Slashback: Civilians, Rubyx, Restrictions

Slashback this evening brings you a dose of updates and clarifications to previous stories about Yahoo!'s block on third-party messaging products, the Ruby-based Linux distro called Rubyx, and a few notes of caution on "unlimited" wireless internet service.

Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"

(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)

That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."

Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."

Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"

Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.

Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."

I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"

Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."

(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)

His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:

' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.

For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.

The future is free.'"

By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.

Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."

However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."

Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."

Comments

Re:I never understand licenses

[B.D.Mills]

Discalimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice then hire a lawyer, blah blah blah.

We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense. I'm waiting for the day when someone wins in court by claiming to agree to only that part of the agreement that can be seen on screen when an "I Agree" button is clicked.

Let me give you a common example. Agreements are often presented in text boxes in web browsers that are only 10 to 20 lines high, but the actual agreement is hundreds of lines long. To read the agreement, you have to use the scrollbar in the text box to scroll though the agreement. It's only a matter of time when someone sues because they didn't know how to work the scrollbar. Far-fetched? Just ask McDonald's about the hot coffee lawsuit.

To maximise your chances of winning such a hidden-terms lawsuit, print out two or three copies of the agreement as rendered by the web browser before pressing "I Agree". Make sure these copies are as accurate a rendering of the text on screen as possible. Keep these copies safe. If you are the lucky person that chooses to sue, tender these copies in court as the agreement. If they point out in court that you have to use the scrollbar to read the full text of the agreement, ask "What's a scrollbar?" The "What's a scrollbar" question should have the same effect to your case as "I didn't know that coffee was hot" did against McDonald's: a fatal hit below the waterline.

If that lawsuit wins, then it will set a precedent where all text of online agreements must be clearly visible on screen. That will put a stop to the "hide big agreement in small text box" crowd, but also put a stop to the "hidden terms" clowns like Nextel.

If any terms of a contract are not clearly presented to a customer before the company takes the customer's money, are those terms legally binding?

Re:I never understand licenses

[Aneurysm9]

I was just going to mod you down, but I think it's important to, once again, clarify the misconception you (any many others) seem to have regarding the "McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit." The large punitive damages award in that lawsuit had nothing to do with whether a warning was provided that the coffee was hot or whether the woman knew that the coffee was hot. It had everything to do with the fact that McDonald's maintained their coffee at an unsafe temperature, knew the temperature to be unsafe, and failed to remedy that problem. That is often called wanton disregard for the consequences of your actions or gross neglegence. Further, the excessive punitive damages award was significantly reduced on appeal.

As for your "what's a scrollbar" argument, I doubt it would fly very far as it's likely that the user would have to operate a scrollbar to obtain the software they're installing if the software was obtained from a website. It's an interesting argument, but it assumes that the opposing party is just going to roll over and say, "gee, you don't know what a scrollbar is. Ok, we're not going to challenge that. You win." Not likely.

Re:I never understand licenses

[aardvarkjoe]

We don't have misconceptions about the coffee lawsuit. It's just that most of us believe that it's common sense not to dump boiling liquids on yourself, and if you do it, it's your own damn fault. And the fact that the damages were only reduced, rather than overturned completely, helps demonstrate how out of control our legal system is.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Mycroft_VIII]

Try looking into the case. I thought, from experience in resturaunt management, that customer stupidy followed by a sympathetic jury, was what happened myself till I found out the fact.
Then, again from resturaunt experienced, decided McDonalds had screwed up royally. Trust it's not just "little old lady pours cofee on crotch, gets millions". It's company repeatedly takes actions it KNOWS leads to 2nd degree burns of customers and takes no actions remedie the problem or to even warn customers.

Mycroft