IBM doesn't want to see Linux ported to the Itanium, but not the PPC, in 64 bit mode. If that were to happen, it would pretty much kill support for the chip outside of things like the AS/400.
Far better for them to put the work into ensuring a stable port to their new chip. Now all they need to do is to wait for Intel to put out a sickly version of the Itanium (like they did with the first release of the P4). --
The joke is that it's technically accurate. You forward the email (even spam!) and you're making a copy in violation of copyright. If the spammer ever finds out, (s)he can nail your ass to the wall. QED. --
The weird thing is that this probably also applies in North America, as well. Many years ago (late '80s), I had someone send me an email chiding me for someting I'd said on the net. I forwarded his emil with my public apology, and he blew up at me for forwarding his email in it's entirety.
He pointed out to me that it was a technical breach of his copyright. After thinking about it for a bit, I concluded that he's correct. We all have copywright on anything that we produce, and any copying of it without permission is a technical breach.
The practice on the 'net is in technical breach of the law since the beginning of internet time, but very few have noticed that the emperor has no clothes. Even fewer have bothered to say anything about it (being naked, themselves). To finish off the analogy: What happened here, is that it's a cabinet minister saying that the emperor has no clothes, and all a sudden people are waking up to their own nakedness (and shooting the messenger).
In a lot of ways, this is just a result of the unexpected merging of the digital age, and old law. Given how wide the breach is, however, it may be possible that (in the US, at least), the practice may be able to be subsumed into the "fair use" doctrine (i.e. Everybody, so far, has considered it fair use, so who is the Supreme Court to change everybody's mind?) --
So, you expecte the density increase to continue without end? If the curve continues, in a few years we'll be storing 15MB in a single atom. (Crumb. I couldn't find the story on quantum storage). --
What do you really want? Do you want to prevent them from using the code in a non-GPL way? Do you want to prevent them from un-GPLing what's already been released? Do you want to allow the proprietary version, but are simply worried about the implications of the GPL release?
A few people have mentioned valuable points:
If you're working under contract, you probably have copyright in the code, unless the contract says otherwise
Even if you don't own the code, if the copyright holders (employer or govt) gave permission to GPL the code, then what's already released is legally GPL.
The current copyright holder {you|employer|govt} has the right to have future copies released under another (or even multiple!) licenses... If they want to it, it's an issue between you and them.
There's nothing wrong with forking a proprietary version of the code, as long as the copyright holder agrees to it.
One Gotcha: If notable pieces of the GPL code were actually developed by someone else, they may have some right to that portion of the code (dunno about this). That may complicate the proprietarizeation of the code (that part of it_)
The GPL doesn't bind the copyright owner. It only binds the non-copyright holder. It says that "unless I say otherwise, you can only distribute this code, or derivative works (e.g. compiled) of it if you let other people have access to the source.
If you (as copyright owner) give a copy to someone else and say, "you can develop a proprietary version with this", then they can do whatever you allow them to do with that copy.
Just because the code is GPL doesn't mean that the database they're using is GPL. (someone else pointed this out). This may make them less queasy about letting the code stay GPL.
I guess that the other question to ask is why do they want to non-GPL a future version of the code? If they simply want to keep some of the data that they gather private, then they don't have to GPL the code. If they want to develop proprietary add-ons, then they can keep the already developed portions GPL, and the new parts proprietary (though it would be polite to modularize it so that you can continue to sanely release the GPLed portions
The job of a lawyer is to gather together a set of rules -- sometimes old and arcane, and arrange them so that the client can do what they want in a sane, and predictable manner. The biggest difference between this, and the computer world is the language that is being used. --
My point is, it's *stupid* to ask legal advice on a public forum because you don't know the quality of
the advice you're getting.
No, you don't know the quality of the advice you're getting. That doesn't matter, though. In the end you should be going to a lawyer, and saying "does this look like a viable answer". Then the lawyer can look up the authorities to support (or trash) what was said in the public forum.
What's said here, however, could give the lawyer ideas that he wouldn't have had without our input. Just because you're not a lawyer doesn't mean that you couldn't make a contribution.
I once took a case to the court of appeal, that no lawyer I knew of was willing to touch. I later found out from a law professor, that I almost won the case -- and would have probably won if I had taken it to the next step. (I was going against one of the top two lawyers in the largest firm in Vancouver, and one of the government's top constitutional lawyers).
What I learned in the process is that a lot of lawyers don't necessarily understand the law, fully, themselves. It's not much different than the computing world, where I once had a first year student sheepishly ask me "is it OK to do the assignment this way?" That sheepsih question actually changed the way that recursion vs loops was taught at the U of Alberta, and may have even changed many textbooks since then (I haven't looked recently).
To a thousand eyes, any problem is transparent. --
A little over 10 years ago, polygram records (and a couple of related labels) decided that they wanted to charge radio stations to for broadcasting their music. Community (e.g. campus) radio stations revolted. They refused to play any polygram music whatsoever.
Polygram "relented". They offered to allow community radio stations to play 'alternative' music for free. The stations held firm and simply refused to play polygram until they withdrew royalties altogether. Polygram finally gave in to the demand.
Napster is in a similar situation. Record companies have to explicitly say that they want certain tracks/files deleted from napster. Once they do so, Napster has to remove those files.
It is the record companies' decision to have napster remove specific files. Companies/artists that like the service that Napster provides are free to allow their files to be shared on the service.
If people refuse to buy music that is banned on Napster, the RIAA is going to be very slow to pull music from the service.
I think that it's worth noting that the RIAA has not, from what I can find, made an application to get a new ruling from the trial court. I expect that it's because they know that doing so will cost them sales.
The original, blanket, ruling was good for them because it shut down ALL music sharing -- including non-RIAA artists who wanted their music to be available. It would have put the RIAA back firmly in control of all music distribution, including non-RIAA artists. This is what I think they really want in this lawsuit.
Despite their in-court bravado about what napster is supposedly costing them, I'm sure that there's a stack of internal email about what it would cost them to start pulling only their music from napster.
I, like many others, presume that this lawsuit is more about the RIAA wanting control of music distribution than it is about Napster supposedly cutting into their profits. If that's true, then they can't afford to just pull their own music from napster, and it's not going to happen. The reason why is that it would create a powerful ecological niche for smaller music distributors and independant artists.
With a popular, viable non-RIAA-controlled distribution channel available to small artists, artists would not be quite as hungry to get an RIAA contract. The RIAA would have to bargin in better faith with artists.
Fair terms for artists are not in the RIAA's financial interest. --
Well, they claim that we're not purchasing their music, but we know better.
I for one, have noticed that I've been purchasing more music since I started using napster than I did before (I'm 39).
I can definitely see college students being the ones least likely to increase their immediate purchasing of CDs, but it's mostly because almost all of their money is going into their education. Once they get a decent paying job, I'd expect that they'll be model consumers of music -- and that their consumption of music is going to be in line with what's available to them via napster.
--
If you've paid for ADSL for the month, and they've cut you off, they're breaching contract.
Try calling them up and having a conversation like the following.:
Hi. My ADSL was cut off by you guys without warning or reason a few days ago, and all of my attempts to figure out why have gone unanswered. So, I was wondering: Could I please have the correct address for service of your legal department?
The explanation, if they ask, would be that you're preparing to respond to their actions, and you expect that you'll need the information. (it's far more efficient to deliver a writ direct to the legal department.. It's less likely that it'll get lost/redirected/etc.).
There's no reason or need to be specific here. You're setting stuff up, and what you precisely you'll be doing with the targeting information is entirely your business, until the payload lands. --
I think that the Arrow was mentioned as an example of the premise that: just because the US (even NASA) can't do something, doesn't mean that it can't be done by a group of foreigners.
Because of the slightly different climate, Canadians have a tendancy to take the probability of environmental extremes more seriously. +40C~-40C is supposedly considered US Mil Spec (104F ~ -40F). In Canada, it's considered outdoor equipment. I can exceed those exremes in one year driving around Alberta. Most years I can get +30~-40 just planting it in my backyard in Edmonton.
A friend ofmine has a story of some oilpatch equipment that froze up while stil inside of it's rated spec (rated to -45C; froze at -37C). He called down to the Texas company that supplied it to complain. The answer:
You mean it actually gets that cold??!
----
In any event, there isn't a whole lot of conspiracy theory around the Avrow. The generally accepted theory is that the US needed many of those hot engineers for the Apollo project. That's where many of them went when the Arrow was tanked.
You didn't think that the States could get all the way to the moon without foreign help, did you?
As to the Avro enginering data being destroyed, it makes complete sense to me. The system was capable of doing stuff that the US was either incapable of, or unwilling to acknowledge being capable of. With most of the engineers going over to NASA associated work, the project was going to be, at best, mothballed for a long time.
The last thing that you want is to have all this engineering data stacked in a warehouse somewhere just waiting for a Soviet Spy to cart it off to the Embassy.
Far better to just trash the existing data, and rebuild from scratch later when/if you decide to do it again. Besides -- by the time they'd get around to restarting the project available technology could be expected to have advanced beyond whatever miracles they'd produced back then.
Pretty much the same thing was done with the Saturn 5 engines when NASA decided to go to the Space Shuttle. Although some people feel that it was done to prevent the ability to go back to non-reusable craft, I think that the security explanation is quite applicable here as well. --
I think that there's definitely a moral, if not legal cause to call for the open sourcing of the database. People who've posted technically own copyright on their postings. I think that it could be argued that most of us have expected that it was on the understanding that the postings be made freely available.
Although that should probably include enough information to access the postings as separate items, there's a little bit less excuse to ask for the searching code (though there's no reason to not at least ask).
I remember that DEC had an archive of older postings in the late '80s/early 90's. I think that it was Gene Spafford that put it together. Does anybody know what happened to the older archive?
(as an aside, I remember a reference to the value of being able to access DEC drives at internal cost price) --
OK: rereading my mirror of their page, they claim that the resulting shrunk coin is the same density -- so either it probably thickens as it shrinks. In fact, they more formally refer to it as forming.
A shrunken coin
weighs exactly the same afterwards, and its density is also unchanged - it's merely the
shape that's been altered.
I think that the issue is more along the lines of people being able to surreptitiously read the tags on things that you're carrying/ wearing. The idea of people being able to do things like pool data, and track me from store to store, or figure out what brands I'm carrying/wearing is... well... spooky.
Well, Mr. Smith. From the stores you've just visited, I presume that you're looking for some lingerie for your....
Hmm. From the tags, she's not your registered wife, so I presume this is your lover?
As for burnout... It might fry some electronic equipment, but it shouldn't hurt more inert objects, like furniture and clothing. --
You're not likely to actually shrink the coin It might be possible to burn off some of the metal, leaving a smaller coin. What I notice, however, is that some of the features are shifted (e.g. the liberty is moved almost onto the throat in ond picture). It leaves me thinking that the 'shrunk' coins are simply coins re-done slighly smaller.
--
For example, there are no proto-turtles, yet there are millions of turtle fossils. What happened? Was
there an organism that went around collecting and eating proto-turtle shells and leaving everything
else alone?
There's an easy answer to that one. The proto-turtle was around for a short period of time. Once the base mutation occurred, it quickly evolved to fit in the various ecological niches.
Think about it for a moment: How many people do you know that have Linux 0.X kernels out there?
How many people do you know that have linux 2.X kernels on CD?. If society had a nuclear war today, an archeologist would be far more likely to find a 2.X kernel than a 0.X kernel. That doesn't mean that 0.X doesn't exist.
A proto turtle would be analogous to a Linux 0.X -- interesting, but rare.
<rant>
In any case, the 'catastrophists' and 'classical' evolutionists schools are mostly differing on the form of evolution, not the validity of it. Some people may latch onto the former as disproving evolution. In my world -- even though the catastrophist approach is more consistent with biblical view, I don't think that it's necessarily inconsistent with the basic concept of evolution.
I also don't feel that evolution is necessarily inconsistent withThe Bible. The Bible has lots of ambiguity in it. For example, we don't know how long God's first days were. We do know that the earth didn't exist until the second, so it's clear that God's evening and morning have little, if anything, to do with the earth's rotation.
</rant> --
It would seem that the mistake this judge mad was that he went to his friends in the background, rather than assigning them publicly, where both sides would have the ability to cross-examine them.
Under cross-examination, the lawyers might ask questions that the judge hadn't thought of. It wouldn't invalidate the questions of the judge, but it would simply offer both sides the opportunity to put their own questions to the court appointed expert.
As was mentioned in the release -- Judges (federal judges, at least) have had the right to appoint their own experts since 1993 --
Slashdot Mirror
If you're living in or near Washington, I suggest you contact you favorite rep, and offer your services.
--
Far better for them to put the work into ensuring a stable port to their new chip. Now all they need to do is to wait for Intel to put out a sickly version of the Itanium (like they did with the first release of the P4).
--
This could put some SERIOUS teeth into the GPL in Australia. (it just gets really hard to discuss it.)
--
More importantly: Is it illegal for you to forward my own email back to me when you have a complaint about it?
--
It is -- under their anal (excuse the pun) pornography laws...
--
The joke is that it's technically accurate. You forward the email (even spam!) and you're making a copy in violation of copyright. If the spammer ever finds out, (s)he can nail your ass to the wall. QED.
--
He pointed out to me that it was a technical breach of his copyright. After thinking about it for a bit, I concluded that he's correct. We all have copywright on anything that we produce, and any copying of it without permission is a technical breach.
The practice on the 'net is in technical breach of the law since the beginning of internet time, but very few have noticed that the emperor has no clothes. Even fewer have bothered to say anything about it (being naked, themselves). To finish off the analogy: What happened here, is that it's a cabinet minister saying that the emperor has no clothes, and all a sudden people are waking up to their own nakedness (and shooting the messenger).
In a lot of ways, this is just a result of the unexpected merging of the digital age, and old law. Given how wide the breach is, however, it may be possible that (in the US, at least), the practice may be able to be subsumed into the "fair use" doctrine (i.e. Everybody, so far, has considered it fair use, so who is the Supreme Court to change everybody's mind?)
--
So, you expecte the density increase to continue without end? If the curve continues, in a few years we'll be storing 15MB in a single atom. (Crumb. I couldn't find the story on quantum storage).
--
Hey, why not? The BSD IP stacks are good!
--
Aha! I found the full moderation FAQ. Try reading it, if you have any more questions.
--
BTW: There's a solution to the Chicken and Egg problem.
--
What do you really want? Do you want to prevent them from using the code in a non-GPL way? Do you want to prevent them from un-GPLing what's already been released? Do you want to allow the proprietary version, but are simply worried about the implications of the GPL release?
A few people have mentioned valuable points:
-
If you're working under contract, you probably have copyright in the code, unless the contract says otherwise
- Even if you don't own the code, if the copyright holders (employer or govt) gave permission to GPL the code, then what's already released is legally GPL.
- The current copyright holder {you|employer|govt} has the right to have future copies released under another (or even multiple!) licenses... If they want to it, it's an issue between you and them.
- One Gotcha: If notable pieces of the GPL code were actually developed by someone else, they may have some right to that portion of the code (dunno about this). That may complicate the proprietarizeation of the code (that part of it_)
-
The GPL doesn't bind the copyright owner. It only binds the non-copyright holder. It says that "unless I say otherwise, you can only distribute this code, or derivative works (e.g. compiled) of it if you let other people have access to the source.
-
Just because the code is GPL doesn't mean that the database they're using is GPL. (someone else pointed this out). This may make them less queasy about letting the code stay GPL.
I guess that the other question to ask is why do they want to non-GPL a future version of the code? If they simply want to keep some of the data that they gather private, then they don't have to GPL the code. If they want to develop proprietary add-ons, then they can keep the already developed portions GPL, and the new parts proprietary (though it would be polite to modularize it so that you can continue to sanely release the GPLed portionsThere's nothing wrong with forking a proprietary version of the code, as long as the copyright holder agrees to it.
If you (as copyright owner) give a copy to someone else and say, "you can develop a proprietary version with this", then they can do whatever you allow them to do with that copy.
The job of a lawyer is to gather together a set of rules -- sometimes old and arcane, and arrange them so that the client can do what they want in a sane, and predictable manner. The biggest difference between this, and the computer world is the language that is being used.
--
What's said here, however, could give the lawyer ideas that he wouldn't have had without our input. Just because you're not a lawyer doesn't mean that you couldn't make a contribution.
I once took a case to the court of appeal, that no lawyer I knew of was willing to touch. I later found out from a law professor, that I almost won the case -- and would have probably won if I had taken it to the next step. (I was going against one of the top two lawyers in the largest firm in Vancouver, and one of the government's top constitutional lawyers).
What I learned in the process is that a lot of lawyers don't necessarily understand the law, fully, themselves. It's not much different than the computing world, where I once had a first year student sheepishly ask me "is it OK to do the assignment this way?" That sheepsih question actually changed the way that recursion vs loops was taught at the U of Alberta, and may have even changed many textbooks since then (I haven't looked recently).
To a thousand eyes, any problem is transparent.
--
Polygram "relented". They offered to allow community radio stations to play 'alternative' music for free. The stations held firm and simply refused to play polygram until they withdrew royalties altogether. Polygram finally gave in to the demand.
Napster is in a similar situation. Record companies have to explicitly say that they want certain tracks/files deleted from napster. Once they do so, Napster has to remove those files.
It is the record companies' decision to have napster remove specific files. Companies /artists that like the service that Napster provides are free to allow their files to be shared on the service.
If people refuse to buy music that is banned on Napster, the RIAA is going to be very slow to pull music from the service.
I think that it's worth noting that the RIAA has not, from what I can find, made an application to get a new ruling from the trial court. I expect that it's because they know that doing so will cost them sales.
The original, blanket, ruling was good for them because it shut down ALL music sharing -- including non-RIAA artists who wanted their music to be available. It would have put the RIAA back firmly in control of all music distribution, including non-RIAA artists. This is what I think they really want in this lawsuit.
Despite their in-court bravado about what napster is supposedly costing them, I'm sure that there's a stack of internal email about what it would cost them to start pulling only their music from napster.
I, like many others, presume that this lawsuit is more about the RIAA wanting control of music distribution than it is about Napster supposedly cutting into their profits. If that's true, then they can't afford to just pull their own music from napster, and it's not going to happen. The reason why is that it would create a powerful ecological niche for smaller music distributors and independant artists.
With a popular, viable non-RIAA-controlled distribution channel available to small artists, artists would not be quite as hungry to get an RIAA contract. The RIAA would have to bargin in better faith with artists.
Fair terms for artists are not in the RIAA's financial interest.
--
I for one, have noticed that I've been purchasing more music since I started using napster than I did before (I'm 39).
I can definitely see college students being the ones least likely to increase their immediate purchasing of CDs, but it's mostly because almost all of their money is going into their education. Once they get a decent paying job, I'd expect that they'll be model consumers of music -- and that their consumption of music is going to be in line with what's available to them via napster.
--
Try calling them up and having a conversation like the following.:
The explanation, if they ask, would be that you're preparing to respond to their actions, and you expect that you'll need the information. (it's far more efficient to deliver a writ direct to the legal department.. It's less likely that it'll get lost/redirected/etc.).There's no reason or need to be specific here. You're setting stuff up, and what you precisely you'll be doing with the targeting information is entirely your business, until the payload lands.
--
Because of the slightly different climate, Canadians have a tendancy to take the probability of environmental extremes more seriously. +40C~-40C is supposedly considered US Mil Spec (104F ~ -40F). In Canada, it's considered outdoor equipment. I can exceed those exremes in one year driving around Alberta. Most years I can get +30~-40 just planting it in my backyard in Edmonton.
A friend ofmine has a story of some oilpatch equipment that froze up while stil inside of it's rated spec (rated to -45C; froze at -37C). He called down to the Texas company that supplied it to complain. The answer:
----In any event, there isn't a whole lot of conspiracy theory around the Avrow. The generally accepted theory is that the US needed many of those hot engineers for the Apollo project. That's where many of them went when the Arrow was tanked.
You didn't think that the States could get all the way to the moon without foreign help, did you?
As to the Avro enginering data being destroyed, it makes complete sense to me. The system was capable of doing stuff that the US was either incapable of, or unwilling to acknowledge being capable of. With most of the engineers going over to NASA associated work, the project was going to be, at best, mothballed for a long time. The last thing that you want is to have all this engineering data stacked in a warehouse somewhere just waiting for a Soviet Spy to cart it off to the Embassy. Far better to just trash the existing data, and rebuild from scratch later when/if you decide to do it again. Besides -- by the time they'd get around to restarting the project available technology could be expected to have advanced beyond whatever miracles they'd produced back then.
Pretty much the same thing was done with the Saturn 5 engines when NASA decided to go to the Space Shuttle. Although some people feel that it was done to prevent the ability to go back to non-reusable craft, I think that the security explanation is quite applicable here as well.
--
Although that should probably include enough information to access the postings as separate items, there's a little bit less excuse to ask for the searching code (though there's no reason to not at least ask).
I remember that DEC had an archive of older postings in the late '80s/early 90's. I think that it was Gene Spafford that put it together. Does anybody know what happened to the older archive?
(as an aside, I remember a reference to the value of being able to access DEC drives at internal cost price)
--
--
--
You're not likely to actually shrink the coin It might be possible to burn off some of the metal, leaving a smaller coin. What I notice, however, is that some of the features are shifted (e.g. the liberty is moved almost onto the throat in ond picture). It leaves me thinking that the 'shrunk' coins are simply coins re-done slighly smaller.
--
can it change pennies into quarters?
No, but for 20, we can turn a quarter into a nickel. (would that be inflation or deflation?)
--
It doesn't say much more than the Science Daily article, but it has a whole slew of interesting-looking links on it.
--
Think about it for a moment: How many people do you know that have Linux 0.X kernels out there? How many people do you know that have linux 2.X kernels on CD?. If society had a nuclear war today, an archeologist would be far more likely to find a 2.X kernel than a 0.X kernel. That doesn't mean that 0.X doesn't exist.
A proto turtle would be analogous to a Linux 0.X -- interesting, but rare.
<rant> In any case, the 'catastrophists' and 'classical' evolutionists schools are mostly differing on the form of evolution, not the validity of it. Some people may latch onto the former as disproving evolution. In my world -- even though the catastrophist approach is more consistent with biblical view, I don't think that it's necessarily inconsistent with the basic concept of evolution.
I also don't feel that evolution is necessarily inconsistent withThe Bible. The Bible has lots of ambiguity in it. For example, we don't know how long God's first days were. We do know that the earth didn't exist until the second, so it's clear that God's evening and morning have little, if anything, to do with the earth's rotation. </rant>
--
Under cross-examination, the lawyers might ask questions that the judge hadn't thought of. It wouldn't invalidate the questions of the judge, but it would simply offer both sides the opportunity to put their own questions to the court appointed expert.
As was mentioned in the release -- Judges (federal judges, at least) have had the right to appoint their own experts since 1993
--