasn't been replaced by an SUV. In Virginia, where state officials recently discovered that SUVs were wrecking their efforts to meet clean-air regulations, a few noted sheepishly that perhaps local governments should sell their own fleets, which had ballooned to 250 in Fairfax County alone. (A Fairfax County official told The Washington Post that public safety officials needed four-wheel drive and large cargo spaces to transport extra people and emergency equipment through snow or heavy rain - proof that even law enforcement officials misunderstand SUV safety records.)
As Bradsher details, because of their weight, shoddy brakes, and off-road tires, SUVs handle poorly in bad weather and have trouble stopping on slick roads. What's more, they're generally so poorly designed as not to be capable of carrying much cargo, despite the space. A contributing factor in the Ford Explorer-Firestone tire debacle was that drivers weren't told that their Explorers shouldn't carry any more weight than a Ford Taurus. The extra weight routinely piled in these big cars stressed the tires in a way that made them fall apart faster and contributed to the spate of rollover deaths.
I have a hunch that government officials' justification for buying SUVs is mostly a ruse for their real motivation, which is the same as any other SUV owner's: image. Officials can safely load up their fleets with leather-seated SUVs, whereas using taxpayer dollars to buy themselves, say, a fleet of BMW coupes would get them crucified (even though Detroit considers SUVs luxury vehicles and designs them accordingly). Police departments may claim that they need an SUV to accommodate SWAT teams or canine units, but there is no reason that Sparky the drug dog wouldn't be just as comfortable in the back of a nice safe Chevy Astrovan.
The same is true for nearly everyone who drives an SUV today. Of course, not every SUV owner is gripped by insecurity and a death wish - plenty of otherwise reasonable people seem to get seduced by power and size (see sidebar).
But if soccer moms and office-park dads really need to ferry a lot of people around, they could simply get a large car or a minivan, which Bradsher hails as a great innovation for its fuel efficiency, safety, and lower pollution. (And minivans don't have a disproportionately high kill rate for motorists or pedestrians when they get into accidents.) According to industry market research, minivan drivers also tend to be very nice people. Minivans are favored by senior citizens and others (male and female, equally) who volunteer for their churches and carpool with other people's kids. But that's the problem. SUV owners buy them precisely because they don't want the "soccer mom" stigma associated with minivans.
While Bradsher does a magnificent job of shattering the myths about SUVs, he has a difficult time proposing a solution. Sport utility vehicles have become like guns: Everyone knows they're dangerous, but you can't exactly force millions of Americans to give them up overnight. And because the SUV is single-handedly responsible for revitalizing the once-depressed American auto industry, the economy is now so dependent on their production that it would be nearly impossible to get them off the road.
Bradsher suggests regulating SUVs like cars rather than as light trucks, so that they would be forced to comply with fuel-efficiency standards and safety regulations. He also proposes that the insurance industry stop shifting the high costs of the SUV dangers onto car owners by raising premium prices for SUVs to reflect the amount of damage they cause. But these ideas, commendable though they are, fall short of a perfect answer.
Clearly, the best solution would be for Americans to realize the danger of SUVs and simply stop buying them. Social pressure can be a powerful determinant on car choices, as seen in Japan, the one country where SUVs have not caught on because of cultural checks that emphasize the good of the community over that of the individual. There are signs that perhaps public sentiment is beginning to shift against SUV drivers here, too, as activists have begun to leave nasty flyers on SUV windshields berating drivers for fouling the environment and other offenses.
But for a true reckoning to take place, image-obsessed Americans will need to fully understand the SUV's true dangers - including to themselves - before they will willingly abandon it to the junkyard. Spreading that message against the nation's biggest advertiser - the auto industry - will be tough work. Drivers can only hope that Bradsher's book will cut through the chatter.
Re:4 wheel drive (Score:2, Informative)
Not exactly. The Quattro from the Audi's is an actual *permanent* 4x4 mechanism (from the A4 and up), the 4Motion used in VW models is based upon a Haldex system. Technically it means that you are in frontwheel drive all the time, except when the front tires start to slip: then the rear tires come in. The Haldex system hydrolically manages this. ;-) )
It gets nasty on the Audi A3 and Audi TT, because those are built on the same platform as the Volkswagen Golf. So if you have an A3 or a TT labelled "quattro", you actually get the 4Motion Haldex-based system.
Unfortunately enough I found that only out *after* buying my TT. I'd have gone for the 3.0 A4 Quattro otherwhise. (Yes, those are gass guzzelers... in Europe
And you are right about the braking with all wheel drive. Snow and ice means you have to lower your speed anyway, but it sure makes me laugh when I see all those rearwheel drive Mercedes and BMW sitting at the side of a hill because of some little snow.
Re:That's awfully Microsoft of them. (Score:3, Informative)
As for enforcing IP rights... I don't know that SCO is enforcing _patents_. These are licensing fees for software they developed (and other people are selling, I might add). As they said in the article (you read it, right?), "SCO pays royalties on software, and we're asking companies/customers to do the same."
I think that's fair, don't you?