kastababy - Slashdot User

Submission + - U. Maine legal clinic fights RIAA; 1st in country (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Saturday December 22, 2007 @02:32PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: ""A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution" says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's college students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of 2 University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (pdf) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's "making available" complaint as mere "conclusory", "boilerplate" "speculation". The 2 students represented by Cumberland join the 8 students represented by a prominent Portland law firm, bringing to 10 the number of University of Maine students fighting back in this case."

Comment Re:Explanation, please? (Score 1) 155

by kastababy on Monday December 17, 2007 @01:11PM (#21726586) Attached to: Time Warner Wins Ohio-Wide Cable Franchise

Think how many fewer calls we'd have if instructions on properly powercycling a modem/router/PC setup were given instead of muzak. I worked for one company that let customers send basic refresh hits to their boxes through the IVR instead of having to talk to someone.

Because I've never worked for Time Warner, yet I work in a market now that has recently been acquired from Time Warner by Comcast, I can say that there are a lot of things that are offered, such as hits to boxes and powercycling instructions for modems and MTAs via the IVR. These are things that Comcast has always offered. Some people do in fact use this information and that reduces call volume. However, most twits that end up on the phones are women that can't unplug an iron without having a man there to do it for them and then giggle and laugh on the phone "hee hee, I'm so stupid, let me get a man to unplug the power cord." I'm a woman and it infuriates me every single time. The other type we get is some lazy bum that is sitting there looking dead at the problem and will call a child or someone else into the room to do it for them instead of getting up off their asses and doing it themselves. Those are the ones who suck up valuable call handling time and take away from the people who genuinely need assistance with real issues. One other thing to note: I don't know about Time Warner, but I do know that Comcast doesn't provide any troubleshooting support whatsoever to customer-owned routers. Their phone techs are instructed to troubleshoot the connectivity to the modem/MTA only and stop. Any router support has to go to the router manufacturer. The only exception to this is the gateways used for their home networking service, which has its own support team.

Everything is not going to be perfect at every cable company. Do I wish we supported routers? Certainly -- it would save me a lot of headache on one hand, yet create another set of headaches because nerds always think they know more than the tech on the phone. Do I wish I could educate every customer that calls in like I have spent the last 18 hours educating everyone that is reading this thread? Hell yeah -- it's a great way to vent, and I'll go to work today feeling a whole lot better about my job because I reached SOMEONE. But hey, everyone's not perfect -- not me, you, or any cable company.

It's just wishful thinking all around, I guess.

Saturn's Rings Are Ancient 61

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 15, 2007 @01:41AM from the steady-relationship dept.

gardenermike writes "Analysis of data from the Cassini probe suggests that Saturn's rings may be billions of years old, rather than the previously surmised millions. Previous research suggested that the rings were young, because of the lack of dark dust accumulation on their surfaces. However, the latest data suggests that the ring surfaces are even younger than previously thought, meaning, ironically, that the rings themselves are much older: they are not static enough to collect dust, but rather are continuously recycling material, with clumps continuously forming and disintegrating."

RIAA Protests Oregon AG Discovery Request 172

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 14, 2007 @11:36PM from the tough-pill-to-swallow dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics. The request came in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)"

NYSE Moves to Linux 351

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 14, 2007 @09:29PM from the penguins-with-dollars-in-their-bills dept.

blitzkrieg3 writes "The New York Times is reporting on how the NYSE group now feels that Linux is 'mature enough' for the New York Stock Exchange. They are using commodity x86 based Hewlett-Packard hardware and Linux in place of their traditional UNIX machines. From NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow: 'We don't want to be closely aligned with proprietary Unix. No offense to HP-UX, but we feel the same way about [IBM's] AIX, and we feel the same way to some extent about Solaris. Other reasons cited for the switch were increased flexibility and lower cost.'"

Riding the Failure Cascade 195

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 14, 2007 @07:43PM from the wreck-you-with-maths dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Escapist has up an article looking at a curve that represents the dissolution of large social groups, like online guilds. Called the Failure Cascade, it's essentially a way of examining the dissociation of members of an organization predicated on a culture of success. They primarily explore this phenomenon using descriptions of EVE corporate alliances. 'These are the two forces at work in [an] alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild ... This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.'"

Submission + - Opera Tells EU That Microsoft's IE Hurts the Web (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

kastababy

on Friday December 14, 2007 @12:08PM

kastababy writes: "In yet another instance of up-and-coming browser developers fighting back against the Microsoft behemoth, the makers of Opera have filed a complaint with the European Union against Microsoft. In their complaint, they allege that IE's 77% market share abuses its dominant position by tying IE to Windows and its refusal to accept Web standards, causing significant interoperability issues. The complaint also requests that the EU's Antitrust Division force Microsoft to separate IE from Windows and accept several different standards, thereby resolving major interoperability issues and providing consumers more choice in the browser market."

Slashdot Top Deals