Lovely... let's just accept and condone corporations lying to us because it could be to their benefit. This is the attitude that let's them get away with such things as UCITA and the DMCA.
Yes, and then we could get back to good old republican scandals. Spare me the diatribe. An election could go either way, it depends on the candidates and other factors too numerous to mention. I was just using democrats as an example because I've read recently about several elections in which there was a three-way race with the third party being closer to the democrats on the issues.
For those who think that the US elections should change to this method, it doesn't really matter very much because we operate under a two party system for the most part (with some notable exceptions) and different voting methods only take effect with more than two candidates
It would matter quite a bit because people wouldn't fear throwing their vote away on a third party candidate. That would actually give us a shot at electing a non-republicrat for a change rather than voting for a third-party candidate, thus helping to ensure that the candidate that you want the least gets into office. Democrats fear this effect and many third-party supporters vote democrat rather than green or reform or libertarian, etc, just to try to make sure a republican doesn't get in because the democratic votes got siphoned off by the third party.
Why does being a racist bastard mean that your testimony is invalid?
It doesn't necessarily. It can hurt your credibility if you don't have quite a bit of corroborating evidence though. People aren't likely to accept the word of a known racist bastard testifying against a member of a minority race without something substantial to back it up.
Why shouldn't we expect them to admit that? Why should consumers, or in this case, computer sellers, be threatened by Microsoft because Microsoft's marketing (and management) people are deluded?
Note that the signs are usually posted where you can see them when you first come in, so that in walking in there you are entering into something akin to a shrink-wrap EULA (without as much fine print).
Are there any cases that deal with this issue? I'm wondering how binding these signs are and whether their placement is well-regulated or not. What if I go to the store without my contacts in and I don't see the sign? There's probably a hundred reasons I could think of that could prevent me from reading such a sign. I would love to know how these things work. It does sound somewhat similar to a shrink-wrap EULA, but we aren't even sure how legal those are, at least in certain states or districts.
Otherwise, who knows what you're leaving your customers--and yourself--open to?
Is Microsoft really implying here that they could take action against a computer seller just because they sell machines without an operating system preinstalled? That's the way I read it. Sounds completely and utterly ridiculous to me, but then the DMCA sounds completely and utterly ridiculous as well, and it's real enough.
Valid point if you don't understand copyright or the GPL, which many(most) people don't. I'm no GPL scholar either, but from what I do understand, the GPL does not restrict your usual first-sale or fair use rights at all. When you get a piece of GPL'd software, you have a choice. You can either accept the GPL license and have the right to distribute modified versions of the software, provided that you make the modified source code available as well, or you can reject the GPL license and simply use the software within the bounds of normal copyright law. That means you can't distribute copies at all. That's one of the major difference between the GPL and Microsoft's EULA. With the GPL, you can use the software whether you accept the license or not. With the MS EULA, they try to take away every right you have and then pile on every restriction they can think of.
800 numbers are cheap. My mom had one for her business. You basically pay for your customer's long-distance call at a pretty reasonable rate (basically about the same as you would pay for long distance service per minute). This is in no way comparable to what AT&T is planning. What would be more comparable is if the merchants would pay some fraction of your broadband bill when you place an order with them. But that's not what's going on here.
One of the major reasons why I hate the DMCA is because of how it became law: a joint venture between the MPAA, RIAA, and the government.
Not to mention being passed by a voice vote so that we can't even tell who voted for or against it. (Safer to assume that it was unanimous and vote the whole lot of them out.. if only we can convince others of the disgusting nature of this law.)
Do I sound a little like Henry David Thoreau? Good! It's nice to know that I'm the only remaining Transcendentalist in the US.
Let's not get too full of ourselves here.
Anyway, this law was bought and paid for by corporate interests. The average citizen had no input on it, nor did the government care to even attempt to see how people felt about it. They slipped it through as quickly and quietly as a bill this attrocious can possibly be slipped through. By using a voice vote, everyone in favor got to get the bill through while avoiding attaching their names to it. Sneaky as hell. How does a bill this big and important get through on a voice vote? It's called corruption. We need to fight this and we need to make people understand what it means to them. Explain how it will affect them. I'm just not sure how to go about doing that. Most people I know just kinda shake their head and say something to the effect of, "Well, that's the government for ya." I'm beginning to despair of ever finding enough people who give a damn about this to make any sort of difference at all.
No, you moron. Not having credit cards is just one facet of it. Not having anyone willing to extend you any sort of credit whatsoever is a problem in today's world. Have you ever tried buying a house or car with bad credit? Maybe you make enough money that saving up for a big-ticket item isn't a problem, but the vast majority of people don't and have to pay for such things in installments. Not to mention that being denied a credit card does inconvenience people, sometimes considerably. Not having a credit card can be a real problem if an emergency occurs. Quit being such a twit and get off your high horse.
Debtor's prison is not a physical place. It's the inabilty to purchase anything that you cannot pay cash for at that very moment. It's the inability to make purchases over the internet. It's the much increased difficulty in buying big-ticket items due to the fact that you can't pay via cash or check, nor can you finance them.
Thats all he's doing. Asking them to be more responsible.
If that's all he's doing, then I wouldn't have a problem, but there seemed to be an implied threat that if they don't do what he wants, he'll find a way to make them do what he wants through legislation.
I think my example would be a lot more common than yours, but I'll consider yours anyway. If you take recent events as an indicator, there are exceptions made in cases where a drug is needed but the people can't afford to get it. When drug companies were trying to enforce their patents in Africa, many African countries basically told them exactly where they could stick their patents. People were contracting AIDS at an alarming rate over there and they needed the drugs badly. They decided that since the drug companies were asking much more than they could possibly afford, they'd just manufacture the drugs themselves, patents be damned.
Now, this got people's attention and made the drug companies look like a bunch of cold-hearted bastards that put profits before human life. Granted, it wasn't really that black-and-white, but it was close enough and that's how many people saw it. So, the drug companies ended up cutting a deal with the African countries to allow them to obtain the drugs much more cheaply than normal. This way the drug companies get some return, and get to not look like greedy bastards, and the people in Africa get the drugs they need so badly. So while patents may sometimes cause problems, such problems are generally dealt with rather swiftly if they become serious.
While it's obvious that I think patents have their uses, I strongly disagree with the direction the patent office has taken and with the shoddy review process they currently have. I think business model patents should be thrown right out. I think software patents should also be scrapped. I think there should be a MUCH more rigorous review process than we currently have, and I think that patents should be challengeable before they are awarded, and the burden of proof that an invention is unique should fall on the party that is attempting to gain the patent rather than on the party that is offering some form of prior art. I also think that the standard for obviousness should be more strictly enforced. It certainly hasn't been in quite a while.
You do make a good point about 2 people independently inventing the same thing. Right now it's simply settled by who gets to the patent office first. That's not really a fair way to handle it, but life ain't always fair. I can't think of a better way to handle that kind of situation off the top of my head. I still believe patents are, in theory, a good idea. I just think the current implementation is horribly broken.
Face it, some things require massive resources to come up with. Drug companies are the classic example. They spend years on research and development to come up with a new drug. How could they do this without some sort of guarantee that someone won't just start churning out cheap copies of the drug? They couldn't. Nobody would invest in it. Therefore we wouldn't get better drugs or better treatments for various diseases. Nobody would be able to afford the research involved. How would you plan to deal with that?
You are oversimplifying things. If I invest millions of dollars in researching a much better, more efficient way to make widgets, and you then use that knowledge to make widgets to compete against me, then I am put at a severe disadvantage in the market. Patents are a way to ensure that I am allowed to profit from my invention. Patents are good, even though the current patent system is very flawed and is most likely doing a lot more harm than good.
I think that copyright exists for good reason as well, simply because I feel that authors should receive some compensation for their sharing of their creation with the world. Now, the compensation will be decided by the number of people who want to purchase a copy of the work, so in that way it is regulated by the market. I do believe that copyright terms should be much much shorter than they currently are. They should be more like 10-20 years rather than anywhere from 70 to well over 100 that they are now.
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Lovely... let's just accept and condone corporations lying to us because it could be to their benefit. This is the attitude that let's them get away with such things as UCITA and the DMCA.
Yes, and then we could get back to good old republican scandals. Spare me the diatribe. An election could go either way, it depends on the candidates and other factors too numerous to mention. I was just using democrats as an example because I've read recently about several elections in which there was a three-way race with the third party being closer to the democrats on the issues.
For those who think that the US elections should change to this method, it doesn't really matter very much because we operate under a two party system for the most part (with some notable exceptions) and different voting methods only take effect with more than two candidates
It would matter quite a bit because people wouldn't fear throwing their vote away on a third party candidate. That would actually give us a shot at electing a non-republicrat for a change rather than voting for a third-party candidate, thus helping to ensure that the candidate that you want the least gets into office. Democrats fear this effect and many third-party supporters vote democrat rather than green or reform or libertarian, etc, just to try to make sure a republican doesn't get in because the democratic votes got siphoned off by the third party.
Actually Barbara Simons quoted Karl when she was discussing the issue of TLDs and agreed with him. She was my second choice. Lessig was third.
Why does being a racist bastard mean that your testimony is invalid?
It doesn't necessarily. It can hurt your credibility if you don't have quite a bit of corroborating evidence though. People aren't likely to accept the word of a known racist bastard testifying against a member of a minority race without something substantial to back it up.
Why shouldn't we expect them to admit that? Why should consumers, or in this case, computer sellers, be threatened by Microsoft because Microsoft's marketing (and management) people are deluded?
Note that the signs are usually posted where you can see them when you first come in, so that in walking in there you are entering into something akin to a shrink-wrap EULA (without as much fine print).
Are there any cases that deal with this issue? I'm wondering how binding these signs are and whether their placement is well-regulated or not. What if I go to the store without my contacts in and I don't see the sign? There's probably a hundred reasons I could think of that could prevent me from reading such a sign. I would love to know how these things work. It does sound somewhat similar to a shrink-wrap EULA, but we aren't even sure how legal those are, at least in certain states or districts.
Wait til the poor guy sees how much the hard drives will cost him.
Otherwise, who knows what you're leaving your customers--and yourself--open to?
Is Microsoft really implying here that they could take action against a computer seller just because they sell machines without an operating system preinstalled? That's the way I read it. Sounds completely and utterly ridiculous to me, but then the DMCA sounds completely and utterly ridiculous as well, and it's real enough.
You can't COPY it, of course, because of copyright law
Actually, you can copy it. You just can't distribute copies, and you can't have more than one copy installed.
Valid point if you don't understand copyright or the GPL, which many(most) people don't. I'm no GPL scholar either, but from what I do understand, the GPL does not restrict your usual first-sale or fair use rights at all. When you get a piece of GPL'd software, you have a choice. You can either accept the GPL license and have the right to distribute modified versions of the software, provided that you make the modified source code available as well, or you can reject the GPL license and simply use the software within the bounds of normal copyright law. That means you can't distribute copies at all. That's one of the major difference between the GPL and Microsoft's EULA. With the GPL, you can use the software whether you accept the license or not. With the MS EULA, they try to take away every right you have and then pile on every restriction they can think of.
The way I understand it, they pay less because they buy in volume, not because of the license.
800 numbers are cheap. My mom had one for her business. You basically pay for your customer's long-distance call at a pretty reasonable rate (basically about the same as you would pay for long distance service per minute). This is in no way comparable to what AT&T is planning. What would be more comparable is if the merchants would pay some fraction of your broadband bill when you place an order with them. But that's not what's going on here.
One of the major reasons why I hate the DMCA is because of how it became law: a joint venture between the MPAA, RIAA, and the government.
Not to mention being passed by a voice vote so that we can't even tell who voted for or against it. (Safer to assume that it was unanimous and vote the whole lot of them out.. if only we can convince others of the disgusting nature of this law.)
Do I sound a little like Henry David Thoreau? Good! It's nice to know that I'm the only remaining Transcendentalist in the US.
Let's not get too full of ourselves here.
Anyway, this law was bought and paid for by corporate interests. The average citizen had no input on it, nor did the government care to even attempt to see how people felt about it. They slipped it through as quickly and quietly as a bill this attrocious can possibly be slipped through. By using a voice vote, everyone in favor got to get the bill through while avoiding attaching their names to it. Sneaky as hell. How does a bill this big and important get through on a voice vote? It's called corruption. We need to fight this and we need to make people understand what it means to them. Explain how it will affect them. I'm just not sure how to go about doing that. Most people I know just kinda shake their head and say something to the effect of, "Well, that's the government for ya." I'm beginning to despair of ever finding enough people who give a damn about this to make any sort of difference at all.
And DeCSS is illegal because.........
Because the defendants were accused of "trafficking," not "circumventing," which is the portion that hasn't gone into effect yet.
Dude, it was a joke. Calm down.
No, you moron. Not having credit cards is just one facet of it. Not having anyone willing to extend you any sort of credit whatsoever is a problem in today's world. Have you ever tried buying a house or car with bad credit? Maybe you make enough money that saving up for a big-ticket item isn't a problem, but the vast majority of people don't and have to pay for such things in installments. Not to mention that being denied a credit card does inconvenience people, sometimes considerably. Not having a credit card can be a real problem if an emergency occurs. Quit being such a twit and get off your high horse.
Debtor's prison is not a physical place. It's the inabilty to purchase anything that you cannot pay cash for at that very moment. It's the inability to make purchases over the internet. It's the much increased difficulty in buying big-ticket items due to the fact that you can't pay via cash or check, nor can you finance them.
Thats all he's doing. Asking them to be more responsible.
If that's all he's doing, then I wouldn't have a problem, but there seemed to be an implied threat that if they don't do what he wants, he'll find a way to make them do what he wants through legislation.
I had thought that debt could not be transferred to someone else.
Oh yes, it most certainly can be transferred. It sucks, but that's the way the law works.
Would that be a standard or metric shitload?
AMD has been doing a lot better than Intel lately in the distribution area. Or were you just trolling?
I think my example would be a lot more common than yours, but I'll consider yours anyway. If you take recent events as an indicator, there are exceptions made in cases where a drug is needed but the people can't afford to get it. When drug companies were trying to enforce their patents in Africa, many African countries basically told them exactly where they could stick their patents. People were contracting AIDS at an alarming rate over there and they needed the drugs badly. They decided that since the drug companies were asking much more than they could possibly afford, they'd just manufacture the drugs themselves, patents be damned.
Now, this got people's attention and made the drug companies look like a bunch of cold-hearted bastards that put profits before human life. Granted, it wasn't really that black-and-white, but it was close enough and that's how many people saw it. So, the drug companies ended up cutting a deal with the African countries to allow them to obtain the drugs much more cheaply than normal. This way the drug companies get some return, and get to not look like greedy bastards, and the people in Africa get the drugs they need so badly. So while patents may sometimes cause problems, such problems are generally dealt with rather swiftly if they become serious.
While it's obvious that I think patents have their uses, I strongly disagree with the direction the patent office has taken and with the shoddy review process they currently have. I think business model patents should be thrown right out. I think software patents should also be scrapped. I think there should be a MUCH more rigorous review process than we currently have, and I think that patents should be challengeable before they are awarded, and the burden of proof that an invention is unique should fall on the party that is attempting to gain the patent rather than on the party that is offering some form of prior art. I also think that the standard for obviousness should be more strictly enforced. It certainly hasn't been in quite a while.
You do make a good point about 2 people independently inventing the same thing. Right now it's simply settled by who gets to the patent office first. That's not really a fair way to handle it, but life ain't always fair. I can't think of a better way to handle that kind of situation off the top of my head. I still believe patents are, in theory, a good idea. I just think the current implementation is horribly broken.
Face it, some things require massive resources to come up with. Drug companies are the classic example. They spend years on research and development to come up with a new drug. How could they do this without some sort of guarantee that someone won't just start churning out cheap copies of the drug? They couldn't. Nobody would invest in it. Therefore we wouldn't get better drugs or better treatments for various diseases. Nobody would be able to afford the research involved. How would you plan to deal with that?
You are oversimplifying things. If I invest millions of dollars in researching a much better, more efficient way to make widgets, and you then use that knowledge to make widgets to compete against me, then I am put at a severe disadvantage in the market. Patents are a way to ensure that I am allowed to profit from my invention. Patents are good, even though the current patent system is very flawed and is most likely doing a lot more harm than good.
I think that copyright exists for good reason as well, simply because I feel that authors should receive some compensation for their sharing of their creation with the world. Now, the compensation will be decided by the number of people who want to purchase a copy of the work, so in that way it is regulated by the market. I do believe that copyright terms should be much much shorter than they currently are. They should be more like 10-20 years rather than anywhere from 70 to well over 100 that they are now.