So, even if you buy a proprietary closed source application, you might as well be in violation of the law.
IIRC, Microsoft's customers are now facing the threat of legal action because Microsoft improperly included Timeline's intellectual property in their SQL server offerings. So even though Microsoft's customers bought licenses from Microsoft, they may still end up owing money to Timeline! And IIRC, Microsoft is also being sued by their customers for this practice. So much for the "safe" proprietary code model....
So seeing as how you didn't post JCL, I'll give you partial credit if you can explain, in detail, what the above lines actually do. After all, you can learn mainframe programming from the web, right?
This is a self correcting problem. A good admin/coder can pick up mainframe stuff when he needs to. All the 50+ year olds are still working the jobs they got when they were 30. When they die off/retire, younger folks will pick it up.
Obviously, you've never worked on a mainframe. It's not like Java or UNIX, where you can google the web and come up with useful documentation. You have to be trained to use a mainframe in a college environment; you can't learn it by picking up an O'Reilly book and cramming over the weekend. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're stupid; it's just that IBM has gone to great lengths to ensure that the only documentation for mainframes is available through them, and their writers aren't exactly pulitzer winners, if you know what I mean. You simply can't pick up a book on the subject, or google the web, because no one is enthusiastic enough about mainframe programming to write the stuff down and publish it (either hardcopy or web.) It's kind of hard to learn something when there isn't any documentation.
And if you think otherwise, here's a challenge: Reply to this post with the JCL necessary to compile and run a COBOL program which will print out "HELLO WORLD". And then give the URL or a link to a book title where you found this information.
The biggest problem I see with the W3C's patent policy is that it encourages corporations to license their patents on a royalty free basis until the standard has gained such widespread adoption that developers have no alternative but to comply. Then, said corporations will be able to charge exorbitant licensing fees for such patents. Sure, the W3C could then exclude them from the next standard, but given that so many developers have to focus on backward compatibility with the already established user base, excluding a patent-encumbered part of the standard from the next release would do little to alleviate the problem.
What the W3C is really doing is paving the way for another Rambus like fiasco.
Well, I think it's obvious that Access isn't enterprise ready. But that's not the point. Only a world-class idiot, or at least someone profoundly naive, would write an update algorithm which deletes both records when one gets corrupted. I don't think that this was a simple programmer oversight - I think some idiot at Microsoft made a conscious decision to include this behavior in Access, blissfully unaware of the negative consequences it would have on those people who depend on their software to make a living.
I mean, come on. Microsoft mentions words like "enterprise class computing" and "corporate datacenter" in their promotional materials. Corporate execs think that Microsoft knows their business. But when I see mistakes like this time and time again, I have a hard time believing that anyone at Microsoft has ever worked in "mission critical" production environment. At best, Microsoft is naive and stupid, at worst, negligent.
Disclaimer: I'm an IT consultant for a small business using Access as its only DB.
I've currently got a project that is easily 2 months overdue because of stupid bugs in Access. The worst is this one: if one of the databases becomes corrupted, all of the databases which synchronize with that DB will become corrupted as well. I've actually witnessed databases losing records during a synchronize because some stupid jerk of a programmer at MS thought that the good thing to do would be to delete records to make the tables match. So instead of the good copy filling in missing records in the bad copy, just the opposite happens - good records get deleted from the good copy, and now both copies are bad.
At this point, it simply doesn't matter if Microsoft gives its software away - consultants like myself are going to charge you so much for working with their bit-trash that you won't be reaping any savings. Honestly, there's a reason why I charge more for MS support, and it's not because I'm greedy, but rather, because I recognize the headaches that it presents to the average developer.
Quite frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of explaining to my customers that the reason why they're losing thousands of dollars a day in downtime and lost data is precisely because they chose to use Microsoft software. Get clue! - Microsoft does not care what happens to your data; they've already got your money, stupid!.
Re:I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Modern creationists are in the same place that official Christiandom was in the time of Galileo, I think. If you're religious, nothing in modern biology (which largely is evolution) really denies a role for a deity in kickstarting the whole shebang. Setting up the system to run itself unattended, in fact, would have been the smart way to do it. Those who insist that God would create a system far inferior to this -- i.e., that requires endless hand-tweaking of every minute detail -- are really delivering Him a kind of insult, aren't they?
A point seemingly lost on a lot of right-wing fundamentalists. When you study religion, you notice certain trends, and one of these trends is that the oldest and most well established religions don't ask their believers to deny their intellectual capacities. The problem with "creation scientists" is the same problem with "evolutionary biologists" - each firmly believes in their position regardless of the weakness of the position or evidence to the contrary.
Weak minds often have a hard time with the intelligent design arguments of creation. While we don't specifically deny evolution, we posit that there was a Creator who started the process, and has and does attend to his creation. When one looks at the complexity of living things compared to that of inanimate objects, one can't help but be struck by the difference in complexity between what merely exists and those things that grow.
Interestingly, while this study can show the merits of evolution, it does more to bolster the intelligent design theory than to destroy it. While the experiment was very interesting, we must remember that the digital organisms did have an intelligent designer - it's not like the programs sprang to life on their own!
Creators of top-secret government documents, financial records or other sensitive material could assign rights to sensitive files, allowing them to be viewed only on trusted computers running the system. Anyone else -- hackers and malicious programs included -- would be locked out.
Maybe it's just me, but I would think that such a system would also enable terrorists to send "sensitive files" to each other, with the full confidence that law enforcement could not read them.
Consider the above statement reworded a little:
Creators of top-secret documents, terrorist plans or other sensitive material could assign rights to sensitive files, allowing them to be viewed only on trusted computers running the system. Anyone else -- FBI hackers, law enforcement and malicious programs included -- would be locked out.
but the fear of being sued because the product your using was written by 'shady individuals' as Balmer seems to be suggesting can have a real chilling effect.
I think that the BSA has a much greater chilling effect than OSS. IIRC, no one has ever been sued for using OSS, but Microsoft has already filed lawsuits against schools and other government entities. Open source advocates would do well to remind people of the number of times Microsoft has sued its own customers. Granted, with OSS you might not have a corporation to support your software, but neither will you risk the liability of being sued.
This from an Access programmer who is stupified by basic RDBMS concepts
No, actually I'm a database programmer whose used a variety of products, from DB2 (and others, unfortunately) on the mainframe, to Access on the client. My original solution was contingent on the original poster's problem of not being able to join tables across different databases - a significant problem. Obviously, if this was an option - to link tables, that would be the first choice. But what do you do when you've got two databases that, in essence, won't talk to each other? Running SQL is nice, provided you've got connectivity, but all the RDBMS knowledge in the world is useless if you can't get the two database servers talking to each other. And if you can, then joining tables across a the two systems would have been a trivial exercise - one that wouldn't have merited such a post.
Sometimes you've got to work with what you've got. And if you can't implement a database system with text files, then you aren't much of a programmer. Here's a hint: if you need locks, add another field - this is the way some of the older mainframe systems handle locking.
Right now, I'm doing work for a company that can't afford anything but Access. And yet, they expect their systems to have mainframe class reliability. Granted, Access is not my first choice, and I've told them this. Now I know what you'd tell them - get a real database. And I know what they'd tell you - get another job.
Good database design is not merely plugging SQL code into a database server. There are bigger issues to consider, such as cost. Small businesses simply can't afford the more robust databases, and you can't work with what they've got, they'll hire someone else.
Here's another idea: instead of just games, what about digital media - you know, images, movies, mp3's etc...
Such a scheme would make DRM obsolete. Think about it - how do CD's get copied now? The user boots into his OS, and then reads the CD with said OS. With a bootable, encrypted CD, OTOH, there is no OS available to facilitate copying. If you booted into your OS, you could perhaps make a bitwise copy, but even then, you'd still be left with an encrypted image.
IIRC, Microsoft Access 2000 can already do this with linked tables. You can link one set of tables to a database on one server, and another set to a database on another server.
As for your PostgreSQL database, that would require some work. Here's what you would do:
Convert (or dump) your PostgreSQL tables to comma delimited text files on the server.
Use Samba to share the directory to which these tables are dumped.
Map this directory to a drive letter on your MS boxen.
Use the VBA part of Access 2000 to open and read these files; use DAO (or whatever) to build local tables from same on a regular basis.
Develop a plan for synchronizing the two sets of tables. If you really didn't care whatsoever about performance, you could use your VBA code to read these files over the network every time the user does a query.
As a compromise to help prevent piracy, you must change your playlist every 10 CD burns, and you may share the music with only three other Macs (you may modify the list of computers that the music may be shared with at any time). There was no word on the technology used to handle this DRM.
So, where was Microsoft in all this? Or are they still waiting for Apple to succesfully implement DRM so they can copy it, too?
Seems strange to me that Apple can actually come up with a workable DRM while Microsoft is still sitting on their hands.
I think the time is coming when DRM will be a reality for every computer user, whether we like it or not. However, it's good to see that at least one company is using DRM in such a manner that protects the artists without diminishing our fair use rights. I don't mind DRM as much as I mind giving up my freedoms. Hopefully, Apple will continue to strike the correct balance between protecting the artists and making content available.
IIRC, the idea that someone would design and build a program by drag and drop is uniquely Microsoft's idea. While there were plenty of code generators and prototyping tools out there, Microsoft was the first to extend the drag and drop metaphor to programming.
Not that I like Microsoft. But it took Borland and Sun nearly 10 years to catch up to the drag and drop program design paradigm, and they still didn't do it as well as VB. Their only saving graces were the fact that they backed their development tools with more powerful languages (C++, Java).
Considering that one of Linux/Gnome/KDE's weakest points has been its poor support for fonts.
Quite frankly, I'm glad to see this. The early fonts that came with X were simply horrible when compared to what MS was offering at the time. With better looking fonts, we are one step closer to widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop.
In the US, it is ILLEGAL to put the military on the boarders
Since when did the illegality of something ever stop our government from doing it?
And don't think that this is shot at just the current administration. During Clinton's tenure, the FBI paid snipers to shoot and kill the wife and infant son of a suspect (ruby ridge).
I can understand how someone can love their country, but that doesn't mean we should trust our government.
Legacy support is the only thing that keeps the likes of Palladium and DRM out of the hardware. If PC manufacturers were to truly abandon all backwards compatibility, it would be nearly impossible to run Linux, as the manufacturers would simply cater to the largest OS maker, namely, Microsoft. With Microsoft designing the hardware, you can bet that the BIOS would autodetect the OS, and if the OS couldn't be "verified", it would fail to boot the machine. (Compaq has actually done this - a few years ago, their machines running Windows NT server had hardcoded instructions which would abort loading Windows NT, unless the version was one distributed by Compaq. The reason was that Compaq charged more for WinNT at the time than Microsoft.)
Yes, I think that the old hardware can be a drag at times. But it's kind of nice to know that I can depend on a standard NOT controlled by any one company. I've still got a choice of OS, and I intend to keep it that way.
Think about it - what Uy has done is nothing more than post what was already publicly available information - the county has a record of where he lives, and the phone company publishes his address and phone number. Uy hasn't invaded the privacy rights of anyone. Rather, he has made it easier for those harmed by Moore's business practices to express their discontent.
"If I was doing something wrong, I think I would have heard," Moore said.
Problem is, by Moore's own standards, there is nothing wrong with Uy's behavior. Moore is suing only because of the inconvenience that spam has caused him; what he doesn't realize is that if the court finds that public disclosure of personal information is an actionable offense, then Moore's business will be threatened, as every spam could be considered "public disclosure" of a person's private information (namely, their name and email address). Moore is literally shooting himself in the foot.
The comparison between Moore and abortion doctors and the like is simply not relevant; Moore is fighting this battle to avoid having done to him what he has been doing to so many others. It has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with the rights of an individual to control how their personal information is used. If Moore wins, everyone whom has had their email address inadvertently publicized in a spammer's CC: list could sue the spammer. If he loses, this will open the door to widespread spamming of the spammers. We win either way.
I'm waiting for a mob-owned business to get one of the letters...
Vito: Yo' wahs is dis I be gettin' in da mail? Yousa sendin' me a threatin' letters.
BSA Attorney: Um, sir, I'm not sure if I understand what you're referring to... We do send out letters requesting audits every now and then.
Vito: Audits? Howsa bought you come down to my place fo' an' audit...Maybe we could 'discus' de issue...
BSA Attorney: Well, sir, um, that's not how we usually work, you see-
Vito: Listen, punk, I'm da won tellin' you da way it's gonna be. Like da Pres' be sayin' yousa either wit' me on dis one, or yousa against me. Ya know it would be a real tragic like if sometin' was ta happen to yousa family, ya know what I'm sayin'...
BSA Attorney: Um sir, I've got a lunch meeting to attend... (Hangs up phone nervously)
Which makes me wonder if this law can even be enforced. It could be argued that if the authorities can find you that you weren't "concealing the source of communications"...
When I open openoffice is just sits there doing nothing for like 20 seconds and then launched. No excess cpu overhead or anything. It just stalls and then runs
Happens to me too, except that I'm running Win95. I think that it's more like OpenOffice is just slow.
Wouldn't this also make SPAM illegal? Or at least provide the legal means to force spammers to provide accurate headers?
</fantasy>
In a dark basement, the door is suddenly kicked in by state troopers. A man surrounded by computers with a broadband connection is busted as a terrorist for 'concealing the source of communications'. In tears, the spammer is taken away to rot in jail.
<fantasy>
Okay, it's not like the government would actually use this law for something as useful as busting spammers, but sometimes it's nice to dream....
But on a more serious note, anonymity has been considered a constitutional right by the Supreme Court for quite some time now, and I don't think this law would stand up to constitutional scrutiny.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, Microsoft's customers are now facing the threat of legal action because Microsoft improperly included Timeline's intellectual property in their SQL server offerings. So even though Microsoft's customers bought licenses from Microsoft, they may still end up owing money to Timeline! And IIRC, Microsoft is also being sued by their customers for this practice. So much for the "safe" proprietary code model....
So seeing as how you didn't post JCL, I'll give you partial credit if you can explain, in detail, what the above lines actually do. After all, you can learn mainframe programming from the web, right?
Obviously, you've never worked on a mainframe. It's not like Java or UNIX, where you can google the web and come up with useful documentation. You have to be trained to use a mainframe in a college environment; you can't learn it by picking up an O'Reilly book and cramming over the weekend. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're stupid; it's just that IBM has gone to great lengths to ensure that the only documentation for mainframes is available through them, and their writers aren't exactly pulitzer winners, if you know what I mean. You simply can't pick up a book on the subject, or google the web, because no one is enthusiastic enough about mainframe programming to write the stuff down and publish it (either hardcopy or web.) It's kind of hard to learn something when there isn't any documentation.
And if you think otherwise, here's a challenge: Reply to this post with the JCL necessary to compile and run a COBOL program which will print out "HELLO WORLD". And then give the URL or a link to a book title where you found this information.
The biggest problem I see with the W3C's patent policy is that it encourages corporations to license their patents on a royalty free basis until the standard has gained such widespread adoption that developers have no alternative but to comply. Then, said corporations will be able to charge exorbitant licensing fees for such patents. Sure, the W3C could then exclude them from the next standard, but given that so many developers have to focus on backward compatibility with the already established user base, excluding a patent-encumbered part of the standard from the next release would do little to alleviate the problem.
What the W3C is really doing is paving the way for another Rambus like fiasco.
I mean, come on. Microsoft mentions words like "enterprise class computing" and "corporate datacenter" in their promotional materials. Corporate execs think that Microsoft knows their business. But when I see mistakes like this time and time again, I have a hard time believing that anyone at Microsoft has ever worked in "mission critical" production environment. At best, Microsoft is naive and stupid, at worst, negligent.
Disclaimer: I'm an IT consultant for a small business using Access as its only DB.
I've currently got a project that is easily 2 months overdue because of stupid bugs in Access. The worst is this one: if one of the databases becomes corrupted, all of the databases which synchronize with that DB will become corrupted as well. I've actually witnessed databases losing records during a synchronize because some stupid jerk of a programmer at MS thought that the good thing to do would be to delete records to make the tables match. So instead of the good copy filling in missing records in the bad copy, just the opposite happens - good records get deleted from the good copy, and now both copies are bad.
At this point, it simply doesn't matter if Microsoft gives its software away - consultants like myself are going to charge you so much for working with their bit-trash that you won't be reaping any savings. Honestly, there's a reason why I charge more for MS support, and it's not because I'm greedy, but rather, because I recognize the headaches that it presents to the average developer.
Quite frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of explaining to my customers that the reason why they're losing thousands of dollars a day in downtime and lost data is precisely because they chose to use Microsoft software. Get clue! - Microsoft does not care what happens to your data; they've already got your money, stupid! .
A point seemingly lost on a lot of right-wing fundamentalists. When you study religion, you notice certain trends, and one of these trends is that the oldest and most well established religions don't ask their believers to deny their intellectual capacities. The problem with "creation scientists" is the same problem with "evolutionary biologists" - each firmly believes in their position regardless of the weakness of the position or evidence to the contrary.
Weak minds often have a hard time with the intelligent design arguments of creation. While we don't specifically deny evolution, we posit that there was a Creator who started the process, and has and does attend to his creation. When one looks at the complexity of living things compared to that of inanimate objects, one can't help but be struck by the difference in complexity between what merely exists and those things that grow.
Interestingly, while this study can show the merits of evolution, it does more to bolster the intelligent design theory than to destroy it. While the experiment was very interesting, we must remember that the digital organisms did have an intelligent designer - it's not like the programs sprang to life on their own!
Maybe it's just me, but I would think that such a system would also enable terrorists to send "sensitive files" to each other, with the full confidence that law enforcement could not read them.
Consider the above statement reworded a little:
Creators of top-secret documents, terrorist plans or other sensitive material could assign rights to sensitive files, allowing them to be viewed only on trusted computers running the system. Anyone else -- FBI hackers, law enforcement and malicious programs included -- would be locked out.So you mean to tell me that Linux is available on a 64 bit architecture before Windows?! Does Steve "Mr. Innovation" Balmer know about this?
We all know this is a hoax. It's not possible for open source software to "innovate"...
I think that the BSA has a much greater chilling effect than OSS. IIRC, no one has ever been sued for using OSS, but Microsoft has already filed lawsuits against schools and other government entities. Open source advocates would do well to remind people of the number of times Microsoft has sued its own customers. Granted, with OSS you might not have a corporation to support your software, but neither will you risk the liability of being sued.
My, how I feed the trolls...
This from an Access programmer who is stupified by basic RDBMS conceptsNo, actually I'm a database programmer whose used a variety of products, from DB2 (and others, unfortunately) on the mainframe, to Access on the client. My original solution was contingent on the original poster's problem of not being able to join tables across different databases - a significant problem. Obviously, if this was an option - to link tables, that would be the first choice. But what do you do when you've got two databases that, in essence, won't talk to each other? Running SQL is nice, provided you've got connectivity, but all the RDBMS knowledge in the world is useless if you can't get the two database servers talking to each other. And if you can, then joining tables across a the two systems would have been a trivial exercise - one that wouldn't have merited such a post.
Sometimes you've got to work with what you've got. And if you can't implement a database system with text files, then you aren't much of a programmer. Here's a hint: if you need locks, add another field - this is the way some of the older mainframe systems handle locking.
Right now, I'm doing work for a company that can't afford anything but Access. And yet, they expect their systems to have mainframe class reliability. Granted, Access is not my first choice, and I've told them this. Now I know what you'd tell them - get a real database. And I know what they'd tell you - get another job.
Good database design is not merely plugging SQL code into a database server. There are bigger issues to consider, such as cost. Small businesses simply can't afford the more robust databases, and you can't work with what they've got, they'll hire someone else.
Here's another idea: instead of just games, what about digital media - you know, images, movies, mp3's etc...
Such a scheme would make DRM obsolete. Think about it - how do CD's get copied now? The user boots into his OS, and then reads the CD with said OS. With a bootable, encrypted CD, OTOH, there is no OS available to facilitate copying. If you booted into your OS, you could perhaps make a bitwise copy, but even then, you'd still be left with an encrypted image.
IIRC, Microsoft Access 2000 can already do this with linked tables. You can link one set of tables to a database on one server, and another set to a database on another server.
As for your PostgreSQL database, that would require some work. Here's what you would do:-
Convert (or dump) your PostgreSQL tables to comma delimited text files on the server.
- Use Samba to share the directory to which these tables are dumped.
- Map this directory to a drive letter on your MS boxen.
- Use the VBA part of Access 2000 to open and read these files; use DAO (or whatever) to build local tables from same on a regular basis.
- Develop a plan for synchronizing the two sets of tables. If you really didn't care whatsoever about performance, you could use your VBA code to read these files over the network every time the user does a query.
Hope this helpsSo, where was Microsoft in all this? Or are they still waiting for Apple to succesfully implement DRM so they can copy it, too?
Seems strange to me that Apple can actually come up with a workable DRM while Microsoft is still sitting on their hands.
I think the time is coming when DRM will be a reality for every computer user, whether we like it or not. However, it's good to see that at least one company is using DRM in such a manner that protects the artists without diminishing our fair use rights. I don't mind DRM as much as I mind giving up my freedoms. Hopefully, Apple will continue to strike the correct balance between protecting the artists and making content available.
Sure, I'll bite...
Visual Basic
IIRC, the idea that someone would design and build a program by drag and drop is uniquely Microsoft's idea. While there were plenty of code generators and prototyping tools out there, Microsoft was the first to extend the drag and drop metaphor to programming.
Not that I like Microsoft. But it took Borland and Sun nearly 10 years to catch up to the drag and drop program design paradigm, and they still didn't do it as well as VB. Their only saving graces were the fact that they backed their development tools with more powerful languages (C++, Java).
Considering that one of Linux/Gnome/KDE's weakest points has been its poor support for fonts.
Quite frankly, I'm glad to see this. The early fonts that came with X were simply horrible when compared to what MS was offering at the time. With better looking fonts, we are one step closer to widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop.
It's not how much you have have, it's how you use it.
And I suppose size doesn't matter either...
Since when did the illegality of something ever stop our government from doing it?
And don't think that this is shot at just the current administration. During Clinton's tenure, the FBI paid snipers to shoot and kill the wife and infant son of a suspect (ruby ridge).
I can understand how someone can love their country, but that doesn't mean we should trust our government.
Legacy support is the only thing that keeps the likes of Palladium and DRM out of the hardware. If PC manufacturers were to truly abandon all backwards compatibility, it would be nearly impossible to run Linux, as the manufacturers would simply cater to the largest OS maker, namely, Microsoft. With Microsoft designing the hardware, you can bet that the BIOS would autodetect the OS, and if the OS couldn't be "verified", it would fail to boot the machine. (Compaq has actually done this - a few years ago, their machines running Windows NT server had hardcoded instructions which would abort loading Windows NT, unless the version was one distributed by Compaq. The reason was that Compaq charged more for WinNT at the time than Microsoft.)
Yes, I think that the old hardware can be a drag at times. But it's kind of nice to know that I can depend on a standard NOT controlled by any one company. I've still got a choice of OS, and I intend to keep it that way.
Think about it - what Uy has done is nothing more than post what was already publicly available information - the county has a record of where he lives, and the phone company publishes his address and phone number. Uy hasn't invaded the privacy rights of anyone. Rather, he has made it easier for those harmed by Moore's business practices to express their discontent.
"If I was doing something wrong, I think I would have heard," Moore said.Problem is, by Moore's own standards, there is nothing wrong with Uy's behavior. Moore is suing only because of the inconvenience that spam has caused him; what he doesn't realize is that if the court finds that public disclosure of personal information is an actionable offense, then Moore's business will be threatened, as every spam could be considered "public disclosure" of a person's private information (namely, their name and email address). Moore is literally shooting himself in the foot.
The comparison between Moore and abortion doctors and the like is simply not relevant; Moore is fighting this battle to avoid having done to him what he has been doing to so many others. It has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with the rights of an individual to control how their personal information is used. If Moore wins, everyone whom has had their email address inadvertently publicized in a spammer's CC: list could sue the spammer. If he loses, this will open the door to widespread spamming of the spammers. We win either way.
Vito: Yo' wahs is dis I be gettin' in da mail? Yousa sendin' me a threatin' letters.
BSA Attorney: Um, sir, I'm not sure if I understand what you're referring to... We do send out letters requesting audits every now and then.
Vito: Audits? Howsa bought you come down to my place fo' an' audit...Maybe we could 'discus' de issue...
BSA Attorney: Well, sir, um, that's not how we usually work, you see-
Vito: Listen, punk, I'm da won tellin' you da way it's gonna be. Like da Pres' be sayin' yousa either wit' me on dis one, or yousa against me. Ya know it would be a real tragic like if sometin' was ta happen to yousa family, ya know what I'm sayin'...
BSA Attorney: Um sir, I've got a lunch meeting to attend... (Hangs up phone nervously)
Which makes me wonder if this law can even be enforced. It could be argued that if the authorities can find you that you weren't "concealing the source of communications"...
Happens to me too, except that I'm running Win95. I think that it's more like OpenOffice is just slow.
Exactly. Just like you, I goofed up.
Wouldn't this also make SPAM illegal? Or at least provide the legal means to force spammers to provide accurate headers?
</fantasy>
In a dark basement, the door is suddenly kicked in by state troopers. A man surrounded by computers with a broadband connection is busted as a terrorist for 'concealing the source of communications'. In tears, the spammer is taken away to rot in jail.
<fantasy>
Okay, it's not like the government would actually use this law for something as useful as busting spammers, but sometimes it's nice to dream....
But on a more serious note, anonymity has been considered a constitutional right by the Supreme Court for quite some time now, and I don't think this law would stand up to constitutional scrutiny.