"CNN already never bore much credibility in my book"
ACtually, in my book, they have a good bit of credibility, in some matters. Geopolitics and military issues they do some really good work, second to none. Technology, however, they are horrid on.
God help us if CNN gets seriously interested in the rave scene...
Hmm... We have limited rights to enforce our laws on foreign citizens on our military bases subject to the SOFA(Status of Forces Agreement) which outlines jurisdiction for crimes involving US citizens/foreign citizens based on duty status at time of crime, on or off base location, whether it involved only foreigners on base or only US off base, they get complicated and generally only apply when US Military personnell or the dependents are involved as victims or accused, or when the crime takes place on board a military installation.
In general though, I don't think so, though it is entirely possible that some treaty or another apart from the SOFA might give us limited foreign enforcement of our laws.
First, the FDA did not approve the device. They simply made an administrative determination that they do not posess the authority to approve or deny the devices use.
Second... All biblical stuff aside, this is disturbing. Installation is a simple procedure according to the artice, but what about removal? I assume its probably simple, but who knows?
Thankfully, its an opt in device.
I can see a handful of legitimate uses for such a device being mandatory. Well, one. Special operations forces could use a similar device with a GPS reciever for coordinating with other teams and higher headquarters. Those sorts of operators must travel light and can't lose equipment or they could give their position away, so there would be significant tactical benefit to it being mounted internally. For regular troops, external GPS will work just as well if not better with less privacy concerns. Remember, while joining the Armed Forces means giving up some of your constitutional rights, the general doctrine for such things is constitutional rights may only be sacrificed when ABSOLUTELY necesary for building an effective force and maintaining military discipline. An implanted ID card like this just goes too far for anyone but special operations.
Still, while I don't like it, as long as it remains optional, its ok. For most people though, SMART cards will probably be better, and if you need emergency notification of the hospital in the event of emergency, a heart rate monitor(they should be smaller than the one I used when I was a kid) attached externally to the waist with a transmitter shoudl work just as well...
Honestly, he'd probably have committed suicide weeks if not months earlier if not for the game... The game obviously gave him something he was lacking elsewhere. So why didn't his mom sit him down and talk about it, maybe hang out with him while he played it, and helped him make the emotional connections outside the game he made inside the game? RPGs online and off can be a big help! One of my good friends is bipolar(manic depressive) and his psychologist actively encourages RPGs as a creative outlet and a way to help him deal with his problems. And you know what- IT WORKED. He was far from perfectly stable, but he was dealing with it quite well and getting better almost daily. Rather than demonizing the game, she should have used it to help her son.
Its a pity he died, but its not EQ's fault. Its more the moms fault for not stepping in and either cutting her son off entirely, or better yet learning about the game and using it to show her son "See that elf you made friends with? You can do the same with the cute girl at work! Just approach and say hi!"
If they pull it off, great. If they even come close it will only be good news. Make it like the CPU world, where if AMD or Intel slacks off on improving their offerings, the other will eat them alive. Google is so far ahead of its competitors that they could slack off and still be #1 for quite some time. If Teoma works hard and gets close, or offers features Google doesn't, then Google will be forced to improve constantly, and not slack off at all.
I wouldn't go that far... Hearing what has worked for people in the real world, in addition to professional medical advice, is valuable. It will give a little more meaning to the doctors medical jargon. Of course, he shouldn't select a treatment option based solely on slashdot comments, but he could say
"Doctor, I heard about treatment X, what do you think of that?"
Doctor says: " Hmmm... that might work for you, lets run some tests"
After tests doctor says: "That will work best... lets set the date"
Granted, it may not trun out like that, but it cannot hurt for the patient to take even some unofficial knowledge, so long as he understands that only a doctor can determine if that information is applicable to his specific case.
On that note, the Hewlett Packard Pavillion mx70(and probably the other mx monitors) have two preset Brightness/contrast modes, one for text, one for video. It helps alot, without the trouble of fiddling around to find your ideal setting. Of course, manual setting will have better results, but the auto settings do help.
I don't know if these monitors are available seperately from the HP Pavillion PCs though.
Probably. Still, its an advance, and with the internet being central to todays computing experience, with this tech on the horizon, its an incentive to keep Moores Law going(in addition to the fact that if AMD OR Intel slacked off the other would eat them alive)
Also, as I said in a previous comment, this would have potentially huge advantages over current network technologies in clustering.
Clustering. Currently the bottleneck in clusters is network connections, simply put most computers you will cluster are faster than 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks. THe faster you move the data between systems, the faster your cluster- High end supercomputers do this, maximizing transmission speed between the individual porcessors as much or more than the CPU speed.
Lets say you take 4 Quad PIV 1Ghz systems, build two Beowulf clusters. The one with Tb/sec networking between the systems will be faster, noticeably, than the one with Gb/s networking.
This will also push things like Gb/s networking from its heights down to the average person. I don't see the average person having a Tb/s network anytime soon, but Gb/s networking will probably be more common within a couple of years. That will probably be the biggest benefit of this advance, the people that absolutely need the fastest networks go to Tb/s, and those that only WANT a fast network now get Gb/s
"Google takes the first amendment very seriously. We are also obligated to follow the laws of the land."
True.
"It is not within our discretion as a company to decide when to conform to the DMCA and when to ignore it."
Bullshit. The CoS(Crate of Shit... ummm Church of Scientology) attempt to use the DMCA is unconstitutional. www.xenu.net is a journalistic site. Therefore it is protected under freedom of the press, WHICH CANNOT BE SUPERSEDED BY ANY LAW LESS THAN A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Therefore, the DMCA DOES NOT apply.
Since when does federal law allow a company to stifle the free press? Only a Constitutional Amendment would have that power, and none have been passed to date that would do so(though it probably isnt' far off). Operation Clambake is clearly a journalistic effort, as such it is protected by the Freedom of the Press. It is also individually the Free Speech of the people who have contributed to it.
"Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Thats two clauses of this amendment that this use of the DMCA violates. Therfore, REGARDLESS of the text of the DMCA, Google was not required to remove the links.
I've sent an email to google comments@google.com quoting the First Amendment and explaining how it invalidates this use of the DMCA in this situation. Concluding with this demand:
"If those links are not back on Google within 3 days, I will cease all use of google for any purposes and will begin a boycott campaign, or, if one has already begun by then, throw my full weight to support it.My personal website will contain encouragement not to use google and my signature file attached to my emails will be modified with such an encouragement added."
And I intend to. Whose with me? This is just too far.
Problem is, legally speaking, you never had the right to release it under the GPL to begin with. All code you release in violation of such a contract is illegal, regardless of what license you used. If your contract states that your employer owns the rights to the code, then you are NOT allowed to release it under the GPL. No matter who touches it, it IS NOT under the GPL regardless of any statements in included docs or comment fields, UNLESS your employer wants it to be.
This is not defending child porn as free speech. This is a position they took because of potential "false positives". Should a 19 year old who looks 15 be banned from having her nude photos on the web? Should we accept the risk that the government could expand this into legitmate but offensive speech?
Child porn is most definitely NOT protected under the first amendment. Even if a case could be made that it is, the Supreme Court would almost certainly make a "spirit of the constitution" ruling rather than "letter of the constitution" ruling in the matter. However, there is a significant risk that this law could prevent some women and men who are of legal age and desire to be nude models on the internet from putting their pics up and having them seen, and carries the risk of being expanded to other areas like communism, the KKK, neo nazis, gay bashers, etc....
Again, it isn't the child porn they are standing up for- but potential fals positives and extensions of this concept that they are standing against.
"While I'm as big a conspiracy theorist as anyone, I do think this could actually stop some child porn."
Some, yes. But in this case, the potential side effects are too severe. What exactly qualifies as child porn? Some sites have pictures of young women in the 18-20 range, that look like they could be younger, yet they aren't. You therefore could stop legal content on the basis that it looks illegal, yet the site administrators have detailed records proving that all their models are legal.
Also, there are some girls under 18 who can easily pass for older... Sites with those girls could pass through, while the 15 year old girl is being abused by her father and exploted all over the internet, nothing done to stop it.
The only way this could possibly be applied fairly and effectively would be to get all porn sites that have models of even slightly questionable age, submit to Penssylvania all their records regarding models ages. And then Penn would have to check all thsoe records, those that didn't pass muster, and those sites that refused/couldn't provide records get blocked. The manpower requirements for such a review are staggering, as are the privacy implications for the models and photographers involved.
Then you get into the realm of how much skin has to be shown for the picture to be considered porn? Is it a breast? Full nudity? Partial with sexual contact? What if its a vacation pic from a nude beach somewhere and in the background there is a topless 16 year old? What about a pic of your childs first unassisted bath? And how do these standards change as the child gets older? Does a pic of a 16 year old have to be covered as much as an 8 year old or can the teen get away with showing more?
I don't even need to get into potential extensions of the law into other areas.
While well intentioned, it just won't work. A better law would perhaps be to require ISPs to report any violations of the law they discover in the process of doing business, if they aren't already. With a clause stating they they do not have to monitor, but must report if they decide to monitor or otherwise find out.
The law also ignores USENET, P2P, email, IRC, IM programs as conduits for this stuff.
Besides, the entity in the United states that has the power to regulate interstate and international commerce is the Congress of the United States, and out of state connections over the Internet would be covered by that. This law is constitutionally invalid.
"Here's a free clue: QUIT USING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE."
Ok, we stop using Microsoft software. That will require a significant investment in terms of getting new software, possibly new hardware if the switch takes us to another OS, a significant expenditure at least in time if not loads of money to get new people trained, a loss of productivity while workers get used to the new system...
Then, the time we've spent doing hardware and software changes and training our people on the new stuff, people who seriously want to fuck with us will use that time to develop ways to beat our new system. The new system might be inherently less vulnerable, but nothing is unvulnerable, and with the new system that is "more secure" the users will assume that means they can be less careful, which will cause all sorts of problems.
Granted, most companies probably should seriously look at alternatives to Microsoft. But the knee jerk reaction to just switch is at least as stupid as complacently staying with MS products. A new product may offer *potential* security and performance benefits, but if the concerns I mentioned above are not seriously looked at and adressed properly and carefully, the switch will cause far more problems than it will solve.
"But in the shareware industry, which can't function without Internet distribution, this freedom of theft can be much worse."
Hmm... Sharware worked fine on BBS's and through mail order in the late 80's and early 90's. In fact, at least 75% of the software my family used when we started in the computer world was mail order shareware through regular old snail mail. WE didn't even have a modem until we had the PC for about 3 and a half years.
In fact, it was truly shareware... These days, whats called shareware is little more than functional demos. If it dies after a period of time, lacks critical abilities, etc... it isn't shareware.
Shareware registration normally wasn't required to use the program. REgistration generally got you nice things like automatically mailed upgrades, clip art collections(in the case of programs that used such things) printed manuals, document templates, level editors, stuff like that... Cool stuff that made the program more useful, but the program still did all that it was advertised to do even without registration.
These days, it may do all its advertised to do... For 30 days.
I liked AmiPro- The whole Lotus Smart Suite was a good package, it was the standard office package for the US Marine Corps until late 98 when orders came down to switch to MS Office. Even then, alot of units and individual departments still used Ami/Word pro. By the time I got out though(last october) it was dead... A few copies kept around in the event you needed to work with old data, but effectively dead. In fact, at my last unit, you just about needed a written request from an officer to get a copy installed.
Treason is an overstatement, but in his case, the penalties would be stiff, and could depending on the circumstances and who he distributes it to, could be considered treason. The non disclosure agreement sets penalties of 10 years and 10,000 dollars for EACH violation of the security regs. For example:
Classified fact a classified fact b classified fact c classified fact d classified fact e
If those were real classified facts, I could easily end up in jail for 50 years for this post.
It may not technically be treason, but it can be as severe and match the spirit of treason if not the letter of the definition.
IANAL, however I did work in military intelligence and information security.
From what I understand, in this case, the government agency responsible for the code changes would be required to distribute those changes to any agency they distribute the binaries too... This should not, as I understand it, mean the individual users of the software.
For example, lets say the Navy sends copies of the binaries to Electric Boat(a sub manufacturer). They would be required to send the source to Electric boat as well.
However, in this case, it is Electric Boats IT department that is the receiver of the binary, NOT the electric boat employee who uses the software. Therefore, the source can legally be kept inside a safe at the CMCC(classified material control center), shown only to the IT department and others with an established need to know.
However, in any case, regardless of license, if the source changes reveal classified information it would be illegal to release them to the general public. I'd wager that even if that turned out to be a direct violation of the GPL, the classification side of the case would win in court.
With all that said, I would recommend you push for release of all source changes that do not reveal classified information. I realize that might not be much, but what you can, go for it.
Just went through it... You'd expect a press release about this... not a word on acclaims website about this. This article just seems absurd. There is no way this would actually be done...
I'm hoping that this was meant as an april fools article that just accidentally got published early. Thats what it sounds like...
If, say, a world champion Quake player gets massive fame and becomes basically identified with Quake, and dies while whichever version of quake he played was still current, then it is appropriate to approach the family and suggest memorializing his quake fanatacism on the tombstone, and offering to pay the entire cost of the funeral, plus however much they would pay for a similar size advertisement in a more traditional location.
One other possibility- if the deceased requested prior to death to put something about a favorite game or game company on the tombstone, by all means allow it.
It all boils down to respect for the deceased. In the first case, you are honoring an acheivement or series of acheivements he/she made. In the second, you are honoring the request of the deceased.
Any other reason, is just disrespectful... and under no circumstances should the family pay for a funeral if the company approached them first.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'd expect some government-level security on those things!!"
You actually WANT government level security?!?!?!?
Not to mention that 2000(when still called NT5) was supposed to be out in 97.
"CNN already never bore much credibility in my book"
ACtually, in my book, they have a good bit of credibility, in some matters. Geopolitics and military issues they do some really good work, second to none. Technology, however, they are horrid on.
God help us if CNN gets seriously interested in the rave scene...
Hmm... We have limited rights to enforce our laws on foreign citizens on our military bases subject to the SOFA(Status of Forces Agreement) which outlines jurisdiction for crimes involving US citizens/foreign citizens based on duty status at time of crime, on or off base location, whether it involved only foreigners on base or only US off base, they get complicated and generally only apply when US Military personnell or the dependents are involved as victims or accused, or when the crime takes place on board a military installation.
In general though, I don't think so, though it is entirely possible that some treaty or another apart from the SOFA might give us limited foreign enforcement of our laws.
First, the FDA did not approve the device. They simply made an administrative determination that they do not posess the authority to approve or deny the devices use.
Second... All biblical stuff aside, this is disturbing. Installation is a simple procedure according to the artice, but what about removal? I assume its probably simple, but who knows?
Thankfully, its an opt in device.
I can see a handful of legitimate uses for such a device being mandatory. Well, one. Special operations forces could use a similar device with a GPS reciever for coordinating with other teams and higher headquarters. Those sorts of operators must travel light and can't lose equipment or they could give their position away, so there would be significant tactical benefit to it being mounted internally. For regular troops, external GPS will work just as well if not better with less privacy concerns. Remember, while joining the Armed Forces means giving up some of your constitutional rights, the general doctrine for such things is constitutional rights may only be sacrificed when ABSOLUTELY necesary for building an effective force and maintaining military discipline. An implanted ID card like this just goes too far for anyone but special operations.
Still, while I don't like it, as long as it remains optional, its ok. For most people though, SMART cards will probably be better, and if you need emergency notification of the hospital in the event of emergency, a heart rate monitor(they should be smaller than the one I used when I was a kid) attached externally to the waist with a transmitter shoudl work just as well...
Honestly, he'd probably have committed suicide weeks if not months earlier if not for the game... The game obviously gave him something he was lacking elsewhere. So why didn't his mom sit him down and talk about it, maybe hang out with him while he played it, and helped him make the emotional connections outside the game he made inside the game? RPGs online and off can be a big help! One of my good friends is bipolar(manic depressive) and his psychologist actively encourages RPGs as a creative outlet and a way to help him deal with his problems. And you know what- IT WORKED. He was far from perfectly stable, but he was dealing with it quite well and getting better almost daily. Rather than demonizing the game, she should have used it to help her son.
Its a pity he died, but its not EQ's fault. Its more the moms fault for not stepping in and either cutting her son off entirely, or better yet learning about the game and using it to show her son "See that elf you made friends with? You can do the same with the cute girl at work! Just approach and say hi!"
If they pull it off, great. If they even come close it will only be good news. Make it like the CPU world, where if AMD or Intel slacks off on improving their offerings, the other will eat them alive. Google is so far ahead of its competitors that they could slack off and still be #1 for quite some time. If Teoma works hard and gets close, or offers features Google doesn't, then Google will be forced to improve constantly, and not slack off at all.
I wouldn't go that far... Hearing what has worked for people in the real world, in addition to professional medical advice, is valuable. It will give a little more meaning to the doctors medical jargon. Of course, he shouldn't select a treatment option based solely on slashdot comments, but he could say
"Doctor, I heard about treatment X, what do you think of that?"
Doctor says: " Hmmm... that might work for you, lets run some tests"
After tests doctor says: "That will work best... lets set the date"
Granted, it may not trun out like that, but it cannot hurt for the patient to take even some unofficial knowledge, so long as he understands that only a doctor can determine if that information is applicable to his specific case.
On that note, the Hewlett Packard Pavillion mx70(and probably the other mx monitors) have two preset Brightness/contrast modes, one for text, one for video. It helps alot, without the trouble of fiddling around to find your ideal setting. Of course, manual setting will have better results, but the auto settings do help.
I don't know if these monitors are available seperately from the HP Pavillion PCs though.
Probably. Still, its an advance, and with the internet being central to todays computing experience, with this tech on the horizon, its an incentive to keep Moores Law going(in addition to the fact that if AMD OR Intel slacked off the other would eat them alive)
Also, as I said in a previous comment, this would have potentially huge advantages over current network technologies in clustering.
Clustering. Currently the bottleneck in clusters is network connections, simply put most computers you will cluster are faster than 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks. THe faster you move the data between systems, the faster your cluster- High end supercomputers do this, maximizing transmission speed between the individual porcessors as much or more than the CPU speed.
Lets say you take 4 Quad PIV 1Ghz systems, build two Beowulf clusters. The one with Tb/sec networking between the systems will be faster, noticeably, than the one with Gb/s networking.
This will also push things like Gb/s networking from its heights down to the average person. I don't see the average person having a Tb/s network anytime soon, but Gb/s networking will probably be more common within a couple of years. That will probably be the biggest benefit of this advance, the people that absolutely need the fastest networks go to Tb/s, and those that only WANT a fast network now get Gb/s
"Google takes the first amendment very seriously. We are also obligated to
follow the laws of the land."
True.
"It is not within our discretion as a company to decide when
to conform to the DMCA and when to ignore it."
Bullshit. The CoS(Crate of Shit... ummm Church of Scientology) attempt to use the DMCA is unconstitutional. www.xenu.net is a journalistic site. Therefore it is protected under freedom of the press, WHICH CANNOT BE SUPERSEDED BY ANY LAW LESS THAN A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Therefore, the DMCA DOES NOT apply.
Since when does federal law allow a company to stifle the free press? Only a Constitutional Amendment would have that power, and none have been passed to date that would do so(though it probably isnt' far off). Operation Clambake is clearly a journalistic effort, as such it is protected by the Freedom of the Press. It is also individually the Free Speech of the people who have contributed to it.
"Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Thats two clauses of this amendment that this use of the DMCA violates. Therfore, REGARDLESS of the text of the DMCA, Google was not required to remove the links.
I've sent an email to google comments@google.com quoting the First Amendment and explaining how it invalidates this use of the DMCA in this situation. Concluding with this demand:
"If those links are not back on Google within 3 days, I will cease all use of
google for any purposes and will begin a boycott campaign, or, if one has
already begun by then, throw my full weight to support it.My personal
website will contain encouragement not to use google and my signature file
attached to my emails will be modified with such an encouragement added."
And I intend to. Whose with me? This is just too far.
Problem is, legally speaking, you never had the right to release it under the GPL to begin with. All code you release in violation of such a contract is illegal, regardless of what license you used. If your contract states that your employer owns the rights to the code, then you are NOT allowed to release it under the GPL. No matter who touches it, it IS NOT under the GPL regardless of any statements in included docs or comment fields, UNLESS your employer wants it to be.
This is not defending child porn as free speech. This is a position they took because of potential "false positives". Should a 19 year old who looks 15 be banned from having her nude photos on the web? Should we accept the risk that the government could expand this into legitmate but offensive speech?
Child porn is most definitely NOT protected under the first amendment. Even if a case could be made that it is, the Supreme Court would almost certainly make a "spirit of the constitution" ruling rather than "letter of the constitution" ruling in the matter. However, there is a significant risk that this law could prevent some women and men who are of legal age and desire to be nude models on the internet from putting their pics up and having them seen, and carries the risk of being expanded to other areas like communism, the KKK, neo nazis, gay bashers, etc....
Again, it isn't the child porn they are standing up for- but potential fals positives and extensions of this concept that they are standing against.
"While I'm as big a conspiracy theorist as anyone, I do think this could actually stop some child porn."
Some, yes. But in this case, the potential side effects are too severe. What exactly qualifies as child porn? Some sites have pictures of young women in the 18-20 range, that look like they could be younger, yet they aren't. You therefore could stop legal content on the basis that it looks illegal, yet the site administrators have detailed records proving that all their models are legal.
Also, there are some girls under 18 who can easily pass for older... Sites with those girls could pass through, while the 15 year old girl is being abused by her father and exploted all over the internet, nothing done to stop it.
The only way this could possibly be applied fairly and effectively would be to get all porn sites that have models of even slightly questionable age, submit to Penssylvania all their records regarding models ages. And then Penn would have to check all thsoe records, those that didn't pass muster, and those sites that refused/couldn't provide records get blocked. The manpower requirements for such a review are staggering, as are the privacy implications for the models and photographers involved.
Then you get into the realm of how much skin has to be shown for the picture to be considered porn? Is it a breast? Full nudity? Partial with sexual contact? What if its a vacation pic from a nude beach somewhere and in the background there is a topless 16 year old? What about a pic of your childs first unassisted bath? And how do these standards change as the child gets older? Does a pic of a 16 year old have to be covered as much as an 8 year old or can the teen get away with showing more?
I don't even need to get into potential extensions of the law into other areas.
While well intentioned, it just won't work. A better law would perhaps be to require ISPs to report any violations of the law they discover in the process of doing business, if they aren't already. With a clause stating they they do not have to monitor, but must report if they decide to monitor or otherwise find out.
The law also ignores USENET, P2P, email, IRC, IM programs as conduits for this stuff.
Besides, the entity in the United states that has the power to regulate interstate and international commerce is the Congress of the United States, and out of state connections over the Internet would be covered by that. This law is constitutionally invalid.
Are you guys making this a humour site?
"Here's a free clue: QUIT USING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE."
Ok, we stop using Microsoft software. That will require a significant investment in terms of getting new software, possibly new hardware if the switch takes us to another OS, a significant expenditure at least in time if not loads of money to get new people trained, a loss of productivity while workers get used to the new system...
Then, the time we've spent doing hardware and software changes and training our people on the new stuff, people who seriously want to fuck with us will use that time to develop ways to beat our new system. The new system might be inherently less vulnerable, but nothing is unvulnerable, and with the new system that is "more secure" the users will assume that means they can be less careful, which will cause all sorts of problems.
Granted, most companies probably should seriously look at alternatives to Microsoft. But the knee jerk reaction to just switch is at least as stupid as complacently staying with MS products. A new product may offer *potential* security and performance benefits, but if the concerns I mentioned above are not seriously looked at and adressed properly and carefully, the switch will cause far more problems than it will solve.
"But in the shareware industry, which can't function without Internet distribution, this freedom of theft can be much worse."
Hmm... Sharware worked fine on BBS's and through mail order in the late 80's and early 90's. In fact, at least 75% of the software my family used when we started in the computer world was mail order shareware through regular old snail mail. WE didn't even have a modem until we had the PC for about 3 and a half years.
In fact, it was truly shareware... These days, whats called shareware is little more than functional demos. If it dies after a period of time, lacks critical abilities, etc... it isn't shareware.
Shareware registration normally wasn't required to use the program. REgistration generally got you nice things like automatically mailed upgrades, clip art collections(in the case of programs that used such things) printed manuals, document templates, level editors, stuff like that... Cool stuff that made the program more useful, but the program still did all that it was advertised to do even without registration.
These days, it may do all its advertised to do... For 30 days.
Counterpoints to your agument:)
>What about random crashes for no reason?
Windows.
>buggy software ?
Windows.
>unpredictable performance?
Windows.
>Installations that wouldnt work for no apparent >reason?
Mandrake Linux 8.0.
>Cryix processor issues ?
Cyrix processors.
>Applications that didnt work properly ?
Windows.
I liked AmiPro- The whole Lotus Smart Suite was a good package, it was the standard office package for the US Marine Corps until late 98 when orders came down to switch to MS Office. Even then, alot of units and individual departments still used Ami/Word pro. By the time I got out though(last october) it was dead... A few copies kept around in the event you needed to work with old data, but effectively dead. In fact, at my last unit, you just about needed a written request from an officer to get a copy installed.
Treason is an overstatement, but in his case, the penalties would be stiff, and could depending on the circumstances and who he distributes it to, could be considered treason. The non disclosure agreement sets penalties of 10 years and 10,000 dollars for EACH violation of the security regs. For example:
Classified fact a
classified fact b
classified fact c
classified fact d
classified fact e
If those were real classified facts, I could easily end up in jail for 50 years for this post.
It may not technically be treason, but it can be as severe and match the spirit of treason if not the letter of the definition.
IANAL, however I did work in military intelligence and information security.
From what I understand, in this case, the government agency responsible for the code changes would be required to distribute those changes to any agency they distribute the binaries too... This should not, as I understand it, mean the individual users of the software.
For example, lets say the Navy sends copies of the binaries to Electric Boat(a sub manufacturer). They would be required to send the source to Electric boat as well.
However, in this case, it is Electric Boats IT department that is the receiver of the binary, NOT the electric boat employee who uses the software. Therefore, the source can legally be kept inside a safe at the CMCC(classified material control center), shown only to the IT department and others with an established need to know.
However, in any case, regardless of license, if the source changes reveal classified information it would be illegal to release them to the general public. I'd wager that even if that turned out to be a direct violation of the GPL, the classification side of the case would win in court.
With all that said, I would recommend you push for release of all source changes that do not reveal classified information. I realize that might not be much, but what you can, go for it.
Just went through it... You'd expect a press release about this... not a word on acclaims website about this. This article just seems absurd. There is no way this would actually be done...
I'm hoping that this was meant as an april fools article that just accidentally got published early. Thats what it sounds like...
If, say, a world champion Quake player gets massive fame and becomes basically identified with Quake, and dies while whichever version of quake he played was still current, then it is appropriate to approach the family and suggest memorializing his quake fanatacism on the tombstone, and offering to pay the entire cost of the funeral, plus however much they would pay for a similar size advertisement in a more traditional location.
One other possibility- if the deceased requested prior to death to put something about a favorite game or game company on the tombstone, by all means allow it.
It all boils down to respect for the deceased. In the first case, you are honoring an acheivement or series of acheivements he/she made. In the second, you are honoring the request of the deceased.
Any other reason, is just disrespectful... and under no circumstances should the family pay for a funeral if the company approached them first.