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Microsoft

Submission + - Using copyright enforcement to suppress dissent. (nytimes.com)

A Commentor writes: Russian authorities, with the help of Microsoft, is confiscating computers, outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers, under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software. Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government.
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Girl Quits On Dry Erase Board a Hoax 147

suraj.sun writes "It's the same old story: young woman quits, uses dry erase board and series of pictures to let entire office know the boss is a sexist pig, exposes his love of playing FarmVille during work hours." Story seem too good to be true? It probably is, at least according to writer Peter Kafka. Even so, Jay Leno and Good Morning America have already reached out to "Jenny."

Comment Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score 1) 258

In the U.S., having this exception doesn't really help. In the U.S. nothing new will EVER fall into the public domain. Every time anything comes close, the government passes another 20 year retro-active extension so Disney can keep making money, and making sure NOTHING NEW WILL EVER FALL INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Until something is done about retroactive laws, and the payoff of politicians by big corporations, things will not change.

Comment Re:Poor Planning (Score 2, Insightful) 476

The labor being cheap mostly because the Chinese government doesn't enforce labor laws and doesn't give the people their fair share of the profits.

First part about the labor laws, seems like a valid complaint. But the second part, about 'fair share of the profits'. Where does that come from? As an employee, you are getting paid for the work you are doing not any profit that is made. If you want to get a share of the profits, you need to be a share holder. Some companies do offer 'profit-sharing', but that definitely not the norm.

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 2, Insightful) 446

Alcoa Inc. in May 2008 at 36$, which seems to have dropped down permanently to around 12$. Do you really think that yearly dividends of some say 5%/year would make up for the risk you take that your equity drops 300% overnight and stays there? You'd have to wait a lot of years until you'd have recouped that loss.

300%!!!... nope.. $36 down to $12 is a 66% drop. a 300% drop would imply that you would OWE $72 for each share....

Comment Re:It would be nice to name names (Score 4, Interesting) 374

Netgear had the same problem. It was probably about 4-5 years ago, they had a nice router that ran Linux and had a USB port for supporting a harddrive. I saw that Netgear provide the source, I emailed their open source person, and he was providing the things I ask for. I ended up picking up the router during one of Fry's sales and thought I was all set to build my own firmware. I attempted to build the new firmware, everything completed successfully, but I couldn't find the firmware to install. I emailed netgear again, the response was along the lines of: "Oh no, you can't build the firmware image, we don't give out that tool, and also our html pages are copyrighted, so you couldn't put that in the firmware anyway." As others have stated, this is what TIVO did and why GPL v3 was created. With GPL v2, it would be a much harder fight to win, and again it would need to be the copyright holders of the software, who need to file suit, not the customer.

Comment Re:Well, there is a problem here (Score 2, Informative) 320

Where did you find that quote, it definitely wasn't in the article linked to the story. Maybe you should take the time to read the story instead of basing it on the tainted summary. Right from the linked news article summary: "People who misrepresent themselves as officials in online comments could face civil, criminal penalties, Acevedo says." The problem is not the anonymous comments, but people posing as actual officers and stealing officer's identity. Here, from the first paragraph: "Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo says he and some of his officers have been harassed, lied about and had their identities falsely used in online blogs and in reader comment sections on local media Internet sites." Stealing someone's entity is definitely not on the same as posting anonymous comments. It falls under this new law: "State lawmakers this year passed a law that took effect Sept. 1 making it a third-degree felony to use another person's name to post messages on a social networking site without their permission and with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten."

Comment Re:Enough Already! (Score 1) 246

/. should at least intermix real stories and fake stories... so that there is some question on what is real/fake. 100% fake news is stupid and boring... Ideally the real stories should be something that at first glance some would consider fake - Like the person arrested for drunk driving on a bar stool.

Mix it up, make it interesting...

If you want 100% fake news... there is a website for that called the Onion...

Comment Re:Yeah, but how do you decide which one? (Score 1) 664

Pick one randomly... it doesn't matter... If someone doesn't see a signal on the channel they have, they will most likely try the other local channels. When they get to the channel that is still broadcasting, hopefully they will understand it and be able to fix the issue.

This just allows the information to get these people over the existing communication medium.

Comment Just keep one channel broadcasting for awhile. (Score 4, Insightful) 664

Why not just keep one of the channels in all the major markets broadcasting a continually loop telling people what they need to do if they want to watch TV... after a few months turn that off too.

This transition has been communicated to everyone for a long time. Delaying it will just add to the confusion.

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