Actually, I believe the legal term for what SCO is doing is 'barratry', and it is illegal last time I checked. Threatening legal action without grounds in order to blackmail someone into doing something completely unrelated is one way to get yourself sued right back, thrown in jail, and/or if you're a lawyer, disbarred, depending on the law in your area. IANAL, but look up the term in any legal dictionary. (BTW, 'barratry' is also used to refer to certain maritime crimes, but we can probably ignore that meaning.)
A different aspect of the same legal principle may apply to SCO's law firm, if they are the ones advising Mr. McBride to say these things; that is, stirring up a dispute in order to drum up business and fees, whether or not the client has a valid case or not.
Could this be useful, or am I just full of it? What do you guys and gals think?
Along a similar vein, I remember a program that would play music on a 5 1/4" floppy drive. I think it was part of "stupid PC tricks." Has anyone else heard of this or am I just hallucinating again?
All a degree tells me is that, at some point in your life, you had more money than knowledge. Letters after your name don't mean squat. Tell, me, bitte, Herr Einstein, what university did Thomas Edison attend? Just what degree did he have? You elitist swine that think having daddy send you to the university for a few years makes you intellectual super-men just make me sick. Let's see how far the book learning of some Harvard grad gets him in oh, say, Compton, vs. the street smarts of a local kid. Any takers?
Yeah, but I bet the twenty-somethings can do metric-to-standard conversions correctly, having had it thrown at them since kindergarten.:P Now if only we could find a way to swap NASA's budget with that of the military...
The greatest geek that has ever lived is quoted as once having said this of knowledge and teaching: "If you can not explain it to an eight-year-old, you do not truly understand it." Unless you somehow leapt out of the womb with all of your knowledge already in place, you owe everything you know to someone that got the information to you, that is, a teacher. Be it Mrs. So-and-so from jr. high band class or the writer of the man page for grep, a teacher gave you all the knowledge you have. If it were not for teachers allowing us to build on the shoulders of giants, we would all be discussing the latest beta test of fire while scratching our hide-covered club-swinging selves. Until I read your post, I had thought that the people of the Neander valley had all died out.
And what makes you so sure that a little chemical lovin' isn't exactly what the Drones had in mind to keep the herd in line? Give those pesky bellwethers a "safe" (for the Drones) outlet for their wandering tendencies. If the herd is allowed to revel in these little rebellions, (75 MPH, how deviant!) they won't notice when the first ten amendments to the Constitution are quietly dismantled with legal technicalities. So "please" yourself and think a little. Birkenstocks and piercings do not a Rebel make. The most effective rebellion I recall was led by a bunch of guys like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. If these guys weren't geeks, I don't know who is. (Who else would think of flying a kite in a lightning storm to see if it would shock you!) They sure as fsck weren't a bunch of little yuppie-larvae living off of daddy's money (or welfare, much the same thing in many cases...no offense intended to those that are actually making an effort but need a leg up), smoking pot and painting their hair trendy colors and calling themselves revolutionary thereby. Until you are capable of recognizing the "system" for what it is and start looking for the loopholes and weaknesses; to hack it; you are still just part of the herd. Even in real life, you've got to pick your pill.
It's getting deep! The part where RIAA says Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. looks like a bunch of FUD to me. I read the Audio Home Recording Act at Cornell's online law library and it specifically says that it has NOTHING to do with anything that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer programs or data bases. It doesn't say anything about disallowing fair-use copies for personal use using computer equipment instead of a minidisc recorder. It just says that manufacturers of multi-purpose recording equipment don't have to pay royalties. The only activity labeled as illegal by the act is the manufacture or import of a "music recording device" (which by definition contained in the act _excludes_ computer equipment) without making royalty payments. I say that they're full of it. If any of you get a different reading out of the actual text of the act, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I say RIAA can just stuff it.
This guy just doesn't know when to re-examine his position. Linux is (thank ye Gods!) NOT Mac OS. It will never be Mac OS. It's a powerful tool creaded by gearheads for gearheads, and that's what has driven the community to such success. If that tool happens to have become good enough that it is being packaged and sold to Joe Clueless, it does not mean that we should have to stoop to the level of the least common denominator. I would hate to see good functionality projects fall by the wayside because everyone is busy worrying about how to make a little paperclip buddy for gnome. (viGor here we come!) This guy needs to realize that maybe the clock on his VCR should stop blinking 12:00 before he starts analysing server operating systems.
One of the proposals that Kurzweil makes in Age of Spiritual Machines is: what if the process were gradual? One cell at a time, replaced with an inorganic nanite that replicates the function of that cell along with some added functionality to make the swap worth the effort. Never any full duplication of the whole, just a gradual transition of the "wavefront" that represents the "self" from organic to inorganic composition. What is the difference between that and the natural process of the body replacing old, dead cells with new? How much of the matter in your body has actually followded you all your life and how much is this morning's pizza breakfast?
Since my knowledge of psychology is only rudimentary, I may be completely wrong, but I would imagine that there are only so many ways that one could ask the kind of loaded questions that would be required to get this kind of information about someone. Otherwise they would have to re-invent the set of indicators that they used for every permutation of the test. Would it not be a simple task to compile a set of answers to generic forms of these loaded questions based on a selection of "profiles?" A "cheat sheet," if you will, for the test. These cheat sheets could be posted as HOWTO documents, allowing the enterprising testee to show up, at their choice, as Antichrist Herself, the next Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, or Droopy the Dog.
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Actually, I believe the legal term for what SCO is doing is 'barratry', and it is illegal last time I checked. Threatening legal action without grounds in order to blackmail someone into doing something completely unrelated is one way to get yourself sued right back, thrown in jail, and/or if you're a lawyer, disbarred, depending on the law in your area. IANAL, but look up the term in any legal dictionary. (BTW, 'barratry' is also used to refer to certain maritime crimes, but we can probably ignore that meaning.)
A different aspect of the same legal principle may apply to SCO's law firm, if they are the ones advising Mr. McBride to say these things; that is, stirring up a dispute in order to drum up business and fees, whether or not the client has a valid case or not.
Could this be useful, or am I just full of it? What do you guys and gals think?
Along a similar vein, I remember a program that would play music on a 5 1/4" floppy drive. I think it was part of "stupid PC tricks." Has anyone else heard of this or am I just hallucinating again?
All a degree tells me is that, at some point in your life, you had more money than knowledge. Letters after your name don't mean squat. Tell, me, bitte, Herr Einstein, what university did Thomas Edison attend? Just what degree did he have? You elitist swine that think having daddy send you to the university for a few years makes you intellectual super-men just make me sick. Let's see how far the book learning of some Harvard grad gets him in oh, say, Compton, vs. the street smarts of a local kid. Any takers?
Didn't think so.
Yeah, but I bet the twenty-somethings can do metric-to-standard conversions correctly, having had it thrown at them since kindergarten. :P Now if only we could find a way to swap NASA's budget with that of the military...
The greatest geek that has ever lived is quoted as once having said this of knowledge and teaching: "If you can not explain it to an eight-year-old, you do not truly understand it." Unless you somehow leapt out of the womb with all of your knowledge already in place, you owe everything you know to someone that got the information to you, that is, a teacher. Be it Mrs. So-and-so from jr. high band class or the writer of the man page for grep, a teacher gave you all the knowledge you have. If it were not for teachers allowing us to build on the shoulders of giants, we would all be discussing the latest beta test of fire while scratching our hide-covered club-swinging selves. Until I read your post, I had thought that the people of the Neander valley had all died out.
And what makes you so sure that a little chemical lovin' isn't exactly what the Drones had in mind to keep the herd in line? Give those pesky bellwethers a "safe" (for the Drones) outlet for their wandering tendencies. If the herd is allowed to revel in these little rebellions, (75 MPH, how deviant!) they won't notice when the first ten amendments to the Constitution are quietly dismantled with legal technicalities. So "please" yourself and think a little. Birkenstocks and piercings do not a Rebel make.
The most effective rebellion I recall was led by a bunch of guys like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. If these guys weren't geeks, I don't know who is. (Who else would think of flying a kite in a lightning storm to see if it would shock you!) They sure as fsck weren't a bunch of little yuppie-larvae living off of daddy's money (or welfare, much the same thing in many cases...no offense intended to those that are actually making an effort but need a leg up), smoking pot and painting their hair trendy colors and calling themselves revolutionary thereby. Until you are capable of recognizing the "system" for what it is and start looking for the loopholes and weaknesses; to hack it; you are still just part of the herd. Even in real life, you've got to pick your pill.
It's getting deep! The part where RIAA says
Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted.
looks like a bunch of FUD to me. I read the Audio Home Recording Act at Cornell's online law library and it specifically says that it has NOTHING to do with anything
that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer programs or data bases.
It doesn't say anything about disallowing fair-use copies for personal use using computer equipment instead of a minidisc recorder. It just says that manufacturers of multi-purpose recording equipment don't have to pay royalties. The only activity labeled as illegal by the act is the manufacture or import of a "music recording device" (which by definition contained in the act _excludes_ computer equipment) without making royalty payments. I say that they're full of it. If any of you get a different reading out of the actual text of the act, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I say RIAA can just stuff it.
This guy just doesn't know when to re-examine his position. Linux is (thank ye Gods!) NOT Mac OS. It will never be Mac OS. It's a powerful tool creaded by gearheads for gearheads, and that's what has driven the community to such success. If that tool happens to have become good enough that it is being packaged and sold to Joe Clueless, it does not mean that we should have to stoop to the level of the least common denominator. I would hate to see good functionality projects fall by the wayside because everyone is busy worrying about how to make a little paperclip buddy for gnome. (viGor here we come!) This guy needs to realize that maybe the clock on his VCR should stop blinking 12:00 before he starts analysing server operating systems.
One of the proposals that Kurzweil makes in Age of Spiritual Machines is: what if the process were gradual? One cell at a time, replaced with an inorganic nanite that replicates the function of that cell along with some added functionality to make the swap worth the effort. Never any full duplication of the whole, just a gradual transition of the "wavefront" that represents the "self" from organic to inorganic composition. What is the difference between that and the natural process of the body replacing old, dead cells with new? How much of the matter in your body has actually followded you all your life and how much is this morning's pizza breakfast?
Since my knowledge of psychology is only rudimentary, I may be completely wrong, but I would imagine that there are only so many ways that one could ask the kind of loaded questions that would be required to get this kind of information about someone. Otherwise they would have to re-invent the set of indicators that they used for every permutation of the test. Would it not be a simple task to compile a set of answers to generic forms of these loaded questions based on a selection of "profiles?" A "cheat sheet," if you will, for the test. These cheat sheets could be posted as HOWTO documents, allowing the enterprising testee to show up, at their choice, as Antichrist Herself, the next Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, or Droopy the Dog.
Just my few grams of copper and zinc.