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UCITA Stalled At State Level
OscarGunther writes "Four states have passed anti-UCITA laws and Massachusetts may soon become the fifth. Meanwhile, only two states have adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which gives software vendors all the benefits and none of the burdens of the consequences of publishing their software. The details can be found at ComputerWorld and an opinion piece by Frank Hayes can be found here."
Remember Utica!
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
TRASH
Sixty years ago, I worked in what was once my Grandfather's Greenhouses. Gramps had died a year earlier and Grandma, now in her seventies had been forced to sell to the competition. I got a job with the new owners and mostly worked the range by myself. That summer, they hired a man to help me get the benches ready for the fall planting.
Ike always looked like he was three days from a shave and his whiskers were dirty white, shaded by the brim of his battered felt fedora.
He did not chew tobacco but the corners of his mouth turned down in a way that, at any moment, I expected a trickle of thin, brown juice to creep down his chin. His bushy, brown eyebrows shaded pale, gray eyes.
The old-timer extended his hand, lifted his leg like a dog about to mark a bush and let go the loudest fart I ever heard. The old fellow then winked at me, "Ike Thomas is the name and playing pecker's my game."
I thought he said, "Checkers." I was nineteen, green as grass. I said, "I was never much good at that game."
"Now me," said Ike, "I just love jumping men . . ."
"I'll bet you do."
". . . and grabbing on to their peckers," said Ike.
"I though we were talking about . . ."
"You like jumping old men's peckers?"
I shook my head.
"I reckon we'll have to remedy that." Ike lifted his right leg and let go another tremendous fart. "He said, "We best be getting to work."
That summer of 1941 was a more innocent time. I learned most of the sex I knew from those little eight pager cartoon booklets of comic-page characters going at it. Young men read them in the privacy of an outside john, played with themselves, by themselves and didn't brag about it. Sometimes, we got off with a trusted friend and helped each other out.
Under the greenhouse glass, the temperature some times climbed over the hundred degree mark. I had worked stripped to the waist since April and was as brown as a berry. On only his second day on the job and in the middle of August, Ike wore old fashioned overalls. Those and socks in his high-top work shoes was every stitch he wore. When he bent forward, the bib front billowed out and I could see the white curly hairs on his chest and belly.
"Me? I just love to eat pussy!" Ike licked his lips from corner to corner then sticking his tongue out far enough that the tip could touch the end of his nose. He said, A man's not a man till he knows first hand, the flavor of a lady's pussy."
"People do that?"
He winked. "Of course the taste of a hard cock ain't to be sneezed at neither. Now you answer me, yes or no. Does a man's cock taste salty or not?"
"I never . . ."
"Well, old Ike's willing to let you find out."
"No way."
"Just teasing," said Ike. "But don't give me no sass or I'll show you my ass." He winked. "Might show it to you anyway, if you was to ask."
"Why would I do that?"
"Curiosity, maybe. I'm guessing you never had a good piece of man ass."
"I'm no queer."
"Now don't be getting judgmental. Enjoying what's at hand ain't being queer. It's taking pleasure where you find it with anybody willing." Ike slipped a hand into the side slit of his overalls and I could tell he was fondling and straightening out his cock. "Now I admit I got me a hole that satisfied a few guys."
I swallowed, hard.
Ike winked. "Care to be asshole buddies?"
***
We worked steadily until noon. Ike drew a worn pocket watch from the bib pocket of his loose overalls and croaked, "Bean time. But first its time to reel out our limber hoses and make with the golden arches before lunch."
I followed Ike to the end of the greenhouse where he stopped at the outside wall of the potting shed. He opened his fly, fished inside, and finger-hooked a soft white penis with a pouting foreskin puckered half an inch past the hidden head.
I hope a lot more pass those kind of laws...I mean if more than 2/3 of the states pass such laws there will be a bassis to build a constitutional amendment movement :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
UCTIA gives YOU rights.
Besides which, we should all rise up and fight the tyrany - I mean do you want to be IN the matrix?
It would be like having an IT student tell you how to get out of a paper bag - JUST WRONG!
PROPS TO MAUS AND GABE.
Alan Eldridge 1961 - 2003
....
Alan Eldridge (AlanE) passed away on 6 June 2003 in Denver, Colorado, USA, apparently the result of a self-induced overdose.
Born on 15 December 1961, Alan moved from Iowa to New York City some 15 years ago to make a life for himself as a first rate Unix programmer. Recently, however, his professional and personal life was severely disrupted, and as a result, Alan moved to Denver to start anew.
A member of the KDE on FreeBSD Core Team, both a FreeBSD and KDE committer and maintainer of numerous FreeBSD ports, Alan will be sorely missed by all those of us who knew him personally, by those who knew him only through his work and, indeed, by the entire FreeBSD and KDE communities at large.
Among Alan's many Open Source accomplishments were:
* KDE on FreeBSD Core Team member
* Member of the team creating ports and binary packages for KDE on FreeBSD
* Maintainer of KDE's kdesu module
* Maintainer of 47 FreeBSD ports, in particular: python, CUPS, fam, grip, autoconf, and automake; and former maintainer of phoenix and zope
* Three major independent projects: newfile, ruby-cdialog, and xmlrpc-jukebox
* A member of the SourceForge team maintaining BSD FAM
Reflections and Rememberences of Alan
To have your thoughts included here, contact drc
Alan's contributions to our team should not be underestimated or forgotten. When he was on his game, I know few people as productive, and he pushed us all to do better, be cleverer, work harder.
I refuse to whitewash the man. Alan was quick to point out when he thought you were trying to sugar coat something. Alan was the archetypical geek at times, difficult to work with in a team, sometimes hard to get along with. He was sometimes bristling and difficult, sometimes naive about how his abrasiveness appeared to others, and yet could be totally artless and charming, should it be pointed out to him.
Alan was smart and funny. He had a quick and often very sharp wit, and wasn't afraid to use it. An eclectic at heart, he turned me onto music I'd have otherwise never listened to, and books I'd otherwise never have read, films I wouldn't have watched, and you could have an intelligent disagreement with him on the wildest topics, so long as they weren't personal.
Watching someone selfdestruct and not being able to help them is a painful thing to go through, whether it's from up close or from afar. The last few months, when things started to not go so well, he became a lot harder to deal with, incommunicative, withdrawing from his previous sociable self, no longer happy to idle on IRC or chatter in email.
Alan had a lot to contribute, and people who really did care what happened to him. It was easy to be angry at him, but the reason he managed to inspire such anger is that I always knew that he was capable of so much more and better. I don't know if he understood that, or that if I didn't like him so much, I wouldn't have tried so hard.
It's stating the obvious to say that Alan's life was in chaos, and he was in a lot of pain. Choosing to take the way out of this pain that he did, it is very easy to feel bitter, and guilty, and even to feel guilty for not feeling guilty, and I think it's important that we acknowledge this, and allow ourselves to feel it.
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
TRASH
don't believe in UCITA, whatever that is.
BOOBIES R TASTY
From the link...
.... if I used windows....
Under UCITA, software vendors could booby-trap software so they could remotely disable it if a customer was suspected of violating the software license.
Hmm.. I might be worried about this
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
From the site:
looks like this was drafted by Microshaft, BSA, **AA's and our beloved government... oh wait.
You can also read from the following site:
EFF PAPER
Solution, lets remove shrink wrapped licencing period. That's like buying a car- THEN signing th e contract.
HEre's another one:
This is familliar. Doesn't it sound like an extention to the DMCA? Hmmm...
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
Sweeeeeeeeeet!
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
TRASH
We need lemon laws for software not limes for consumers!
Free the Code not the IP.
Feed the developer not the CEO.
Empower the consumers!
FreedomWare!
(sorry, getting carried away...)
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Dear rotten.com, I am unsure if you are aware of the problems that your "Incident with the bird" picture has caused on the popular technology website slashdot (http://slashdot.org).
Many users of this site's messageboards are posting links to http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/ and making text based representations of a bird on a man's penis. Frankly, while I am pro-freedom, this type of photo sickens me. Could you please move the location of the bird page on your site to keep slashdot readers from seeing things that are completeley unrelated to computers and technology? I'm not asking you to remove the content, just to relocate it.
FYI the text representation of the bird is:
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
p______...___________________________p
e____(_..__`'-.,--,__________________e
n_____'-._'-.__`\a\\_________________n
i_________'.___.'_(|_________________i
s____________7____||_________________s
b___________/___.'_|_________________b
i__________/_.-'__,J_________________i
r_________/_________\________________r
d________||___/______;_______________d
*________||__|_______|_______________*
p________`\__\_______|__/__''\_______p
e__________'._\______/.-`____{}|_____e
n___________/\_`;_.-'_________/______n
i___________\_;(((____.--'\_/________i
s_________.(((_____.-;\______________s
b____.--'`_____,;`'.'-;\_____________b
i_taco's____.'____'._.'\\____________i
r_dick_--'_________|__\_|____________r
d__________________\_\,_/____________d
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
with a link to the offensive site (http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/) underneath, these "Penis Birds" are posted by Penis Bird Guy, Penis Bird MAN and several other users.
Regards, Andrew J. Tosh
Love it, love it, love it!
UCITA laws sound very bad for the users and great for the software companies. I agree Frank Hayes.
only two states have adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which gives software vendors all the benefits and none of the burdens of the consequences of publishing their software.
I've not followed this issue so I don't know which two states have adopted this, but I can guess one of them might be Washington state.
At any rate, one should hope that when one produces a product, they should have a sense of craftsmanship and ownership of that product and stand behind it. Now, I am not one who supports the litigiousness of our country right now, but if a software company writing software that controls the infusion rate of an insulin pump screws up and kills people, they should be held responsible. That is one of the checks against creating crappy or dangerous products. For instance, all of the recalls I had to endure for my Dodge pickup (ultimately the reason I bought a Toyota), were designed to protect the consumer against a faulty product. With all of the concepts of pervasive computing controlling aspects of our lives, we are going to have to hold software companies responsible for products they create that are going to be used in sensitive or critical applications.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
what happened to adequacy.org? They used to be a good source for news.
UCITA has become law
"Bomb-shelter" has become law
What is UCITA "bomb-shelter" legislation? UCITA "bomb-shelter" legislation is defensive legislation needed to protect a state's residents from being subject to unfair and overreaching provisions in UCITA even if the act has never passed in their state. As of 2002, West Virginia, Iowa and North Carolina have passed this kind of legislation. "Bomb-shelter" legislation narrowly protect software licensees from choice of law provisions that make UCITA the governing law of the contract or from choice of forum provisions that might select another state unrelated to either the vendor or the licensee as the forum for settling a legal dispute over the contract. One proposed version (New York) stipulates that only the laws of the licensee's state (i.e. the state with the "bomb-shelter" law) will apply in determining whether the license's terms are enforceable.
See AFFECT's "bomb-shelter" section:
States to WATCH
This state is one to watch closely because some UCITA activity has been reported. This could mean that important pre-legislative activity has begun.
Things you can do:
Contact your state library association to find out how you can help them. Educate yourself about UCITA's effect on libraries by visiting the Impact section.
No legislative activity reported
Things you can do:
Contact your state library association to find out how you can help.
Educate yourself about UCITA's effect on libraries.
Review the ALA Washington Office Online UCITA Tutorial.
Keep your eyes open for workshops in your area at ALA mid-winter and annual conferences.
Request a workshop if you don't see one listed in upcoming conferences.
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
Once software/data/network insurance comes out, the insurance companies will jack rates on insecure software, bad admins, and unsecured data.
Industry will regulate itself (unless monolopies are made....).
you know, sometimes, these stories just suck so much, they're only worth reading to see how much crapflooding the trolls can do.
I was thinking about this earlier this evening....just exactly WHY is MS pushing DRM so heavily, particularly when it isn't really user friendly at all. And then I read the article about the RIAA suing that student, and now this about UCITA (which was passed in Virginia, even though I wrote the governor telling him he was doing a bad, bad thing)....and then it hit me. The blinding blue streak of enlightenment.....MS et al are going the DRM route, as part of a deal with the RIAA et al to shield themselves from massive lawsuits for providing 'enabling technology'. I mean really, why hasn't the RIAA sued MS et al for making software that enables such piracy...they certainly have deep enough pockets to make up for the 'damage'. Or Dell, Gateway and Apple for providing the hardware.... Or did I take the red pill?
Basically UCITA tries to say that software makers aren't liable for their software. Then it extends to also the platform its running on.
If UCITA passes some things that could be legal:
1.) If the winword box says it has a spell checker in it, but the program doesn't, you still can't return it.
2.) If you car has a computer the manufactor isn't responsible if it malfunctions. In fact some interpretations are that the manufactor isn't responsible for anything because it has a computer in it so they can do safety cts.
Here is some wonderful information about
UCITA
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when...he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
Politicians are such babies these days.
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll..
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot in-between the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
âoeUgh... UGH!â Chris Pirillo moaned as he squatted over the ThumbDrive. He eyes darted back and forth like a stone man and he sighed gay breaths as he attempted to shove the device filled with the entire line of eBooks into his anus. His geek house trembled with fag vibrations comig from his crack but then- his doorbell rang, whistling the tune from âoeMatlockâ throughout his hovel. âoeDamn!â he howled in a gay sepulchur and slipped on a pair of pastel slacks. He trapsed to the threshold of his cold abode and grabbed the greasy doorknob that was shaped like Birdman. With a slavish sigh, he opened the door to see none other than Adam Sessler himself! A gay gasp escaped from Chris's dork lips and Adam began to speak. Quickly, Chris snapped at him. âoeDamnit for the last time you vagabond, you're not supposed to be here!â The revolting nerd slammed the door in Adam's face, but the Game Master quickly shoved his iron boot inbetween the door and the wall, wedging it open. âoeI have come for you,â he spoke in a cold tone; electric arcs coursed between the spikes in his cockneyed bleached hair. He howled as a blast of mystic Boohbahs eminated from his busy shirt and slammed Chris down the hall and into a Microsoft Digital Picture Frame. Chris grunted and swiped nerd dust and sheetrock from his arms. He rose to his feet and watched in horror as Adam brandished a weapon made from 3 Xbox controllers tied at the ends. âoeOh my word! Game periferals!â the dork bellowed; the stench of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper wafted from his geek teeth. Instantly his palms began to sweat at the very sight of them, as if the grease from his McGriddle hadn't slicked them up enough. Chris tried to run, but it was too late. Adam swung the weapon above his head and threw it at the King of Nerds, entangling his legs and forcing him to the floor. Adam pulled a cestus made from PS2 DVDs out of his Spice Girls backpack and rushed Chris. He swiped at his turdly back over and over, causing streams of cold blood to squirt from his flesh. âoeOh god, the horror, the HORROR!â Chris moaned as Adam butchered him relentlessly. A old Brit with one eye and a cockneyed accent burst into the room and started kicking Chris in the side. Chris was just about do die when... he rose from his bed. It was just a dream ! He laughed and took a sip of more Brawls Guarana, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep again. âoeTime to plot...â he grumbled and shoved yet another pin into his Leo Laporte voodoo doll.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Slashdot... (sniff)... you STINK!!
Dear rotten.com, I am unsure if you are aware of the problems that your "Incident with the bird" picture has caused on the popular technology website slashdot (http://slashdot.org).
Many users of this site's messageboards are posting links to http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/ and making text based representations of a bird on a man's penis. Frankly, while I am pro-freedom, this type of photo sickens me. Could you please move the location of the bird page on your site to keep slashdot readers from seeing things that are completeley unrelated to computers and technology? I'm not asking you to remove the content, just to relocate it.
FYI the text representation of the bird is:
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
p______...___________________________p
e____(_..__`'-.,--,__________________e
n_____'-._'-.__`\a\\_________________n
i_________'.___.'_(|_________________i
s____________7____||_________________s
b___________/___.'_|_________________b
i__________/_.-'__,J_________________i
r_________/_________\________________r
d________||___/______;_______________d
*________||__|_______|_______________*
p________`\__\_______|__/__''\_______p
e__________'._\______/.-`____{}|_____e
n___________/\_`;_.-'_________/______n
i___________\_;(((____.--'\_/________i
s_________.(((_____.-;\______________s
b____.--'`_____,;`'.'-;\_____________b
i_taco's____.'____'._.'\\____________i
r_dick_--'_________|__\_|____________r
d__________________\_\,_/____________d
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
with a link to the offensive site (http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/) underneath, these "Penis Birds" are posted by Penis Bird Guy, Penis Bird MAN and several other users.
Regards, Andrew J. Tosh
that's a paddling
His dad is breast feeding him with his C-cup man boobs.
On another note, I've stopped worrying about all the legislative garbage and contract trickery some large companies are spewing out. It does a fantastic job of convincing people that they are not looking to benefit the paying customer. It's going to kill them. Maybe not tomorrow, but if they don't ease up, everyone who doesn't hate them right now will. Just remember, whenever you try to corner the market and drive up prices, people will either use an alternative or stop using your product. Don't worry... they have plenty of rope to hang themselves with. They're just putting the finishing touches on the knot.
IAAL
...and find out, you lazy bastard.
It is official; UN Statistics now confirms: the USA is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered USA when president Bush confirmed that their markets have dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction their value when he began his term. Coming on the heels of a recent UN survey which plainly states that America has lost its way, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. America is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by being the most hated nation in the world.
You don't need to be a foreigner to predict America's future. The hand writing is on the wall: America faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Americans because the USA is dying. Things are looking very bad for America. As many of us are already aware, as the American economy continues to collapse.
Red ink flows like a river of blood. For all practical purposes, all Americans are dead, or at least should be.
Dear rotten.com, I am unsure if you are aware of the problems that your "Incident with the bird" picture has caused on the popular technology website slashdot (http://slashdot.org).
Many users of this site's messageboards are posting links to http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/ and making text based representations of a bird on a man's penis. Frankly, while I am pro-freedom, this type of photo sickens me. Could you please move the location of the bird page on your site to keep slashdot readers from seeing things that are completeley unrelated to computers and technology? I'm not asking you to remove the content, just to relocate it.
FYI the text representation of the bird is:
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
p______...___________________________p
e____(_..__`'-.,--,__________________e
n_____'-._'-.__`\a\\_________________n
i_________'.___.'_(|_________________i
s____________7____||_________________s
b___________/___.'_|_________________b
i__________/_.-'__,J_________________i
r_________/_________\________________r
d________||___/______;_______________d
*________||__|_______|_______________*
p________`\__\_______|__/__''\_______p
e__________'._\______/.-`____{}|_____e
n___________/\_`;_.-'_________/______n
i___________\_;(((____.--'\_/________i
s_________.(((_____.-;\______________s
b____.--'`_____,;`'.'-;\_____________b
i_taco's____.'____'._.'\\____________i
r_dick_--'_________|__\_|____________r
d__________________\_\,_/____________d
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_*
with a link to the offensive site (http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/) underneath, these "Penis Birds" are posted by Penis Bird Guy, Penis Bird MAN and several other users.
Regards, Andrew J. Tosh
Not naming this company is pretty gutless and does a disservice to us all. And it's not only a 127.0.0.1 address (clearly the software's own fault) that might do this to you - if you're a small developer and have a provider that doesn't give you a dedicated IP address, but rather assigns one each time you connect, or even changes it every few months, then you are extremely likely to be caught by this foolishnes
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You've not only not been following it, but you also don't bother to read the article before you post. But why bother, when people will just tell you and others will call you insightful.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
One day, businesses are going to realize that it ain't worth being in business and will just say "fuck it, let the bastards drown".
That's why I don't bother with starting a business, what's the point? I'll just leech like the rest of you fuckers. Suddenly SCO is looking more and more like a genius.
(eventually) gain more customers than a company
that offerss less. Cute. But it can easy
be the opposite. A well know example is Microsoft. I am sure
we can find more.
If something sounds logical, chances are it is
just a sound-byte.
The basic tenet of Objectivism: Might makes right.
If you can still take Rand seiously after the age of 25, then I suggest you move to Somalia, as the ethicaly bankrupt culture of the US will never suit you. You can make snarky jokes about John Galt as you kowtow to the strong and accept your worship from the weak.
..DMCA CSS RIAA CBDTPA EFF UCITA SKYLAROV MPAA..
I'm spinning here... UCITA is something good.. right?
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
As soon as I finish this Twinkie, I think I'll get offended.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
When you buy a car, you buy the whole thing. If something goes wrong with the car, you know who to blame. When you buy defective software, you can't be sure who's fault it is. It could be the vendor. It could be the operating system. It could be the hardware drivers. Worse yet, the OS vendor could sabotage an application just to make the application vendor look bad (in fact, that's exactly what Microsoft did to Quicktime, Netscape, and probably dozens of other applications).
+5, so fucking true. I'm sick of hearing Ayn Rand mumbo jumbo from otherwise intelligent people. Those people make me want to puke. They're worse than communists or religious fundamentalists, and they pretend their zealotry is rationality.
Federal law is superior to state law: ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land..." See U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2.
"[t]his Constitution, and the Laws of the United States
It doesn't matter how many states enact anti-UCITA laws because state laws are just that: state laws, unique to each state, and completely unrelated to each other; and if Congress were to enact a federal UCITA law, all of those state anti-UCITA laws would be invalid.
Also, if Congress were to even partially enact UCITA or even something similar to it, those state laws would be invalid as well. This is what is known as the "Dormant Commerce Clause." The Constitution gives Congress the ability to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States..." See U.S. Const. art. I, Â 8, cl. 3.
The courts have held that since congress is given the sole authority to regulate interstate commerce, any state laws that conflict with federal ones regulating interstate commerce, or even state laws that attempt to regulate in an area of interstate commerce in which congress has expressed its desire to "occupy the field," are invalid.
What you're talking about are not state or federal laws, they're constitutional amendments; things which will change the actual text of the Constitution.
For that to occur, first, the amendment must be proposed. For Congress to do this, the amendment must be introduced in one house, then pass both houses with a two-thirds majority. For the states to propose amendments, two-thrids of the states must call for a constitutional convention. After proposal of an amendment, it must be ratified. See U.S. Const. art. V.
For ratification to occur, three-fourths of the states must ratify it. See id.
Since a supermajority is needed for ratification, it almost never happens, especially for something that the vast majority of people couldn't care less about (like stopping UCITA). The last time an amendment was successfully ratified was in 1992, the 27th amendment; which was proposed by the first Congress in 1789, and took a whopping 200 years to be ratified.
There are two kinds of software users -- corporate and home users (hence the reason you typically see two kinds of software, such as Windows XP Professional vs. Windows XP Home, Red Hat Advanced Server vs. Red Hat Standard, Microsoft Office vs. Microsoft Works, etc.)
Home users don't read the warranty provisions of software products and don't care. Most software, including OSS, right now has an exclusion of warranty right in the click-wrap.
Corporate users, OTOH, tend to negotiate some sort of warranty provisions into their purchase agreements. This bypasses click-wrap and UCITA altogether.
The only people TRULY affected by UCITA are consumers and small businesses (SOHO) with no negotiating power. And all but the most educated consumers don't care. That's why they stick with Windows. How many Windows users have actually *READ* the EULA? I'd wager almost none. If they had and if they had understood it, many of them probably wouldn't have installed Windows or allowed it to be on their computer at all.
Example: My aunt was having a garage sale and was going to sell some of her old software she wasn't using, including Windows 95. I told her, "No, you can't legally sell your copy of Windows 95."
She said, "Sure I can."
I said, "No, you can't. Have you READ the EULA?"
"EULA? What's that?" she inquired.
"The End-User License Agreement. The thing you agreed to when you installed Windows. It says you can't sell or transfer the license to the software," I replied.
"No, it doesn't say that!"
"Yes it *does* say that."
Consumers are very clueless when it comes to what's in the EULA, including exclusion of warranty. They think that they can sue Microsoft is something goes wrong, and with UCITA they won't be able to for sure. But they won't know and won't care because most software consumers have never even heard of UCITA. That's the scary part.
My journal has hot
I made the quote more to the point...
//m
The risk is accepted by the users, and has been for some time.
In the analogy of home fire insurance you missed the fact that homebuilders are not being sued for building flamable houses. Such a house could be built, but is considered too costly and impractical. The builder might be sued for using overly flamable materials, but no one expects a realy nonflamable structure, even if it is built to all local building codes.
Is ther a non-extremist position available? Maybe software producers would be liable for not meeting enacted "building codes" that included things like reasonable, but not necesarily perfect, checks for buffer overflow protection.
An independant lab had to certify that the brand of sheetrock in your house or apartment resisted burnthrough for a certain amount of time to meet code. Lab-tested fire resistance is accepted because fire proof is generaly believed impractical. Software QA code could require independant certification of reasonable security, without the irrational demand for perfect fire-proof-ness.
People in white lab coats are the number one cause of cancer in labratory mice!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
> I don't know which two states have adopted this,
> but I can guess one of them might be Washington state.
Both linked articles clearly and prominently report that the two states are Maryland and Virginia.
Are you a journalist?
Hey, if you live in Mass, write your state representative already! Barely anyone does, so they'll probably even listen to you! I'm going to dump some information I found on the Mass.gov site, and you can use it to find your reps and write them.
First of all, I believe the matter under discussion is House 1622, Petition of Ronald Mariano relative to the interpretation of computer information agreement contracts. Though as you can see from the JCCL homepage, there's lots to choose from and I'm not shocked they didn't act at the hearing on June 2.
If you don't know who to write to, visit the Who are my elected officials? page and type in your addres. And be sure to pick the STATE reps, as they're listed alongside your US reps in a way that's less-than-clear (to me anyway).
I haven't cooked up a boilerplate letter or anything... I figure I'll just synthesize something from this article and the EFF page regarding UCITA. If anyone is more familiar than me with the Mass state legislature, and can let me know if House 1622 is actually what we want, please get in touch.
We all heard about the arguments agaisnt the anti UCITA clause which will give vendors god like powers but lets look at this through another angle.
What about free or OSS software?
Do any of you know how extreme the UCITA is and why the anti measures are being adopted?
Under the UCITA, a developer is liable for their products. If some nut decides to install Linux kernel 2.5x for a mission critical server and it crashes causing thousands of dollars of lost revenue then Linus is held liable!
Or what about some asshole who wants to never work by suing people decides to install your product and then sues you if it doesn't work?
Corporations can afford lawyers. Individuals can not.
I welcome the anti-UCITA as it protects free software, innovation, and software corporations. Remember this was formed from lawyers lobbing the democratic party. They want to sue everyone who makes software so they can fill their pockets.
Yes I believe some of the clauses for this might be extreme but the UCITA is quite extreme in its own right.
We need some moderation in laws but right now its a game of who would you like to fight? Corporations or lawyers? I chose corporations.
If a corporation acts like an asshole then do not use their products and develop a free alternative. However a lawyer can do alot more damage to free software and could kill it. Meanwhile the price of regular commercial software will go through the roof to pay for these redicolous software. An EULA already gives these corporations godlike powers anyway.
http://saveie6.com/
All the postings here have been pro UCITA. The UCITA makes all software makers including free software makers liable!
Yes these anti UCITA measures reak with corporate influence and are quite extreme but the original UCITA is extreme in its own right.
Microsoft could for example install Linux on something critical on purpose and then crash it and sue him for lost damages! The UCITA gives lawyers the power to do this. The anti UCITA measures from states like Massachusuets take power away from lawyers and to corporations.
I will email them and tell them I support the anti UCITA measures but would like some moderation in terms of corporations changing terms of the contract after purchase and some of the extra nasties with it.
Really its the lesser of two evils. If this is reformed then I am all for it.
http://saveie6.com/
Hey, I'm not quite sure what your perspective is, but I think it was pretty clear from the context, especially given that I referenced including material from the EFF, that I'm also against UCITA, and in favor of laws against it. Just for the record.
If I read the article right, it only needs to be passed in its model form in one state (it has passed in two) to be enforceable in all (through the clause that says the vendors choose the state in which they will be sued). They only had to get it passed in one, but we have to pass bomb shelter states in all fifty states to be safe. Am I missing something here? On a side note, it would be interesting to see the reaction of people if every piece of software was required by law to be shipped with a printed version of the eula in a booklet on the back of the package that could be opened and read. Sales would drop dramatically until they stopped putting all the crap in there (or maybe not... I guess there are enough that just wouldn't care.)
It's true that 2/3 of the states can call for a convention for proposing amendments, but adopting similar laws doesn't count as such a call...
And a very good thing, too. Such a convention could propose any amendments that it happened to feel like. I think that they wouldn't become active until approved by 3/4 of the states, but I'm not sure. No such convention has ever happened, so nobody knows either who the representatives at the convention would be, or what the limits on what it could get away with doing would be. (I.e., I think this convention is merely a short circuit around the legislature and the executive branches for the purpose of proposign constitutional ammendments, but I don't really know.)
But I think that it's quite fair to guess that they wouldn't represent *my* interests.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Linux is to an OS what an engine is to a car Actually Linux is to an OS what a Buick is to a car.
Linus should be liable if anything goes wrong with Linux as well. Don't you agree? Or is this another of the famous FOSS double standards?
for the record, my mom works for a large company you would all recognize and has been working hard keeping UCITA from passing at the state level for over two years.
the reason she has organized with other like-minded people & organizations is not out of the goodness of her employer's heart, but because passage of UCITA would cost them MILLIONS of dollars annually
they are especially concerned & incensed at the notion of a software provider being able to install "kill-switches" and essentially control them at their discretion. As you can imagine, large organizations that rely on software for the functioning of their business (that is, just about every company these days) are *extremely* reluctant to put that kind of control in the hands others
especially those found to be predatory monpolists!
check out the AFFECT site: http://www.4cite.org/index.html
DaBuddha
Actually a Linux Distro is to an OS what a Buick is to a car. Linux is to an OS what Hurd is to an OS.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.