They did at least get the idea of an oppressive media-driven corporatocracy right. But we're talking about 3 minutes, total, of the entire pile of offal. Given the movie's length, that gives is about a 2% success rate.

If the remake is even close to 25% accurate, it'll be seen as an icon of the genre. It's one of the few times that you actually want a remake of a movie. Plastic and foam kind of don't make for a believable experience. Nor does a casting job from hell. Or effects that Lucas did better 20 years earlier.

As for the muscles, it's an impressive step towards real artificial limbs. With that sort of efficiency and speed, that means a human-strength model would be extremely light and use an extremely compact power source. Sure, you'd have to recharge your arm or leg once every day or two, but that's nothing. In fact, with recent advancements in wearable power generation technology, it might be self-recharging as long as you're outside.

The problem was entirely with the local phone company in my case. I had a new line straight to the box, new lines put under the hours, and all new equipment put in. And still, static. (DSL line worked, but if I can head massive static on the phone, it's certainly affecting the DSL as well) So if the OP is suffering from 20% more usage than his router is reporting, he very well might be dealing with bad lines or equipment as well.

The OP was in a fairly rural state, though, so he's probably lucky to get 256K if he's outside of town. Add in old equipment along the chain and maybe a crappy install on top of that, and I can see 20% overhead and/or losses.

Correct. But they are almost certainly calculating it correctly. There's the data, the headers, any background traffic. Gaming does this a lot, btw. Tons of tiny little wasteful packets and the system constantly asking for updates/pinging/etc. Downloading a torrent is even more crazy - you can send an astonishing amount of traffic back and forth by the time you get even a single small file. Add in some dropped packets when the telephone is being used and there you go.

When I had DSL, if I started talking on the land line, my speed would drop into the dirt. I could hear static on the phone as well. DSL works over amazing distances, but he might be struggling to get even 256K. Note - old wiring in the house also does this. Most proper installs run a new line from the pole directly to the computer. A lot, though, especially if you are in an apartment, do not. Given how crappy DSL generally is, I can see a 20% overhead quite easily.

But, it's certainly not ethical, either, to be counting this towards a cap, especially if there is no non-capped option available. (well, there always is - via their business service, but that's a whole other wad of butt-hurt).

Note - the OP really needs to get cable or something without the insanity. DSL is always the choice of last-resort.

It's almost certainly a bit of debris from the shield and/or lander. If you look at the high definition video, you see the thing slam into the surface right before Curiosity lands and it looks like it hit hard, with a huge plume of dust and debris. Fragments could have reached a few miles from the looks of it.

Or it could be a screw. (arm falls off as it reaches for the item. Camera is now looking at an arm and a screw.)

Trust me on this. There's nothing on Mars. After millions of years being irradiated, it's as lifeless as the Moon except *maybe* at the poles where some bacteria or viruses survived. note - the Moon is similar in that it's covered in a blanket of dust, but below the dust is pretty much normal rock.

Shame, since I find it easier to read the way you put it. ;)

Company having a problem? I know! Just merge it into another corporation and ensure even greater monopoly power.

I sometimes wonder what people are thinking. Don't they ever learn from history?

I think you'd be able to recycle it, though. ;)

But seriously. This would be like coming up with a $1 tax on bullets. And then forgetting that it affects law enforcement, the military, and so on. THe idea (IIRC) was about software initially, but making it apply to physical items is sheer insanity.

My guess is that if this passes, that businesses will be able to re-sell items (since evidently only businesses are people any more - we're just meat-sacks with numbers attached), so either you'd have to apply for and pay re-seller's license fee, or give the item to a place that did.(ie- donate or "recycle")

Think of how many auto dealers alone would scream at this. No used car sales. In fact, I can right off the top of my head just keep coming up with example after example of businesses that sell used equipment. Ebay, for instance, would simply shut down. And they have pretty deep pockets last I checked.

And then there's the absurd part of it. That we actually are limiting ourselves as a nation based upon the IP and copyrights of other nations like China that ignore our same laws. We might as well just give up and move Congress to Shanghai. I really would like to know the thought process behind the idiot who first thought this up. Because once you think about it beyond your tiny little niche and apply it to everyone, it's a disaster.

Welcome to the U.S. Nobody can sell anything used - just throw it away.

This will be Apple's problem in the counter-suit. I expect them to get similarly reamed by Samsung.

There is a double standard, though. In copyright and patent law, thanks to decisions and laws made in the last decade or so, the defendant pretty much has to prove that they didn't do what the plaintiff is charging them with.

Also, Samsung did exactly the same trick in 2004. And got hammered then as well. They simply are choosing to not comply with the laws concerning data retention. There's a big difference between "I didn't store it - oops" and "It was deleted as per company policy. We don't follow U.S. laws concerning this but instead Korean laws." Samsung has a history of obstruction and weaseling out of it at the last minute isn't going to change a thing. The jury obviously made their minds up since the original order was given much earlier in the case and colored the entire thing up until the end when Apple decided to let it drop.

Once the can of worms is opened and the jury assumes that one side is lying, you really can't undo that at a later date. Samsung was essentially fried at that point. Samsung is basically trying to prove that it didn't do what it was charged with without any evidence. My guess is that they probably thought that they could stall long enough so that it wouldn't affect their business. And that the fine would be fairly small and they'd just pay it. But a billion, well, that got their attention right quick.

Being in a jury selection process myself recently, the lawyers barely talk about the parties at all. In fact, they are as round-about and obtuse as possible, to the point of asking nearly idiotic questions like "do you have any preconceived notions about patents?". So unless he was following Seagate's progress on a daily basis for 15+ years, he was without a doubt NOT informed during the process of selection that Samsung had a share in Seagate. He probably didn't know that Seagate owns Maxtor. Or that Apple owns a stake in Akamai. Such things are not really common knowledge except maybe here at slashdot. ;)

Very few lawyers go to the trouble of posting a list of every company and sub-company that a corporation of that size owns and all of the stock options that it also holds (it's unlikely that such information would be easily available, as well), and then asking jurors to announce if they ever had dealings with any of these dozens of companies. They hardly even mention the company's name if they can help it.

In every instance that I have seen, they ask the potential jurors if they are able to be impartial. If the defendant says yes, and they don't do any followup, it's the lawyer's decision. Even then, even if there IS a bias, the lawyers have the option to excuse the person. Though they also always ask "Will this bias keep you from making an impartial decision in this specific case?" before deciding to finally get rid of you or not. Sometimes they do not as they have bigger idiots and problems to get rid of (like a juror that is too smart or opinionated or conservative or...) and then run out of options. Sometimes they simply don't ask any more questions and move on.

If the lawyers say the jury that they have selected is acceptable, it's not the jury's fault any more.

Lying to the court is still misconduct, so whether or not his personal feelings were allowed at that point they shouldn't have reached that point.

True. But it could just as easily be claimed that he personally didn't know that Samsung owned the company in question. Do you know all of the companies that, say, G.E. owns? In any case, his being impartial despite his past dealings with a subsidiary of Samsung likely wasn't a factor. Until the judge said basically, "figure it out yourself, the trial is a disaster."

In any case dealing with patents and copyrights, the onus is on the defendant to prove that they didn't break the law. It's contrary to most other forms of law in that the defendant is assumed to be guilty first and has to prove their innocence. If they can't, then as I stated originally, it's over. I thought this was obvious, so I condensed my original post to reflect this fact.

Samsung can't defend versus the charges. They lose at that point, no matter what Apple is or is not doing.

http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/

There's a big difference, though. The judge did effectively say that both companies should be considered to be acting in such a manner, but the instructions against Samsung (as the defendant) obviously carried far more weight. And it allowed (legally) personal feelings to be part of the decision making process at that point by the jury. At that point, from a practical standpoint, Apple didn't really have to show everything (that's what the upcoming counter-suit is all about - watch Apple get reamed for the same reasons, most likely) to make its case at that point. If the Jury could basically be as impartial to both as it wished, well Samsung simply loses, as I said.

Samsung also has a history of doing this in 2004.
Apple's errors were of omission and basically refusing to show all of its evidence.(basically being asses and cock-blocking everything) Samsung's errors were clearly destruction of evidence on a massive scale, as is their long-standing policy. They basically chose to ignore discovery laws in North America and follow what's legal in South Korea. Which is apparently almost anything you want to do by comparison. Thumbing your nose at the courts in the U.S. and refusing to comply pretty much gets you a pounding every time. Samsung's misdeeds here are far more severe than Apple's.

To clarify:
Judge: "They both were lying asshats. Assume Samsung is guilty and unable to make an adequate defense against the charges. Assume Apple's claims are overblown. Feel free to be as impartial as you see fit. I'm done with this."
Jury:"Awesome. "We'll be back in a few hours after we figure out what charges Samsung can't defend against and which ones Apple is going overboard on."

Samsung was destroying emails and manipulating the discovery process.
http://internationaledisclosure.blogspot.com/2012/09/apple-v-samsung-largest-international.html
Here's what the judge had to say:

  “Apple sought a finding that Samsung spoliated evidence, and as a sanction for such conduct, an adverse inference jury instruction “to the effect that: (1) Samsung had a duty to preserve relevant evidence, including emails; Samsung failed to preserve large volumes of relevant emails and other documents; Samsung acted in bad faith in failing to preserve the relevant documents; and the jury may presume that the documents that Samsung failed to preserve would have been favorable to Apple's case and unfavorable to Samsung; and (2) if the jury finds infringement of any Apple patent, trademark, or trade dress, that jury may infer that the infringement was intentional, willful, and without regard to Apple's rights.”

The jury was issued an Adverse Inference Instruction by the judge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
Quote from Wikipedia:
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit pointed out in 2004, in a case involving spoliation (destruction) of evidence, that "...the giving of an adverse inference instruction often terminates the litigation in that it is 'too difficult a hurdle' for the spoliating party to overcome. The court therefore concluded that the adverse inference instruction is an 'extreme' sanction that should 'not be given lightly'...".

Judge: "Assume Samsung is guilty. Feel free to be as impartial as you wish to be."
Jury: "Sweet. We'll be back in a few hours and can go home early."

The critical point in all of this is that Velvin Hogan's personal feelings were legally allowed to be part of the decision making process at that point. There is no misconduct.

Physical copies are a different story. Almost nobody expects physical copies to exist any more since emails and computers have been the norm for a few decades now. Note - if you did run a business purely by phone and on paper, you could get around much of this. But it would have to quite literally be 100% offline. Of course, failure to have physical copies at that point pretty much tanks your case. It's why a lot of companies that are still paper-based have sometimes decades of files in storage. Just in case.

Electronic copies are to be kept for whatever is required by law. Any gaps are considered to be essentially willfully done or done via negligence by the courts. If there's say, a fire, then it's more of a gray area, of course. A lot of companies aren't remotely in compliance with data retention laws, unfortunately, and get an earful (or more) when they get in front of a judge. Some just settle as well because the second that they look into the laws and realize that they never did anything correctly, it's better than get reamed in court.

It used to be a lot more lax, but in the last decade, the laws have gotten almost a bit crazy.

Obviously the rules differ by industry as well as for data type. Also, by jurisdiction (with, for instance, California and New York being among the most strict about it) Government projects, defense contractors, and so on have a lot more leeway. But 98% of the time, we're talking about email and database records that mysteriously go missing (which is all the courts really seem to actually care about unless it's relevant to the case itself, like a specific patent or piece of code). The general consensus is that you keep email backups forever. Some mid-size companies even have a dedicated person in IT who manages all of this and knows the laws regarding this.

http://www.dredlaw.com/2009/07/new-e-discovery-rules-in-california.html
As I said, it's gotten a bit crazy as of late.

http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/
Improper data retention was a major factor in the Samsung vs Apple case, in fact. And this same messup will likely crush them in their counter-suit since the judge will likely tell the jury to assume the worst concerning Samsung since they pretty much destroyed documents on purpose.