Then we get 250k to sign a petition lowering it to 12.5k (1/2 of what it was) - point being everyone "now" knows this is one big crock, we just as as well have fun with it... It's always better to make fun of the bully, and make him/them look stupid than it is to pick a fight - having petitions "playing" with the petitions just shows that "we the people" know that they are full of shit, so we just as well have some fun with them... Could very well be the last chance we have :-/

Whats the message they are sending though? If I were a legit member of anonymous, knowing that Brown was not a member - what am I suppose to take from this? That the FBI has no idea who they really are (good thing for anonymous), that they are the bad guys (the point anonymous exists) and will destroy ones life on a whim (already knows this)? From the sounds of it, my reaction would be the same that was in the video - LOL, OMG, that sux! and continue chatting.

Personally, I sincerely hope the FBI didn't raid this guys place because they "thought" he was a spokesman for anonymous when he wasn't even involved - that would just mean that the KGB (?) of the USA is out gunned by the out laws of the internet, and flat out embarrassing that as a country we are at the mercy of such an elite clueless power.

The operator of the laptop did that...

the same company who they are contracting with in regards to Public Relations

Isn't that the whole point to PR firms/departments/companies - to protect the organizations public perception?

Regardless of far you want to twist/stretch things - I'm still defaulting to the bad guys at fault (ie: the Feds :-P )...

I call bullshit! I give my own experience lately as evidence - I HATE those lame/annoying tampon adds, they are f'ing everywhere and mean ZERO to me to say the least. Recently I've been doing a lot searching for tires and now, regardless if I follow them or not, I'm receiving more adds for tires - whether I follow them or not is a different story all together - the web is full of banners, although I would MUCH rather see a an advertisement for a tire than free flowing tampons!

It's the 'foot in the door' - once your on this side of it, it's up to what you do with it.. Once your in, script your job to make life easier for you, while also doing everything 100% with out failure (assuming your scripts aren't full of bugs) - you will get promoted into another position - or simply ensure that you keep your job. If you don't get promoted, jump jobs - its basically ALL experience that gets you the higher end positions, nothing else, certs help with the bigger companies, smaller ones (where I prefer) want experience more than anything. Jumping jobs, ensures you get the varied experience. Multiple steady jobs as a sys admin, could land you the Sr Sys Admin in a smaller company.

Also, don't stop with just installing systems on new hardware, thats easy - try to get your hands on the 'old' stuff that barely works, and I'm talking Pentiums - nothing in the last decade. back when I was a teenager, my mom was given around a dozen plus systems for a project she was working on, she tasked me with seeing what worked and what could be done with them. I was able to get around 7 systems fully working, only some had no drives. Between them all, I got into networking (obviously), diskless nodes, DNS, various services, the kernel/modules/configurations, etc.., etc.. Because the amount of resources I had to work with was very limited, I had to really do my homework to get everything going AND usable. A few years later, my first 'good' job I scored because I knew what some strange boot codes from LILO were when simply no one else did, and I could get the critical systems going again (I was contract initially) - I only knew that info from the countless issues I ran into on that old hardware, and getting it all working.

When it comes to your employer verifying that you can walk the walk, and not just talk the talk - it's done one of two ways, and sometimes both - they will either verify from word of mouth (previous employer/references) or during your 30 day/3month 'probation' period.

So, your saying that the jury was right in assuming Samsung stole an idea from Apple - solely based off a 100% broken patent system?

You can't have it both ways, either Apple thought up such an ingenious design (rectangle with rounded corners :-P) that no one else would have been able to do or they were "only" the first to WORD it that way and like wise got the prize of the first patent concerning something so stupid and obvious - and have taken advantage of the said broken patent system...

This kind of leads to something I've been wondering about lately - essentially as to why this 'war' has been going no where. I've been wondering if the content providers are so clueless and seemingly ignoring their "supposed" customers, is because we are NOT their customers by a long shot - DirectTV/ComCast/TimeWarner/etc.. are their customers, we just happen to be their customers customers - ie: we have been bitching/complaining to the wrong players...

I remember a ways back (10yrs?) when Comcast(?) decided that paying extra for Disney was not going to be an option anymore, instead EVERYONE would pay an extra $5/mo and get it for 'free' whether you wanted it or not - there was none of this grandstanding going on. Back then there was no competition (except geographically) for the distribution empire, now there is streaming in the likes of NetFlix and Amazon - so I'm starting to really wonder if the distributors are who is really being caught in the middle of all this, the content providers HAVE been catering to "their" customers the best they can (we just are not them) and 7 yrs (?) later, the content providers are asking for an increase on their product - with how lawsuit happy this great(?) nation has become, I could see that from the legal side alone.

I purchased ROKU a couple of years ago, afterwards with in a few months I was hardly flipping on the cable box (DirecTV - where I did have their high end package) - nothing was ever on, Im not a big sports fan, and everything else was either depressing news, reruns or some reality show. DirecTV continued to give me discounts left and right to stay with them - even at one point getting their services for free for about 6 months, after that and realizing I NEVER use their service anymore I pulled the plug. The customer service rep(s) fought valiantly for me as a customer, all the while claiming they have never heard of NetFlix/ROKU or Amazon streaming, although in the end lost..

This is the 2nd or 3rd time I've heard of these types of fights going on between the distributors and the providers in the last few years - could it be that the providers DO have legit reasons to raise their cost (I mean 7yrs later I would think there is some kind of increase) the distributors are seeing the writing on the wall - and simply getting scared? As someone else has mentioned, NetFlix already has a TON of kids shows on it, and for a mere drop in the bucket compared to cable/satellite - it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the distributors are going to loose customers over this - and probably for good, its just a matter of how many, I mean how many are on the verge and have been thinking about it/testing the waters already?

It will be a cold day in hell when the people of the US realize that those elected to congress actually need to KNOW their shit, rather than just talk it... Meaning that EVERYONE elected needs to prove they know what in the hell they are doing, technical and otherwise, rather just knowing how to talk the talking points...

Thats not the problem, the real problem is....

Thinking of the children only applies when your civilian I guess and not employed by a billion dollar governmental agency apparently...

On a side note...

FTFA....

"The TSA released a statement Tuesday saying it explained to the family why additional security procedures were necessary and that agents didn't suspect or suggest the child was carrying a firearm."

So they did all this, not because the felt there was a potential threat - but because of why? Then you have this story as well where after the family was allowed through, the TSA spent an hour looking for them to force them back for a rescreening. Considering that they apparently dont do very well at actually finding potentially dangerous items (hell even my own Dad found he had a 4" blade on his carry on items he forgot about) the only 'reason' for all this is to keep the general populace in check and forced into submission?

It is accepted, and happening more and more - thats the problem, whether they get b*tch slapped for it will all depend on if they are caught and there is some one to stand up to them (ACLU and the mother of the girl in this case) who can argue better in court than their lawyers.. They absolutely don't think there is anything at all they did in the wrong - they're even surprised :-/

FTFA: School Superintendent Greg Ohl said the district had not yet been served with the lawsuit and he withheld comment until he had more information.

"We're taken aback by it," he said.

Those internal communication mean nothing - and here lies one of the core problems with all this.. The **IAA wants to pass the the buck and have the providers police their users. The only problem with that, is that any sys admin/tech support employee is *not* a lawyer (most likely), and if they want to keep their customer(s) - just because they find an mp3/divx/avi/iso file, they need to make sure that 1) it is copyrighted and 2) MORE importantly, that the customer does *not* have the right to re-distribute the given material and that is impossible to tell unless your an expert in the area. If employee X does not have that information and just because they see an mp3 file with the name Brittany Spears in it they suspend the entire account - they could be loosing a customer very quickly if it was legit and not to mention a potential law suit, as in think "slamming Brittany Spears" or something.

I work for a fairly large web hosting company, and we used to police our selves - if during any routine investigation (as in if someone reported a problem with their account) and we found anything suspicious we would suspend if it was "seemingly" obvious, although two specific incidents changed our policy on that relatively quickly. The first had to do with a Microsoft Development edition of some sort - it turned out the customer was a reseller and had the full right to have that on his site for purchase/download. The second was with a small record label out of the UK, iirc, selling/offering their own goods. Both incidents highlighted the fact that we were not qualified to tell whether something was illegal or not - so we essentially backed completely off, and unless we get a DMCA notice or one sent to the customer - all we do IF we see something very, very suspicious and they are somehow in violation of our RUP/TOS - then we only send them a ticket, if they dont respond with in a given amount of time that is something else entirely.

The point being, is that just because something seems to be illegal - doesn't mean it is, you/we have NO idea if the customer in question has some kind of weird contract with the copyright holder and if they are in violation of it or not - THAT is up to a judge and/or contract attorney to decide, no one else. We see stuff all the time across our large fleet of servers, and the fact that internal communications between employees reflect this is only pointing out something interesting is all. Whether something is actually illegal or not, is a point of contract law - not mere speculation of someone NOT well versed in this.

The flip side of this issue is that the Internet is a VERY large place, and it's simply next to impossible to check every nook and cranny for your various IP'd material - which where logically the rights holders would try and force the providers to police them self, which as noted above is impossible as well.

Conclusion - simply trying to fit a square block (brick and mortar business model) into a round hole (cyber space) just does not fit :-P

I've been thinking about that subject lately, what would be very interesting, telling and very eye opening is for a bill of that nature to even get to congress/senate or even better for the people of the US to have a vote on it (is that even possible anymore?). If the it was out of the congress/senates hands to vote on it - it would only be up to the big media corps, to try and sway you on how letting the big corporations finance the government is best for YOU - no matter how you twist that around, even the biggest idiots/morons would be able to see how corrupt this government has become.

I'm no Apple fan, but their R&D has been increasing year after year - the percentage is dropping because they are making more...

$2,398,000,000 (2.2% of est $109,000,000,000) 2011
$1,760,400,000 (2.7% of $65,200,000,000) 2010
$1,329,900,000 (3.1% of $42,900,000,000) 2009
$1,105,000,000 (3.4% of $32,500,000,000) 2008
$792,000,000 (3.3% of $24,000,000,000) 2007
$714,100,000 (3.7% of $19,300,000,000) 2006
$556,000,000 (4% of $13,900,000,000) 2005
$331,200,000 (4% of $8,280,000,000) 2004
$496,000,000 (8% of $6,200,000,000) 2003
$437,600,000 (8% of $5,470,000,000) 2002
$428,800,000 (8% of $5,360,000,000) 2001
$399,000,000 (5% of $7,980,000,000) 2000

(same link)