"Real" libraries also end up throwing out books, selling them in bulk to be ground up as pig feed, or seeling them for 25 cents each, when they run out of room. Cheaper to throw some of the old, unused stuff out than it is to build an extension.
"I think it does indeed apply to trolls and prist fosters: evolution does not necessarily mean progressit can simply indicate a species adapting to fill a niche."
[X] Hey, I resemble that remark, you ignorant clod!
[X] Its like open source, you "have a niche you want to scratch".
[X] This explains the global obesity epidemic. As supermarket aisles get wider, people evolve to fill that niche.
Of course the urban legend is funnier! What's sad, though, is that Britannica is somehow held up as some sort of "gold standard" in terms of accuracy, when, historically, they've always trailed due to their model - dead trees take time to be updated, and you have to pay someone to rewrite the article, so not every article is rewritten in a timely manner.
Case in point - one of my friends picked up a really old set (pre-WW2, iirc) of Britannica, and he found a really off-the-wall article on the different "races" of humans, and how "the black race" was "intellectually inferior". How many school kids were exposed to that crap in their school or public libraries?
Add to that more crap on phrenology, etc.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, and it will eventually be replaced with something better if it doesn't evolve, unlike Britannica, which is unable to reinvent itself.
"The stupid thing about this is how a few months ago fark went from being fairly open about NSFW imagery, to banning anyone that links to or posts it. Apparently they can make more money by being family(or workplace) friendly."
"Sounds like he's gone into damage control mode to me. He's trying to deflect critics by calling this a "prank." Baloney. What's so funny about this anyway? Nothing. Drew Curtis is a moron. Fuck him."
Sounds like you're bitter... probably because you bit? Must bite to post on slashdot before you've had your morning coffee?
To help you, here's my contribution to the Aconmymica (TM)... NSTRBMC (TM) - Not Safe To Reply Before Morning Coffee?
Seriously though, we all know that there are only a few outcomes, and all of them are good in the end.
If it gets denied, we've all (okay, *most* of us) had a good laugh, sort of like along the "OMFG the gubbermint wants to tax email!!!". jokes.
If it gets accepted, we get to trash-talk the gubbermint some more for stupid copyright laws, and in the end, the law hopefully gets changed once too many of these incidents occur.
So, where's the downside...?
"* Acronymica - a totally made-up word that now actually means something"
At least that's better than the crap standard always trotted out - the "Encyclopedia Britannica:.
"been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as Encyclopedia Britannica"
Go and grab an older copy, and see all the crap that was in there as "science" - a lot of it with a racist bent, or advocating social darwinism. The newer editions aren't any better, in that errors continue to be propounded.
Case in point - back in the '70s, a joke article about "Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet" appeared in the April edition of Scientific American (iirc, it was in one of Martin Gardner's columns). The editors of Britannica, not knowing how to read a calendar, or being unfamiliar with April Fools (they could look it up:-) and with a total lack of awareness, republished it as fact for years and years, even though it was easy enough to disprove if they had done ANY secondary checking of facts. The book cited in the article didn't exist, though several others, all "full of crap" satirizations, did...
Fuck Britanicca. Overpriced, high-pressure sales tactics ("buy the encyclopedia and it'll help your kids in school"... yeah, right), built-in obsolescence, and a VERY slow update/corrections policy. By one estimate, 10% of all articles are off.
"I have yet to find a tool that allows me to treat zip files as part of the filesystem like Explorer does."
Gee, then you'd love linux. Doesn't matter whether you're using a gui or console app such as mc - you can transparently look inside zipped and tarballed files, even copying out individual files, without having to unzip the whole thing.
"*Installs Slackware Hey look guys root is default"
... those of us who cut our teeth on slackware can work all day as root without a problem uphill, both ways, in the winter... and when there's a power failure, we just throw some more coal into our UPS... and ram upgrades? We don't need no stinking ram upgrades. 8 meg is more than enough on our pentium^W486^W386 on our green-screen console.
Kids nowadays! Bah!!! Humbug!!!!!
(... and merry xmas/seasons greetings/whatever floats your boat)
Jury nullification is a definite right. However, it only exists when there is a case that can be presented to the jury in the first place. The SCO vs. Novell litigation doesn't have any facts in dispute that would allow for SCO to claim the right to a jury, and that is SCO's real problem. At every instance, Novell limited their claims to things that wouldn't need a jury, and this gutted any hope SCO had of prevailing by "pounding on the table".
When the law is against you, pound on the facts.
When the facts are against you, pound on the law.
When both the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table.
Fortunately, SCO won't get to the "pound on the table" stage.
Let's make this simple - you do not have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than those who do it for a living.
I've had to fire lawyers too many times in the past and do it myself (civil and criminal cases) because, even with a decade or two of experience, they are STILL woefully ignorant of the law.
Sometime in the next month I will AGAIN be forced to fire a lawyer with several decades of experience who:
didn't do what he was told to do, and as a result of his stupidity, I now have the government on my back - something it would have taken 10-minutes to draft a motion for a stay until trial, another 10 to find a court clerk to find a judge to sign off on it, and 10 more to fax a copy to all parties. And yes, even the government confirmed that this (my way) was the normal, and almost universal, method of proceding in such cases;
wasted MORE time doing shit I told him specifically NOT to do, and which only made matters worse;
in addition, is in violation of the contract we entered into;
I knew I should have done like I always do - represent myself. Anyone can draft their own motions and argue their own cases.
The majority of lawyers are stupid, ignorant, and lazy. Their idea of "keeping up to date" in their field is to gossip; any "updates" to their knowledge - real learning - are done at your expense, in the court, at $250/hour.
The SCO case is not that complicated:
IBM: "Show me the writing!"
SCO: "Novell didn't give us any."
IBM: "Fuck Off and Die"
SCO: "Novell, we want the copyrights!"
Novell: "Nope - you didn't buy them because you didn't have enough money"
SCO: "Give them to us or we'll sue!"
Novell: "Fuck Off and Die"
The rest is just translating this from layperson's terms to terms the court can accept (in other words, motions in legalese), same as any other legal proceding.
Unfortunately, the author of TFA is a known SCOtroll, like the mogtroll, lyin' lyons, and pretenderle, and chose not to include in his citation the list of rights specificially excluded; that list excludes the copyright transfers.
Originally, Santa Cruz (not Caldera (later to change their name to SCO), who only bought a part of Santa Cruz - the rest became Tarantella) was supposed to buy everything, but they didn't have the money. So, they paid a lesser amount to became Novell's agent in the handling of the Unix licenses, passing on 100% of the revenue, and Novell then remitting them a 5% fee.
This is why Ransom Love (head of Caldera, before the name change) stated that Caldera couldn't open source Unix - others held the copyrights.
SCO, as supposedly Caldera's "successor in interest", (but not Santa Cruz's successor in interest, as they did NOT buy out all of Santa Cruz, contrary to the FUD they have been spreading - just some of the assets) should have known this; the lawsuits were predictably as DOA as the rebadged Maxtor drives from the China factory currently being sold by Seagate.
Jurisprudence has settled that wilfull ignorance is not a defense. Besides, Boies et al should have asked for the decumentation that would allow them to legally prove SCO's case. When you go to see a lawyer, you bring your paperwork with you. Its like going to the shit-house - "The job ain't complete until the paperwork is done."
Boies was lazy and/or incompetent. This isn't the first time, btw.
Copyright law REQUIRES that all transfers be in writing. The parties can't agree to do a work-around.
The APA specifically excluded copyrights, since Santa Cruz didn't have enough $$$ to buy everything.
SCO obviously didn't believe that the copyrights had transferred, because before they filed their suit against IBM, they repeatedly asked Novell to transfer them.
The law is clear-cut. Juries are only there to determine the facts of a case. If there are no facts in dispute, there is no option for a jury trial.
In this case, SCO could not show a dispute around the facts. It could not show that there was a law or statute, or even a precedent, that allowed for "implied" transfers of copyright, which would have then led to the "question of fact to be decided by the jury" of whether, in fact, there had been an implied transfer of copyright.
Juries don't decide on points of law. Just the facts of a case. (and yes, I've served on a jury).
The right to a jury trial is not universal. A jury is only needed if there are questions of fact to be decided - juries decide facts, judges decide the application of laws.
In this case, the law was quite clear - without a written transfer of copyright, there were no facts in question for a jury to decide, just the application of the law, which is for a judge.
SCO's theory of an "implied transfer of copyright", without citing a single legal statute, or a judgement or precedent that was not later reversed on appeal, left no legal basis for a jury trial.
I'm just amazed at how many supposedly-knowledgeable people continue to fall for what is utter BS. Anyone reading the comments posted to the article within hours of its' first appearance would have seen the whole thing torn apart - in particular, the legal requirement for a transfer of copywrite to include a written transfer, and that, withut that, judge Kimball could NOT rule in favour of SCO even if he wanted to.
This is the same level of "journalism" as pretendrle and mogtroll. Uninformed. Ditto with all those "analysts" who also came out with buy recommendations, talking through their goatse.cx orifices.
The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.
Boies could have checked the facts and told SCO "you have no case."
All the analysts could have checked the facts and told the world "SCO has no case."
While the average slashdotter may not be a lawyer, we seem to have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than many of the "experts". Why? Because we write code, and we know the consequences of overlooking a missed semicolon, a typo, or starting from wrong assumptions. Lawyers, on the other hand, don't have a financial incentive to give good advice or dig too deeply when it means generating less revenue.
Shakespeare had it right. "First, we kill all the lawyers."
As I point out elsewhere, the Saturn V, in today's dollars, is the same price per launch as the shuttle - but with 6x the payload. No compromises, unlike the shuttle, which was compromised in its iitial design by the requirements of the USAF.
Slashdot Mirror
"Real" libraries also end up throwing out books, selling them in bulk to be ground up as pig feed, or seeling them for 25 cents each, when they run out of room. Cheaper to throw some of the old, unused stuff out than it is to build an extension.
" I find the secret is to lay them spine-down in the attic. Helps immeasurably with heating and cooling costs."
No posts, and already slashdotted!
"I think it does indeed apply to trolls and prist fosters: evolution does not necessarily mean progressit can simply indicate a species adapting to fill a niche."
[X] Hey, I resemble that remark, you ignorant clod!
[X] Its like open source, you "have a niche you want to scratch".
[X] This explains the global obesity epidemic. As supermarket aisles get wider, people evolve to fill that niche.
That's *just* all the stuff that's NSFW. You need variety, or you'll go blind!!!
Or is this (people no longer subject to going blind) more proof that humans are evolving 100x faster because of "social changes"?
Of course the urban legend is funnier! What's sad, though, is that Britannica is somehow held up as some sort of "gold standard" in terms of accuracy, when, historically, they've always trailed due to their model - dead trees take time to be updated, and you have to pay someone to rewrite the article, so not every article is rewritten in a timely manner.
Case in point - one of my friends picked up a really old set (pre-WW2, iirc) of Britannica, and he found a really off-the-wall article on the different "races" of humans, and how "the black race" was "intellectually inferior". How many school kids were exposed to that crap in their school or public libraries?
Add to that more crap on phrenology, etc.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, and it will eventually be replaced with something better if it doesn't evolve, unlike Britannica, which is unable to reinvent itself.
"The stupid thing about this is how a few months ago fark went from being fairly open about NSFW imagery, to banning anyone that links to or posts it. Apparently they can make more money by being family(or workplace) friendly."
Time to fork fark!
"Sounds like he's gone into damage control mode to me. He's trying to deflect critics by calling this a "prank." Baloney. What's so funny about this anyway? Nothing. Drew Curtis is a moron. Fuck him."
Sounds like you're bitter ... probably because you bit? Must bite to post on slashdot before you've had your morning coffee?
To help you, here's my contribution to the Aconmymica (TM) ... NSTRBMC (TM) - Not Safe To Reply Before Morning Coffee?
Seriously though, we all know that there are only a few outcomes, and all of them are good in the end.
If it gets denied, we've all (okay, *most* of us) had a good laugh, sort of like along the "OMFG the gubbermint wants to tax email!!!". jokes.
If it gets accepted, we get to trash-talk the gubbermint some more for stupid copyright laws, and in the end, the law hopefully gets changed once too many of these incidents occur.
So, where's the downside ...?
"* Acronymica - a totally made-up word that now actually means something"
At least that's better than the crap standard always trotted out - the "Encyclopedia Britannica:.
"been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as Encyclopedia Britannica"
Go and grab an older copy, and see all the crap that was in there as "science" - a lot of it with a racist bent, or advocating social darwinism. The newer editions aren't any better, in that errors continue to be propounded.
Case in point - back in the '70s, a joke article about "Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet" appeared in the April edition of Scientific American (iirc, it was in one of Martin Gardner's columns). The editors of Britannica, not knowing how to read a calendar, or being unfamiliar with April Fools (they could look it up :-) and with a total lack of awareness, republished it as fact for years and years, even though it was easy enough to disprove if they had done ANY secondary checking of facts. The book cited in the article didn't exist, though several others, all "full of crap" satirizations, did ...
Fuck Britanicca. Overpriced, high-pressure sales tactics ("buy the encyclopedia and it'll help your kids in school" ... yeah, right), built-in obsolescence, and a VERY slow update/corrections policy. By one estimate, 10% of all articles are off.
"I have yet to find a tool that allows me to treat zip files as part of the filesystem like Explorer does."
Gee, then you'd love linux. Doesn't matter whether you're using a gui or console app such as mc - you can transparently look inside zipped and tarballed files, even copying out individual files, without having to unzip the whole thing.
"*Installs Slackware Hey look guys root is default"
Kids nowadays! Bah!!! Humbug!!!!!
(... and merry xmas/seasons greetings/whatever floats your boat)
Jury nullification is a definite right. However, it only exists when there is a case that can be presented to the jury in the first place. The SCO vs. Novell litigation doesn't have any facts in dispute that would allow for SCO to claim the right to a jury, and that is SCO's real problem. At every instance, Novell limited their claims to things that wouldn't need a jury, and this gutted any hope SCO had of prevailing by "pounding on the table".
Fortunately, SCO won't get to the "pound on the table" stage.
"Wow are you full of shit and yourself.
Let's make this simple - you do not have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than those who do it for a living.
I've had to fire lawyers too many times in the past and do it myself (civil and criminal cases) because, even with a decade or two of experience, they are STILL woefully ignorant of the law.
Sometime in the next month I will AGAIN be forced to fire a lawyer with several decades of experience who:
I knew I should have done like I always do - represent myself. Anyone can draft their own motions and argue their own cases.
The majority of lawyers are stupid, ignorant, and lazy. Their idea of "keeping up to date" in their field is to gossip; any "updates" to their knowledge - real learning - are done at your expense, in the court, at $250/hour.
The SCO case is not that complicated:
The rest is just translating this from layperson's terms to terms the court can accept (in other words, motions in legalese), same as any other legal proceding.
Unfortunately, the author of TFA is a known SCOtroll, like the mogtroll, lyin' lyons, and pretenderle, and chose not to include in his citation the list of rights specificially excluded; that list excludes the copyright transfers.
Originally, Santa Cruz (not Caldera (later to change their name to SCO), who only bought a part of Santa Cruz - the rest became Tarantella) was supposed to buy everything, but they didn't have the money. So, they paid a lesser amount to became Novell's agent in the handling of the Unix licenses, passing on 100% of the revenue, and Novell then remitting them a 5% fee.
This is why Ransom Love (head of Caldera, before the name change) stated that Caldera couldn't open source Unix - others held the copyrights.
SCO, as supposedly Caldera's "successor in interest", (but not Santa Cruz's successor in interest, as they did NOT buy out all of Santa Cruz, contrary to the FUD they have been spreading - just some of the assets) should have known this; the lawsuits were predictably as DOA as the rebadged Maxtor drives from the China factory currently being sold by Seagate.
Jurisprudence has settled that wilfull ignorance is not a defense. Besides, Boies et al should have asked for the decumentation that would allow them to legally prove SCO's case. When you go to see a lawyer, you bring your paperwork with you. Its like going to the shit-house - "The job ain't complete until the paperwork is done."
Boies was lazy and/or incompetent. This isn't the first time, btw.
Three points:
- Copyright law REQUIRES that all transfers be in writing. The parties can't agree to do a work-around.
- The APA specifically excluded copyrights, since Santa Cruz didn't have enough $$$ to buy everything.
- SCO obviously didn't believe that the copyrights had transferred, because before they filed their suit against IBM, they repeatedly asked Novell to transfer them.
The whole thing was a stock scam.The law is clear-cut. Juries are only there to determine the facts of a case. If there are no facts in dispute, there is no option for a jury trial.
In this case, SCO could not show a dispute around the facts. It could not show that there was a law or statute, or even a precedent, that allowed for "implied" transfers of copyright, which would have then led to the "question of fact to be decided by the jury" of whether, in fact, there had been an implied transfer of copyright.
Juries don't decide on points of law. Just the facts of a case. (and yes, I've served on a jury).
The right to a jury trial is not universal. A jury is only needed if there are questions of fact to be decided - juries decide facts, judges decide the application of laws.
In this case, the law was quite clear - without a written transfer of copyright, there were no facts in question for a jury to decide, just the application of the law, which is for a judge.
SCO's theory of an "implied transfer of copyright", without citing a single legal statute, or a judgement or precedent that was not later reversed on appeal, left no legal basis for a jury trial.
I'm just amazed at how many supposedly-knowledgeable people continue to fall for what is utter BS. Anyone reading the comments posted to the article within hours of its' first appearance would have seen the whole thing torn apart - in particular, the legal requirement for a transfer of copywrite to include a written transfer, and that, withut that, judge Kimball could NOT rule in favour of SCO even if he wanted to.
This is the same level of "journalism" as pretendrle and mogtroll. Uninformed. Ditto with all those "analysts" who also came out with buy recommendations, talking through their goatse.cx orifices.
The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.
While the average slashdotter may not be a lawyer, we seem to have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than many of the "experts". Why? Because we write code, and we know the consequences of overlooking a missed semicolon, a typo, or starting from wrong assumptions. Lawyers, on the other hand, don't have a financial incentive to give good advice or dig too deeply when it means generating less revenue.
Shakespeare had it right. "First, we kill all the lawyers."
Since when is 2-month-old news that we already read about (cf: "widespread rejoicing") news?
"Again, that's disingenuous because the Saturn V's LEO capability has to include any crew you want to send up with it"
Why do you need a crew? With the ability to send 6x the payload, you cut down the need to assemble things in orbit by a factor of 6.
As I point out elsewhere, the Saturn V, in today's dollars, is the same price per launch as the shuttle - but with 6x the payload. No compromises, unlike the shuttle, which was compromised in its iitial design by the requirements of the USAF.
"In Germany, whack jobs like Scientologists are actually -banned-."
You say that like its somehow a bad thing.
"You really think someone will get charged that much for recording Canadian Idol on his VHS without the commercials for 15 weeks in a row?"
They'll obviously use the insanity defense.
Of course, if they make the jury watch all the evidence, the jury will vote for the death penalty - even though we don't have a death penalty.
"Kill it with fire."
"I say nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Next up - Some Newfoundlander will propose "lasers - with frigging sharks on their heads, boy!"