Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disney Copyright, Alaa Freed, Kelo Repealed
Egyptian blogger Alaa freed from jail. FleaPlus writes "Egyptian blogger, open source advocate, and Slashdot interviewee Alaa Abd El-Fatah has been released from jail. He had been imprisoned for 45 days after being arrested (along with several others) for taking part in a pro-democracy election reform rally, on charges which included "insulting the Egyptian president." In a blog post Alaa describes the conditions he was subjected to in the jail, as well as his worry about the hundreds of other activists who are still in prison."
Executive order defuses Kelo decision. physicsphairy writes "President Bush has issued an executive order whose effect is to undo the previous Kelo decision of the Supreme Court. From the article: 'It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.' The downside is that what was once affirmed consitutionally is now affirmed only in federal law."
Disney's trouble with Pooh bear. bbernard writes "It seems that the same laws that allow the Mouse to continue generating money for Disney have prevented Disney from taking control of Winny the Pooh. The Supreme Court has denied Clare Milne's bid to get the rights back for Pooh and his buddies. Clare is A.A. Milne's granddaughter, and her court battle was funded by Disney, as she was going to reassign the rights to them. Interesting to see a company foiled by the laws they insisted on in the first place, isn't it?"
NASA engineer fired for opposing shuttle launch. quad4b writes to tell us The New York Daily News reports that Charlie Camarda was has been removed from his post at NASA for questioning the safety of this Saturday's launch. From the article: "Camarda's removal heightened the turmoil over NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's decision to take the 'acceptable risk' of launching the Discovery orbiter despite warnings of potentially fatal blastoff debris. Camarda, who flew aboard the troubled flight of Discovery last July, told colleagues in an e-mail that he was fired from his post as chief engineer at Houston's Johnson Space Center and given another NASA engineering job."
Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance. An anonymous reader writes "A new insurance company in Sweden is offering a new policy to protect you from the RIAA [Swedish]. For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing. Interesting development in Sweden indeed."
Open source Java months away? bl8n8r writes "A Sun Microsystems Inc. executive said Tuesday said the company is "months" away from releasing its trademark Java programming language under an open-source license. Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer for Sun, said the company is ruminating over two major issues: how to keep Java compatible and ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's "write once, run anywhere" mantra."
Net neutrality amendment defeated in committee. DeathPooky writes "While not the end of the road for net neutrality, the latest vote isn't a good sign. From the article: 'The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday rejected a network neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users. The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.' All 10 Democrats on the committee, as well as Republican co-sponsor Sen. Snowe, voted for the amendment. The other 11 Republicans voted against."
While the executive order makes for nice PR, it has no effect on Kelo or any other action taken by local governments. Bush's order only applies to Federal emiment domain. Furthermore, it's probably really only good as "advice" to the Attorney General. If you want to get a law passed, you actually have to go through Congress, not that the Bush administration cares to bother with respectin separation of powers.
The Washington Times has a slightly better writeup. Not exact but way better than that poor link.
By the way - to the editors.... It's Winnie not Winny.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
Issuing an executive order is not the same as legislating. As the head of the executive branch, the President can authorise or limit the actions of any agency under the executive branch as long as doing so would not contradict any legislation.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
'mrchaotica' already replied to your post saying why it's a stupid idea yet you repeatedly insist on doing something stupid (adding something that's not in the spec and won't compile on anything except your own hacked up version).
And not only that but you won't STFU about it and keep posting the same "I don't care--I'm going to do it and I need to tell Slashdot so they can see how stupid I am" posts.
Basically he said it would be ASAP, but seemed to imply that (lengthy) legal issues were pretty much the cause of delays.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
My submission got rejected, but net neutrality is not the only bad thing on the way via bill S.2686. This is the same bill that grants the FCC the power to require audio and video broadcast flag recognition on every device made or sold. This is one of the last opportunities you have to contact your Senators to let them know you are opposed to this bill before it gets voted through in the middle of the night.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I'm not from New London, but a neighboring town, and I feel obliged to point out that there's a lot of general support around here for what New London has done. It's still controversial, but the general feeling is that it's overall a good thing.
See, the thing is, New London is dirt poor. It's been in decline since it's peak in the 1800s, ever since whaling and fishing stopped being a reasonable basis for a small New England city's economy. For a long time now New London has been the poorest town in the area, with the most densely packed suburban sprawl, and a small downtown area which is mostly boarded up. Over the past twenty or thirty years, New London has been slowly building itself back up. They've cleaned up a lot of the bad crime that was going on, and businesses have been moving back in to areas that had lain dormant. They're developing themselves as a cultural center for the area, and doing a good job of it.
Now, with the whole eminent domain issue, here's the thing: It didn't particularly benefit the company much at all. Pfizer was going to build in the area, at comparable price, regardless, just not in New London. The government of New London saw the opportunity to bring that economic boon into their own town, and jumped on it. Now, there was no readily available area to give to Pfizer. New London is very small, with a high population for it's size. They had to move some people in order to make this go through, or they'd lose the tax base of having that industry to a neighboring, richer town.
The money generated for the town by having Pfizer there is going to allow them to increase the quality of their public services greatly. The school system is going to improve, the police effectiveness is going to improve, the quality of life for the entire town going up as a result of this. It's unfortunate that some people had to be removed for this to happen, and even more unfortunate is the level of malcontent some have felt over this act, but the town and it's inhabitants are going to benefit tangibly. The business received some benefit in order to entice them to the town, but that's a marginal amount. Big Business didn't trump the people here. The town made a heavily debated and difficult decision, and made it for the benefit of it's residents as a group.
Now, as a precedent, Kelo is undeniably dangerous. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that in the particular case of New London, it was the right choice to make.
This was a licensing dispute which hinged on whether or not an agreement could be voided. It had nothing to do with "laws Disney wanted passed". The writeup is inaccurate.
If Sun wants to protect the use of the Java trademark so that others implementing Java runtime systems remain compatible with the standard, there already is a method available. It's called a "certification mark" or "membership mark" class of trademark or servicemark. If you live in the United States, you're almost certainly aware of one very famous certification mark, the "UL" label on electrical appliances. Companies supply samples of their equipment to Underwriters Laboratories, which basically tests the device to destruction, then if the fail point is higher than the minimum standard, UL grants them permission to affix the UL certification mark to their equipment.
A "membership mark" would be used where some organization is allowed to use a mark to show it's a member of a group or has qualified to show the particular mark. I think the "Energy Star" label from the Department of Energy would fit here.
The only requirement to do this is that someone else — that does not distribute the software — has to be the certification authority (you can't be both owner of a certification mark and a user of it, that would be a conflict of interest.) But they'd probably want to do that anyway, the way IBM turned over the Eclipse IDE to a separate foundation after they decided to release it open source.
So, there's already plenty of existing systems available for Sun to use a system to "protect" the Java trademark and the "write once, run anywhere" concept. And a small license fee for those who want to use the mark to cover testing costs for verifying compliance could make the whole thing self-funding.
Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Actually, Bush's executive order says nothing that has any effect. What it "means" is subject to lots of discussion. But of course an executive order cannot contradict an express Supreme Court decision. Even if that decision is unjust, or if the court is loaded with Bush's corporate appointees.
The only way to counter a Supreme Court decision, which interprets actions in the context of American laws, is to make new laws. That power is reserved to the Congress, not the president, as anyone who ever saw Schoolhouse Rock knows.
Despite the neocon "unitary executive" ("king") philosophy, the president is optional (when Congress overrides a presidential veto), but Congress never is, when making laws.
Of course, with Republicans controlling all three branches of our government, it's hard to tell how the powers are separated. Of course, that's why Republicans are doing all these antiamerican actions, while they have the chance.
And when Bush can sign such a BS order, and have naive people post, publish and read on Slashdot that it somehow "repeals" a Court decision (the correct term is "rescind", even when that is actually the effect), we can tell why they do it. Because when people believe it, it has effect. Even when it's the kind of destruction of America that our enemies have always dreamed of.
--
make install -not war
Actually it doesn't mean 'thinkfree.now' you are confusing "tänka fritt" and "tanka fritt", the first one is literally 'think freely' while the second one means 'fill up freely' or considering Swedish slang 'download freely'. Allthough one might make the point that since special characters are not allowed in URLs, at least not widely, there is a nice ambiguity to it.
Best regards,
Mikael
Real programmers never comment their code. If it's hard to write, it should be hard to read!
This way of making an insurance of it is not a new thing here in Sweden. We alreay have http://www.planka.nu/ which will pay your fines if you get caught not paying in the subway.
It's not really an insurance, more of a solidarity fund...
Wow, you really have no understanding of the US Government do you? Most those agencies you named are part of the Executive Branch, not some mystery fourth branch like you say. These are all "policing" agencies, which technically fall under the Executive Branch, if you read the Constitution. Now, I cannot speak for all the groups, but most of them were assigned their powers through...get this...Congress!
The FCC, for example, was created as part of the Federal Communications Act of 1934. Their powers are relegated to them by Congressional Acts, and they have been slapped by SCOTUS before for overstepping the bounds laid before them in the law and for acting without Congressional approval. The USPTO, as another example, is given some support by the original Constitution, but all the laws for it were written through acts of Congress. The laws were merely "clarified" in some instances by the CAFC and SCOTUS. They also have a set of regulations, but in their case, the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) which are applied to patents do not hold the weight of law.
While the EPA was created by a President, Nixon to be exact, many of its "regulations" actually come from Acts of Congress. OSHA was also created by an act of Congress, conveniently having the same acronym.
Really, please read up a little bit before accusing these groups of blatantly creating and enforcing laws. These groups did not just magically appear and are hardly some sort of rogue 4th branch of US Government.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."